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SKYPE TO SHUT
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TWO DECADES
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1 Warm up
Look at the images below. Which mode of communication do you prefer? How has communication
changed over time? Do different generations prefer to communicate in different ways? Do you think
the way we communicate will be very different in the future? Has technology changed communication
for the better or for the worse? Discuss in pairs.

picture A picture B

picture C picture D

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2 Pre-listening task: general vocabulary

Part A: Match the words and phrases with the correct definitions.

Group 1:

1. surpass (v) a. keep somebody’s attention by being interesting, attractive, etc.

2. captivate (v) b. being a famous person or thing that people admire and see as a
symbol of a particular idea, way of life, etc.
3. peer-to-peer (adj.) c. do or be better than somebody/something

4. telecoms (n) d. the technology of sending signals, images and messages over
long distances by radio, phone, television, satellite, etc.
5. iconic (adj.) e. (of a computer system) in which each computer can act as a
server for the others, allowing data to be shared without the
need for a central server

Group 2:

1. nostalgic (adj.) a. unreasonable; that you cannot take seriously

2. ludicrous (adj.) b. (of problems, plans, activities, etc.) quickly becoming bigger,
more serious, more important, etc.
3. skepticism (n) c. connected with human existence

4. snowball (v) d. an attitude of doubting that claims or statements are true or that
something will happen
5. existential (adj.) e. having or bringing a sad feeling mixed with pleasure when you
think of happy times in the past

Part B: Discuss the following questions in pairs.

1. Can you think of a technological invention from the last twenty years that has captivated people?

2. Which company do you think has the most iconic logo?

3. Do you feel nostalgic about old technology? If so, why?

4. Do you think that technology could ever provide an existential threat to humanity? If so, how?

5. When do you think peer-to-peer file sharing became popular? What disadvantages could this
method of file sharing pose for businesses?

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3 Listening for specific information

Watch the first part of the report (00:00-04:17). Tick the items you hear mentioned.

ringtone friends

corporations entrepreneurs

borders webcam

phone engineers

security consumer

4 Listening for comprehension

Part A: Watch the second part of the report (04:17-06:39). Using information from both the first and
second parts of the video, answer the questions true, false or not given.

1. Skype was founded in Estonia.

2. One of the founders started the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk at the University of
Cambridge.

3. After setting up Skype, the group went on to found a file-sharing program called Kazaa.

4. The Skype logo was designed to look like both a cloud and a speech bubble.

5. Microsoft bought eBay from Skype in 2009.

6. Skype had nearly 500 million registered users by the end of 2009.

Why do you think eBay decided to buy Skype? Could it have been more successfully integrated with
their existing products? Why/why not? Discuss in pairs.

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5 Focus on vocabulary

Watch the third part of the report (06:39-11:39), then match the key vocabulary with the correct
definitions and synonyms.

accelerant bloated capitalize on fussy

missteps pour into rumored whopping

1. (v): said

2. (adj.): huge

3. (n): something that accelerates a process

4. (phr. v): take advantage of

5. (adj.): complicated

6. (adj.): excessive in size or amount

7. (n): mistakes

8. (phr. v): provide a large amount of money for something

6 Listening for comprehension

Watch the fourth part of the report (11:39-15:09). For each question, select the answer that most
accurately reflects the information given in parts three and four of the video.

1. Silverlake:

a. tripled its investment after selling Skype

b. lost money after selling Skype

c. is keen to purchase Skype again

2. According to Om Malik, Steve Ballmer was:

a. the king of venture capitalism

b. the king of a small country in Africa

c. the king of buying things and not knowing what to do with them

3. Two Skype founders teamed up to start a company called:

a. Starship Troopers

b. Starship Technologies

c. Starlink

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4. Skype co-founder Jaan Tallinn spends most of his time:

a. designing robots

b. discussing the dangers of AI

c. working on the next generation of communication apps

5. Jordan Novet said that Microsoft is trying to make Skype more popular by:

a. marketing it to younger people

b. pre-installing it on mobile devices

c. pushing a chatbot that you can talk to using Skype

Do you agree with Ahti Heinla’s final thoughts on Skype? Did it change the world? Discuss in pairs.

7 Focus on vocabulary: business and technology

Part A: Using the text above for reference, complete the definitions of the business vocabulary below
by filling in the gaps with the correct words from the list.

