Successful listening in any professional or academic situation involves being able to use a number of sub-skills effectively. These include being able to predict what a speaker might say; using your knowledge of specialist vocabulary relevant to a particular topic and training yourself to listen out for specific information.
You are going to listen to the first part of a lecture given by Dr Mary Phillips from the Department of Management at Bristol University and do some activities that will help you to develop these sub-skills.
Dr Mary Phillips begins her presentation by saying:
"Right, the topic for today's lecture is corporate social responsibility"
What questions do you have about this topic that you would like the speaker to answer?
Write down at least three questions. Refer back to these questions after you have listened to the introduction - did you get any answers? If not, do you think the answers will be given in the next part of the lecture?
Before you listen, it may help you to check the meaning of some of the vocabulary you will hear in this part of the lecture.
Open the exercise and match the words from the lecture with their definitions. Use the online dictionary to help if necessary.
This activity will help you to tune in; in other words, get used to the speaker's voice and focus your listening on one specific aspect of the content.
Listen to the whole extract once without stopping. Select the tick symbol next to any names on the list below that you hear:
Australia
Britain
California
Exxon
Ford
France
General Motors
Microsoft
Portugal
Shell
Sweden
the United States
Wal-Mart
Listen to the extract again, this time focusing on the points that the lecturer makes, and test your general comprehension. Decide whether each statement below is true or false. Select and then check your answers.
1.
The lecturer starts by saying that the social responsibility of corporations
is more important than their obligations to their shareholders.
2.
Large corporations are so influential only because they produce most of the
goods and services that we buy.
3.
Corporations can only influence wider aspects of society when they act together.
4.
The gross national product of Sweden was only slightly higher than the 1999
revenues of General Motors.
5.
General Motors revenues are equivalent to about 65 per cent of the revenues
of California.
6.
Exxon, the oil company, has more ships than the UK.
7.
The top corporations in the United States have a smaller share of industrial
assets today than they did in the 1980s.
You may wish to refer to the tapescript to check any points that you were unsure about.
Tapescript (pdf, 65KB) You may wish to print this document.
Look at these questions requiring specific figures given by the speaker during the lecture. Write any answers that you remember in the boxes provided.
1. What was the size of General Motors' workforce in 1999?
2. How much money did General Motors make in 1999?
3. How many people work for Wal-Mart?
4. What figures are given for the GNPs of Sweden and Portugal?
5. How many ships does Exxon have?
6. What percentage of industrial assets did the top 200 manufacturing firms in the United States have in the 1980s?
Now listen again and complete the task before checking your answers.