Academic Listening Encounters: The Natural World uses a sustained content approach to help students develop the listening, note-taking, and discussion skills they need to meet the demands of high school or college academic courses in an English-speaking environment. Academic Listening Encounters: The Natural World engages students with high-interest topics in the fields of Earth Science and Biology. The Audio Program consists of a class set of Audio CDs containing warm-up activities, informal interviews, and academic lectures. An Audio CD with the lectures is included in the student's book for extra practice. The companion book, Academic Encounters: The Natural World is a reading, study skills, and writing book that introduces students to high-interest topics closely related to the topics in the listening book.