Group 1:

connection customers develop particular shares

1. private equity (n) - investment made in a company, usually a small one, whose
are not bought and sold by the public

2. venture capital (n) - money that is invested in a new company to help it ,

which may involve a lot of risk

3. migration (n) - the act of moving or users to another software

platform or product

4. point-to-point (adj.) - a communications between two end points

or nodes

5. VP (n) - (vice president) a person in charge of a part of a business

or company

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Group 2:

achieved company detail group numbered

1. micromanagement (n) - the practice of controlling every of an activity

or project, especially your employees’ work

2. synergy (n) - the extra energy, power, success, etc. that is by two
or more people, companies or elements working together, instead of on their own

3. IPO (n) - (initial public offering) the act of selling shares in a for
the first time

4. calendar month (n) - a period from a particular day in one month

to the day with the same number in the next month

5. breakout room (n) - a small meeting room or a part of an online meeting where a small
of participants can do a specific activity

Part B: Discuss the following questions in pairs.

1. Can you think of an example of technological migration in recent times?

2. What do you think is the purpose of a breakout room? How would this concept be more difficult
to set up in a virtual environment?

3. How important is synergy between different departments or products within a company?

8 Talking point

In pairs or small groups, discuss the following questions.

1. Do you use Skype? If not, have you used it in the past?

2. Why do you think Skype became so popular? Why did people stop using it?

3. Do you still chat via the phone, or do you prefer to send instant messages?

4. Is it important for you to be able to see the person you’re talking to? Why/why not?

5. Should large companies be prevented from acquiring other large companies? If so, why?

6. Overall, do you think Skype has had a positive or negative impact on the world?

7. If another company decided to buy Skype, do you think they would be able to make it successful
again? Why/why not?

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9 Optional extension: transcript review

Part A: Look at the transcript from part four of the report. In pairs, fill in the missing words from the
list below, then listen to the report again to check your answers.

autonomous obsolete sporadically unchecked wiped out

Newsreader: Twenty years later, and Skype’s founders have moved on, going on to start their
own companies. Ahti Heinla is the CEO and co-founder of Starship Technologies.
He teamed up with another Skype founder, Janus Friis, to start the company.
1
Newsreader: Starship specializes in robot delivery and says it has
done millions of deliveries across fifty locations around the globe. Niklas Zennstrom
went on to head Atomico, a venture capital firm, and Jaan Tallinn spends most of
2
his time discussing the dangers of AI development.
Jaan Tallinn: I don’t know what the future holds for Skype. I mean, I’m concerned about humans
3
being , so it’s unlikely that they – that we’ll need
Skype if that happens. One thing that is guaranteed is that there will be like massive
changes now, so uh, I’m not sure if video calling will be a thing even like five years
from now.
Ahti Heinla: I myself, uh, use Skype right now fairly little. It is – I still have it installed on my
phone, but my primary communication methods now are elsewhere.
Newsreader: With apps like WhatsApp and Zoom being a clear choice for many people, can Skype
make a comeback?
Jaan Tallinn: Skype had a really good run, and then, perhaps, like, asking too much, uh, to, for,
like a bigger, bigger run.
Jordan Novet: Anything is possible. Microsoft is trying to make Skype happen in a bigger way
now. There is the Bing chatbot that has generative artificial intelligence, which is all
the rage now, and you can talk to Bing in Skype. Will that make Skype explode in
popularity or make a comeback? I don’t think so. Microsoft, as a rule, cares about
being profitable. I would not be surprised to learn that Skype is basically paying for
itself but not making a huge amount of money for Microsoft today.
Newsreader: Right now, not much is known about Skype’s user data or profitability since
4
Microsoft has provided data since its acquisition
in 2011. CNBC reached out to Microsoft for an interview with the current head of
Skype but were told he was not available.
Newsreader: In a statement, it told CNBC: "More than thirty-six million people use Skype daily.
Our goal with Skype continues to be to deliver the best possible experience to users,
regardless of the platform they choose."
Om Malik: I think the challenge for Skype – like most large social platforms – has been that,
despite scale, the profits remain pretty thin.
Jordan Novet: There were years when Skype was not profitable, and that includes the time that it
was under the ownership of eBay.
5
Newsreader: So, has Skype fulfilled its full potential, or did it just become ?

