New Business Matters Teacher Resource Book - Heinle

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United Kingdom • United States • Australia • Canada • Mexico • Singapore • Spain
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New Business Matters
Teacher’s Book
Powell/Mart›nez/Jillett
Publisher: Christopher Wenger
Director of Marketing, ESL/ELT: Amy Mabley
Director of Development, ESL/ELT: Anita Raducanu
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Copyright © 2004 by Heinle, a part of the Cengage
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ISBN: 0-7593-9857-7
(Teacher’s Book)
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Contents
A Typical Topic Unit
4
Unit-By-Unit Teaching Notes
Unit 1
Career Management
9
Unit 2
Enterprise
10
Unit 3
E-business
Meeting Skills
12
13
Unit 4
Brand Management
14
Unit 5
Prices and Commodities
15
Unit 6
Corporate Entertaining
Telephoning Skills
17
19
Unit 7
Innovation
20
Unit 8
Public Relations
21
Unit 9
Cultural Awareness
Presentation Skills
22
24
Unit 10
Global Advertising
25
Unit 11
Management Styles
26
Unit 12
Mergers and Acquisitions
Negotiating Skills
27
28
Unit 13
Business and the Environment
29
Unit 14
Finance and Credit
31
Unit 15
Economic Issues
32
Resource Files
35
CNN Video Worksheet Teaching Notes
66
3
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A Typical Topic Unit
Pre-Reading
Reading (recorded)
Post-Reading
Language Focus
Fluency Work
A note on New Business
Matters
This course is more than a mere ‘new edition’ of
Business Matters, first published in 1996. New
Business Matters has been substantially developed
and updated as follows:
• All units that have been retained have been
thoroughly updated, some substantially, to reflect
changes in the global business world.
• Four entirely new units have been written to
reflect modern business reality.
• Four listening-based skills units have been added,
to focus on the language of meetings, telephoning,
negotiations and presentations.
• A glossary of key business vocabulary has been
added.
New Video
In addition to the above, a selection of 15 video
extracts has been made from authentic CNN
programmes, and worksheets written for each have
been added to the back of the Coursebook, with
teacher’s notes, transcripts and answers provided in
this Teacher’s Resource Book. These video extracts
have been chosen for variety and international appeal,
and to reflect the topics of the main units.
Making the most of New
Business Matters
The Language of Business
The Lexical Approach Of New Business Matters
A New Approach
New Business Matters is a different kind of business
English course. Based on the latest corpus research
into what the language of business really is, it deemphasises the narrow focus on functional and
structural input of the traditional course and places
business content at the centre of its syllabus.
Redefining Business English
Traditionally, the response to the language needs of
business people has been the provision of a general
business English coursebook, combining a conventional
structural syllabus in a business context with the
functional language of meetings, telephoning and other
business functions.
4
However, teachers will all be familiar with learners
who, fed a rich diet of functional exponents to use in
meetings, role play a meeting quite successfully in class
without using any of them! Would-be presenters,
painstakingly coached in signpost phrases, discourse
markers and graph language, continue to stand up and
give uninspiring end-of-course presentations. Business
people who have no problem getting through to the
person they want on the phone, have all kinds of
trouble dealing with them in English once they have got
through!
In many ways, the traditional business English syllabus
misses the mark, and a large part of the problem is
functional ‘overkill’, for much of the functional language
of business that is taught is both unnecessary and
unnatural.There are always simpler, more effective
alternatives. For example, one of the most common
ways of disagreeing in a meeting is to say ‘Yes, but ...’.
A very common way of changing direction in a
presentation is simply to say ‘OK, so ...’ . And
recordings of both native and non-native speakers
show that EFL favourites like ‘I’m afraid I can’t agree
with you there’ and ‘If we could just turn our attention for
a moment to the question of cost’ are actually rather
rare.
In fact, so much time is wasted in business English
classes learning ten alternative ways of agreeing that
there is no time left to talk about what we agree on!
And here we come to the real crux of the matter.The
main difference between general English and business
English is not one of function but of content.Voicing
your opinion in business English is really no different
from voicing your opinion in general English.What is
different are the things you voice your opinion on. It is
all a question of content.What New Business
Matters does is systematically identify the key content
language all business people need.
New Business Matters recognises that learners who
have already studied a lot of grammar, a lot of
functions, and a lot of vocabulary, will not significantly
improve their communicative competence in business
simply by studying more of the same.What they need
to develop most of all at their critical intermediate
stage of learning is lexical awareness, the ability to
combine a lot of words they already know (like
company and run) into word partnerships they do not
know (like run a company), and to see how building up
a substantial repertoire of word partnerships (like meet
demand) and fixed expressions (like We can hardly keep
up with demand) rather than individual words (like
meet, keep and demand) speeds up language processing
and is the key to real fluency.
Word partnerships are accorded special importance in
New Business Matters.The language of business is
especially heavy in terms of information load, and word
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partnerships, which are really concentrated packets of
meaning, play a much more central role in business
English than they do in general English, which tends to
be more lexically diffuse.
In fact, the core syllabus in New Business Matters
consists of a restricted set of business concepts (like
companies, contracts and meetings; prices, products
and markets), all of which generate hundreds of 2-, 3and 4-word partnerships.
For example:
hold a meeting
market forces
sales potential
set up a company
create a price war
reduce overhead costs
withdraw a defective product
draft a provisional contract
professional needs of your group. It is a good idea to
go through the contents list with your learners on day
one and prioritise the units to be studied.This allows
them to negotiate their needs and, to a certain extent,
customise the content of their course.
Simple Methodology
All
1
2
3
of the units follow a similar pattern:
A pre-reading activity introduces the topic.
Text work follows.
A variety of exercises and activities reinforce and
expand on the language in the texts.
4 The language work is punctuated by short minidiscussions relating to the learners’ own
experience.
5 The unit culminates in an extended fluency activity.
Timetable Fit
Fixed expressions are also a crucial part of a fluent
speaker’s competence. Native and near-native speakers
may know many thousands of contextually triggered
sentences by heart. All the texts in this course, both
articles and exercises, have been packed with a high
proportion of fixed expressions which should be
categorised and learnt whole.
For example:
I see what you mean.
It can’t be helped.
That’s beside the point.
I would if I could but I can’t.
It isn’t as simple as that.
You must be joking.
Each unit in New Business Matters, if fully exploited,
provides about five hours’ worth of work, roughly
divided into:
1 hour
text work
2 hours
language work
½ hour
discussion work
1 to 1½ hours fluency activity
Typically, a unit would be covered in four one-hour
lessons with some of the language work set for
homework. On an intensive course a unit could form
the basis of a day’s studies. On an extensive course
lessons could trace a four-stage learning cycle:
Lesson 1:
Lesson 2:
General Teaching Notes
Lesson 3:
Lesson 4:
Wide Range of Topics
The fifteen main units in New Business Matters are
extremely varied in terms of content, target language
and activity type. Step by step the course takes
learners through the whole world of business from
product development to pricing strategy, from brand
management to credit control, from advertising
expenditure to management styles.
General Interest
The articles in each unit, though focusing on a
particular area of business, are directed towards the
general business reader.Topics have been specially
chosen to remain current, and the issues raised are of
perennial interest.
introductory discussion and text work
(set language homework)
extra language work and discussion
(prepare at home for fluency activity)
fluency activity (record for feedback)
feedback session and remedial work
(choose next unit to study)
Although each unit is carefully phased to develop the
learners’ language awareness and confidence, the page
layout in New Business Matters, with each section
starting on a new page, means that parts of a unit can
be worked with separately if desired.
In some cases there is overlap between units in terms
of topic and language.This offers the possibility of
doing information transfer work using articles for more
than one unit. As the business themes addressed are
largely ongoing, articles on the same topics regularly
appear in the business press.Teachers and learners
should be on the lookout for authentic articles and
news stories with which to draw a comparison.
Freestanding Units
The units in New Business Matters can be worked
through in any order, depending on the interests and
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A Typical Unit
4. Language Focus
1. Pre-Reading
This part of the unit offers a wide selection of lexical
and business grammar exercises which review and
expand on the key language contained in the article.
With some of the exercises it is a good idea to refer
learners back to the article itself to check their
answers before you go through them in class.
The aim in this part of the lesson is to get the learners
thinking and talking about the topic.The teacher reads
out a short introductory text, learners complete
questionnaires or perform a simple task.Ten to fifteen
minutes is usually enough to set the scene and arouse
interest.
2. Reading (recorded)
Learners read the article and compare it with the
views they shared with their colleagues in the prereading discussion. Alternatively, they can listen to a
recording of the article instead.With weaker groups,
who find extended reading and listening activities
demanding, try playing the recording as they read.This
prevents people ‘getting lost’ and ensures that
everyone completes the activity at the same time. Later
in this introduction there is more detailed advice on
dealing with texts.
In Unit 7, Innovation, learners are split into two
groups and read different articles on the same topic.
They then pair up to exchange and compare
information.
3. Post-Reading
The activities in this part of the unit are a little
different from those usually associated with text work.
Instead of comprehension questions, learners may be
asked to:
— decide which of several points listed support those
made in the article.
— remember the context in which key facts and
figures were mentioned.
— find words and expressions in the article which
mean ...
— indicate their own personal response to the
information contained in the article.
— prepare a set of questions on the article to ask
their colleagues.
These last two activities are particularly important.The
natural response to reading (or listening to) something
is to say what you think. Sometimes questions are
raised by what you have read, which you may want to
ask. But answering questions on what you read is highly
unnatural, except in tests. And, in general, learners gain
more from asking questions than answering them.
The ability to formulate accurate questions is an
essential business skill, and even quite advanced
learners can be weak at this. So, the question-asking
activities in New Business Matters offer learners
‘language frameworks’ to help them ask better
questions than they would naturally. Usually this means
giving them the first few words of the question: In what
way ...? How might ...? According to the article, ...? What’s
likely to be the effect of ... on ...? What are the implications
of ...? etc.
6
Word Partnerships: Since New Business Matters
sets out to teach the core content language you need
to do business in English, word partnerships (the real
information carriers) feature frequently in the
Language Focus section of each unit. It is essential to
get your learners into the habit of looking for chunks
of language bigger than words if you are to maximise
their learning.
Typically, the Language Focus section progresses
from straightforward matching to phrase-search
exercises to more complex activities where, for
example, learners may have to sequence and link up
whole expressions into a text or presentation extract.
The majority of word partnership exercises in the
course start from a keyword, usually a noun (business,
company, production, agreement, figures, problem, etc.), and
build on the verbs, adjectives and secondary nouns you
need to generate two-, three- and four-word
partnerships. It is extremely important that learners
can identify the keywords most relevant to their own
job, for not all the exercises in this section of the book
will be equally useful to them. And, if you have a small
class, you should be prepared to let them do a certain
amount of picking and choosing.The new glossary at
the back of the Coursebook provides an additional
resource of key vocabulary.
Fixed and Semi-Fixed Expressions: There are
exercises in New Business Matters which explicitly
teach common expressions and idioms used in business
(money expressions, for example). And the majority of
exercises in the Language Focus section have been
specially written to contain a high concentration of
more or less fixed expressions as well. Encourage
learners to be on the lookout for complete
expressions they can learn and use themselves.
Business Grammar: Some of the units in New
Business Matters address grammar, and a certain
amount of grammatical range obviously gives learners
choices about what they can say which they would not
otherwise have. But grammar is always treated as
secondary to lexis.There are two reasons for this.
First, it is assumed that at an intermediate level of
English learners have already studied a lot of grammar
and that further study is unlikely to prove cost-effective
in terms of increased communicative competence.
Second, a great deal of grammar is, in fact, learnt
lexically. In New Business Matters, conditionals,
future forms, modal verbs, past tenses and the perfect
aspect are all introduced in phrases and expressions in
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which they commonly feature. Learners meet examples
of a structure and work out how it operates.This
reflects natural acquisition.
Discussion Activities: Throughout the Language
Focus section there are short discussion activities
which give learners an immediate opportunity to relate
the topic of the unit to their own work situations and
also to use some of the language they have been
learning. It is not suggested that a lot of time be spent
on these mini-discussions unless they particularly catch
the interest of your class. But it is important that
learners are given breathing space between
concentrated language work.
There are suggestions in the Unit-by-Unit Notes for
ways in which the language exercises in New
Business Matters can be followed up with
competitive and collaborative classroom activities.
5. Fluency Work
Each unit concludes with an extended discussion,
presentation, role-play or simulation. Occasionally, there
is a choice of activity, and sometimes an element of
competition is introduced. Recording or videoing is
advisable if you want to do detailed feedback.The
purpose of the fluency work is to give an end-product
to the unit, and, as a general rule, it should be tackled
separately from the text and language work, perhaps in
a subsequent lesson. Adequate preparation is vital with
the more elaborate role-plays and simulations if your
learners are to do them well.There are suggestions in
the Coursebook and teachers’ notes on extra
functional language you may want to input at this stage,
but be careful not to overload your learners with
language they may end up not needing!
Exploiting the Texts
The Importance of Input
Strange as it may sound, you do not learn to speak a
language by speaking, but by listening and reading.
Learners who can already speak some English will learn
to speak a lot more by listening and reading as much
and as often as they can. Reading, in particular, is the
best way to boost your word power. But input must be
both comprehensible and maximally useful if it is to
accelerate learning.
The Central Role of the Texts in New
Business Matters
The articles and many of the exercises in New
Business Matters have been specially written to
contain a large part of the target language of the
course.They are not simplified, but lexically enhanced
with a disproportionately high number of word
partnerships and / or fixed expressions (and little of
the redundant or colloquial language found in many
authentic texts).This makes them eminently exploitable
in the classroom as the main source of input as well as
fuel for discussion.Your learners would have to read an
enormous number of newspaper and magazine articles
to be sure of covering anything like the same range of
content language.
A certain amount of reader-training is necessary,
however, if learners are to get maximum benefit from
the course. Because we hardly ever notice the words
we read, but read the meaning behind them instead, all
text is prone to what applied linguists call
‘transparency’.The message is received and understood
but the words are lost forever. Clearly this is not what
we want with our language learners. So the
Coursebook introduces them to a variety of simple
techniques for mining texts for useful language and
increasing their lexical awareness.The Unit-By-Unit
Notes and Resource File in this teachers’ book offer
many more suggestions.
