Expert on Cambridge IELTS 10 Academic Listening Test 1 (Online Test)

And now it's straight into the Eco Hotspot for today's programme. We are in fact going to look at an intriguing trend in recent years in the world of eco-friendly developments. There has been a constant stream of new "green products" coming into the market for the environmentally conscious. A new departure, which I feel needs greater attention drawn to it, is the increasing interest in grass roofs.

Environmentalists sing the praises of grass roofs as interest in sustainable ecological building has led to the greening of the rooftops of residential and commercial buildings around the world. And what does this type of roof consist of. Instead of tiles which allow water to run off and create flash flooding, the roof has a waterproof underlay which is laid over the roof deck. This waterproof layer is then covered with layers for insulation and drainage. Then on top of the insulation and drainage layer is added a final layer of soil or crushed stones for the plants and or grass to grow on. The roof can be planted with wild owners to add colour and life to your rooftop.

As for the benefits of grass roofs, in spring and in summer they are very pretty as flowers spring into bloom. Moreover, in summer grass roofs are of particular benefit in cities because they keep any building cool by reflecting the sun's rays. In winter the grass roofs insulate the building, helping to prevent heat loss. The roofs require little maintenance and are better than any other roofing material. They encourage biodiversity by attracting bees and birds and they absorb water run off which helps prevent flash flooding. In fact, the gravel layer retains 71 percent of rainwater that falls, thus helping to prevent flash flooding. In winter, the brown soil is a bit more evident, which can look unattractive, if the roofs are not tended carefully, but that is a price worth paying and I would say that they come highly recommended by those who have them.

If you compare grass roofs with tiles, the latter do certainly look very tidy, but at a price to the future of the planet. The main drawbacks of tiles though are the water run-off and the absorption of heat from the sun's rays in summer. So if we are to save the planet from the ecological point of view, tiles do not come recommended. The only roof that I can think of which has similar ecological credentials to the grass roof is the thatched roof. Thatched roofs are good insulators and very attractive, but very pricey (pricy) and not ideal for cities.

How can we make more of our roofs green. That is, how can people be persuaded to install grass roofs? The World Green Roof Conference in Australia was a very good start. At a grassroots level, the best way to raise the profile of grass roofs is to make them trendy by highlighting them in fashionable magazines so that people begin to feel that they cannot do without them. But the idea I like best is holding competitions for the best designed grass roofs.

Next week Eco-hotspot is going to look at...

Tutor: Now, Mark, and Anna, I have to say that I thoroughly enjoyed your joint presentation on the application of robotics in a non-industrial setting to the group on 2nd December and it is clear that you have both devoted quite a lot of time and effort to it. Have you had a chance to fill in the self- evaluation form for the session?

Mark: Yes, we have.

Tutor: So Mark, what do you think overall?

Mark: Well, generally, I felt the presentation worked very well; in fact, we seemed to hold the attention of the others throughout. And the pace of delivery was fairly even as were the range of activities we organized.

Anna: I agree with Mark, but I'm not sure we were comprehensive or academic enough.

Tutor: No comment really except that I don't think there was any question of it not being thorough.

Anna: I think we were a bit too chatty and too jokey at times rather than formal.

Tutor: Okay. What do you think were the best areas and which do you think can be improved on?

Mark: Everything could have been improved on. I felt very good about the hand-outs; we had spent a lot of time putting them together. They had a very professional appearance as we bound them into a booklet.

Anna: To me the hand-outs were the best part as we had a very extensive bibliography and the booklet seemed to go down well.

Tutor: The booklet you did for the hand-outs certainly showed you had done a lot of work. But I think that you put too much material into it and people got distracted by it. Perhaps, you could have cut the hand-outs by about a third.

Mark: I see. When I come to think about it, maybe you are right.

Anna: Okay.

Mark: But there were times in the middle of the presentation where things did go a bit astray. I think that was my fault when I got the power-point slides out of sequence and I had difficulty getting back on track.

Anna: Mmm. I also think we rated our technical ability too highly especially when operating under pressure. I had never done a presentation with technical equipment before, so it was a steep learning curve for me in particular.