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Jordan Novet: Skype is not obsolete. It has thirty-six million daily active users. That is small when
you compare it with other assets out there online, but we can’t say that Skype is
over with because we’re going to get millions of people mad at us. People still insist
on using Skype. Fewer and fewer people, but some do.
Om Malik: There was a time and a place for Skype. It had everything going for it. And now,
other people have everything going for it.
Ahti Heinla: We, uh, we wanted to give a lot of people, millions of people, hundreds of millions
of people, billions of people, access to free communication over the Internet. We
absolutely accomplished that goal.

Part B: Match the synonyms to the correct vocabulary items from Part A.

1. wiped out a. out of date

2. unchecked b. destroyed

3. sporadically c. intermittently

4. obsolete d. independent

5. autonomous e. uncontrolled

What do you think "is all the rage now" means? Can you think of something that is all the rage at the
moment? Discuss in pairs.

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Transcripts

3. Listening for specific information

Part: -1-

Newsreader: Remember this? You might know this iconic ringtone but probably haven’t heard
it in years.

Ahti Heinla: The blings and ringtones and so forth, it’s nostalgic to me.

Newsreader: It all started here, in the tiny country of Estonia, only twelve years after the
collapse of the Soviet Union.

Newsreader: A group of childhood friends teamed up with two Scandinavian entrepreneurs to

transform the way we communicate across borders with an app called Skype.

Jordan Novet: Skype came out in the early 2000s as a way for people to communicate, mainly by
voice calls over the Internet. It was basically an alternative to using your phone.

Ahti Heinla: Right now, this is completely commonplace. Back then, that was not the case,
and Skype was the first to really bring this to the masses.

Newsreader: This is the story of Skype, and how it went from hundreds of millions of
monthly users to a nostalgic sound of the past. CNBC explores Skype’s past, its
present, and what’s next for the company, after it was one of Microsoft’s biggest
acquisitions in 2011.

Newsreader: Skype was launched in 2003, after Scandinavian entrepreneurs Niklas Zennström
and Janus Friis teamed up with four Estonian tech developers and former
schoolmates: Jaan Tallinn, Priit Kasesalu, Toivo Annus and Ahti Heinla.

Newsreader: Heinla left Skype in 2008 and now runs Starship Technologies, a robot delivery
business. As a chief technical architect at Skype, he helped design it from the
ground up.

Ahti Heinla: It took a relatively short amount of time, I think, you know, about nine months,
to develop the initial concept. We were smart engineers, we learned on the go,
and none of us had any telecoms background.

Om Malik: I think that was the key thing about why it worked so well. It didn’t look like
telecom, it didn’t behave like one, so they were such outsiders, so the thought
completely differently about what they could do with Skype.

Newsreader: Jaan Tallinn was a founding engineer at Skype, and he went on to start the Centre
for the Study of Existential Risk at the University of Cambridge.

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Jaan Tallinn: At the time we started Skype we already had like a bunch of experience from
our previous projects, things like Kazaa and a few other projects that didn’t
go anywhere. Even more importantly, before that we had experience, uh,
programming computer games for a decade.

Newsreader: The group used knowledge they learned building Kazaa, a peer-to-peer file-
sharing program that, at the time, was one of the world’s most downloaded
Internet softwares, to build Skype. Skype stands for ‘Sky peer-to-peer’. The
software initially used Voice-Over-IP technology, which allowed users to make
and receive calls over the Internet, and it caught on quickly, growing to over
eleven million users in its first year.

Jaan Tallinn: The fact that Skype is going to be big became clear like pretty much in the first day.
One thing that we did borrow from Kazaa was this online counter, like how many
users are currently connected, and then this like – when we launched Skype, we
started calling our friends, and “come on, come online, we need to, we need to
make the number go up”, and suddenly we saw like the number starts just like
going up like crazy, without, uh, without any help from our friends.

Ahti Heinla: It really captivated people. Ten thousand people downloaded and installed our
app on the first day, and it was a very big number back in 2003. It immediately
signaled to everybody that this is something really successful, this is something
that will really catch on, and very soon it was not ten thousand but it was one
hundred thousand, it was a million, it was ten million and so forth. It snowballed
from there.

Newsreader: In the same year the app was launched, laptop sales surpassed desktop sales
for the first time, and by 2005 Skype had fifty-nine million registered users
and had been downloaded more than one hundred and eighty-two million times
worldwide.

Ahti Heinla: One thing that really helped Skype to be successful is that it is a product that you,
as a consumer, cannot possibly use alone. You have to tell somebody else! Okay,
you know, get this app as well, because then you can talk to me for free over
the Internet, and we can see each other and so forth, so that meant that people
naturally talked to each other immediately.

