Listening to a lecture


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As I am always pointing to other teachers’ resources on this site, for a change I thought I’d point to one of my own. Here’s a lecture I gave to students at Exeter University called Postwar Reconstruction and the Welfare State. It’s designed as a lecture for students on Academic English courses who need practise in listening and note-taking so the content is not too difficult and you should be able to follow it. It’s about how the Labour government rebuilt Britain after world war two by setting up the welfare state and implementing policies of nationalisation and full employment. It’s not a professional production! That means that I set up the camera and left it. As a result I keep walking in and out of the camera shot, oops. If you want to watch it then look at the powerpoint presentation which goes with it to help you follow the talk. It doesn’t sound like a very interesting topic but if you want to try watching then give it at least five minutes before you turn it off as I think you may well get interested if you give it a chance. Once you get interested in a lecture and concentrate on the content your language acquisition will really take off. The power point slides are here and the lecture is here. If you are good at manipulating windows on your computer you’ll be able to open the powerpoint slides and the video at the same time. If you can’t quite work this out or find it too cumbersome (awkward/difficult) then you could print out the slides.