Audio materials

There’s been a lot of interesting discussion going on in the Business Spotlight Teachers’ Group on the topic of listening skills, based on my last blog post.

Many teachers have contributed comments on how they perceive the value of teaching listening skills in business English classes and how it fits in with training other skills.

One point raised was the value of short stories in introducing students to language and culture (thanks, Heike!). I’d like to quote Heike’s view here because she makes a valid point:

Apart from the fact that literature is authentic material and that it is highly valued, it has a wide range of further functions in the 'classroom'. It helps students understand other cultures, it can be a stimulus for language acquisition, it develops students’ interpretative abilities and encourages them to talk about their opinions and feelings. With regard to learner autonomy the students should try to deduce the meaning of unknown vocabulary (intelligent guessing) and draw inferences – they might be surprised about how much they understand, which will motivate them.

I used to use graded readers quite frequently with my groups, but my main problem with the readers was that there was inevitably no audio version available. This meant that asking students to read chapters at home didn’t ensure that they were learning the pronunciation of the words and the intonation of the sentences.

One way that Business Spotlight has addressed this issue is through the launch at the beginning of 2010 of a new series of short stories written by James Schofield and read on the accompanying audio CD by Ken Taylor. I recently spoke to James about the value of authentic short stories in learning a foreign language, and our opinions were both very similar to Heike’s quoted above.

However, the way that James’s short stories differ from graded readers is that James writes in original authentic English. With the graded readers, original works are simplified according to the level they’re aimed at, whereas James provides a natural way to enjoy a short, humorous, business-related story.

On the Teachers’ Group discussion, we also had a comment about the lack of quality audio and visual material for business English students on the market. Did you know that Business Spotlight has a series of free videos called Business with Bob? 

Other comments included the need for more audio material of Asian speakers, more genuine dialogues (i.e. not too easy) and the availability of transcripts. Business Spotlight has attempted to address such issues. For example, on Business Spotlight Audio 3/2010, Robert Gibson interviews Zailiang Tang, an expert on the Chinese car industry. Tang speaks English extremely well, but has quite a strong Chinese accent. And the Head-to-Head section always includes authentic interviews with people on the street.

Together with the weekly podcasts, Business Spotlight provides a lot of audio material aimed at various levels and for various purposes, and all of it includes transcripts. Since practising listening greatly enhances the learning process, it’s worth taking advantage of the audio material available.

[The editorial team at Business Spotlight is always interested in feedback on the audio products, so please feel free to leave your comments or suggestions for improvement.]