B2 – Upper Intermediate
Phone scams are quite prevalent these days. Although this may seem like a little problem, it has had a large-scale impact and made the fraudsters very wealthy and their victims forever scarred.
Check out this video to learn how to spot a phone scammer.
Vocabulary Questions:
- What is a “cold-call“, “Cold-call scammers pretending to be from the HMRC are targeting households threatening legal action unless you call them back.“? Use this word in your own sentence.
- What does the idiom “out of the blue” mean, “The HMRC will never contact you out of the blue and threaten you with arrest.“? Use this expression in your own sentence.
- What does the phrase “at hand” mean, “The issue at hand is extremely time-sensitive.“? Use this phrase in your own sentence.
Discussion Questions:
- What do you think about cold-calls?
- Talk about some kind of calls such as this that you have received and how you handle it.
- If you had the ability to help stop these scam call centers, what would you do?
- How can you and others close to you prevent being phone scammed?
- Do you believe that law enforcement could do a better job in this type of situations? How so?