Listening

Warm Up

Helpful Words and Phrases

Listen and repeat.

    • ex. The employees criticized their CEO for his bad behavior.
    • ex. For my research project, I need to transcribe recorded interviews.
    • ex. You need to ask for permission to use his pictures.
    • ex. Every time you shop at this store, you earn points that you can cash out later.
    • ex. The police tried hard, but unfortunately, they could not trace the letter to anyone.

Article

Read the article below and answer your tutor's questions.

Font size 文字サイズ

Facebook has announced that it’s going to pay users for their voice recordings as part of its new Pronunciations project. The goal of the project is to improve the company’s technology for understanding human voices. Last year, Facebook was criticized for listening to and transcribing users’ recordings without permission.

To join the project, users must send recordings of the words “Hey Portal” and the names of some of their Facebook friends. Each user may send up to five sets of recordings. For each set of recordings, Facebook will give 200 points. When users receive 1000 points, they can cash out a $5 reward.

Only Facebook users who are 18 years old or over may join the project. In addition, they must also have at least 75 Facebook friends. To protect its users’ privacy, the company promised that the recordings cannot be traced to the people who send them in. Facebook also said that it would not use the recordings for other reasons without asking for permission first.

Discussion

Choose a topic and discuss the questions with your tutor.

Research Participation

  • Do you think that people should participate in Facebook's Pronunciations project? Why or why not? Discuss.
  • Do you think the $5 reward is enough for this project? Why or why not? Discuss.
  • What are good reasons for companies to ask customers to help with research (ex. to improve technology, to improve safety)? Why? Discuss.

Voice Recordings

  • What should users do if a company listens to their voice recordings without permission? Why? Discuss.
  • Do you think it's safe to upload or send voice recordings through social media? Why or why not? Discuss.
  • Do you think sending recordings online will be a more common way to communicate in the future? Why or why not? Discuss.