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How to Use the Texts in the Classroom
Managing text can be a bit unwieldy in the classroom, if
not handled properly — people read at different
speeds; some stop at every unknown word and reach
for the dictionary; others take a deep breath and
plough on regardless; there are those who get lost
altogether and those who read and discard at an
alarming rate!
The following alternative approaches are suggested to
harmonise reading styles and ensure that the input
language is properly digested.
1. Set a time limit for all reading activities. For slow
readers this will function as a spur to read on,
whilst for faster readers it will provide an
opportunity to pace themselves.You may find
playing quiet music during the reading phases of
your lesson breaks what can otherwise be an
uncomfortable silence. Fading the music out at the
end of this phase is a subtle and effective way of
signalling to people to stop reading.
2. Getting learners to read aloud to the class in strict
rotation is more reminiscent of primary school
than the business language training centre, but
reading a paragraph out to a partner is quite
acceptable. People read bits of newspapers out to
each other all the time in coffee bars and at home,
so why not in class? Encourage pairs of learners to
take turns reading out parts of the text to each
other, perhaps breaking off from time to time to
discuss a point with their partner or gloss
something which is unclear.
3. Play the recording first, so that your learners get to
hear what it is about and compare it with the
views they shared in the pre-reading session before
you refer them to the text for more detailed
language and discussion work. Knowing they will be
seeing the actual text later often reassures less
confident listeners.
4. An excellent idea is to try playing the CD or
cassette as your class reads.This necessarily keeps
stragglers on track and ensures that everyone
completes the activity at the same time. Reading
with the recording also prevents word-by-word
translation and encourages people to take in larger
chunks of text at a time.
5. Do not underestimate the value of occasionally
reading the text out yourself.This is best done
interactively, with you pacing yourself according to
the difficulty of the text and length of the
sentences, and your learners interrupting you to
ask for repetition, clarification or explanation.
8
6. From time to time, set the pre-reading and reading
activities for homework, so that learners come to
the next lesson well immersed in the text and the
issues it raises.
Resource File Section
In the Resource File section of this teachers’ book
you will find several other ideas for exploiting text
communicatively in the business English classroom.
Activities such as games to practise word partnerships,
ways to summarise texts and notetaking for minipresentations are examples of the type of activities
which are included in the 15 Resource Files. Each file
supplies the teacher with the material needed to carry
out the activity and a step-by-step description of how
to organise each stage.
The Skills Units
A Typical Skills Unit:
Pre-Listening
A warm up activity which prepares learners for the
listening through discussion and questions.
Listening
The listening provides an appropriate model for each
of the four skills: telephoning, meeting, presenting, and
negotiating.
Key Language
This section provides practice of expressions and
vocabulary for each of the skills.
Case Study
This is an opportunity to practise the skill in a realistic
business context.
The CNN Video Extracts
A Typical Video Unit:
Has a worksheet which begins with discussion
questions to focus the learners on the topic of the
video.
Before You Watch
An exercise to supply learners with helpful words and
phrases to make understanding the video a little easier.
While You Watch
Exercises to encourage active viewing of the video
extract and to check comprehension.
After You Watch
Pair and groupwork activities which recycle the
language of the video in a business context.
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Career Management
Text
Me plc.: redefining what it takes to be
successful in today’s competitive job market
Language Focus
The Appointment Pages: job advertisement
expressions
Reading between the Lines: understanding job
ads
Career, recruitment and interviewing phrases:
do research, sell yourself, dress to impress, project
the right attitude
Discussion Topics
Do you live to work or work to live?
Balancing career and life decisions
Applying for jobs that are not advertised
Fluency Work
Describe your ‘dream job’ and prepare a job
interview for it; role-play the job interview
General Notes
This unit focuses on how the very nature of
employment has evolved from the traditional notion of
‘holding down a job’ to forcing people to be more proactive about managing their own careers. It is a topic
that should have broad appeal since young and old,
employed or unemployed alike will find some relevance
to their own lives. If you have young-adult learners in
your class, the perspective will be more from the
prospect of employment, and working adults will be
able to contribute more from personal experience.
Either way, the topic should generate much interest
and discussion, and for that reason may be a good unit
to start with.
To promote even further discussion, if you have access
to real job advertisements – either from an Englishlanguage newspaper or Internet media – you could
invite learners to talk about jobs that strike their
interest and those that do not, and why.
Page 9
Pre-Reading High-flyer or Wage Slave?
As a class, have learners react to the opening
quotation.This could be done silently or aloud (read by
the teacher or learner). After getting a few initial
reactions, ask them to individually mark where they see
themselves on the scale.Then put learners into pairs to
discuss the questions. (There is an analysis of their
answers on page of 152 of the Coursebook.)
Page 11
Post-Reading Crosschecking
When you do the feedback for this task, ask your
learners to back up their answers by referring to the
article: ‘It says here that ...’, ‘It talks about ... .’
Page 12
Language Focus
The Appointments Pages
If you have a strong class, this could be done aloud as a
‘complete the sentence’ activity, which will challenge
learners and keep up a dynamic pace. (Be sure to ask
learners to cover the text in their books when they do
this.)
Page 12
Reading between the Lines
You could start by asking the follow-up question to this
activity first, especially if you have a group with enough
job experience, to draw more interest and make the
activity all that much more relevant to learners.
Page 13
Quotes
Have learners read through these first without
worrying about filling in the gaps.This will allow them
to focus on meaning first.This could be done very
effectively with the teacher reading the extracts aloud,
skipping over the spaces, thereby avoiding the
possibility of learners stumbling over them.
If you are working in a school or college, it can be fun
to collect business quotes with the groups you teach
and display them in the classroom. Many quotes contain
useful idioms and fixed expressions. Remember to
update the collection periodically and get learners to
contribute some quotes of their own.
Page 14
Recruitment
It is a good idea to focus the class and have learners
collectively contribute the answer to the first two
questions without actually looking at the book.When it
comes time to do the activity, if you have learners with
little or no work experience, it is best to pair them up
with one who does. If no such learner is available, tell
them that it is OK to guess.
Page 14
Interview Skills
If you have a class with very few learners with actual
job experience, you might want to skip to the second
opening question.When doing the listening activity,
learners can simply number each line to establish the
order.
Page 15
Who Said It?
To build learners’ awareness of lexical chunks, as a
follow-up to the activity you can ask learners to
underline the parts of each line they think are
useful/important to them. For example, 1. Take a seat.
Coffee?; 2. Could I ask you…? (as a generative question
stem) or the entire phrase Could I ask you what
attracted you to the position? This kind of training
early on will begin to help learners understand that
what they want to focus on is language patterns from
which they can generalise.
Unit 1 • Career Management
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Page 16
Fluency Work Dream Job
If you are short of time
Depending on time, you can really raise learners’
interest in the subject by having them answer the first
question, ‘What would be your ideal job?’ in pairs or small
groups.This will get their heads warmed-up to the
activity even more to optimise its effectiveness.
Do Interview Skills and Phrase-building on page
14 and Who Said It? and Phrases and Expressions
on page 15 in class. Set the rest for homework.You can
reduce the time spent on the Dream Job activity by
preparing a few job descriptions in advance and simply
giving those to the learners to work from in class.
Alternatively, the job descriptions in the form of
advertisements could be posted around the class or on
the board as a kind of ‘job centre’. Learners could then
even interview for jobs other than those they have
written descriptions for.
2
U N I T
Enterprise
Text
Entrepreneurs: the hero status of the
entrepreneur and the secrets of
entrepreneurial success
Language Focus
Word Grammar: expressing nouns in the
adjective form
Word partnerships in the context of
entrepreneurial skills
Business Grammar: reporting verbs,
gerund/infinitive expressions, prepositional
verbs
Discussion Topics
Entrepreneurism within corporations, using
intuition and ingenuity, personal success
Page 17
Pre-Reading Room at the Top
Fluency Work
Business Venture: starting a new business,
drawing up and presenting a business plan
General Notes
This unit discusses the essential differences between
the successful manager and the successful
entrepreneur. Since your learners are more likely to be
managers than entrepreneurs, this gives you the
opportunity to find out whether they would rather be
working for themselves than for their employer. Be
discreet!
The unit can be tackled on two levels, depending on
the degree of interest and experience in your group.
Less experienced groups may want to talk very
generally about what leads to success in business,
entrepreneurial or otherwise.You could ask them to
think of a well-known business person in their own
10
country and account for this person’s success.
More experienced groups with an interest in the
practicalities of setting up in business may prefer to
think about the basic requirements of a successful new
company: steady cashflow, a clearly identified customer
base, medium-term objectives, etc.They may also want
to discuss the idea of ‘intrapreneurism’: giving the
manager the autonomy to use their intuition, act on
their own initiative and run a company-within-acompany. How much autonomy do your learners enjoy
in their own jobs?
Be on the lookout for news items and magazine
articles featuring the rich and famous from the worlds
of business and enterprise. As a rule, disasters and
scandals will generate more interest than success
stories.You could give an article to each member of
your group and ask them to summarise it in a
subsequent lesson.There is a worksheet for news
article summaries on page 60
This activity is meant to expose preconceived ideas
about wealth and how it is acquired. It can be done in
pairs or small groups, but you may find, if you are short
of time, that this activity will work best done as a class
brainstorm to lead into the reading. Read out the text,
How to Make a Million, to your class.Tell them that
when you’ve finished reading you will put them into
pairs to produce a ten-word summary of the text.This
will encourage them to stop you if there is anything
they do not understand. Make sure the summaries are
exactly ten words long. Choose the best.
Page 19
Post-Reading Information Check
Send your learners back to the text to argue out any
differences of opinion.
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Page 19
Interviews
Monitor the preparation of questions carefully or, if you
prefer, collect in the questions at the end of the lesson,
correct / reformulate them and hand back multiple
copies in the next lesson. If you like, you could conduct
the question-and-answer session competitively.
Page 20
Language Focus
Word Partnerships 1
Draw the learners’ attention to the fact that the 16
parts of the presentation extract are all broken in the
middle of a useful word partnership: make it to the top,
put in an 18-hour day, a recipe for success, bide your time
etc. If you have a small group, don’t underestimate the
value of getting them to mark in the stressed words
and pauses and then read the extract aloud.
Page 21
Word Partnerships 2
Page 24
Fluency Work Business Venture
(time required 50-60 minutes)
Do the fluency work in a follow-up lesson to give your
learners time to think through their ideas. Do not let
them get too involved in details, but encourage them to
keep the whole thing as simple as possible, taking just a
few notes on each point. If notes are displayed on a
flipchart or projected on OHP this will help to keep
them concise and act as a memory aid during the
presentations. Make it clear that amusing ideas for a
new company are as welcome as more serious ones!
Useful verbs: we plan, aim, intend, propose to ...; we
estimate, envisage, propose that ...
If you are short of time
Do Word Partnerships 1 and 2 on pages 20-21 and
Business Grammar 1 and 2 on page 22 in class. Set
the rest for homework. Do a simplified version of the
Business Venture activity by cutting some sections
on the Business Plan Checklist.
To make this activity more interactive have pairs of
learners question each other on each point.
Alternatively, you could record yourself being asked the
questions before the lesson, play the recording and get
your learners to complete the answer grid with your
responses and then discuss them with you.
Page 21
Quotes
If you are working in a school or college, it can be fun
to collect business quotes with the groups you teach
and display them in the classroom. Many quotes contain
useful idioms and fixed expressions. Remember to
update the collection periodically and get learners to
contribute some quotes on their own.
Page 22
Business Grammar 1 and 2
It is seldom necessary to go through the contortions
of reported speech in a business English course. Events
and opinions, rather than actual speech, tend to be
reported. ‘Are you quite sure you won’t need to get
authorisation for this?’ is unlikely to be reported as She
asked us if we were quite sure we wouldn’t need to get
authorisation for that, but rather: She thought we’d need
authorisation.
But being able to use simple reporting verbs such as
asked, said, told, thought and more complex ones such as
confirmed, doubted, stressed, questioned and demanded is
very important if you want to write a report on what
was discussed in a meeting. Make sure your learners
know what words follow each reporting verb –
doubted whether, stressed that, questioned the need for,
demanded to know whether etc.
As a follow-up activity, you could prepare a set of cards
with direct speech on for learners to reformulate into
report language. Alternatively, a short extract of an
interview on cassette or video would be an excellent
way of practising reporting verbs.There’s a worksheet
for this on page 000.
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E-business
Text
Dot.Con?: the rise and fall – and apparent
resurgence – of e-commerce and the Internet as a
whole
Language Focus
Abbreviation: business and technology terms
Prepositions in phrasal verbs and other multi-word
expressions
Word partnerships: verbs and verb phrases
Discussion Topics
Criticisms of corporate web sites
The Internet past and present, and predictions for
its future, especially as it relates to business
Page 28
Find the Words
It is important not to rush this activity, as the cognitive
involvement which sometimes will take up some time
is a productive and essential part of the lexis-building
process, and for the same reason it is best not to do
the activity open-class, as inevitably there will be
learners who will ‘steal the show’ and deprive the
others of a chance to reflect on the language to be
focused on.
Page 29
Discuss
Invite learners to contribute any criticisms they may
have of their own that were not already covered in the
speech bubbles.
Page 29
Case Study Microsoft Under Attack
Fluency Work
Dotcom Clinic: giving online business advice
General Notes
This unit focuses on an industry that has suffered
dramatic changes and is bound to undergo still more.
For that reason it has been written from a historical
viewpoint, allowing for both reflection and speculation
about what is still to come. Since the article deals with
what was essentially an investor fad at one point – tech
stocks and e-business – the class may go into a
discussion about ‘new’ ways of doing business and
business trends and how regardless of fashion and fad
the fundamentals of business and the nature of markets
(supply v. demand, price sensitivity, market timeliness,
customer service) remain unchanged through the
years.
Page 25
Pre-Reading Nethead or Web-hater?
Put learners into pairs to discuss the questions, after
which it should be established if each is a ‘Nethead’ or
‘Web-hater’ (both made-up terms).The criteria for
establishing this are not very scientific – they are based
on a general assertion according to how each learner
answers the questions.
Page 27
Post-Reading Response
This focuses on the macro meaning of the article.
Learners may wish to briefly re-read before doing this
exercise.
If you have non-working learners in the class,
particularly younger learners, you will probably have
little difficulty having them identify with the world of
computer security and hacking.Working from this
angle, you should be able to gather interest from the
class as a whole. (Remember that the scripts for all the
listenings are in the back of the Coursebook.)
