English For Academic Study - Listening PDF
English For Academic Study - Listening PDF
English For Academic Study - Listening PDF
New edition
This fully updated 2012 edition of English for Academic olin Campbell is a course director and teacher
C
Academic Study
Study: Listening will help you develop the listening and in the International Study and Language Centre
note-taking skills you need to participate effectively in at the University of Reading, and on the MA ELT
academic lectures and seminars. programme. His interests include the teaching
Listening
psychology and linguistics. These have been recorded in skills, sound/spelling relationships and the
a genuine academic environment and are a perfect way applications of technology in language
to prepare for English-medium study. learning. He has worked in EFL and EAP for
The Course Book includes unit summaries to give you 30 years and has taught in Europe, North Africa
and the Far East.
a quick overview of what you have covered, and a
Components:
EAS Listening: Course Book with CDs
ISBN 978 1 90861 433 9
EAS Listening: Teachers Book
ISBN 978 1 90861 434 6
Suitable for:
Course Book Colin Campbell and Jonathan Smith
Upper intermediate
to proficiency
GARNET EDUCATION
IELTS 5.07.5+
CEF B2C2
www.garneteducation.com
The purpose of this book is to help you better understand spoken English, particularly the spoken
English of academic lectures, as well as to help you develop your note-taking skills while listening.
Additional materials
Glossary: Words or phrases in bold (or bold and underlined in task instructions) in the text are
explained in the glossary on page 70.
Transcripts: At the end of the book you will find the transcripts of all the lectures. Your teacher will
sometimes give you the opportunity to listen to the recordings and follow the transcript at the same
time, once you have completed the main listening tasks.
Listening 5
Many of the lecture extracts in this book are based on transcripts of authentic lectures given at the
University of Reading. These lectures were given to audiences of British and international students as
part of their normal degree programmes. Although the extracts have been re-recorded to ensure clarity,
the language and content of these lectures have been maintained, to ensure that you are provided with
listening practice that closely simulates listening to, and note-taking from, real academic lectures.
The lecture extracts are taken from a range of academic fields, including investment banking,
development economics, marketing, psychology and linguistics. Although the original lectures were
intended for students doing degrees in these subjects, we have chosen extracts that should be
accessible to students of all subjects.
Other extracts have been written specially for this book, but have been designed to reflect features
of authentic academic lectures.
The symbol indicates that the recordings are available on both audio CD and DVD.
Vocabulary
Although the recordings in the book may not be related to your particular subject, you will find a
lot of useful vocabulary in this book.
There are different types of vocabulary that you may find useful:
Academic words: These are words that occur frequently in many different academic subjects,
so whatever your degree subject, it is important to learn how to use them.
Non-technical topic words: Many of the recordings use sets of topic vocabulary which will
be useful to students on almost all degree courses; for example, the text on market research
contains many words connected with surveys, questionnaires and statistics.
Subject-specific words: Some of the recordings contain words which will be of particular
interest to students of specific subjects; for example, there is an extract on social learning which
will be of particular interest to students planning to study psychology.
Your listening will improve more quickly if you practise outside the classroom. You can do this
in a variety of ways; for example, talking with English-speaking friends, listening to the radio or
watching TV, or working with independent study materials (see further below).
You will find Sound advice sections in most units in this book, and these contain useful advice for
improving your listening. Here are some more ideas.
There are a number of good websites which provide practice in listening to academic lectures. If
you go to the EAS website (enter through www.englishforacademicstudy.com) you will find
links to some of these sites.
A wide range of vocabulary is part of the key to success in listening. You should keep a record
of new words or phrases that you learn, and make sure you note down the pronunciation,
particularly if it does not fit in with pronunciation patterns you are familiar with. Ask your
teacher to model the pronunciation if you are not sure of it.
There are several dictionaries on CD-ROM where you can hear the pronunciation and see the
meaning of a word on screen, either by moving the mouse pointer over a word or by clicking
on it. The Macmillan English Dictionary and Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English both
have good CD-ROM versions. Think about buying one of these because it will be useful, not just
on this course, but in your later studies.
Listening to longer talks, and talks about your own subject, will help prepare you for listening to
lectures, so you will need to do more independent listening in your own time.
Additional audio-visual resources
To help improve your extended listening, you can access highly relevant lectures and talks on two
websites the University of Readings SACLL site, and TED Talks.
TED Talks
Speakers on this interesting site include world-famous academics, writers, thinkers, medical
researchers, politicians, investors, cooks, businesspeople and artists. The talks are informative, up to
date and thought-provoking. They vary from three minutes to more than an hour in length. You will
hear different accents that will help you prepare for study at a culturally diverse university.
Here are some suggestions on using this website effectively.
The URL is www.ted.com, or just enter ted talks into a search engine.
You can access the talks in different ways. The top of the homepage has a menu including
Themes, Speakers, Talks. You can search for a particular speaker, e.g., Bill Gates, or the
Themes button may offer a more interesting way to access talks giving you a choice of talks
on related topics.
Listening 7
Customer Level
2.2 CD1: 16 Listen to Part 1 of the lecture, which is in three sections. Identify the
three sections and number them in the correct order.
Listening 23
2.5 CD1: 19 Listen to Part 1, Section 3 again and answer the following questions.
1. What does the franchisor provide to the franchisee?
2. What two kinds of fee does the franchisee pay?
3. What is the difference between these two fees?
4. Which of these is the key point made in this section?
That fast-food restaurants can be successful franchise businesses.
How the fees are calculated.
How each party in the business agreement benefits.