Om Malik: I never really experienced anything that easy to use, even if the quality wasn’t
that great before that. Like, it was just so dead simple.

Part: -2-

Newsreader: Skype’s early success made it attractive to investors. In 2005, eBay bought Skype
for $2.6 billion dollars, under then president and CEO Meg Whitman, with the
idea of integrating online shoppers and sellers.

Ahti Heinla: A lot of people after the eBay acquisition started to criticize eBay, you know, why
did they do this, was the acquisition price too high?

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Om Malik: They completely didn’t understand the complexity of the product, how difficult
it would be for them to actually make it work with eBay.

Newsreader: Despite skepticism, Whitman praised the acquisition.

Meg Whitman: What we bought was the leader in voice communications in every country of the
world. We think we bought a tremendous business in addition to some really
interesting synergies with PayPal and eBay, and as a result, we feel like we paid a
fair price.

Jordan Novet: It’s true that, under eBay, we can say that Skype grew in terms of users and
in terms of the number of minutes people were paying to call from Skype to
landlines and mobile phones. That’s great, but ultimately, what happened is that
there were no ‘synergies’ that Meg Whitman had imagined.

Newsreader: In 2008, John Donahoe took over as president and CEO of eBay, and he wanted
Skype gone.

John Donahoe: The only question was, was there synergy with eBay’s other businesses, and the
answer to that’s no.

Om Malik: I thought it was a ludicrous idea, and I still think it’s a ludicrous idea. I mean,
there’s a reason why it didn’t work out, and they had to spin out the company
and sell it again.

Newsreader: eBay decided to sell Skype, briefly exploring IPO options but settling on selling
the majority of its stake to private equity firm Silverlake in 2009. The deal valued
Skype at $2.75 billion dollars. eBay retained a thirty percent stake in the company
and gained $1.9 billion dollars in cash.

Jaan Tallinn: Once eBay realized actually there isn’t that many synergies with Skype, they
must have left Skype alone, which was great, because they just uh, Skype then
continued to grow like crazy.

Newsreader: Under eBay, Skype did grow. At the end of 2007, Skype had over two
hundred million registered users, with over fifty million connected monthly users.
Connected users are defined by Skype as a number of users that log in a given
calendar month. By the end of 2009, Skype had nearly five hundred million
registered users, of a hundred and five million of those being connected.

Part: -3-

Newsreader: By 2010, Skype had five hundred and sixty million registered users and over two
hundred and seven billion minutes of voice and video conversations, once again
making it attractive to investors. Google and Facebook were rumored to have
interest in the company, but in May 2011, it was Microsoft that announced the
purchase of Skype from Silverlake, for a whopping $8.5 billion dollars, meaning
Silverlake more than tripled its investment while eBay gained an additional $1.4
billion dollars on its original investment.

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Steve Ballmer: So I expect Skype to be an accelerant of our financial results. You know the truth
of the matter is, communications is one of the big scenarios that’s driving our
financial success, and Skype’s going to accelerate that.

Newsreader: Under then CEO Steve Ballmer, Microsoft’s plans included incorporating Skype
into its existing products, including the Xbox, Outlook and smartphones. As part
of the announcement, then Skype CEO Tony Bates announced Skype’s goal to
reach one billion daily users, but things didn’t work out as planned.

Om Malik: They failed to capitalize on Skype, hundred percent. Steve Ballmer was the king
of buying things and not knowing what to do with them.

Newsreader: And today, Microsoft says it has thirty-six million daily active users.

Om Malik: What happened with Skype is the story of every large company with a lot of
micromanagement. They didn’t innovate on the product for a very long time.
Tony Bates can say whatever he wants to say, in reality, is that the whole thing
blew up on his watch.

Newsreader: In 2017, WhatsApp reached one billion users. By 2020, it had two billion. And
like the early days of Skype, it uses Voice-Over-IP to transmit calls.

Om Malik: The reason WhatsApp worked was it was just simple and it was easy, and it wasn’t
really fussy, and Skype by then had become bloated, slow, complicated. In fact,
I’ll go as far to say that Skype’s missteps allowed WhatsApp to grow and become
this big.

Newsreader: In 2016, in response to Slack, a growing messaging platform, Microsoft

announced Teams. However, when Teams launched in 2017, it became a direct
competitor of Skype.

