Unit 4 Person to person
Inside view
Conversation 1
Kate Oh, I must make a quick call.
Jacky Hello, Jacky Gordon speaking.
Kate Hello, can I speak to Abbie, please?
Jacky I'll see if she's in, can you hold on?
Kate Sure.
Jacky Hello? She's out, I'm afraid. Can I give her a message - er ... or I can ask her to call you back?
Kate Could you ask her to call me back?
Jacky Sure. Who's calling?
Kate Kate Santos.
Jacky Kate Santos, OK. Does Abbie have your number?
Kate Yes, she does.
Jacky I'll tell her you called.
Kate Thanks.
Janet Abbie? I know a girl called Abbie. She reads English, doesn't she?
Kate Yes, how do you know her?
Janet She has a tutorial just after me so we chat a bit. We get on really well.
Kate Yes, everyone likes Abbie. I think it's because she's really interested in people - she's a very good listener. She should be, she works for Nightline.
Janet Nightline?
Kate Oh, I haven't told you, I've joined it.
Janet What is it? I've never heard of it.
Kate Look, I've got a leaflet about it.
Janet So...
Kate It's a university helpline for students who are having problems. I'm training to be one of the people they can call to talk to.
Janet You mean, you're a volunteer?
Kate Yes.
Janet Oh, that's great, Kate.
Conversation 2
Abbie Hi, Abbie speaking.
Kate Hi, Abbie, it's Kate Santos.
Abbie Hi! I'm sorry not to have called you back. I've got a lot on at the moment. How's things?
Kate Fine. I just wanted to let you know I won't be able to come to the next training session.
Abbie Um ... It's quite an important session. Oh, can you hold on a moment. There's someone at the door.
…
Abbie Hi, I'm sorry, look, can I call you back later?
Kate Sure. What time?
Abbie Is three o'clock OK?
Kate Three's fine.
Abbie OK, I'll call you then. Speak soon.
Kate Bye.
Abbie Bye.
…
Kate Abbie's my Nightline trainer.
Janet You're saying she's your Nightline trainer! But she's still a student.
Kate Well, experienced students train new students, that's the way it works.
Janet Oh, I see.
Kate It's great! At the moment, she's training us in listening skills.
Janet Listening skills? What do you mean, listening skills?
Kate Um ... The ability to really listen to someone and make them feel you're listening. It's very important.
Janet I've never thought about that before.
Kate Yes, for example, one thing you can do is listen carefully and then repeat what someone says but maybe a little differently.
Janet So what you're saying is, repeat what someone says but maybe not the exact same words?
Kate Yes. You see, when you do that, you check you've understood and you show them you're really listening.
Janet So they know you've really heard them.
Kate Very good, Janet. I can see you've got it already! Hi,... how's it going?
Outside view
Voice-over It's the most popular means of communication in the 21st century. Nobody writes letters any more, especially young people. They all use text messaging instead. Officially called SMS - short message service - text messaging is slow to enter, and you can only key in 160 characters. So why is it such a success? The first text message was sent in 1992, but texting only became commercially available in 1995. It has grown incredibly quickly since then. Just look at the graph. In 1999, the number of texts sent reached one billion. Over the next three years, it grew to 20 billion! So people have now sent billions of texts, and the number continues to rise. It isn't difficult to see why it quickly became part of youth culture.
Emily I use it every day. I don't call a lot of people on it. I just use it for text messages because it's easy and quick to send things and arrange things by text.
Heidi Mainly to friends. Sometimes it's useful to get information for work as well. You know, if people want to give you contact numbers or things like that, it's easier than phoning.
Andy I've had my mobile phone for about three years. I mostly use it for just texting my mates and arranging sort of social meetings with them.
Alice I like texting. I don't really talk much on it except just to make arrangements but texting's the biggest thing I do.
Male I probably text message about ten, 15 times a day.
Alice Usually, I don't know, about ten. Ten to 15. Fifteen maybe to 20.
