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

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Average: 4.5 (182 votes)

Submitted by _louixwtt on Sat, 09/10/2021 - 00:57

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When it comes to learning a foreign language, what make an app useful for me, it has to be competent and has a compelling teaching method, for instance, Busuu is usually being used nowadays. For others sort of stuffs is completely rare myself just pick one up, since I am freak for amassing apps.

Submitted by monaaltyyar on Tue, 28/09/2021 - 08:16

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in current days, I'm practicing and improving my english language by cambly application. whetever, I uesd alot of applications but i didn't benefit and notice any progress except cambly app, its cost the lowest fund and consist of specailist tutors and native speaker . in my opinion , it is sucessful project for who concern in english

Submitted by mahmoudrahaf on Sun, 26/09/2021 - 14:57

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After completing this lesson, how can i move to the next lesson?

Hello mahmoudrahaf,

The pages in our Skills section are not presented in any order and are instead in a list, as if they were on a bookshelf in a library. If you want to continue practising your listening skills, I'd recommend going back to the B2 listening page to choose another page.

You could also move to the Reading or Writing sections to try a lesson there as well.

Our subscribers have access to our courses, which are arranged in a particular order and where your progress is tracked.

All the best,

Kirk

The LearnEnglish Team

Submitted by Javier Antonio Seco on Tue, 07/09/2021 - 12:39

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Hello All, At the moment I am working hard to improve my English speaking skills so I am using an app called elsa. This app is helpful for this goal. I really enjoy using it ,even though I got frustrated when I can't get the perfect sound

Submitted by gdinunzio on Sat, 04/09/2021 - 10:59

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I gave some try with babbel and duolingo but they didn't fit well to me. Then I have found out BBC learning english that is more effective. Last year I often used the learning website globalenglish, which is useful for professional and business workers. Now I've just signed up the british council subscription. It seem to me similar to globalenglish.

Submitted by Abrarhussain on Tue, 17/08/2021 - 23:55

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My favourite app is BBC bitesize for learning because , this app is worldwide and easy for me to build and improve my existing knowledge.

Submitted by GiulianaAndy on Thu, 08/07/2021 - 20:40

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Actually, I have a lot of different apps for learning. I recently downloaded a new app which is called Freedom; it is very useful because it blocks some apps which are very distracting such as Whatsapp, Messenger, etc for a period of time. I mean you can choose the apps you want to get blocked and how many hours you want the app to block other distracting apps and it will do it for you; permitting you to focus on your homeworks or whatever you need to do for a period of time. On the other hand, I have Kahoot app which is one of my favorites. It permits you to look for a topic and choose a quiz of the topic that you looked for on the app. Personally, I think it is pretty useful. However, sometimes you cannot find the quiz that you want to get. Finally, the others apps and websites that I use for improving my English skills are: British Council, Cake app, TOEFL listening and grammar quiz. They have been helping me a lot since I started to study English