Page 31
Word Partnerships 2
Encourage learners to try the activity without referring
to the original text.
Page 32
Fluency Work Dotcom Clinic
Before putting learners into small groups to work on
the activity, you may feel it necessary and helpful to go
over some basic opening and closing lexis used in semiformal e-mail messages. Language such as To the team at
BiblioFiles, Hope this feedback will be useful. Regards
Charles Brown.
If you are short of time
Do the Language Focus activities on page 28 and the
reading on page 30 plus Word Partnerships 2 and
Find the Expressions. To reduce the amount of time
spent on the fluency activity, have learners choose
three case studies to respond to.
Page 28
Language Focus
Computer Speak
debug: to solve a computer-related problem;
domain name: the last part of a web address,
such as .com or .org;
morph: to evolve into a different kind of business;
bricks: a real physical business;
clicks: referring to the virtual reality of the Internet;
friction-free: smooth, minimalised difficulty
12
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Meeting Skills
The Language of Meetings
Page 33
Key Language
Listening content
a problematic meeting scenario where just about
anything that can go wrong during a meeting does
go wrong
Key language
useful expressions for participating in and
conducting meetings
Skills practice
Learners divide themselves into different
departments within a fast-food organisation,
holding a meeting to respond to a crisis situation
and develop a plan of action
General Notes
One thing that a language course cannot and should
not aspire to is to go beyond language training to try
and change the basic nature of the person. If a person
walks into a language classroom as basically shy, it is
unlikely that s/he will return home the life of the party
when the class or the course is finished. Meetings in
many cultures tend to be counter-productive and drag
on when extrovert competes with extrovert for the
lion’s share of the attention.There will always be
people who just love to hear themselves talk, and that
occurs independently of L1 or L2 status. In other
words, as a teacher you should try to understand and
respect the basic nature of a learner if s/he seems to
be quieter or reserved during the meetings practised in
this unit. It may be that that learner would not speak
even in his/her native tongue given the same situation.
That said, the general aim of this unit is to at least give
learners the tools necessary to be able to participate if
need be and if willing and able.
Depending on how confident you feel about your
learners’ language ability, you can try putting them in
pairs first to try and guess or put the sentences
together from memory, and then check with the
recording only at the end.
After learners organise the sentences into the different
categories, drill them with Coursebooks closed, naming
the category and having learners respond with a
sentence that goes into that category.
Page 34
Case Study
First have learners read the case study individually.Then
divide the class into the different departments to
prepare for the meeting.You might want to bring in the
necessary materials (construction paper, colored pens,
etc.) to be able to encourage as much creativity as
possible – have them put together a real sample menu,
for example, or a storyboard for a new launch
campaign to save the company’s image.
Page 33
Pre-Listening Language Focus
If you have learners who have not yet entered the
workforce, or whose jobs as of yet have not required
them to be in a professional meeting setting, try to get
them to reflect on any other type of meeting situation
they may have had. For example, though they may not
have ever participated in a meeting at work, they may
have done so in school, with friends studying for an
exam, or with friends planning for a social event.
Page 33
Listening
Learners listen for the degree of ‘usefulness’ of the
meeting, which, as it turns out, is very low.Try to get
them to be as specific as possible in justifying the score
they give the meeting at the end, re-playing parts of the
meeting or even the meeting in its entirety if necessary.
Meeting Skills
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Brand Management
Text
Brand Wars: in retail marketing the battle is on
amongst the brand leaders, the own-label products
and the pirates.
Language Focus
Key words: market, brand, consumer
Word partnerships: brand, market and product
descriptions
Business metaphors: terms of war, sport and games,
water, health and flight.
Business grammar: writing a successful sales letter
Discussion Topics
Company ‘household’ names, upmarket and
downmarket goods, product proliferation
Fluency Work
Product Development: challenging a brand name with
a competitive new product
General Notes
This unit focuses on the ruthless price wars which
typify retail marketing. It describes the measures being
taken by the big brand leaders in fast-moving consumer
goods to take on the more competitively priced ownlabel supermarket products. It also looks at the
problems faced by luxury goods manufacturers in
trying to deal with the millions of pirate versions of
their products which annually flood the market.
Since we all have experience of these market sectors
as consumers, it is not necessary for learners to be
actively involved in retail marketing in order to benefit
from this unit.The question of quality v price is one
which everyone can talk about, as are the rights and
wrongs of ripping off well-known brands by making
cheap copies of their goods.
You might mention in your discussion that in some
countries, notably Turkey and Greece, the brand names
have actually given in to the pirates and now grant
them licences to produce cheaper but qualitycontrolled versions of their goods.
If your class does have an interest in brand
management, then there are a lot of issues raised in the
article which can be further explored: the criteria by
which you measure a classic brand, the effectiveness of
brandstretching, the saturation of the market with
almost identical products and the problem of product
differentiation.
Learners who work in service industries might like to
consider whether you can brand and market a service
in the same way you brand and market a product. Does
it make sense to actually sell services as ‘products’?
Page 35
Pre-Reading A Follower of Fashion?
If your class is not involved in marketing, do not spend
much time on the marketing terms, but go straight to
the questionnaire.
14
Page 37
Post-Reading Recall and Response
When you do the feedback for these tasks, ask your
learners to back up their answers by referring to the
article: ‘It said that ...’, ‘The article talked about ...’, ‘It
mentioned something about ...’.
Page 38
Language Focus
Word Partnerships 2, 3 and 4
As a follow-up activity, you could prepare one of the
word partnership card games described on page 56.
Page 39
Word Partnerships 5
Listen again to the article on Brand Wars to check the
answers.
Page 39
Presenting
With a small group there might be time to let
everyone have a go at giving the whole presentation,
which only takes about two minutes. Make it clear,
however, that the objective is not just to read out the
information clearly – after all, everyone has heard it at
least once already.The aim is to put as much feeling
into the delivery as possible by pausing, stressing
important words, speeding up and slowing down your
speech and raising and lowering your voice for effect.
The words given at the bottom of the page should help
in achieving this goal.
With a larger group do team presentations with two
or three speakers giving alternate pieces of
information. Good presentations (however brief) are
not about being clear; they are about making an
impression. Have fun trying out different techniques.
Page 40
Business Metaphors
A lot of business English is actually highly metaphorical.
We talk about money being channelled or poured into
projects; resources being tapped or pooled; markets
being flooded, saturated or awash with money; business
flourishing as money is ploughed back into the economy;
companies being floated on the stock exchange or going
under and sinking without trace.
The field of Sales and Marketing is no exception to
this.War metaphors feature most frequently.The
language in this exercise is mostly for passive
recognition, but encourage learners to collect one or
two colourful expressions for their own use too.
Although idioms occasionally sound silly in the mouths
of non-native speakers, a small amount of figurative
language allows something of the speaker’s personality
to show through.
To introduce learners to the concept of metaphor, try
a simple one first on the board. A good basic one is
time is money. Give the example of save time / save
money, and ask learners if they can come up with any
others. Ask if they have similar expressions in their
mother tongue(s) and further raise awareness, and then
carry on with the activity.
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Page 42
Fluency Work Product Development
(60-70 minutes)
Divide your class into small product development
groups with two or three members in each group. Give
them 30-40 minutes to work on their presentations. As
well as completing the notes in the book, they may
want to prepare extra visuals to help promote their
idea: packaging designs, pie charts showing market
sectors etc.
With weaker groups, insist that the technical parts of
their presentation are written down clearly for reading
aloud, so that they only have to improvise between
written sections.
Language feedback should focus on the persuasiveness
of the speakers and more attention be paid to clarity
and delivery than to accuracy.
Take a vote on the best idea at the end of the activity.
5
U N I T
If you are short of time
Do the Language Focus activities on pages 38 and
39 in class. Set the rest for homework. Ask your
learners to write a short product development
proposal instead of doing a presentation. Let them
finish this off at home and read it out in the next
lesson.
Prices and Commodities
Text
If the Price is Right ... : the factors that determine
the price of goods and services are alarmingly
unpredictable
Language Focus
Keywords: price, trade, profit, compete
Word partnerships: business words, fixed
expressions in the context of price and money
Link words
The language of trends and developments
Discussion Topics
Bargaining, profit margins, critical business
indicators, factors influencing pricing policy, taxes
and subsidies
Fluency Work
Case Study: Sumitomo Bank: the world of
commodity trading
General Notes
Pricing is one of the magic arts of business. So many
factors influence it that it makes virtually no sense at
all to talk about what a thing is worth. And the article
in this unit will be of interest to anyone who has
wondered why a Swatch is actually cheaper in London
than in Lausanne.
Learners with some involvement in the export of
goods will have a lot to say about trade barriers,
import taxes and tariffs. Marketing people will be
familiar with pricing as one of the most important of
the so-called four Ps (product, price, place, promotion).
Almost everyone will have some opinion on the
comparative cost of living in different countries.
If you are working with a multi-national group, try
making a list of basic household items and one or two
luxury items as well.What would your learners expect
to pay for them in their country? Do some rough
exchange rate calculations.Who is getting the best deal
overall? Who is worst off?
Page 43
Pre-Reading Value for Money
Write price in a bubble in the middle of the board. Ask
your learners to come up with words and expressions
they associate with price and write them up on the
board too, organising them in different categories.Try
to elicit word partnerships like price cut, price rise,
competitive prices; derived words like pricing and pricey;
compounds like price-sensitive and price-conscious; as well
as related concepts like value, worth and affordability.
Suggest a few common expressions: to price yourself out
of the market, at a price you can afford.
Give your learners a minute or so to read the first part
of the text (up to ‘Whatever the market will stand’). How
would they define price? Give them another minute or
two to work in pairs and come up with a neat
definition. Add these to the diagram on your board.
Now look at the quotations on page 43.Which view
do they share? Question Lord Rayner’s comment. Can
you ever make too much money in business?
Unit 5 • Prices and Commodities
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Page 45
Post-Reading Recall
When you do the feedback for this task, ask your
learners to back up their answers by referring to the
article (‘It said that ...’, ‘The article talked about ...’, ‘It
mentioned something about ...’)
Page 46
Language Focus
Word Partnerships 1
You can do this timed word search competitively if you
like.The first team to finish with all word partnerships
correct is the winner. Alternatively, see how many of
the partnerships your learners can remember without
referring back to the article. Finally, ask your learners
how many other word partnerships they can make
using the words in the first column on their list.The
chances are they will soon realise that very general
words like profit, product and market will partner up
with many other words, whereas with more specific
words like borderless, luxury and niche you can almost
guarantee that Europe, goods/items and market will
follow.What lesson can they learn from this about
recording useful language?
Page 46
Cheap or Expensive?
Add your class’s four favourite expressions to the
diagram about price suggested in the Pre-Reading
note for page 43.
Page 47
Money Expressions
Ask the class to add more expressions.
Page 48
Word Partnerships 4
Put your learners into pairs and get them to prepare
their summaries on paper first.They may want to
change the order of the sentences and will certainly
need some link words to connect up the facts.Those in
the Coursebook are only suggestions. Exchange
summaries for peer correction or, if you have an OHP,
ask your learners to write their summaries onto
transparencies and go through them in class.
Concentrate on how well they have sequenced and
linked the information.
Page 49
Trends 1 and 2
As a follow-up activity, do a visualisation drill. Read out
some of the trend verbs and ask your learners to
picture the curve in their mind’s eye. If they see
nothing, let them look back at their books.Then read
out the trend verbs again, but this time ask them to
trace the curve with their finger. Allow a second or
two for some confusion, hilarity and changing of minds.
Now trace the curves with your own finger or draw
them on a piece of paper and get your learners to
shout out any trend verbs they can recall.
16
The language of change and development is particularly
rich, and most useful when you have not got a graph to
show people, rather than the other way round! It is
not important for learners to actively use very many of
these terms themselves, but they should have some
idea of their use.You could ask them:
How many of the verbs are irregular?
eg. rise-rose-risen.
What is the pronunciation of the -ed ending on
the regular ones?
eg. plunged, dropped, plummeted.
How many of the verbs are also nouns?
eg. a rise, a fall, a decline.
How many can be transformed into nouns?
eg. fluctuation, escalation.
How many of the verbs are usually good news?
eg. recover, bounce back.
How many of the verbs are usually bad news?
eg. slump, crash.
Get learners to chart their energy levels during the day
or the high and low points of their careers and dictate
the resultant graphs to a partner.
Go back to your board and wipe off part of the price
phrases and expressions you have built up during the
lesson. See if your learners can recall them later.
Page 50
Fluency Work Case Study: Sumitomo
Bank (60-90 minutes)
This activity is intended to recycle a lot of the language
of trends in the context of a game which you can
clearly succeed or fail at. In that sense there is a strong
element of competition and risk, and the game may not
be suitable for all groups.
Put your class into commodity brokerage teams of two
or three.They each have US$100,000,000 to speculate
with and, at the beginning, no holdings in any of the
commodities.
Ask learners to copy the chart on page 50. Learners
will hear information updates at regular intervals on
the audio. At the first update they have ten minutes to
decide what to buy on the basis of the
recommendations they received. Make it clear to them
that not all the recommendations will be accurate, but
that there is a pattern to the good ones which will
become apparent.
Play the next information update, quoting the new
prices of each commodity.The teams have another ten
minutes to adjust the value of their holdings and decide
what to buy, sell and hold. Repeat this procedure for
the nine rounds of the game, or as many rounds as you
have time to complete.
At the end of the game get the teams to work out the
current value of their holdings and add on any
remaining unspent cash.The team with the greatest
assets wins.
As a follow-up you could get teams to draft a letter to
the client whose money they were investing, explaining
how their investment is doing and making any
necessary excuses!
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Teachers’ Tips:
The pattern for gold is volatile: up, up, down, down, up,
up, down, down.
The pattern for silver is from fluctuation to boom:
down, stable, down, up, up, up, up, up.
The pattern for copper is volatile: down, up, down, up,
down, up, down, up.
The pattern for tin is unpredictable: stable, stable,
stable, down, stable, up, up, down.
The pattern for coffee is steadily upward: stable, up, up,
stable, up, stable, stable, up.
The pattern for sugar is from slump to recovery: down,
down, down, down, up, up, up, up.
The pattern for oil is volatile: down, up, down, up, up,
up, down, down.
