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Business Territory 1This is a longer version of a review which was published in ReCALL Newsletter Number 16, March 1999 Supplier: Lingonet Oy, Linnankatu 11 A 20, 20100 Turku, Finland, Fax: +358-2-234 5445. System requirements: 486/66 processor or better, Windows 3.1 or 3.11 with 8 MB RAM or Windows ’95 with 16 MB RAM. Four speed CD-ROM drive and Soundblaster compatible sound card. Price: �62.00 + VAT + P&P Business Territory 1 is a multimedia learning package available on a single CD-ROM. It is intended for adult learners of English who need to use business English in their workplace. It exposes learners to authentic language as used by a selection of employees of a British electronics company. Learners are expected to have some knowledge of business concepts and idiom, and to have an intermediate to advanced level of proficiency in general English. Business Territory 1 includes 40 minutes of authentic video material recorded on location in a Cambridge company. The video clips are supplemented by support material comprising transcripts, audio/text paraphrases, and audio/text comments, as well as a glossary. There is also a wide range of tasks that are based on the video clips and suitable for self-access use as well as one-to-one and group teaching. The support material and tasks encourage students to take both responsibility for their learning and to co-operate and communicate with their fellow students. On entering the course we encounter a screen displaying picture icons representing the faces of the ten company employees interviewed on video, and a menu displaying a number of options. First, an Overview, and then the headings into which the materials are arranged, Jobs, Topics, Group work, Exercises, and finally, a section under the heading Teacher’s Territory. The contents can be approached in one of two ways: by clicking on an icon representing one of the employees, which gives access to the video clips relating to that person, or by selecting one of the options from the main menu mentioned above. If we click on an icon representing an employee we are presented with a number of cue cards - video segments into which the interview is divided - which offer three possibilities: 1. Listen to the interviewer’s question, 2. Play the video clip to watch and listen to the employee’s response and 3. Listen to the interviewer paraphrasing the employee’s response. These cue cards are arranged according to the questions posed by the interviewer and vary in duration and in number, ranging from a minimum of three to a maximum of six. Only when we have listened to a video segment twice are we allowed to click on the text button, available on the video control panel, to visualise the spoken passage. This, I find, could be a drawback for impatient students as they would skip useful information included in the glossary entries, available when blue highlighted text is shown, and comments, available when there is red highlighted text. Both the glossary and the comments open up individual overlay windows that do not obstruct the main screen. Unlike the glossary, the comments are available both in audio and text format, although, once again, only when we have listened twice do we have the right to read the text version. This, which could be useful in the main audio sequence leading to the comprehension exercises to encourage students to become accustomed to infer information from an oral source - which is what normally happens in an authentic environment -, I find a bit extreme when dealing with explanatory information which is meant to provide linguistic and cultural comments on certain ‘more difficult’ expressions used in the video sequence. Once the learner has watched and listened to the video sequence s/he can continue with the tasks which are accessed by clicking on numbered tabs displayed above the text window. The tasks, which the program recommends to be carried out in order, take the form of gap-filling exercises based on the video transcript. The first of these tabs requests the learner to watch the video clip where the selected employee describes his or her job within the company and then proceed to the second tab and complete the exercise. A third tab, available throughout, gives access to a Windows help menu describing how to proceed in each section. The gap-filling exercise works in a conventional fashion where the learner has to select a gap and write the correct answer in a separate box. The box will only admit correct letters to be inserted, thus preventing the learner from misspelling a word. To aid in filling in the gap the audio recording of a complete unit of meaning can be listened to but no other means of help is available should the learner finally decide to give up and request the correct answer. Should this be the case, the learner would have to go back to the main video screen and watch the video three times in order to see the text. The options within the exercise are to write a word, to apply it to the passage, to skip a word and to listen to the selected fragment. The exercise also keeps a score of the correct answers but the program, unfortunately, does not store these results, which would be extremely useful for the learner’s own future reference or for the teacher/tutor to supervise the scores accomplished after fulfilling a whole session. Another way of approaching the materials is by going directly to one of the sections into which the video sequences are divided. The learner can select either jobs, which leads us back to each of the video clips where the ten employees describe their role within the company and the same gap-filling exercise described above, or topics. In the topics section the video clips are arranged according to the main topic underlying the sequence. There are fifteen options from which to choose. In any one topic we are presented with all the cue cards which correspond to the employees who talk about that topic. These video clips lead, in turn, to a number of varied tasks ranging from gap-filling passages, true/false questions, re-wording and re-ordering exercises, etc., and a very interesting set of writing exercises which are carried out by giving the learner a set of instructions and prompts and then requesting him or her to call up the Windows notepad. These exercises encourage the learner to carry out either role-playing tasks or writing exercises which can be stored in the programme directory on the hard disk for the learner’s future reference or the teacher’s supervision. These files may be printed out if need be, which is an advantage as the tasks can be handed in to the teacher once completed. The remaining two sections for students, available from the main menu, are group work and exercises. Group work includes activities such as, ‘describing the structure of a company’, ‘a typical working day’, ‘job interviews’, etc., to be carried out by groups of students, and a final ‘group quiz’ which encourages collaborative work among students. These activities are mainly based on creative writing skills, guided writing skills and inferring information from the videos. They are all linked to notepad files that can be stored and/or printed out. The section described as exercises focuses on individual student work and offers a range of activities based on developing communicative skills. The exercises deal with topics such as ‘dealing with people’, ‘working for a company’, etc. extracted from the video sequences. These tasks also give access to the notepad and can be stored or printed out if necessary. The last section is devoted to the teacher under the heading Teacher’s Territory. Personally I think this resource is unique, since other popular CALL materials lack a teacher-oriented aid. Business Territory 1 has been genuinely designed for both self-access and one-to-one or group tutoring, as described in the accompanying guide, in the sense that it provides, on the one hand, a guide to the reference materials, the table of contents and background information, and on the other, the transcripts of all the interviews, paraphrases, comments, task sheets, a learning review, a quick help, and finally, the key to all the exercises. This section can only be accessed using a password made available in the accompanying booklet. The teacher’s guide describes the table of contents, which consists of a list of all the items in Business Territory to aid lesson planning. ‘Background information’ includes information on how to use the software as a classroom resource in one-to-one teaching and as a presentation tool. The three following sections provide the printable transcripts of all the video and audio materials included. The task sheets contain printable work sheets based on the tasks in the topics section, group work activities, individual exercises and report tasks, all of which can be printed out. The printable learning review section has been designed specifically for one-to-one learners who can use it to monitor their learning on a daily basis and keep a permanent record of their work, although the tabled sheet has to be printed out and progress annotated by hand. The quick help section provides a brief overview of the courseware and the key provides printable answer sheets for all the language auditing tasks arranged under the same headings as the student sections, jobs and topics, and which include full transcripts and completed exercises. Navigation is intuitive. A return button is always available to backtrack, converted into an exit button to quit the program from the main menu screen. The graphics design could be more user-friendly on occasions but it does not interfere with the activities. To conclude, my overall opinion of Business Territory 1 is positive because it exploits genuinely authentic materials, providing audio-visual contents suitable for progressively more difficult and complex activities, including group work. I found especially interesting the section for teachers, which allows them to make the most of the materials available throughout the courseware. Ana Gimeno-Sanz Universidad Polit�cnica de Valencia (Spain)
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