Service encounters : booking a holiday

Abstract

In this on-line lesson provided by 'CELE' international students can improve their social listening skills. This lesson is part of a module developing students' listening skills in academic, social and everyday situations.

This lesson helps students understand how humour is used in conversation and how speakers cooperate and share knowledge in conversation. Students can improve their listening skills through tasks focusing on understanding the main points, listening for detail, and practising predicting strategies. Students can work on tasks to improve their listening skills to identify weak sounds in English (difficult to hear) such as prepositions, contractions and articles. In addition, students can look up definitions of words, explore how words are used in context (including what words frequently go before or after a word), and obtain information about whether a word is commonly used in an academic context.

The listening module provides rich opportunities for students to improve their listening skills at their own pace, when they want to work, at their own level, and in any order they would like.