If you can see a group is in real trouble, you could try
passing them some ‘inside information’: the best shortterm investment is gold; oil is a big earner if you sell
before the bubble bursts; long-term the big money is to
be made on silver and coffee.
6
U N I T
Warning This activity involves a lot of figure work, so
calculators are a must. Competitive classes will enjoy
seeing how they shape up against the opposition, but
people who get bogged down with numbers will tire
quickly of keeping accounts. In this case skip the
activity altogether.
If you are short of time
Do the Language Focus work on page 46, Word
Partnerships 4 on page 48 and Trends 1 on page 49
in class. Set the rest for homework. Cut the Case
Study down to four rounds.
Corporate Entertaining
Text
Looking After the Twenty Percent: Is corporate
entertaining just a form of bribery or is it a
legitimate part of a company’s overall marketing
effort?
Language Focus
Word partnerships in the context of corporate
entertaining
Describing food and drink
Expressions with deal
Discussion Topics
Above-the-line and below-the-line marketing,
corporate gift-giving, wining and dining clients, the
business lunch
Fluency Work
Mixing Business and Pleasure: a business meal with
a foreign host
General Notes
Most executives are at some point involved in the
business of socialising with clients and colleagues,
whether it be wining and dining a potential customer at
a top-class restaurant or looking after an important
visitor for the afternoon. In some cultures sociability is
of paramount importance and virtually all important
business is done on a social level.
But no matter what culture you are from, being ‘nice’
to people who are important to your business brings
its own linguistic demands, and it is frequently in this
grey area between small talk and talking business that
learners of business English feel least confident.
This unit introduces learners to some of the language
they will need in the most commonly encountered
social English situation: taking a client out to lunch or
dinner.
The article in this unit is more light-hearted than in
most of the others, but sets the scene in a fairly
controversial manner. If you teach Japanese learners or
learners who do business with the Japanese, they will
no doubt be able to tell you why spending 40 billion
pounds on corporate entertaining actually makes a lot
of sense!
Page 51
Pre-Reading What’s your price?
Find out how much eating out on business your
learners do and whether they enjoy it or not. Most
people don’t (or, at least, pretend not to). Ask them
how difficult it is finding things to talk about after the
first twenty minutes.
Read out the short questionnaire, What’s your Price?, to
your group whilst they follow in their books and say
what they would do. Ask them who they think spends
the most money on corporate entertaining.
Page 53
Post-Reading Expand
When you do the feedback for this task, ask your
learners to back up their answers by referring to the
article (‘It said that ...’, ‘That referred to ...’, ‘That was when
it was talking about ...’)
Unit 6 • Corporate Entertaining
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Page 55
Describing Food
Page 56
Spoken English
You could do this exercise as a quick guessing game.
Get your learners to close their books, but give them
the list of nouns. Divide them into two teams. Read out
each set of words slowly, pausing after each word.The
first team to correctly guess the nouns which will
partner all the other words wins a point.
You can play the same game with other social English
topics eg. holidays
If you are working in a school or college where you
can leave things displayed in the classroom, keep a
collection of social English fixed expressions in view.
Remember to update the list from time to time.
pleasant bumpy
smooth terrible
long-haul
FLIGHT
quiet family-run
comfortable seafront
four-star
HOTEL
comfortable spacious
dark double
twin-bedded
ROOM
fabulous miserable
disappointing
dull hot
WEATHER
traditional top-class
Indian fish
fast-food
RESTAURANT
wonderful strange
spicy inedible
delicious
FOOD
lousy excellent
poor first-class
slow
SERVICE
reasonable ridiculous
silly inflated
bargain
PRICES
If you are working with a multi-national group, let them
produce menus typical of their respective countries
written in their own language. If culturally appropriate,
a short wine list could be included. Asian and Arab
learners should use the Roman alphabet but not
translate. If your group is monolingual but small, then
you could consider playing the client yourself with each
of them in turn. Otherwise, a certain amount of roleplaying ‘the foreigner’ will be unavoidable.
If you have time, do a dry-run with describing food
using the expressions listed in the Coursebook before
you launch into the full role-play.
At the feedback stage you might like to draw your
learners’ attention to certain features of social English
which would have helped them in the role-play:
introducing a topic of conversation:
About this contract ...
changing the topic of conversation:
Anyway, shall we order?
picking up a topic where you left off:
So, you used to work in Prague ...
asking for permission:
I’ll just see if our table’s ready.
showing degrees of interest:
Have you? You have? You haven’t!
polite noises:
Uh-huh. Ah-hah. Mmm. Right. Oh, yeah.
word order:
Can you help me, please? Please, help yourself.
repetition:
So, it was very difficult to know what to do. Very difficult,
yeah.
You may also want to point out how consistently
contracting verbs, far from being the icing on the cake,
is a fundamental part of conversational English if you
want to create rapport. Compare:
I’ll help you.
with I will help you.
As a follow-up, try describing to your class a fabulous /
disastrous meal or holiday you have had. Deliberately
stumble when you come to word partnerships you
would like them to supply you with:
Teacher:
So, anyway, the wine they’d bought us
was much too sweet and we prefer it er
...
Learner:
Dry?
Teacher:
Well, no, not quite dry but er ...
Learner:
Medium?
Teacher
Yes, exactly.We prefer a medium white
wine ...
Page 57
Fluency Work
Mixing Business and Pleasure
(30-50 minutes)
It’s the best
restaurant in Lyon.
with
It is the best restaurant
in Lyon.
We mustn’t be late.
with
We must not be late.
If you are short of time
Do Describing Food on page 57 and the Language
Focus work on page 56 in class. Set the rest for
homework. Get your learners to prepare for the roleplay at home and do it in the next lesson.
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Telephoning Skills
The Language of Telephoning
Page 59
Key Language 1
Listening content
Three different types of business-oriented
telephone calls: contact, information and
appointment
Key language
Useful telephone expressions
Telephone language question starters and their
collocates
Skills practice
Learners practise making different types of business
calls in a role play, using the language studied in the
unit
Put learners in pairs to have them try and recall from
memory how to fill in the blanks, then play the listening
again to check learners’ answers. It is worthwhile to do
a little pronunciation work here, using drills for
example, in order to help learners commit these
expressions to memory.
Key Language 2
With the Coursebooks closed, start by writing the
stem May I…? on the board and eliciting some
questions that could come from that stem in a business
telephone call situation.Then put learners in pairs to
work out the rest.
Page 60
Making Business Calls
General Notes
Telephoning in a second language is one of the most
difficult functions to perform, mostly due to the
acoustic and visual restrictions imposed by the
telephone itself.The pedagogical advantage business
telephone situations have over more social ones is that
a business telephone call is a primarily transactional
language situation, and a social call will be mostly
interactional.
Transactional language situations, such as a restaurant
situation, a post office situation, exchanging e-mail
addresses and so on, are advantageous from a teaching
standpoint in that they are more predictable situations.
The aim of this skills unit, then, is to try and make the
most of that fact and give learners the tools to be able
to prepare themselves for highly probable business
telephone situations.
Telephoning is also a language function which has a high
surrender value to learners, in that they feel it is
immediately ‘useable’ language, regardless of their
grammatical competence or station in the company
(remember that it is often the people on the lower end
of the corporate ladder who will be picking the phone
up first!). In other words, it won’t take much to
convince your learners that this is a useful unit of the
book.
Get learners to read each case study and make the
appropriate calls, taking turns for each situation.
There is not much you can do about getting around
the artificial nature of making a mock telephone call in
a classroom. Short of getting learners to bring cellular
telephones to class to call each other, there is not
much to be done.There are some limited if somewhat
creative ways, however, you can manipulate the physical
environment of the activity, such as putting learners
back-to-back to approximate the lack of visual
information in a telephone conversation, playing loud
music to simulate the interference one gets when
talking on the phone, and even experimenting – space
allowing – with putting a physical barrier between
learners, such as a door or other thin wall. In any case,
if the activity is treated as serious telephone training,
then learners should appreciate the value of the
exercise.
Page 59
Pre-Listening Language Focus
Everyone seems to have some complaint about
telephoning, especially in service-encounter and other
commercial contexts. If you have a weaker group and
you see they have more to say than they are
immediately capable of, you can allow for some
discussion in the learners’ L1 (in a monolingual setting,
of course), attempting to encourage and inject English
equivalents where relevant and useful.
Page 59
Listening
Ask the question: Do you have telephone situations like
these in (Brazil)? You may want to play the listening
more than once.
Te l e p h o n i n g S k i l l s
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Innovation
Text
Bright Ideas/The Lateral Thinker:What are the
optimum conditions for creativity in business and
can creativity be learnt?
Language Focus
Word partnerships with: research, problems, ideas
Business phrases with make and do
Adverbs
Discussion Topics
Creativity in business, breakthroughs and backfires,
dealing with problems at work, responding to
change and new ideas
Fluency Work
Brainstorming: defining, reformulating and solving
problems
General Notes
The two articles in this unit each operate on two
separate levels. On a general level, they are about
fostering creativity in all areas of business and are,
therefore, applicable to anyone who has to look for
creative solutions to the problems they encounter at
work. But, more specifically, the articles investigate the
distinction between creativity and innovation, and
mention the importance placed on creative strategy in
some of the world’s best-known hi-tech companies.
Learners who work in R&D or new product
development will probably have something to say about
researching and protecting new ideas.You might raise
the question of patents and intellectual copyright.
Except in the world of science, can you really copyright
an idea? In the pharmaceuticals industry, for example,
patents often only run for ten years, and by the time
lab and clinical trials have been completed, the patent
has often just about expired.
Learners with mixed business backgrounds will
probably be more interested in discussing creativity in
general terms. Is creativity measurable? And can you
learn how to be more creative? What problems in your
own job could be tackled by looking at things another
way?
Page 61
Pre-Reading How Creative Are You?
Draw the diagram on the board and paraphrase the
instructions in your own words. Give everyone a
couple of minutes to work out a solution if they have
not seen the puzzle already. Find out whether they
think such creative intelligence tests really prove
anything. See if anyone knows any similar puzzles. Here
are two possible solutions:
20
This unit is different from the others in that it contains
two texts rather than one.Your class should work in
two groups on different texts.There is a good case
here for using the recording, since each group can then
listen to the tape or CD together, pause it and take
notes, working as a team. Reading different texts is a
reasonable alternative, but a more solitary activity.
If you do not have access to two rooms and two
cassette players, send one group out of the room to
work on the activities on page 65, whilst the other
group listens to The Bright Ideas article.Then change, so
that the first group comes back into the classroom to
listen to The Lateral Thinker and the second group do
page 65.
Page 63
Post-Reading Summary
If you are short of time, skip stage 1, but make sure
you do stage 4, either by playing the recording or
simply referring your learners to the text.
Page 64
Language Focus
Word Partnerships 1
Draw your learners’ attention to the fact that most of
the sentences in the presentation extract are split in
the middle of a useful word partnership: fail to see an
opportunity, create a climate for creativity, face difficulties,
take advantage of etc.
As a follow-up activity, get pairs to do a collaborative
presentation, where one reads out the sentence
beginnings and the other reads the ends.They will do
this much better if they underline the stressed words
and the pauses first.
Page 65
Word Partnerships 2
As a follow-up activity, you could prepare one of the
word partnership card games described on page 56.
Page 66
Word Partnerships 4
The language practised in this exercise needs to be
automatic. If you have to think about whether it is
make or do a mistake, you may as well say the first one
that comes into your head. Everyone will know what
you mean.
So, to promote spontaneity, try a Total Physical
Response drill. Put a sign up on one wall of the
classroom reading MAKE, and another on the opposite
wall reading DO.Then read out the nouns in the list
one by one. Learners have to point to MAKE or DO
depending on which verb collocates with the noun you
read out.They point to both if it collocates with both.
Start off the drill slowly and gather speed.You can use
this technique with any language area where a straight
choice has to be made: gerund v infinitive, past simple v
past perfect, separable v inseparable phrasal verbs, etc.
Unit 7 • Innovation
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Page 68
Brainstorm (20-30 minutes)
This activity is actually used on advertising courses to
test creative thinking power.The objective is to come
up with as many ideas as you can, silly or sensible,
within a ten-minute time limit, and then present your
best one.
Conventional ideas include: children’s building blocks
(paint in different colours), dice (paint dots on), shop
display stands (for small items like jewellery), drinks
coolers (fill with water and freeze), promotional
paperweights (fill with sand and print company logo
on), paper clip holders (cut in half to make two),
earrings (back to the sixties), decorative mobiles (wire
together and hang from ceiling).
More imaginative ideas include: fishermen’s floats
(camouflaged as ice-cubes), ‘worry cubes’ (for fiddling
with when you’re nervous), executive decision-maker
(print Go ahead, No way, I’ll think about it,Time for
8
U N I T
another coffee, Not my responsibility and You’re fired!
on the six sides), work of art (put into bin liners and
dump outside the Tate Gallery).
If you are short of time
Just read one of the texts in class. Do Word
Partnerships 2 on page 65, Word Partnerships 4
on page 66 and Problem-Solving and Idea Killers
on page 67. Set the rest for homework. Do the
Brainstorm activity as a class.
Public Relations
Text
True Lies: the vital role public relations plays in
corporate image management
Language Focus
Word partnerships in the context of
recommendations,
PR crises, key words for mission statements
Expressions with image
Word grammar: communicate, public, persuasion,
reputation
Discussion Topics
mock public relations crises, addressing questions
as in a press conference
Fluency Work
Case Study: Intel in Trouble: holding a crisis meeting
General Notes
Especially for people with little experience in the
business world, the idea of what public relations
involves may be somewhat alien. For this reason it
might be a good idea to come to class informed
regarding recent relevant corporate scandals and PR
crises in the country in which you are teaching, as
examples that are ‘closer to home’ may help clarify the
meaning. Even more illustrative would be if you actually
have someone who works in PR in the class, to have
that person talk a bit about what s/he does.
Inevitably, any discussion regarding PR and corporate
scandals will lead to talk about business ethics, which
should be encouraged. If you are teaching in a multinational environment, this could indeed make for some
very interesting conversation, as what constitutes
‘ethical’ in one culture may vastly differ from the
criteria another culture uses to judge this.
Page 69
Pre-Reading The Power of the Media
You can use the headlines in the book, but if you can
gather some ‘authentic’ material from actual
newspapers or even electronic media, learners may find
the activity all the more involving. It would be OK to
even use headlines in the learners’ L1 (if you are
working in a mono-lingual classroom), since the actual
production phase of the activity can be done in English,
regardless.