The lecturer begins Part 2 of the lecture by saying: There are a number of issues that you need to
consider when deciding whether or not to franchise your business. He is looking at this from the
viewpoint of the owner of a growing business trying to decide whether or not to become
a franchisor.
3.1 Discuss what you think he will talk about next with another student.
Lecturers often use specific words or phrases (e.g., Firstly, Secondly, Another point to
remember is ) to introduce a key point. For example, the lecturer signposts the first
point in Part 2 by saying: Firstly, there needs to be ...
3.3 Look at the transcript for Track 20 on page 79 and find two or three examples of
language used by the lecturer to signpost key points.
3.4 CD1: 21 Listen to Part 2, Section 1 again and answer the following questions.
1. The lecturer makes the point that a relatively stable, long-term market is needed for
a successful franchise operation. To support this point, the lecturer gives two reasons
and two examples. What are they?
2. Do the examples help make his point clearer? If so, how?
3.5 CD1: 22 Listen to Part 2, Section 2 again and answer the following questions.
1. What point does he make about buying supplies in bulk?
2. How is this point related to the main point in this section?
3. Now look at the following excerpt. Having made the key point (highlighted), the speaker
repeats the idea twice. Underline the words in the excerpt where he repeats the idea.
In addition and this is fairly obvious you will need a fairly wide margin between
cost and income. Remember that the gross margin needs to provide a return on the
investment to both the franchisor and the franchisee. So you will need to keep costs
low and prices as high as the market will bear. One advantage of a franchise operation
is that supplies can be bought in bulk across the whole franchise, which will help to
keep costs down. But you can see that franchising would be unsuitable in a market
where the margin between cost and income is very narrow.
3.6 CD1: 23 Listen to Part 2, Section 3 again and answer the following questions.
1. What does the franchisor need to provide to the franchisee?
2. When are these required?
3. What point is made about franchisees in the restaurant industry?
4. What do you think is the key point in this section?
In Part 3, the lecturer continues to discuss some of the issues that need to be considered when
deciding whether or not to franchise your business.
4.1 CD1: 24 Listen to Part 3 of the lecture. Make notes on the key points in your
notebook. Then compare your notes with another student. Have you identified
the same key points?
Listening 25
One further issue you may need to consider is whether the business is
to another geographical area. If you have developed your business serving one
particular part of the country and you want to set up a franchise network covering a
the whole country, for example another thing you
will have to consider is whether there is a for your
product or service in different regions. It may be, for example, that competition in
other parts of the country may be so that it is difficult for
franchisees to , or that for localized or
reasons the business may not be as profitable.
distinctive brand with a valuable reputation, but pausing after key words or
phrases
that this reputation can be damaged comparatively
quickly if, for example, quality standards are not
consistently applied. The detailed operating manual
that I referred to earlier will play a role in maintaining the brand but, just as important,
you need to take care selecting franchisees and monitoring their operations. In addition
to checking that franchisees have the relevant skills and experience to run a successful
business, you also need to ensure that they share the same business values as you, that
they accept the importance of maintaining the brand and that they are clear about
what they can or cant change about the way the business is run so people who are
very individualistic will probably not make good franchisees.
4.4 CD1: 27 Listen to Part 3, Section 3 again and complete the notes in as much
detail as you think is necessary.
Which of the techniques that the lecturer used helped you to complete the notes?
Sound advice:
As you listen, try to keep in mind the key ideas and relate any new information you
hear to those ideas.
Listen for signposting language, stressed words or phrases and pauses as indicators of
key points.
If you do not understand a key point, listen for any examples which may help you to
recover the meaning.
Remember that effective lecturers sometimes repeat key points. This gives you time
to note them down, but try to avoid writing down the same idea twice!
Listening 27
You can extend your vocabulary by learning groups of words which have the same basic form and
which are often related in meaning.
5.1 Practise the pronunciation of the words in the table and underline the stressed
syllable in each word.
Examples:
5.2 Use the words in the table to study how changes in syllable stress within word
families affect pronunciation.
In many cases, a different syllable stress has an effect on the pronunciation of the sounds.
Example:
product / prdkt/
produce /pr du:s/
2. This is one example of a match between the individuals goals and those of the
organization.
3. They found no significant relation between class size and levels of achievement.
5.4 CD1: 29 Listen to the sentences and complete them with two to four words in
each space. Some of the words include prefixes.
5.5 CD1: 30 Listen to the groups of sentences. Complete the sentences with two
to four words in each space. One of the words in each space is a form of the
word in bold.
Listening 29
5. a. The results indicate that the virus mutates more rapidly than was first believed.
b. There was
the way the election had been administered.
c. The negotiations
establishment of
peace in the area.
Sound advice:
Your listening skills will improve if you work to enlarge your vocabulary. Learning word
families is an effective way of doing this, but you also need to develop your awareness
of differences in pronunciation between words in each family. You can learn the most
useful word families by referring to the Academic Word List and by doing the exercises
in EAS: Vocabulary.
Unit summary
In this unit you have practised identifying key points in a lecture and have seen how examples can
help you understand a key point. You have also developed your understanding of relationships
between ideas and learnt patterns of pronunciation and word stress in word families.
Which two statements about how a lecturer identifies key points in a lecture are
1 not true? Tick (3) these two false statements.
a. The lecturer may use signposting words and phrases to indicate a key point.
b. The lecturer may use words and phrases that are specific to the topic of
the lecture.
d. The lecturer may pause for a moment before introducing a key point.
f. The lecturer may speak very quickly at times to emphasize that a point is key.
b. I still get confused about the difference between key points and examples.
When a lecturer uses typical words and phrases to indicate a key point, it is called
3 signposting. Write eight signposting words and phrases from the unit here.
Listening 31