Wayne Kurtzman: Microsoft Teams has been successful at taking users from Skype. It’s provided a
number of additional features that Skype honestly does not have at this time.

Newsreader: But Microsoft’s corporate VP tells a different story.

Yusuf Mehdi: We see it as complimentary on the core infrastructure, right, so the

communications, the idea of having one contact list, we think of user experience
as being unique and distinct for those. Teams is focused increasingly more on
some communities’ work, getting groups of people to do that. Skype is more
point-to-point, family, uh, much more for international expansion.

Jordan Novet: Microsoft is pouring a lot of engineering resources into making Teams a big
destination for communication. It’s not doing the same thing with Skype.

Newsreader: For example, in 2021, Skype announced it would support up to a hundred people
on one call, but in the previous year, Teams announced it would support up to
three hundred people on one call, and in 2020 when the Covid-19 pandemic
made virtual communication a priority, many people’s go-to were apps like Zoom
and Teams – not Skype.

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Wayne Kurtzman: A lot of users went to Zoom because it was available. Skype was known as well
but they were already on the downslope with the move to Teams.

Newsreader: In response to Zoom, Microsoft added updates to Teams, such as breakout rooms
and increasing the number of meeting participants to one thousand. It also made
some changes to Skype, including allowing virtual backgrounds, but Teams still
grew at a faster rate. In July 2019, Microsoft announced Teams had thirteen
million daily users. By November, it was twenty million. That number soared in
March 2020, during the pandemic, to forty-four million, growing by twelve million
over a seven-day period.

Newsreader: And that same month, Skype had forty million daily users. But by April 2020,
Teams had seventy-five million daily users. Microsoft would not confirm how
many daily users Skype had in the same period. However, it told CNBC that
Teams usage is at an all-time high and surpassed three hundred million monthly
active users this quarter. So how close are we to seeing Microsoft retire Skype?

Wayne Kurtzman: It’s hard to retire a product with forty million users because migration is risky.
Migration could easily happen, and the way technology is moving now, they know
there are a lot of options, and they’ll find another one.

Jordan Novet: Today, Skype exists, but it’s not the phenomenon it was in the 2000s. Skype is a
product with an uncertain future.

Om Malik: Microsoft is where consumer brands go to die, just like AT&T used to be the place
where all Internet services used to go and die. It’s the same thing.

Part: -4-

Newsreader: Twenty years later, and Skype’s founders have moved on, going on to start their
own companies. Ahti Heinla is the CEO and co-founder of Starship Technologies.
He teamed up with another Skype founder, Janus Friis, to start the company.

Newsreader: Starship specializes in autonomous robot delivery and says it has done millions
of deliveries across fifty locations around the globe. Niklas Zennström went on
to head Atomico, a venture capital firm, and Jaan Tallinn spends most of his time
discussing the dangers of unchecked AI development.

Jaan Tallinn: I don’t know what the future holds for Skype. I mean, I’m concerned about
humans being wiped out, so it’s unlikely that they – that we’ll need Skype if that
happens. One thing that is guaranteed is that there will be like massive changes
now, so uh, I’m not sure if video calling will be a thing even like five years from
now.

Ahti Heinla: I myself, uh, use Skype right now fairly little. It is – I still have it installed on my
phone, but my primary communication methods now are elsewhere.

Newsreader: With apps like WhatsApp and Zoom being a clear choice for many people, can
Skype make a comeback?

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SKYPE TO SHUT DOWN AFTER TWO DECADES

Jaan Tallinn: Skype had a really good run, and then, perhaps, like, asking too much, uh, to, for,
like a bigger, bigger run.

Jordan Novet: Anything is possible. Microsoft is trying to make Skype happen in a bigger way
now. There is the Bing chatbot that has generative artificial intelligence, which is
all the rage now, and you can talk to Bing in Skype. Will that make Skype explode
in popularity or make a comeback? I don’t think so. Microsoft, as a rule, cares
about being profitable. I would not be surprised to learn that Skype is basically
paying for itself but not making a huge amount of money for Microsoft today.

Newsreader: Right now, not much is known about Skype’s user data or profitability since
Microsoft has sporadically provided data since its acquisition in 2011. CNBC
reached out to Microsoft for an interview with the current head of Skype but
were told he was not available.

Newsreader: In a statement, it told CNBC: “More than thirty-six million people use Skype daily.
Our goal with Skype continues to be to deliver the best possible experience to
users, regardless of the platform they choose.”