Page 71
Post-Reading Crosschecking
When you do the feedback for this task, ask your
learners to back up their answers by referring to the
article (‘It says here that ...’ ‘It talks about ... .’).
Page 72
Language Focus
Word Partnerships 1
An alternate approach to the one suggested in the
book is to play the PR officer’s recommendations first
just once, and then do one of the following: Play the
listening once more and pause at each first component
Unit 8 • Public Relations
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of a two-part collocation (i.e. press – stop – release…)
and have the learners complete the word partnership
aloud, or, perhaps more manageable, do the same
activity but reading the passage (in order) out loud
with the Coursebooks closed.
One element that is especially crucial to the success of
this activity are the ‘further details’ about each crisis
that each learner is supposed to invent.This may prove
to be somewhat of a challenge to some learners so
your facilitation may be required.
Page 74
Do-it-yourself Vision Maker
This activity is designed to work with micro word
partnerships in order to build a larger sentence with a
specific message. It is important, therefore, that you add
a reporting phase or other kind of whole-class phase in
order to allow learners to hear what other classmates
came up with, reinforcing the notion that the lexical
items featured in the activity are worth committing to
memory for their generative value.
U N I T
Draw learners’ attention to the follow-up questions
first, or write them up on the board. Following the
listening, elicit the answers to the questions from the
learners. Depending on the dynamics of your group and
the nationalities involved, you may encourage different
levels of hostility during the meeting. Remind the
‘Edelman PR consultants’ to refer to Making
Recommendations on page 72 for useful language
during the production phase of the activity.
If you are short of time
Do the Language Focus activities on page 72, the
Vision Maker exercise on page 74 and Word
Partnerships 3 and Word Grammar on page 75 in
class, and leave the rest for homework. On the
Fluency activity, you can reduce items on the agenda
and leave out the follow-up listening.
Cultural Awareness
Text
Boardroom Culture Clash: the advantages and
disadvantages of doing business across cultural
frontiers
Language Focus
Word partnerships business verbs and nouns
Business grammar: negotiations, diplomacy
multi-word adjectives
Discussion Topics
Cultural aspects of conducting meetings and
prioritising business issues
Meetings with native speakers of English
Fluency Work
The Cultural Awareness Game: creating business
solutions in a multi-national environment
General Notes
This unit capitalises on both the preconceptions and
actual experiences of your class concerning the way
business is done in other cultures. And even learners
who as yet do little business with foreigners, will no
22
Make sure learners understand that they are to choose
only one verb to fill in each blank in sentences 1 to 6.
Page 76
Fluency Work Case Study: Intel in Trouble
Page 73
Discuss
9
Page 75
Word Partnerships 3
doubt display some degree of prejudice (we all do),
which will serve as a starting point.
If you have a class who do business with a particular
nationality, you might concentrate your discussion on
that. Do not forget to ask your learners how they
think their foreign counterparts view them.
Cross-cultural awareness is, of course, a huge and
complicated area.The article in this unit can really only
act as a catalyst to further discussion and restricts itself
to behaviour in meetings. But if your class are
interested, there are many websites with more on the
subject, including the American Chamber of Commerce
and The Wall Street Journal.
Page 77
Pre-Reading Your Preconceptions
Get your learners to work alone on this for a few
minutes.They should write down the names of
nationalities next to the characteristics they associate
with them.They may associate more than one
nationality with some of the characteristics, and one
with others.Then get them to pair up with a partner
and share their views. Finally, bring them together as a
group. Encourage them to support their opinions and,
where possible, give concrete examples from their own
experience.
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Page 79
Post-Reading Crosschecking
When you do the feedback for this task, ask your
learners to back up their answers by referring to the
article (‘It says here that ...’, ‘It talks about ... .’).
Page 80
Language Focus
Word Partnerships 1
You can do this timed word search competitively if you
like.The first team to finish with all word partnerships
correct is the winner. Alternatively, see how many of
the partnerships your learners can remember without
referring back to the article. Finally, ask your learners
how many other word partnerships they can make
using the words in the first column on their list.The
chances are they will soon realise that very general
words like hold, question and get will partner up with
many other words, whereas with more specific words
like withdraw, diffuse and pool they may not be able to
think of any.What lesson can they learn from this
about keywords in business?
Page 81-2
Business Grammar 1 and 2
When teaching the language of meetings, it is easy to
confuse learners by overloading them with functional
exponents of the ‘If I could just come in here’ variety. A
certain number of such expressions can, of course, be
very useful in a meeting, but we have probably all had
experience of teaching far too many of these, only to
find that our learners never use them! What is much
more useful to learners of business English is a system
for making direct remarks diplomatic without losing
any of their force: a grammar of meetings, in fact; with a
generative pattern which people can learn. And that is
what this page presents.
As well as the language points mentioned in Business
Grammar 2, you might draw your learners’ attention
to the use of the past continuous in examples f and h.
We hoped to finalise the deal today suggests that we have
given up hoping and closes the door on further
negotiation. We were hoping to finalise the deal today
implies we are still hoping and that finalisation today is
still a possibility.
Words learners often over-use in meetings, which
would be better avoided or rephrased include: must,
mustn’t, should, shouldn’t, can’t and impossible.
Page 82
Business Grammar 3
As a follow-up to this exercise, you could prepare a set
of cards with similar direct remarks on them and
words in brackets to help your learners reformulate
them.Write correct reformulations on the back of
each card. A number of competitive games can then be
played using the cards.Turn them over in rapid
succession and give teams a five second time limit in
which to rephrase the sentences on them. Alternatively,
spread out all the cards and get your learners to bet
on the ones they are confident they can reformulate
immediately.
Pages 83-4
Fluency Work The Cultural Awareness
Game (60 minutes plus preparation at home)
The role-play in this unit is designed to simulate some
of the psychological effects of doing business across
cultures and, if you decide to do the full version, will
require as much time to set up as to carry out.
Adequate preparation is a crucial part of the activity
itself.
Step one is to divide your class into two groups (four, if
you have a very large group) and give them information
about the company they ‘work for’: a computer
peripherals firm with falling sales.
The scenario is very simple, and your learners should
have little difficulty coming up with ideas for reversing
the downward trend in sales. Get them to compile a
list of their ideas and prioritise the best.This stage of
the activity should only take 15 to 20 minutes.
Now refer your learners to the Cultural
Background Notes on pages 83 and 84. Each group
should read different notes (if you have four groups,
two read one text and two the other). Give them
plenty of time to do this (about twenty minutes) and
explain any words or expressions they do not know. If
you can, keep the groups apart at this stage to prevent
them overhearing each others’ discussions.
As the acculturisation process takes a little time it is a
good idea to break off the lesson at this point and let
your learners re-read their notes at home.
In the next lesson put your class back into the same
groups as before and let them review the ideas they
came up with in the previous lesson for boosting sales.
As far as possible, they should do this ‘in role’. Allow
for some confusion and hilarity.
Now bring groups A and B together to hold the final
problem-solving session.Whilst it is unlikely that people
will behave exactly as their notes briefed them, plenty
of culture clash will ensue, which they will have to deal
with.
If you have a large class and four groups, conduct two
simultaneous problem-solving sessions.
If the meeting shows no signs of ending, after about half
an hour slip one of the leaders an urgent message
requiring their immediate presence elsewhere.
In the debriefing session deal first with the result of the
meeting.Were any final decisions reached about how
to promote sales? Then turn to the question of cultural
differences.Without looking at the other group’s notes,
what can people say about the way they behaved? How
did they modify their own behaviour? How did they
find the experience of being ‘in the dark’, not knowing
quite what to expect next? How could they have found
out sooner exactly who they were dealing with? Finally,
do any necessary language feedback.
If you want to make this activity shorter and simpler,
you can, of course, easily reduce the amount of cultural
background information. Cut points 4, 5 and 7.
If you are short of time
Do Word Partnerships 2 on page 80 and the
Business Grammar work on pages 81-2 in class. Set
the rest for homework. Do the simplified version of
The Cultural Awareness Game.
Unit 9 • Cultural Awareness
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Presentation Skills
Language of Presentations
Page 85
Pre-Listening
Listening content
An extract of the beginning of a presentation
meant to inform and persuade an audience,
including a brief introduction, summary of the talk’s
structure and reference to visual aids
Key Language
Useful expressions for structuring and delivering a
presentation
Skills practice
Developing a sales presentation to persuade major
airlines to buy into a new idea for in-flight service
General Notes
The function of delivering a presentation is not unlike
that of participating in a meeting in that in both cases
one needs to capture and sustain the attention of an
audience.The most significant difference is that a
speaker giving a presentation has to capture and
sustain that attention for a longer period of time, and,
in general, there will be no sort of dialogue going on,
and so all discourse will be coming from that person.
The idea of being the centre of attention and, on top of
that, being forced to speak coherently in front of an
audience can truly frighten some people. For this
reason, the presentation at the end of this unit has
been designed to give each learner as much support
and comfort as possible.
Learners will be working in teams, and presentations
will be a maximum of five minutes. Still, those five
minutes can be terrifying for a learner. It is important,
therefore, to try and identify any and all learners who
might really be deeply traumatised by speaking in front
of an audience and intervene where appropriate. Once
identified – and without singling them out – you can
make things easier on the learner by making them feel
as comfortable as possible with the language itself, so
as to boost their confidence as much as possible when
it comes time to speak.
You can also volunteer to go over their presentation
with them and even let them try it out on you as if you
were a one-person audience. However, if you have
exhausted all the tricks you know for helping a learner
feel comfortable and confident and s/he still seems as
though s/he will be seriously troubled by the exercise,
then by all means forego their participation and arrange
some other means for them to demonstrate their
proficiency in the language focused on in this unit. I
have personally witnessed learners exit a classroom to
never return upon a teacher’s insistence that they carry
on with a presentation against their will.
24
This is an activity to allow learners to air their fears of
speaking in public and to begin to approach the topic. It
is also designed to allow for people in the class who
may not yet be in a professional situation in their lives
with a need to prepare for a presentation. In these
cases it is useful to think of the other non-conventional
forms of public speaking which can informally involve
an audience of merely one.What is important is to be
able to organise thoughts and ideas and bring them
across in an effective way to whomever may be
listening.
Listening
Learners listen to the speech, specifically for what the
definition of a ‘tween’ is.You can encourage them to
imagine they are actually in an auditorium at an
important international conference, and have them take
notes.
Learners answer the true/false questions in pairs, and
listen to the recording once more if necessary.
Key Language
Learners work in pairs or small groups to work out
the most logical sequence to the expressions. Listen to
the recording again for answers.
Page 86
Case Study
After getting learners in pairs to focus on the
vocabulary used to talk about trends, tell them what
the situation is and what their role will be, and have
them work out a SWOT analysis in pairs or trios.Then
draw up the SWOT chart on the board and elicit some
points from the class. Put learners back into pairs/trios
and have them study the data to prepare the
presentation. It is useful at this stage to put some of
the key language focused on in this unit on the board
to serve as a constant reminder and encouragement to
use the expressions.
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Global Advertising
Text
Going Global: how the world’s biggest advertisers
have responded to the increasing globalisation of
markets
Language Focus
Expressions with commercial
Word partnerships in the context of advertising
Sentence starters for presentations
Adverbs of degree
Word grammar: forming verbs with -ize / -ise
Discussion Topics
Attributes of market leaders, branding for different
countries
Fluency Work
Case Study: British Airways—What can you do as an
ad agency to keep this company competitive in the
21st century?
General Notes
This unit focuses on the marketing strategies of some
of the world’s biggest companies. Particular reference is
made to global commercials: advertisements which
cross cultural boundaries and work equally well in
different countries. All the companies and brand names
featured in the article are well-known: Coca-Cola, BA,
Marlboro, IBM, Apple, Nike. And your learners are
unlikely to be unfamiliar with the Marlboro cowboy, the
Apple apple and the Nike ‘swoosh’. Although global
advertising campaigns may be updated over the years,
the overall strategy and corporate image of the
companies who run them usually remain the same. So
the topic has fairly general appeal and will not date and
this unit also gives learners a chance to talk about the
national or international profile of their own companies
in very general terms.
If you are teaching a group with a specific interest in
marketing or advertising, you might like to explore
some of the main issues raised by the article: market
segmentation, the overall effectiveness of advertising
and the idea that ‘image outsells product’. Other global
advertisers you could mention in your discussion
include Ford, Benetton, Nestlé, Microsoft and Motorola.
If, on the other hand, your group have mixed business
interests, you could concentrate instead on the cultural
question of whether consumers in different countries
really have that much in common.
If your learners have little experience of doing business
with other cultures, then direct the conversation
towards good and bad TV advertisements – most
people have an opinion.
If you can, bring a selection of press or TV
advertisements into class to promote further
discussion. Ideally, include ads for some of the
companies featured in the article.There is a
photocopiable worksheet on page 42 which you can
use with any TV commercial.
Page 87
Pre-Reading The Persuaders
Put learners into small groups to read through the task
and think about the questions regarding
effective/memorable ad campaigns. If you can, ask them
to bring examples of their own companies’ ads or
promotional material to class to extend and
personalise the discussion.
Page 89
Post-Reading Crosschecking
When you do the feedback for this task, ask your
learners to back up their answers by referring to the
article (‘It says here that ...’, ‘It talks about ... .’)
Page 90
Language Focus
Word Partnerships 2
As a follow-up activity, you could prepare one of the
word partnership card games described on page 56.
Page 90
Word Partnerships 3
As a follow-up activity, read out the text pausing for
your group to call out the missing words. Stop reading
if they get it wrong and wait for self-correction.
Page 91
Word Partnerships 4
As a follow-up activity, get pairs to do a collaborative
presentation, where one reads out the sentence
beginnings and the other reads the ends.They will do
this much better if they underline the stressed words
and the pauses first.
Page 91
Quotes
If you are working in a school or college, it can be fun
to collect business quotes with the groups you teach
and display them in the classroom. Many quotes contain
useful idioms and fixed expressions. Remember to
update the collection periodically and get learners to
contribute some quotes of their own.
Page 92
Word Grammar
As a follow-up activity, try a prompt-drill, where the
learners have to provide you with the word you need:
Teacher:
Utilities should be state-owned.