Tutor: Yes, I think you could have done with a bit more practice with the equipment beforehand.

Tutor: What about the next item on the feedback form? The aims and objectives?

Mark: I think they were very focused and we followed them through well, I think. We wanted to show how Europe was lagging behind other areas of the world.

Anna: Yeah, I think they were clearly set out.

Tutor: Yes. Agreed. No comment there.

Mark: The diagrams and charts were appropriate.

Anna: Yes. I have put that too.

Tutor: They did work well in helping to illustrate and break up the presentation by cutting down on the number of words and text on the screen. What about delivery?

Mark: Well, I think our performance was average.

Anna: It was difficult to coordinate speaking and presenting the material at the same time. I was quite self-conscious of what I was doing. It was down to a lack of experience.

Tutor: Unfortunately, both of you had the habit of standing in front of the projector so you kept blocking the image on the screen. To me this is the area that requires the most improvement.

Mark: The section on the predictions of the commercial application in the future, I think appeared a bit haphazard. To me it was a weak point of the presentation. And I think that some of the slides could have had fewer words.

Anna: And we could have done some fancy graphics with the words.

Tutor: If you had to give yourselves a mark overall how much would you give it out of 10?

Mark: Six maybe. I would be happy with that, though bits were probably nearer a seven. So I'd say a six. Anna, what do you think?

Anna: I think for me it's perhaps a seven.

Tutor: Okay. Did you find the task and the evaluation useful?

Anna: I think...

Last week we looked at some general principles associated with marketing and today I'd like to look at some of those points in a little more detail.

So what is marketing? Or put another way, what does the term "marketing" mean? Many people think of it simply as the process of selling and advertising. And this is hardly surprising when every day we are bombarded with television adverts, mail shots, and telephone sales. But selling and advertising are only two functions of marketing.

In fact, marketing, more than any other business function, deals with customers. So perhaps the simplest definition is this one: marketing is the delivery of customer value and satisfaction at a profit. In other words, finding customers, keeping those customers happy and making money out of the process!

The most basic concept underlying marketing is the concept of human needs. These include basic physical needs for things like food, as well as warmth and safety. And marketers don't invent these needs; they're a basic part of our human make-up. So besides physical needs, there are also social needs-for instance, the need to belong and to be wanted. And in addition to social needs, we have the need for knowledge and self-expression, often referred to as individual needs. As societies evolve, members of that society start to see things not so much in terms of what they need, but in terms of what they want, and when people have enough money these wants become demands.

Now, it's important for the managers in a company to understand what their customers want if they are going to create effective marketing strategies, so there are various ways of doing this. One way at supermarkets, for instance, is to interview customers while they're doing their shopping. They can be asked about their buying preferences and then the results of the survey can be analyzed. This provides reliable feedback on which to base future marketing strategies. It's also quite normal for top executives from department stores to spend a day or two each month visiting stores and mixing freely with the public, as if they were ordinary customers, to get an idea of customer behavior.

Another way to get information from customers is to give them something. For instance, some fast-food outlets give away vouchers in magazines or on the street that entitle customers to get part of their meal for nothing. As well as being a good way of attracting customers into the restaurants to spend their money, it also allows the managers to get a feel for where to advertise and which age-groups to target.

Another strategy employed at some well-known theme parks such as Disneyland is for top managers to spend at least one day in their career, touring the park dressed as Mickey Mouse or some other cartoon character. This provides them with the perfect opportunity to survey the scene and watch the customers without being noticed.

OK, well we mentioned customer satisfaction at the beginning of this lecture, and I'd like to return briefly to that, as it relates to what we've just been talking about. If the performance of a product falls short of the customer's expectations, the buyer is going to be dissatisfied. In other words, if the product you buy isn't as good as you'd expected, then the chances are you'll be unhappy about it. If, on the other hand, performance matches expectations, and the product you buy is as good as you expected then generally speaking the buyer is satisfied. But smart companies should aim one step high. They should aim to delight customers by promising only what they can be sure of delivering, all then delivering much more than they promised. So then, if as sometimes happens, performance is better than expected, the buyer is delighted and is twice as likely to come back to the store.

Now let's move on to look at the role of advertising.