Om Malik: I think the challenge for Skype – like most large social platforms – has been that,
despite scale, the profits remain pretty thin.

Jordan Novet: There were years when Skype was not profitable, and that includes the time that
it was under the ownership of eBay.

Newsreader: So, has Skype fulfilled its full potential, or did it just become obsolete?

Jordan Novet: Skype is not obsolete. It has thirty-six million daily active users. That is small when
you compare it with other assets out there online, but we can’t say that Skype
is over with because we’re going to get millions of people mad at us. People still
insist on using Skype. Fewer and fewer people, but some do.

Om Malik: There was a time and a place for Skype. It had everything going for it. And now,
other people have everything going for it.

Ahti Heinla: We, uh, we wanted to give a lot of people, millions of people, hundreds of millions
of people, billions of people, access to free communication over the Internet. We
absolutely accomplished that goal.

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TEACHER MATERIALS · ADVANCED (C1-C2)

SKYPE TO SHUT DOWN AFTER TWO DECADES

Key

1. Warm up

5 mins.
Tell the students they will be watching a video about Skype and discussing communication. The discussion activity
is suitable for pairs or small groups.

2. Pre-listening task: general vocabulary

Part A:
5 mins.
Ask students to match the words and phrases with the correct definitions. Ensure students know how to pronounce
the target vocabulary.
Group 1:

1. → c. 2. → a. 3. → e. 4. → d. 5. → b.
Group 2:

1. → e. 2. → a. 3. → d. 4. → b. 5. → c.
Part B:
5 mins.
Students discuss the questions in pairs or small groups.

3. Listening for specific information

5 mins.
Individually or in pairs, ask students to watch the first part of the report and tick the items they hear mentioned.

✓ ringtone
✓ friends
✓ entrepreneurs
✓ borders
✓ phone
✓ engineers
✓ consumer

4. Listening for comprehension

Part A:
5 mins.
Students should watch the second part of the report and answer the questions true, false or not given. Then,
encourage students to discuss the questions in pairs. Alternatively, you may wish to do a brief class discussion.

1. True. ["It all started here, in the tiny country of Estonia, only twelve years after the collapse of the Soviet
Union."]
2. True. [Jaan Tallinn set up the Centre.]

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Learn without forgetting! vii
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TEACHER MATERIALS · ADVANCED (C1-C2)

SKYPE TO SHUT DOWN AFTER TWO DECADES

3. False. [The group started working on Skype after building Kazaa, using the knowledge they had gained from
their earlier project.]
4. Not given. [The logo isn’t mentioned in the report.]
5. False. [eBay sold Skype to a company called Silverlake in 2009.]
6. True. ["By the end of 2009, Skype had nearly five hundred million registered users, of a hundred and five million
of those being connected"]

5. Focus on vocabulary

15 mins.
Ask students to watch the third part of the report and match the vocabulary items with the correct definitions.

1. rumored 2. whopping 3. accelerant 4. capitalize on

5. fussy 6. bloated 7. missteps 8. pour into

6. Listening for comprehension

5 mins.
Individually or in pairs, ask students to watch the fourth part of the video and answer the questions, using parts
three and four for reference.

1. a. 2. c. 3. b. 4. b. 5. c.

7. Focus on vocabulary: business and technology

Part A:
5 mins.
Ask students to complete the definitions of the target vocabulary items with the correct words from the list.
Group 1:

1. shares 2. develop 3. customers 4. connection 5. particular

Group 2:

1. detail 2. achieved 3. company 4. numbered 5. group

Part B:
5 mins.
For Part B, students should complete the sentences with the correct political vocabulary items.

8. Talking point

10 mins.
Ask students to discuss the questions in pairs or small groups.

9. Optional extension: transcript review

Part A:
5 mins.
Students should fill in the gaps in the transcript in pairs or small groups, then watch part four of the report again
to check their answers.

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TEACHER MATERIALS · ADVANCED (C1-C2)

SKYPE TO SHUT DOWN AFTER TWO DECADES

1. autonomous 2. unchecked 3. wiped out 4. sporadically 5. obsolete

Part B:
5 mins.
For Part B, students should match the synonyms to the correct vocabulary from Part A.

1. → b. 2. → e. 3. → c. 4. → a. 5. → d.
definition of ’all the rage’ - be very popular at a particular time

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Learn without forgetting! ix
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© Linguahouse.com. Photocopiable and licensed for use in Michelle Siebra School's lessons.