Listening

Warm Up

Helpful Words and Phrases

Listen and repeat.

  1. a boost
    • ex. After practicing for the interview, she got a boost of confidence.
  2. popularity
    • ex. The popularity of AI applications continues to grow.
  3. various
    • ex. The company offers various products and services to its customers.
  4. cumulative
    • ex. The cumulative amount of the money she saved is enough to buy a small house.
  5. reinforce
    • ex. Practice is important to reinforce language skills.

Article

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

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Nintendo reported an 18% rise in net income for its first half. Sales continued to get a boost from “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” and the popularity of its software for various new video games. A year earlier, Nintendo’s income increased to 271.3 billion yen ($1.8 billion), from 230 billion yen. And sales hit 796 billion yen ($5.3 billion), a 21% increase.

According to Nintendo, the “Mario Kart 8 Deluxe” game sold well because of the movie. 3.2 million units of the “Mario Kart 8 Deluxe” game were sold. This helped Nintendo hit cumulative sales of 57 million games. The popularity of “The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom” game also gave a boost to sales. It was released in May and sold 19.5 million units worldwide.

Nintendo plans to sell 15 million machines by March 2024. And for the holidays, it will release “Super Mario RPG” and Pokemon games. Software sales reached 97 million games in the first half. Recently, “Super Mario Bros. Wonder” was released. Nintendo aims to reinforce the system by improving the current games and adding new games.

This material was based on an article by The Associated Press.

Discussion

Choose a topic and discuss the questions with your tutor.

Video Games

  • What video games do you like to play? Why? Discuss.
  • Why do you think people play video games? Discuss.
  • Do you think children should be allowed to play video games? Why or why not? Discuss.

Super Mario

  • Do you like Super Mario? Why or why not? Discuss.
  • In your opinion, what helped increase Super Mario's popularity? Discuss.
  • What do you think Nintendo should do with Super Mario's popularity (ex. create more products)? Discuss.