The 7 Steps January
1. CONTEXT
Mindmap
anything you
know about thetopic, including
vocabulary. Do
some research
online to help.

AmazonListening Questions 1
1. When was Amazon founded and who founded the company?

2. QUESTIONS.
2. What percentage of Amazon’s global workforce is women as of 2019?
.
3. What is a ‘fulfillment center’ and how many of them does Amazon have?
.
4. In what year did Amazon start using their own planes?
.
5. How many planes will their fleet include in 2021?
.

Read the listening
questions tocheck yourunderstanding.
Look up any newvocabulary.

Listening Questions 2

3. LISTEN

1. What does ‘AWS’ stand for and how old is it?
.

Listen and answer
the questions
using fullsentences. Circle
the number oftimes and % you
understood.

2. What are two things AWS has helped Formula 1 do?
.
3. In the 2020 NFL Draft, what did AWS do?
.
4. What other technology company did the NFL partner with?
.
5. Which came first, Alexa or Kindle?
.

1

Listening 1
2 3 4

5%%%

Discussion Questions

1Listening 22 3 45%%%

1. Which online shopping website do you prefer and why?
2. How diverse is your company’s workforce? What are theadvantages of working with people from different backgrounds?

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4. CHECK ANSWERS

TRANSCRIPT 1
Amazon was founded in 1994 by Jeff Bezos and is headquartered in Seattle, Washington.

Read through thetranscript andunderline theanswers. Checkthem against yourown answers.

Amazon employs hundreds of thousands of people around the world, and according to thecompany, about 43% of them were women as of the end of 2019. Globally, roughly 73% of theirmanagers were men. When it comes to a breakdown of race and ethnicity in their USworkforce, about 35% were white, just under 27% were African American, and approximately
15% were Asian. About 59% of their managers in the United States were white.

5. CHECK VOCABULARY

Amazon handles an enormous number of packages every year that have to make their way
from the company’s warehouses to their customers’ doors. Amazon’s global distribution
network includes more than 175 ‘fulfillment centers’, or in-house packing warehouses, themajority of which are located in North America.
Part of Amazon’s distribution system includes their own dedicated fleet of planes, which first
took off in 2016. In June 2020, Amazon announced they would be adding more planes to theirfleet in the coming year to eventually bring their total to more than 80 aircraft.

Read thetranscript andcircle any new
vocabulary you
find. Look themup and add themto your list.

Breakdown

Enormous

Dedicated

Enhance

CrunchFill-in the blanks with the appropriate word / phrase above:

1. The company wants to __________ its reputation across the globe byinvesting more in CSR activities.
2. The reporter gave viewers a city-by-city __________ of new COVID-19 casesin the last 24 hours.
3. The manager __________ the numbers and decided she would hire an extra
10 people.
4. Compared to most Japanese cars, North American vehicles are __________.
5. I work from home a lot, so I have a __________ room in my house that only I
use for business.

6. READ ALOUD

Read thetranscript aloudat least 5 times,
focusing on
intonation andpronunciation.

TRANSCRIPT 2112233

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AWS has partnered with the sporting world on a number of projects. In late 2019, AWS
explained how they have worked with Formula 1 to help them design cars that they hope willlead to more exciting on-track racing in the near future. AWS has also enhanced the fan
experience by crunching data and displaying graphics that show viewers things such as how
difficult it will be for a driver to pass the person in front of them, or what the gap between two
drivers will be after they make their pit stops.

7. SHADOWING
Say the transcript
aloud at the sametime as the audio
without reading
it. Circle howmany timesbelow.

11223344

One of Amazon’s subsidiaries is Amazon Web Services (AWS), the cloud platform division theylaunched in 2006. In the first quarter of FY20, AWS accounted for about 14% of Amazon’s net
sales.

In April 2020, the NFL worked with several partners to hold their first ever virtual draft, two ofthem being AWS and Microsoft. AWS hosted and managed the video feed while Microsoft
Teams was used for communication between the league and their clubs for the draft picks.

55Some milestones in Amazon’s history include going public in 1997, launching Kindle in 2007,
coming out with Alexa in 2014 and buying Whole Foods in 2017.