Learner:
You mean they should be
nationalised?
Teacher:
Yeah.
Teacher:
The packaging on all our products
should be the same.
Learner:
You mean it should be standardised?
Teacher:
That’s right.
Teacher:
Production would be smoother if we
used computers.
Learner:
You mean production should be
computerised?
Teacher:
Uh-huh.
Unit 10 • Global Advertising
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Page 93
Discuss
If you are short of time
A short activity to familiarise learners with some of the
adjectives commonly used to describe product image.
Concentrate on the images they pick up on. Do not
spend too much time on the words they don’t know.
Do the Language Focus exercises on page 90 and
Word Partnerships 4 on page 91 in class. Set the
rest for homework. Just do one case study or the last
discussion activity.
Page 94
Fluency Work Case Study (30-40 minutes)
After discussing the questions posed at the end of the
study, divide the class into groups and ask each group
to prepare for the presentation. If you prefer, you can
read the case study out instead.This then allows your
class to interrupt you for clarification and repetition.
While each group is making its presentation, the rest of
the class will be the ‘clients’. Remind learners to make
use of the expressions for presentations in Word
Partnerships 4 on page 91.
11
U N I T
Management Styles
Text
She’s the Boss: the world’s corporations are still
dominated by men, but more and more successful
entrepreneurs are turning out to be women
Language Focus
Expressions with company, staff
Word partnerships in the context of company
organisation and management
Word grammar negative adjectival prefixes un-, in-,
im-, ir-, disBusiness grammar: prepositional phrases
Discussion Topics
Male and female oriented management styles,
company organisation, ratio of male to female
employees
Fluency Work
Follow-up Letter: rejection; four recruitment dilemmas
where practical considerations and prejudice both
play a part
General Notes
Do women make better managers than men? Venture
capitalists would seem to think so. Since 1990 the
number of women being given the financial backing to
set up in business has grown twice as fast as the
number of men. And, statistically speaking, a woman is
more likely to succeed in a new business than a man.
Why, then, are there so few women running the
world’s corporations?
It is a good question. As a teacher of business English,
26
you may observe that most of your learners are men.
That is because at middle and senior management level
three out of every five managers are men. And that is
just the figure for Europe. Elsewhere the prospects for
female managers are even worse.
This unit questions whether the disproportionately low
number of female executives is just a case of
discrimination, or whether women are actually better
suited to being their own bosses and starting up in
business for themselves.
If you have a group with both men and women, there is
likely to be some disagreement as to why women have
traditionally found invisible barriers between
themselves and the top jobs. And men, in particular,
may not react favourably to the idea that, with
companies being forced to become more enterprising,
women may well turn out to be the managers of the
future. At any rate what you will get with this unit is
some lively discussion.
Page 95
Pre-Reading The Same or Different?
This activity pre-teaches a lot of words and
expressions that will be useful later in the unit.Take the
time to explain unknown terms. Learners who work in
human resources or training and development will find
the vocabulary of personal characteristics and
behaviour particularly relevant.
Page 95
Discuss
At the prioritisation stage people may be surprised to
find themselves more biased than they thought!
Unit 11 • Management Styles
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Page 97
Post-Reading Crosschecking
Page 99
Word Grammar 2
When you do the feedback for this task, ask your
learners to back up their answers by referring to the
article (‘It says here that ...’, ‘It talks about ... .).
There is usually a best answer for each of these
descriptions, but there is also room for alternatives.
Capitalise on this. Discussing quite subtle differences of
meaning and nuance is part of the exercise.
Page 98
Language Focus
Word Partnerships 2 and 3
As a follow-up, you could prepare one of the word
partnership card games described on page 56.
Alternatively, you could try a Total Physical Response
drill. Put a sign up on one wall of the classroom reading
COMPANY, and another on the opposite wall reading
STAFF.Then read out the verbs and adjectives in each
list in random order. Learners have to point to
COMPANY or STAFF depending on which collocates
with the words you read out.They point to both if they
collocate with both. Start off the drill slowly and gather
speed.You can use this technique with any pair of
business keywords, but make sure they do not
collocate with both words too often.
Page 101
Fluency Work Discrimination
(20-30 minutes)
There are various ways you can conduct this activity.
You can simply divide your class into groups to read
and discuss each case and then come together to
report their decisions.
To speed things up, you can divide your class into four
groups. Give each group one case and then bring them
together to report their decisions.
You can record the cases onto cassette.Your learners
listen, take notes and then make their decisions.
Page 102
Follow-up Letter
Page 99
Word Grammar 1
The letter written in note form here is a basic
framework only. Encourage your learners to add in
extra details referring to the specific job in question.
Your learners will remember the meaning of each
adjective better if they write the names of people they
know well next to the ones which best describe them.
If you are short of time
12
U N I T
Do Word Partnerships 1 on page 98 and all the
Language Focus work on page 99 in class. Set the
rest for homework. Do the fluency work as a whole
class.
Mergers and Acquisitions
Text
Greed is Good
Language Focus
Word partnerships: verbs and nouns in the context
of acquisitions and company management
Word grammar: prefixes, finance, invest, capital,
negotiate
Discussion Topics
Globalisation
Fluency Work
Simulation:Takeover Battle: competing media giants
their company, so the topic should be treated
accordingly. Additionally, though this will probably not
be the case in a business class, recent events involving
the World Trade Organisation and the topic of multinational companies that seek out ‘global domination’
and the ‘neo-liberalism’ propagated by the IMF –
especially if you are teaching in a developing country –
can spark negative feeling in people, so be prepared for
some animosity or resistance.
One way to do this is to take a more neutral stance
and focus on the subject as a simple fact, an inescapable
reality of times in which we live. If you keep focused on
that and the usefulness of the language dealt with in
the unit, the class will keep to its proper role as
pedagogic environment and not political forum!
Page 103
Pre-Reading Let’s Stick Together
General Notes
This unit focuses on a subject that for some may be a
sensitive issue.You may have learners who have been
adversely affected by a merger or hostile takeover of
Do not attempt to pre-teach the terms in the first part
of the activity, as learners will be better served
attempting to negotiate their meaning in pairs or small
groups.
Unit 12 • Mergers and Acquisitions
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Page 105
Post-Reading Response
Encourage learners to go through the text and find a
place to use each expression by putting the number of
the sentence starters next to different parts in the
reading where they feel they apply.
Page 108
Language Focus
Word Grammar 1
This will be a much more challenging task for learners
whose L1 is non-Indo-European, as the Greek and Latin
prefixes (anti-, mega-, pre-, ex-, etc.) will be very familiar
to speakers of languages such as Spanish and Italian, for
example, even to the point of being under-challenging.
Though to a lesser extent, this will also hold true for
the second part of the activity. If you have mixed
occidental/oriental learners in class, it may be a good
idea to pair them (i.e. Brazilian learner with a Japanese
learner), to make it almost an information gap activity.
You can play a follow-up game with the exercise by
dividing the class into teams, each scoring points by
giving nouns to each prefix that you shout out.
You could also expand on this exercise by asking your
learners to look up words in their English-English
dictionaries which take the following prefixes: mono-,
counter-, pseudo-, eco-, geo-, Euro-.
Page 109-10
Fluency Work Simulation:Takeover Battle
If learners have Internet access on school premises,
encourage them to visit the web sites for good (and
authentic!) first-hand information. Be sure to give
learners enough time to fully discuss all the issues at
length and to make allowances in physical space so as
to facilitate keeping the bids secret.
If you are short of time
Do Word Partnerships 1 on page 106 and Word
Partnerships 2 on page 107 in class and set the rest
for homework. Skip part 3 of the Fluency Work on
page 110.
Negotiating Skills
Language of Negotiating
many countries, especially Latin America, the United
States and Southern European countries. It is therefore
useful to know with whom your learners are likely to
be dealing in order to advise them accordingly.
Listening content
Contract negotiation in a B2B situation
Key language
Expressions used when negotiating
Lexical grammar: expressions + gerund/infinitive
Skills practice
A negotiation scenario between a boss and an
employee
General Notes
The aim of this unit is to give learners the necessary
language tools in order to carry out effective
negotiations. It is a good opportunity to talk about the
different negotiating styles of various cultures (the
article on pages 78-9 in the Coursebook has some
good material on this) and how being too direct or not
direct enough can adversely affect a deal – hence the
importance of being able to say the right thing at the
right time.
On this subject, it is worth noting here that the best
attempt was made at keeping the register used in the
listening as neutral as possible, while still sounding as
natural as possible.There is a danger of putting the
other party off by using language that is too informal,
yet it is just as dangerous to adopt a register that is
too formal, as this will forment an air of distrust in
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Page 111
Pre-Listening Language Focus
This is an activity designed to get learners thinking
about their own philosophies on negotiating. Even if a
learner is not yet in a career situation that requires
formal negotiation, it is important for that person to
understand that negotiation is something that can
occur even informally, even unplanned. For this reason,
it is a good idea to brainstorm some of these less
formal negotiation situations with the class before
diving into the heart of the unit.
Listening
The first part of the listening is just the very first
opening line, which learners will listen to in order to
decide if George ‘sounds’ happy with the proposal
already at the outset.Though very brief, this initial stage
of the listening is important as it is designed to drive
home the point that intonation speaks volumes in
language, and so in a situation where words are as
carefully chosen as in a negotiation scenario, if the
intonation is off then no matter what words were
chosen one can be in danger of being misinterpreted
or even causing the listeners to feel offended.
Point out the questions the learners will be listening
for answers to during the listening, particularly the
Negotiating Skills
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term bottom line as this term may not have an
equivalent in the learners’ L1 and will come up again
later on in this unit.
Key Language
If you have confidence in your group’s language abilities,
a fun activity to do is to put these scrambled
expressions on an OHP and have learners unscramble
them out loud as a class, one by one.This reinforces
the fixed nature of the expressions, helping learners
understand that they are in fact chunks and need to be
recalled as such.
In the part where learners have to decide between
using the gerund or infinitive (a. reduce the price / b.
reducing the price), have learners work it out first in
pairs and then check as a class.You can drill them by
reading the beginning and having the learners complete
each sentence, read at random, in chorus.
13
U N I T
Page 112
Case Study
A very ‘down-to-earth’ situation – that of a negotiation
between an employee and his/her boss – was
intentionally chosen here so that learners could focus
more comfortably on the language dealt with in the
unit and also to raise learners’ awareness as to how
negotiations can occur in many different forms.
Have learners first fill out both roles – boss and
employee – then negotiate with different classmates,
one at a time, each time choosing a different point to
negotiate. It is useful here to write up the target
language on the board for quick reference and a
constant yet silent reminder to be mindful of the
language they are meant to be using in order to carry
out the negotiations.
Business and the Environment
Text
Managing the Planet: big business is responsible for
most of the world’s environmental damage, but,
ironically, only big business can reverse it
Language Focus
Word partnerships: ecology and commerce
Adjectival word partnerships
Business grammar: attitude verbs (modals), natural
and unnatural sentences
Discussion Topics
The environmental problems and solutions of your
own country, big business and the environment
Fluency Work
Business Ethics: ethical think tanks: five case studies
explore the commercial and ethical issues involved
in running a large multi-national corporation
General Notes
Nowadays people talk a lot about the greening of
politics and business. But there is generally a lot more
talking than greening. In many cases a dirty brown
would be a more appropriate colour! For heavy
industry has more or less single-handedly wrecked the
planet in the last hundred years and, so far, its impact
on the environment has remained largely unchecked.
Some of the companies your learners work for may
well be phenomenal polluters themselves and it pays to
approach the topic with tact. But green is fashionable
and business leaders have been quick to seize on that.
Unit 13 •
Making a more environmentally friendly hamburger,
sells hamburgers.
This unit is one of several which take a broader
perspective on business. If your class has little
professional experience as yet, you may want to
encourage suggestions as to how the world of
commerce could clean up its act. More experienced
(and, therefore, more cynical?) executives will no doubt
respond better to a less idealistic approach. In either
case the environment is definitely a legitimate business
issue.
Keep a look out for the many articles which regularly
appear in the papers describing some environmental
disaster or other.You could give an article to each
member of your group and ask them to summarise it
in a subsequent lesson.There is a worksheet for news
article summaries on page 58.
Page 113
Pre-Reading Can Business be Green?
A selection of some of the particularly shocking and
dramatic pictures featured in the publicity materials of
organisations like Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth
would be an ideal introduction to this unit. It would
also elicit a lot of the target vocabulary in this prereading ranking exercise.
Page 115
Post-Reading Crosschecking
When you do the feedback for this task, ask your
learners to back up their answers by referring to the
article (‘It says here that ...’, ‘It talks about ... .’).
Business and the Environment
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Page 116
Language Focus
Word Partnerships 2
You can do this timed word search competitively if you
like.The first team to finish with all word partnerships
correct is the winner.
Alternatively, see how many of the partnerships your
learners can remember without referring back to the
article. Finally, ask your learners how many other word
partnerships they can make using the words in the first
column on their list.With words like global, world,
financial and commercial the choice of word
partnerships is fairly wide.With a word like track, record
seems the only possible collocation in the context of
business.With a word like big, however, there are too
many possibilities to be worth recording.What lesson
can be learnt from this about learning word
partnerships?
study they read and the decision they came to.
Alternatively, record the case studies onto cassette and
play them to your class.They listen, take notes and
then make their decision. If you prefer, read the case
studies out instead.This then allows your class to
interrupt you for clarification and repetition.
If you are short of time
Do Word Partnerships 2 on page 116 and
Business Grammar 1 and 2 on pages 117 and 118
in class. Set the rest for homework. Split your class into
two groups to look at one case study each, and then
come together to exchange information.
Page 117
Business Grammar 1
In the business English classroom it is often a good idea
to approach the presentation of language in a way that
is broadly compatible with business people’s natural
working styles. In previous units of this book we have
seen how a lot of language can be presented
graphically, since business people are used to working
with graphics. Here, the idea is to get learners thinking
about grammatical choice in project teams and then
report back their findings.You can obviously use the
same technique to teach other grammar points. If you
like, go through the answers confidentially with each
project team and then ask the team who did best to
present the target grammar to the rest of the class.
Page 118
Business Grammar 2
As a follow-up activity, you could prepare a set of cards
with unnatural sentences like those in the left-hand
column of this exercise and ask your learners to
reformulate them using a modal verb.There is a blank
set of cards on page 96.
