A business interview

A business interview

Listen to the business interview to practise and improve your listening skills.

Do the preparation task first. Then listen to the audio and do the exercises.

Preparation

Transcript

Presenter: Welcome to today's show. We're very happy to have Anna Oliveira as our guest today. Anna is the creator and founder of HomeworX – spelled with an 'x' we should note – an app which helps teenagers with their homework. Thanks for coming in, Anna.

Anna: Thanks for having me.

Presenter: So, tell us about your app. How does it work?

Anna: Well, teenagers and their parents have numerous challenges when it comes to homework these days. In many families both parents work and don't have much available time to help their kids with their homework. And even if they do have time to help, they may not be able to offer support with the content. What I mean is, they may not know, or at least remember, enough in any given subject to support.

Presenter: You mean they might not be able to remember complex maths or might have never studied certain subjects, such as biology or economics, themselves?

Anna: Exactly. So they might want to support their children with their homework, but have neither the time nor the knowledge to do so.

Presenter: I see. So the app helps solve this problem?

Anna: Yes, and more. The next issue is that tutors can be expensive, and there may be long waiting lists for specialist tutors in the town or region you live in. Our HomeworX app brings students and tutors together online. Students can search a database of pre-approved tutors and sign up for live online support. They don't need to be in the same town or city.

Presenter: That sounds really great.

Anna: It is. And this approach also enables us to offer the tutoring services at lower prices because there's no travelling time involved for the tutor to get to the student's home. And tutors who live in remote areas are happy to get access to more students, and be able to work from home, even at lower rates.

Presenter: This all sounds great. So, how did you come up with the idea?

Anna: Well, as you might guess, I was one of those parents I described earlier. I really wanted to help my son with his homework, but I was either too busy with work or I didn't actually know anything about the subjects he was having difficulty with. Also, we live in an area where there aren't many tutors and the ones that are there are either very expensive or have long waiting lists.

Presenter: Yes. I can understand your predicament. Well, it sounds like a very useful app that is clearly meeting a need. And its popularity obviously speaks for itself.

Anna: Thank you.

Presenter: So, do you have plans for the future?

Anna: We've just secured some funding and hope to expand the range of services we offer using the app.

Presenter: We wish you the best of luck. Thanks again for coming in. That was Anna Oliveira, founder of the tutoring app HomeworX (with an 'x', don't forget!), which is available for both Apple and Android devices. Join us again next week for another business interview. Have a great week, everyone. 

Task 1

Task 2

Discussion

Download
Worksheet80.49 KB

Language level

Average: 4.5 (182 votes)
Do you need to improve your English listening skills?
Join thousands of learners from around the world who are improving their English listening skills with our online courses.

Submitted by FatCat03 on Thu, 12/01/2023 - 15:01

Permalink

My favourite app is bbc learning english. I really like their contents such as 6 minute english, news review etc. Contents are very informative and useful.

Submitted by mchaires96 on Thu, 05/01/2023 - 00:51

Permalink

BBC Learning English is my favorite one 'cause it has a lot of useful activities that let me improve my skills.

Submitted by cathyli on Sat, 19/11/2022 - 15:44

Permalink

I'm using BBCLearningEnglish, BBC news, CNN to improve my Englsih skills. Among those BBCLearningEnglish is my favorate one. It has different areas covers all my needs currently such as Tim's prounouciation workshop which help my with my accent, news review which has interesting words extracted from recently news headings help me understand newspapers or radios. By using BBC or CNN news app, I can improve my reading skills, vocabulary and most immportantly, they both have interesting stories of what's happening worldwidely.

Profile picture for user _88g5

Submitted by _88g5 on Fri, 18/11/2022 - 15:13

Permalink

nowadays, I am using Duolingo app for learning different languages. it's really amazing with its exercises and fun games and it makes you exited to compete against other people around the world by having scores while learning

The only thing that I do not much like about Duolingo is that it is suitable only for beginners because it's content is very simple and primitive..

Submitted by Ashantakune on Thu, 20/10/2022 - 07:04

Permalink

I normally use duolingo for learning new language and sometime I use Youtube too.

Submitted by Ahmed Salem on Fri, 07/10/2022 - 23:10

Permalink

I don't have a certain app to depend on , but I found that youtube app is widely used and always helps me.

Submitted by ryhnchrl on Wed, 05/10/2022 - 19:15

Permalink

in deed i never payed an app for learning or having help for my subjects but i am useing youtube for free and its very usefull

Submitted by Sara29189 on Mon, 03/10/2022 - 19:25

Permalink

Actually, I never used an app to learn english or any other subject, language or field. Most of the time, I'm learning from reading books, watching movies or listening to music in english. But now I'm taking notes from other comments experiences with apps :).

Submitted by santyfreud on Tue, 20/09/2022 - 16:08

Permalink

I had been using the Babbel app for about four years. I found it very useful and practical since you can access the app everywhere and anytime from a mobile device, so there aren´t any excuses to start a lesson.

Sadly, as many people have said, any app can reach boundaries, and we must find different options for keeping our learning path and not getting stuck.