Voice-over It isn't just young people who use texting. Companies use it too - for advertising and promotion. For example, the Orange telephone network has run a text message promotional campaign since April 2004. People text a special number on a Wednesday and receive a discount voucher by text. They show this message to any one of 450 cinemas in Britain and get two tickets for the price of one. Why Wednesday? Wednesday has always been the worst day of the week for cinemas. Since the campaign started, cinema attendance has risen on Wednesdays by nearly ten per cent. And, of course, TV uses text message voting to decide lots of things. Texting has been one of the most successful inventions for years.
Listening in
Passage 1
John Are you packed?
Mike Yup. Everything's there.
John Sure you've packed your mobile?
Mike I'll look again, John ... yes.
John Well, we've got another ten minutes before we need to leave, so we might as well relax. You know someone told me an amazing story yesterday about these Australians who got completely lost in some national park.
Mike And don't tell me, they used their mobile to get help?
John That's right!
Mike So what happened?
John Well, it was this guy with his son and niece -I think she was about 14 - and they were hiking in this really rugged country and they got completely lost - no idea where they were at all.
Mike That's not going to happen to us.
John No, it isn't. Anyway, the guy had his mobile and he phoned the emergency services — it wasn't dark yet - and they sent out a search party, but they couldn't find them. And then -this is the interesting bit - the guy sent photos of the place where they were.
Mike I'd have thought of that.
John Yes, well it's pretty obvious, really. And in the photos there were mountains in the background, and the staff at the emergency service centre were able to identify exactly which mountains they were. And they used the photos to pinpoint their location, you know, to get the exact location.
Mike How did they do that?
John They used mapping software.
Mike Right.
John Anyway, by then it had got dark and really freezing. So they slept behind this ridge and covered themselves with leaves. And you know what the young girl said afterwards? She said, "It was quite fun."
Mike Really, wasn't she frightened?
John I don't think so.
Mike So - is there a happy ending?
John Yes, well they sent out helicopters as soon as it was daylight and the helicopter hovered over the area, and the man kept talking to them till they were able to pinpoint his location. And when they finally found them they were only 400 metres away from where they'd expected them to be.
Mike Amazing!
John And that's because they'd moved 400 metres away from where they'd taken their photos because the ground was too rough to sleep on.
Mike Incredible!
John And the moral of the story is-
Mike Always take your mobile phone with you when you go hiking.
John And take one that has a camera.
Mike Hey, I think we should go, John.
John Yes, OK. You think we're going to get lost?
Mike No chance, mate!
Passage2
Social networking - it's the 21st century way of having fun - online. And if you're under 40, you probably use a social networking site - maybe when you should be working. It's well-known that -. office workers spend up to two hours a day on a site, exchanging messages and photos. And do students ever do anything else? Different social networking sites are used by different age groups.
For people in their 20s, the most popular site is Facebook, the online phenomenon started by an American student in 2004. It's taken only four years to make Facebook a huge success - and the website's made its founder, Mark Zuckerberg, a very rich man indeed.
What's extraordinary about Zuckerburg is that he started Facebook when he was only 18. He was a student at Harvard, one of America's top universities, when he launched the Facebook website, working from his college room. In only two weeks, more than two-thirds of his college had signed up and in a year, thousands of colleges were using it. Today, Facebook has millions of users. More than half of them visit the site at least once a day.
So what makes Facebook so special? Like other networking sites, you create a profile with photos, you list your interests, you exchange messages and join groups of friends. But where Facebook is different is that it gives you a privacy that you just don't get on other sites. Unlike other sites, you have a lot of control over what users can see about you. As a result, one-third of Facebook users give out their mobile numbers - they know it's safe to do so.
But you still need to be careful about what you think is safe to show people. One reason is that more and more employers are using Facebook to check out potential employees. Is the person you've just interviewed as good as he seems? Facebook can provide the answer. If a 26-year-old man says on Facebook that he's been travelling round the world for the last three years, and in his interview he said he'd been working in an office - well, he probably won't get the job.