Page 118
Business Grammar 3
All the fixed expressions generated in this exercise
could be used in either a meeting or in everyday
conversation.Though simple in meaning, some of them
are extremely difficult to explain. Context is everything.
Monitor your learners carefully as they write their
dialogues. And when everyone has read their dialogue
out, write one or two of your own up on the board to
exemplify the expressions people still do not
understand.
Page 119-20
Fluency Work Business Ethics
(50-60 minutes)
If you are working with larger classes, divide them into
groups and ask each group to look at a different case
study.They can then regroup and explain both the case
30
Unit 13 •
Business and the Environment
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U N I T
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Finance and Credit
Text
Credit out of Control: bad debt has now reached
epidemic proportions in the business sector and
modern technology is actually making the situation
worse
Language Focus
Word partnerships in the context of finance and
credit
Expressions of bankruptcy
Expressions with money and order
Business grammar: prepositions
they will pay off the interest? They could let the client
pay in instalments.This is a reasonable compromise,
but, long-term, the chances of the whole debt being
paid off are much reduced if the client really is in
financial difficulty. All in all, the prospects are grim.
Page 123
Post-Reading Information Check
Send your learners back to the text to argue out any
differences of opinion.
Page 123
Interviews
Discussion Topics
Cross-border trade, credit card debt, dealing with
foreign suppliers and customers
Monitor the preparation of questions carefully or, if you
prefer, collect in the questions at the end of the lesson,
correct / reformulate them and hand back multiple
copies in the next lesson. If you like, you could conduct
the question-and-answer session competitively.
Fluency Work
Getting Tough: dealing with debtors: a meeting of the
Finance Department to decide whose debt to call
in, a follow-up letter and phone call
Page 124
Language Focus
Word Partnerships 1
You can make this activity more interactive by
preparing sets of domino cards.There is a blank set for
you to photocopy and cut out on page 00.
General Notes
Getting new business is one thing. Actually getting paid
is another.These days the credit situation in a lot of
companies has become an elaborate game of pass the
parcel, where I can’t pay you your money until I get
mine. And the higher the sums of money involved, the
less pressure you can put on a debtor whose business
you want to keep.
The vicious circle of debt and credit is a particular
nightmare for small-and medium-sized companies, who
can often be ruined by a single bad debtor. But people
in the finance and accounts departments of larger
companies face the same problem daily. If your learners
have ever been responsible for the negotiating and
drawing up of agreements with clients, they will be
familiar with the dangers of implementing penalty
clauses mid-contract.
If your class has less direct experience in this area of
business, you might prefer to approach the topic from
a cultural angle.Who are the worst debtors? Is it fair
to label particular nationalities as unreliable?
Page 121
Pre-Reading Urgent Action
Read out the text to your class. Give them a few
minutes to outline their courses of action.They could
refer the matter to their legal department, but it might
take years to settle and would cost a fortune. If their
client goes bankrupt, they will end up with nothing
anyway.They could sell off the debt to a factoring
agent, but they would have to pay a substantial
commission, even assuming they could find a factor
willing to take on the debt.They could offer to help the
client company with their cashflow difficulties, but this
is unlikely to help, and the client will almost certainly
refuse.They could charge interest on the debt, but if
the client can’t pay their debt, what makes them think
Page 125
Word Partnerships 2
As a follow-up activity, you could ask your learners to
produce a 150-word description of the credit control
process using all the word partnerships in this exercise.
It is more fun if they draft this out together on a
whiteboard.Write the completed word partnerships
on cards which can be attached to the board as they
use them up in their description.
Page 126
Business Grammar
As a follow-up activity, try paused reading. Read out the
summary to your class pausing in the middle of
important word partnerships or fixed expressions.Your
learners have to predict the next word and write it
down.You can either read out the full word
partnership/expression immediately after they have
written down what they think or you can let your
learners check the whole text again at the end. A
mixture of memory and deduction should enable them
to predict most of the words correctly.
eg. Most people pay for their everyday [10 seconds]
items with their credit [10 seconds] card or in [10
seconds] cash and pay their domestic [10 seconds] bills
by [10 seconds] cheque or direct [10 seconds] debit.
Suggested pauses: 1. everyday / items, 2. credit / card,
3. in / cash, 4. domestic / bills, 5. by / cheque, 6. direct /
debit, 7. valued / customer, 8. outstanding / sum,
9. agreed / deadline, 10. withdraw their / business,
11. to make matters / worse, 12. sit on your / invoice,
13. cashflow / situation, 14. in regular / instalments,
15. fall behind with their / repayments, 16. short of /
cash 17. writing off half the / debt, 18. things would
probably be a lot / simpler, 19. direct bank / transfer,
Unit 14 • Finance and Credit
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20. in constant credit with their / suppliers, 21. playing
the waiting / game, 22. and that would never / do,
23. until the very last / minute.
Page 127
Fluency Work Getting Tough
(30-40 minutes)
If you are working with larger classes, divide them into
groups and ask each group to look at a different client.
They can then regroup, exchange information and
come to a final decision about whose debt to call in.
Alternatively, record the client information onto
cassettes and play them to your class.They listen, take
notes and then make their decision. If you prefer, read
the information out instead.This then allows your class
to interrupt you for clarification and repetition.
15
U N I T
Point out to your learners that the notes here provide
a basic framework for the letter. Depending on which
debtor they have decided to target, they may want to
add in specific details and alter the tone of the letter.
Draw your learners’ attention to semi-fixed phrases
and expressions: with regard to, on this matter, you must
be aware, perhaps you could inform us, we would
appreciate, we sincerely hope, I am afraid we must now
insist, we shall have no alternative but to, etc.
If you are short of time
Do Expressions with money on page 124, Word
Partnerships 3 on page 125 and Business
Grammar on page 126 in class. Set the rest for
homework. Cut out the information exchange stage
from the Fluency Work.
Economic Issues
Text
The Death of Economics: the greatest threat to the
multi-trillion dollar world economy is the growing
polarity between the haves and have-nots
Language Focus
Word partnerships in the context of economic
issues and political speeches
Word grammar: economics and politics
Business grammar: describing economic situations
(tense review)
Abbreviations and acronyms
Discussion Topics
Economic situations: growth and decline, political
views and beliefs: hopes, memories and regrets,
honesty in politics
Fluency Work
Election Campaign: economic and political prospects
of an imaginary country
General Notes
The final unit in New Business Matters brings
together many of the issues and much of the target
language of the previous units: employment trends,
trade gaps, debt management, environmental damage,
rising prices, consumerism and cheap labour.
The article itself, The Death of Economics, highlights the
widening rift even in the developed countries between
the haves and the have-nots, and the market
implications of a two-tier economy. But the unit takes a
very broad perspective. And no matter what field of
business they are in, your learners will have something
32
Page 128
Follow-up Letter
to say about the many topics touched on in the article.
As the language of politics, economics and current
affairs is the particular focus of this unit, it would be an
excellent idea to incorporate an authentic TV or radio
broadcast into the lesson.There is a worksheet for use
with news broadcasts on page 00.
Page 129
Pre-Reading An Uncertain Future
If sufficient interest is generated here, it is probably
worth letting the pre-reading discussion run on for
longer than usual.This will establish a need for a lot of
the language dealt with later in the unit. Putting your
learners into small groups to prepare a three-minute
presentation may help them to have a better
structured discussion when they come together as a
class.
Page 131
Post-Reading Information Check
Send your learners back to the text to argue out any
differences of opinion.
Page 132
Language Focus
Word Partnerships 1
As a follow-up activity, read out the summary, pausing
for your group to call out the missing words. Stop
reading if they get it wrong and wait for selfcorrection.
Unit 15 • Economic Issues
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Page 133
Current Affairs 1
Page 135
Business Grammar
As follow-up activities, you could try one of a number
of word partnership games:
Some of the sentence completions here are more or
less fixed. Others are more open. Encourage the
discussion of what is possible and what is not.
a. Guess the Keyword Read out each pair of verbs
and get your learners to guess the key noun / noun
phrase.
eg. Teacher: Go into. Come out of.
Learner: Recession.
Teacher: Yes.
Teacher: Widen. Close.
Learner: The trade gap.
Teacher: Yes.
b. Word Partnership Tennis Learners work in
pairs, learner A and learner B.
First game: A serves by reading out, one by one,
the word partnerships from 1-10 (nationalise
industry, increase social benefits, go into recession etc.).
B has to think of the opposite partnership for each
one. If they can, A reads out the next word
partnership. If they can’t, A gets a point and the
game continues.
Second game: B serves by reading out, one by one,
the word partnerships from 11-20 (raise taxation,
unite public opinion, bring down employment etc.).
A has to think of the opposite partnership for each
one. If they can, B reads out the next word
partnership. If they can’t, B gets a point and the
game continues.
The third and fourth game are repeats of the first
two with B serving the first time.
c. Help the Teacher: Prepare a short talk on the
political situation in your home country or the
country where you are teaching. Use as many of
the word partnerships in this exercise as you can.
Give the talk in class but deliberately struggle for
some of the words you need. Let your learners
help you by supplying the missing halves of word
partnerships.
eg. Teacher:
During their years in power the
Conservative Party managed to sell
a lot of industries, er, not sell exactly,
but, er ...
Learner:
Privatise?
Teacher:
Yes, they privatised a lot of industries.
And they also cut, er, cut, what’s the
word I’m looking for, er ...
Learner:
Taxation?
Teacher:
No, not taxation. Er, yes, they did cut
taxation, but, no, I mean they cut um
money from people with families and
single parents er ...
Learner:
Do you mean social benefits?
Teacher:
Er yes, social benefits, that’s right.
Page 134
Current Affairs 2
If you like, you could expand this exercise by including
some real headlines with the key nouns and verbs
blanked out. Keep a collection of lexically useful
newspaper headlines on display in the classroom.
Page 136
Fluency Work Election Campaign
(60-90 minutes)
Although the party political broadcasts in this
simulation are only five minutes long, you will need to
allow at least 45 minutes for preparation. If you have
time, get your learners to produce party name cards,
rosettes, flags etc. It all helps to increase the level of
rivalry and competitiveness.
All the language work in this unit will be useful to your
learners in preparing their speeches. But they should
definitely refer to the Business Grammar exercise
for the economic statistics they may need.The language
in Current Affairs 1 and Word Partnerships 4 will
also be particularly helpful.
If you prefer, instead of using the map and economic
statistics in the Coursebook, you could gradually build
up the profile of your fictitious country on the board
with your class.This takes quite a bit longer, but is
usually more fun and introduces the target language at
a more manageable pace.
1 Get one of the learners to draw a large outline of a
fictitious country on the board.
2 With all the other learners, agree on the country’s
topography and ask the ‘cartographer’ to mark in
mountains, rivers, lakes, jungles, deserts, beaches etc.
on the map. Choose an appropriate climate.
3 Locate the capital and principal cities and draw in
road and rail links, airports, seaports and other
aspects of the national infrastructure.
4 Ask the group to decide where to site the
country’s main industries and financial centres and
to agree on what the natural resources might be.
5 Now tell them that the country they have invented
is in fact their country. Invite them to name it.Tell
them that, sadly, their country is facing many
problems – social, economic and political. Point out
border hostilities with a powerful neighbouring
country; perhaps terrorist flashpoints in the major
cities; raging unemployment in the poor ghettoes of
the inner-cities; escalating inflation everywhere;
maybe an environmental disaster or two etc.
6 Counterbalance this with the positive side: a
booming tourist industry; the discovery of rich oil
reserves etc.
7 Ask them what political groups they imagine would
exist in their country – socialist, communist,
nationalist/fascist, liberal, conservative, green etc.
8 Divide up the class into political groups (it is not
necessary for the learners to represent a party they
in fact support in their own country – actually, it
can be more fun to dabble in political extremism!).
You need at least two parties.Three or more are
better, with two or three members in each group.
Unit 15 • Economic Issues
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9 The parties all work within their group to produce
a political slogan, a manifesto (a brief checklist of
their policies) and a more or less scripted Party
Political Broadcast which is to be transmitted live
on TV/radio.
10 Film/record the different parties, coloured rosettes
and slogans well in evidence. Allow a little time for
questions from the others. Get a larger audience in
for this phase if you can.
11 Hold a swift election at the end to decide the
winner. Obviously no member is permitted to vote
for their own party. Make the ballot secret and
keep a running total of the votes for each party as
you count them to keep up the suspense.
If you are short of time
Do Current Affairs 2 on page 134 and Business
Grammar on page 135 in class. Set the rest for
homework. Get your learners to do some of the
preparatory work for the simulation at home.
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Resource Files
The Resource Files
The formatted pages with teaching notes which follow are designed to help you make the most of this course.They
are particularly useful for bringing variety to the text work, based on the articles.
Copyright
The formatted pages may be photocopied by individual teachers for use in their own classes.They may not be copied
and bound into any other publication for whatever purpose.The copyright on these pages remains with the publisher.
Any use of these pages must include the line © Heinle.
Contents
Resource File
Resource File
Resource File
Resource File
Resource File
Resource File
Resource File
Resource File
Resource File
Resource File
Resource File
Resource File
Resource File
Resource File
Resource File
1 Text Search
2 Text Comparison
3 Crosschecking
4 Commercial Break
5 Information Update
6 Business Language Awareness
7 Clarification Game
8 Point of View
9 Question and Answer Session
10 Mini-presentation
11 Lexi-cards
12 Information Gathering
13 Text Summary
14 Facts and Figures
15 Mini-report
Resource Files
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RESOURCE FILE 1
Text Search
Media:
Business skills:
Time:
Business press / radio / television
Searching text for word partnerships
10-20 minutes
Rationale
The usual reason for reading or listening to anything is because we are (at least, vaguely)
interested in its content. And, as a rule, we take little notice of the actual language – the
packaging the content comes in. But, as language learners, it is precisely the language we should
be taking notice of when we read, otherwise we are doing little more than exercising our eye
muscles.
This activity trains learners to read / listen for language and to search for useful word
partnerships (the real information carriers) in any piece of text.This is not as easy as it sounds.
Look at the following extract:
The basic idea that most companies could manage just as well with three layers of management as with
twelve was first put forward by Hammer and Champy in their best-selling book, Re-engineering the
Corporation.
The word partnerships basic idea, layers of management and best-selling book are easy enough to
spot because the words are adjacent to one another. But what about put forward an idea? This is
much more deeply embedded in the text, and is hard enough to detect when you read it. If you
just listened to the text, you would almost certainly miss it.
