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Professor Genevieve Bell is a cultural anthropologist, a technologist and a futurist. She is the head of the 3A Institute (3Ai) , at the Australian National University, where she is building a new branch of engineering to explore the impact and the management of artificial intelligence, data and technology on human behaviour . She previously worked for 20 years at Silicon Valley, leading a team of 100 scientists at Intel, as The New York Times reported in 2014 .  Genevieve Bell has recently presented the line of research in the 3Ai, which brings together experts in the fields of culture, technology and the environment, with the TED Talk below, entitled " 6 Big Ethical Questions About the Future of AI" . In this 14':48" video with subtitles, professor Bell speaks with a vey clear, educated, Australian accent and she uses academic words which might be transparent to a Spanish learner, but the cultural and engineering concepts she explains make the talk suitable for C1 ...

Dating is an art, a communication game where you want to show your feelings, but you do not want "to seem too eager".  In this post you can find two articles from The List, a "women's news and lifestyle site with a twist": Texts to Send After a First Date and Things You Should Never Do on a First Date . These two texts are recommended for C1 students, as the vocabulary is very rich in colloquial American slang.  Some of the less frequent words you will find in the dating and texting article are:  nerve-wracking, to feel a spark, super cheesy, flirty, cute, to ghost your date, to hang out with friends, to hit it off, to get the hint , whereas in the second story you will read  frazzled, tardiness, phubbing  (which is a new coinage),  a self-fulfilling prophecy, to feel upbeat/ over-the-top, to moan about, to whine, to brag, a faux-pas, daunting  etc. A full list of the most interesting words in these two articles can be found in the "Glossary of the Bl...

In the challenging economic scenario of a global pandemic, which has brought about confinements, telework, shop closures, furlough schemes, but also new business opportunities for pharmaceutical or computer companies, what are the top job skills that thriving companies are seeking in their new recruits? Here you have a collection of four articles that list the most highly demanded soft and tech skills in the corporate world. The first article comes form HR Vision, it quotes the recently published World Economic Forum report, " The Future of Jobs ", which predicts that by 2025, in the summit of a digital and biological revolution -the 4th Industrial Revolution- companies will be seeking candidates with communication and interpersonal skills, the so-called "soft skills", like "complex problem solving", "critical thinking", "creativity", "people management" or "emotional intelligence" to outperform robots and get things...

Freddie is a 14-year-old inventor who has developed two machines to help his 89-year-old great aunt, Pat, who has demetia. In this short BBC World Service video (4':46") you will hear him explaining his inventions.  The video can be seen with automatic subtitles, so it is accessible to B2 students and above. Some of the new words you will find in the video are:  an award-winning inventor, a facial recognition door entry system, random strangers, to scan my ID tag for authentification, a code club, a wearable sensor, to dispatch [a robot], to rope in [his family], to trigger [a false positive], thoroughly, to be over, for a second year running, to set him up, a former [winner], to showcase [your skills].

In the modern digital world, everybody is talking about algorithms, but what are they exactly? Where can you find them? What can they do? How do they work? Should we be scared of algorithms? Can algorithms think for themselves? What do they look like? Can they do a job better than humans? This 7':53" BBC Ideas video with subtitles explains all about algorithms in a lively and attractive way.  It is accessible to B2 students and above. The most difficult words you will find in the video are: algorithm, search engines, dating apps, to be baffled [by science], a riddle, overwhelming, to pick her brains (informal), a set of instuctions, to enable a computer programme [to do something], billions, a server room, a bunch of [blocks] (informal), to be concerned about [something], to drag and drop [blocks], a drone, a flip, a challenge, a hoop, a lap, no offence (informal), to take over the world, to take our jobs, to deskill [humans], dependent upon [them], trusting of [them], on the ...

This BBC article tells the story of an old stone quarry that has become a new tourist hotspot in Nigeria after it became popular through Twitter.  The article is short and it has very illustrative pictures, so it can be accessible to B2 students. But here you can find a lesson plan which focuses on vocabulary and speaking, basically, for C1 students. B2 learners (and above) will find rich, descriptive vocabulary here, like an abandonded quarry, a tourist hotspot, a cliff, a moss-lined footpath, to shimmer [in the sun], [the views are] breathtaking, on the outskirts, to be thronged, food vendors, a burgeoining community, expatriates, lockdown, to be somewhat bemused, city-dwellers, tiers, a stunning view, sightseers, a winding footpath, the top terrace, [the path] snakes down to the water's edge, the brave, to plunge into, an aquifer, a fracture-prone area, tremors, to warn amateurs against hiking, fun-seekers seemed not to be deterred, chagrin, to put measures in place, to clear up...

Jaden Wolfiez Ashman is a 15-year-old gamer from Essex who won $1,000.000 playing the Fortnite World Cup Finals.  He promised to buy his mum a house, and one year later he has fulfilled his promise.  The BBC Newsbeat video on this link tells us the story .   Wolfiez talks with a teenager's working-class intonation and he uses colloquial words, which makes it a bit more difficult to understand him despite the subtitles, so this video is suitable for C2 students.  You will come across new words like: "e-sport, chill, quid, set-up, too fancy, step, mortgage, to frame, logo, to be plastered, to take pressure off me, childminder, living day-to-day, you are clock watching, to moan, to strive to do something" . If you want to watch an interview to Wolfiez and his mum one year before when he had just won all that money, you can click below on this " Good Morning Britain " video on ITV , which has subtitles and it is also suitable for C2 students because of their accent:...

Artificial Intelligence professor at MIT, Regina Barzilay, and Connie Lehman, the chief radiologist for breast imaging at Massachussetts General Hospital, are developing algorithms to train computers to read mammograms and prevent disease in general.  But there are also examples in the past of promising new technologies, such as CAD (Computer Aided Detection), which failed to deliver what was expected from them. This NPR story can be read as an article or heard as an audio report with a script (6':25").  The technicality of the vocabulary can make this a C2 reading or listening task.

The World Mobile Congress in Barcelona whirled around 5G technology -which won't be widely available until 2020- while it showcased the latest in mobile phones, foldable smartphones like the Samsung Galaxy S10, the Huawei Mate X or the Nokia 9 PureView -with more rear cameras than any other. But there were other gadgets on the Fira Gran Via floor:  Microsoft presented its HoloLens 2, a light mixed reality headset only available for enterprises right now.  The best camera zoom was the Oppo 10x and the biggest microSD card was the ScanDisk Extreme with 1TB of storage capacity.  Huawei launched a faster and more powerful laptop, the MateBook X Pro (2019). The prices of these devices match their top-notch quality, as you can read in this link to Mashable, which opens the door to the technology you will be using in the future. Although the Mashable report above is short and it illustrated with photos, the density of the information and the technical vocabulary makes this ...