Identifying key words is a fundamental part of knowing which bits of language to look for in a
text.The key words here are clearly idea, companies, management and book.
In fact, the underlying framework of the text is:
The (basic / novel / revolutionary) idea that ...
was (first / originally) put forward by ...
in (their / her / his) (best-selling / controversial / recent) book ... .
Procedure
1. Select a text – an article, advert or short taped extract – which contains between twelve
and eighteen useful two- and three-word partnerships.
2. Write the first words of each partnership in the left-hand boxes on the worksheet and
make copies for each person in your class. For two-word partnerships blank out or put a
line through the right-hand box.
3. Get your class to read or listen to the text and complete the word partnerships by filling in
the middle and right-hand boxes. If you use a written text set a challenging time limit (about
a minute less than you think they will need). If you use a tape, let your learners signal when
they want you to pause it.
4. The follow-up activity involves pairs testing each other by covering up one or two of the
words in each partnership. Cuisenaire rods are perfect for this.
Notes
You can make the task much more demanding by missing out the first words of each
partnership on the worksheet.This deprives your learners of a word to listen out for and forces
them to listen more globally. If you decide to try this, your learners will need to hear the whole
extract once before they begin.
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Resource File 1
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TEXT SEARCH
The following business words appeared in the text / broadcast in the order in which
they are listed. How many of their word partners can you find in just ... minutes?
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
18.
Now work with a partner. Cover up some of the boxes above.Your partner should
try to complete the phrase.
Resource File 1 © Heinle
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RESOURCE FILE 2
Text Comparison
Media:
Business skills:
Time:
The business press
Note-taking and making comparisons between two articles
40 minutes
Rationale
When such a large part of business involves presenting, exchanging and comparing information, it
seems silly to always have everyone reading or listening to the same thing in the classroom.
This Resource File exploits the jigsaw reading / listening principle, where learners are given
different texts which deal with the same subject but from opposing or complementary
standpoints.
Procedure
1. Choose two articles or business news stories of roughly equal length which deal with the
same topic.There is an example in unit 7 in the Coursebook. Make copies of the articles for
your class, one per learner.
2. Decide what general points you would like your learners to take notes on. From four to six
points is usually sufficient.Try to choose at least two or three points which are covered in
both articles.Write these at the top of the worksheet and then make copies for each
member of your class.
3. Divide your class into two groups. Give one group copies of the first text and the other
group copies of the second. Allow five to ten minutes for private reading, depending on the
length of the texts.You may want to play some quiet music during this session.
4. Bring each group together separately to discuss the text they read and write brief notes in
the left-hand box on the worksheet (these notes are supposed to act as a memory aid in
the next phase of the lesson and should not be detailed).
5. Pair up people from the two groups to compare what they read. Each learner should note
down what their partner tells them.When everyone has exchanged information, they may
want to share their own views on the topic.
6. Give everyone five minutes to skim the article they did not read to check it against what
their partner told them.
Alternatives
If you have access to two classrooms or can send one group out of the classroom to work on
something else for ten minutes, this activity can be done as a listening exercise. Simply record
your two articles onto a tape.
All the articles in New Business Matters have audio recordings. As mentioned above, unit 7
contains twin texts on the same topic, and several of the other articles in the Coursebook
have sufficient overlap to use as jigsaw reading / listening exercises:
Unit 2 Enterprise and Unit 11 Management Styles both address entrepreneurial and
managerial skills.
Unit 1 Career Management and Unit 12 Mergers and Acquisitions both address
employment trends and corporate structure.
38
Resource File 2
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TEXT COMPARISON
Read the article your teacher gives you and take notes on the following points:
1. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
2. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
3. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
4. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
5. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
6. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
MY ARTICLE
MY PARTNER’S ARTICLE
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Your partner has a different article on the same subject. Compare notes and complete the box
on the right.What are your own views on the matter?
Resource File 2 © Heinle
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RESOURCE FILE 3
Crosschecking
Crosschecking
Media:
Business skills:
Time:
Business press / radio / television
Amending notes
30-40 minutes
Rationale
Many of the comprehension formats traditionally used in the EFL classroom – true-false
exercises, multiple choice – are actually highly unnatural. In real life what people tend to do is
measure what they read and hear against their previous knowledge, against things they have read
and heard before.
This Resource File gets learners to read preliminary notes on a text, discuss them, study the
text and then amend any of the notes which seem inaccurate.
Procedure
1. Choose your text or audio / video extract and write short preliminary notes on it in the
spaces on the worksheet. Deliberately include wrong information in some of your notes.
Make sufficient copies of the notes for each pair of learners in your class.
2. Ask your learners to go through the notes in pairs, checking any words and phrases they do
not understand with each other or with you. Reading through the notes in this way gives
your learners a good idea of what it is going to be in the text / extract.
3. Your learners now read the text or listen to / view the extract and underline any
inaccuracies they find in the preliminary notes.You can specifically tell them to do this or
you can wait and see if they noticed the discrepancies for themselves.
4. Step three is repeated, but this time inaccuracies in the notes are amended on the
worksheet. If you are using audio or video, it may need to be viewed again a few times with
a short period of discussion after each viewing.
5. Score the amended notes for accuracy.
Notes
With weaker groups the inaccuracies in the preliminary notes should be purely factual.This
makes them easier to spot. For example, using the article in unit 1 in the section headed
Employability:
PRELIMINARY NOTES
It is a good time to find work provided
you accept insecurity.
Project teams are poorly paid.
Team stay together after a project.
AMENDED NOTES
Correct.
Incorrect.They are highly paid.
Incorrect.They disband.
With stronger groups the inaccuracies could be less obvious, more interpretational. For
example, using the article in unit 9:
PRELIMINARY NOTES
The Japanese are very passive in meetings.
The French tend to be fairly aggressive.
Cultural stereotypes are usually wrong.
The majority of Americans are sales-oriented.
AMENDED NOTES
Often silent, not necessarily passive.
Argumentative rather than aggressive.
Some people think so. Some don’t.
Correct.
Alternatives
If you are using an audio or video tape, you could let your learners take their own preliminary
notes and then exchange worksheets and amend each other’s work.
40
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CROSSCHECKING
Some of the following notes on the text / broadcast are not completely accurate.
As you read or listen, first underline any inaccuracies.Then see if you can amend the
notes.
Media Source: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Topic: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
PRELIMINARY NOTES
AMENDED NOTES
1. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
..........................................
2. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
..........................................
3. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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4. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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5. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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6. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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7. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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8. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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9. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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10. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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11. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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12. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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13. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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14. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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15. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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16. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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17. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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18. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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Resource File 3 © Heinle
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RESOURCE FILE 4
Commercial Break
Media:
Business skills:
Time:
Television commercials
Evaluating & inferring
30-40 minutes
Rationale
TV commercials can be very usefully exploited in the classroom, particularly with groups with an
interest in marketing and advertising, but it is essential to edit your selection carefully.The best
adverts combine rich visual imagery with evocative background music and memorable dialogues
/ voiceovers. Some of them say more in 40 seconds than a lot of documentaries say in 40
minutes.
However, try to avoid using ads which are either very low-budget (sales at furniture warehouses
and department stores etc.) or culture-bound (British humour does not always travel well).The
big names in fast-moving consumer goods usually set fairly high standards. If you can, use
commercials which advertise rival products (cars, soft drinks, sportswear, computer hardware
and cosmetics tend to be the easiest to find).
Do not try working on a single commercial in depth unless it is of special interest (eg. it features
the company your learners work for). Even with marketing specialists, it is generally much better
to look at half a dozen commercials fairly superficially rather than get into a complex analysis of
advertising strategy.
If you do not have the time to put together an edited sequence of ads, then you could try using
Resource File 12 Information Gathering instead.This works with any string of adverts. Simply
write key phrases, images and musical references on the information cards to be cut up and
sequenced in the way described.
Procedure
1. Choose your sequence of commercials and make sufficient copies of the worksheet for
your class, one for each commercial per learner.
2. Go through the worksheet in class, explaining any unfamiliar terms. If you have studied the
ads you have chosen before the lesson, you may decide to pre-teach some of the language
your learners are likely to need. Some of the adjectives in the Discussion exercises on
pages 87 and 93 of the Coursebook might be useful for talking about image.
3. Put your learners into small groups to view each advert, take notes, discuss their
impressions, share a few of their notes and go on to the next advert.
4. View the adverts again, if necessary, as a complete sequence, without pausing. Learners give
a creative award to what they consider to be the best ad and a thumbs-down award to the
worst.
5. Bring the groups together to talk about their opinions.
Alternatives
1. Get groups to watch different ads and then discuss them.
2. Run the activity as a simulation. Groups are appointed account managers at a top advertising
agency, responsible for different clients.They choose their ad from a selection, complete the
worksheet, and then use their notes to give a presentation to the other groups, outlining
the advertising strategy they propose. Finally, they show the others ‘their commercial’ and
answer any questions. If you want to make the activity more competitive, promote the best
account team to full partners in the agency and fire the others!
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COMMERCIAL BREAK
Watch the TV commercial and complete the following analysis.
Core Product(s) / Service(s):
Target Consumer(s):
Key Consumer Benefit(s):
Product Identification (early or late):
Company Identification (high or low profile):
Creative Strategy:
Verbal Message
Visual Image
Musical Association
Language Analysis:
Positive Reinforcement Words
‘Buy’ Verbs
Slogans / Catchphrases
Resource File 4 © Heinle
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RESOURCE FILE 5
Information Update
Media:
Business skills:
Time:
The business / financial press
Updating information and talking about change
30-40 minutes
Rationale
Both the global economy and the world of business are in a constant state of flux. And changes
in unemployment figures, exchange rates, company performance and stock market averages offer
a natural context in which to introduce work on the perfect aspect and the language of cause
and effect. Learners are given two texts containing economic figures and statistics – one current,
and one weeks, months or even years out of date.The task is to report the changes that have
occurred between the two dates and to speculate on their likely causes and effects.
Procedure
1. For this activity you need access to information which is regularly updated and always
presented in the same format. Ideal sources are The European (Economics & Finance page,
Investment page and Companies & Markets page), The Financial Times (International
Economic Indicators page, Markets pages), the annual Economist publication, The World in
2001/2/3 etc. (The World in Figures section).
2. Decide what information you want your learners to search for and note it down on the
worksheet next to each number
eg. INFORMATION SOURCE 1
INFORMATION SOURCE 2
a
b
c
3
How is the European chemical sector performing?
...............................................
...............................
What is the price of crude oil?
...............................................
...............................
Where is the FTSE standing?
...............................................
...............................
Distribute copies of the two texts, one to each pair of learners. Set them the task of finding
the relevant information.They note it down under Information Source 1 and 2.
4. When the worksheet has been completed, put the pairs into groups to discuss their findings
and speculate on the causes of the changes they have noted. Sometimes the text will
indicate possible causes and effects.
5. Finally, get the groups to report their findings to the class including any conclusions they
came to about likely causes and effects.
Alternatives
1. To promote global reading skills you can, of course, provide your learners with several pages
of data rather than just two. Make sure it is clear which information is current and which is
from the past (perhaps photocopy onto different coloured paper).
2. Learners can set each other the questions.Time limits can be imposed.You can divide the
current and past information between different groups. Information can be exchanged over
the telephone, back-to-back or on slips of paper.
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INFORMATION UPDATE
Your teacher will give you two texts. One contains up-to-date information.The other
contains similar information from . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ago.Take notes
on the following points in each text.Then talk about how the situation has changed
on each point.
INFORMATION SOURCE 1
INFORMATION SOURCE 2
1. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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2. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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|
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3. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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|
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4. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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|
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5. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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6. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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7. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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8. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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9. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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10. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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|
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11. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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12. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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|
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Resource File 5 © Heinle
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RESOURCE FILE 6
Business Language Awareness
Media:
Business skills:
Time:
The business press
Predicting word partnerships and fixed expressions
15-20 minutes
Rationale
The underlying principle of New Business Matters is that it is by learning to combine words into
word partnerships and fixed expressions (and not by welding words and grammar together) that
you increase your communicative power. But getting learners to think and speak phrase by
phrase instead of word by word is no small step. It demands levels of language awareness and
predictive skills which have previously been largely untaught.
Used regularly, the activity in this Resource File raises your learners’ awareness of the
combinatory nature of language and helps them to think in terms of groups of words.
Procedure
1. Choose a good text with plenty of word partnerships and fixed expressions in it. Any of the
articles in the Coursebook would be suitable, as are many of the text-based exercises.
2. Underline the words you are going to pause in front of.This is the most important part of
your preparation. For this activity to be effective you must pause before words which can be
logically or linguistically predicted and for which there are not too many alternatives.
3. Let your learners read the text. If you are using a text in the Coursebook, you may want
to do some of the post-reading and language focus work before you use this resource file.
When you are ready, ask your learners to put away their texts.
4. Now read out the text to your class pausing before the words you underlined. If you used
the article in unit 6 of New Business Matters, it might sound something like this:
There is no doubt about (pause) it, corporate entertaining is big (pause) business. In Japan,
for example, where relationship (pause) building is a fundamental (pause) part of business
(pause) life, a staggering 40 billion dollars of marketing (pause) expenditure goes on
corporate (pause) entertaining annually.
Using a mixture of recall and language awareness, your learners have to work out the
missing words.You can give them these immediately after each pause if you like, or you can
let them check each one in the text at the end of the activity. It is important that they write
the whole word partnership or expression on the worksheet next to their answers.This
prediction phase can either be done individually or with learners discussing possibilities in
pairs.
5. Discuss alternative answers and give scores for the number of accurate predictions. If you
do this activity regularly, your learners will be able to see their language awareness increase.
Alternatives
Learners can obviously read out texts to each other, but it is important that you tell them
where to pause, otherwise the activity will turn into guesswork instead of language practice.
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BUSINESS LANGUAGE AWARENESS
Your teacher will read out a text to you, pausing before important words.Write
down in the spaces below the words you think come next.Then check your answers
in the text itself.
MISSING WORD
COMPLETE PHRASE / EXPRESSION IN THE TEXT
1. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
...........................................................
2. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
...........................................................
3. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
...........................................................
4. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
...........................................................
5. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
...........................................................
6. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
...........................................................
7. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
...........................................................
8. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
...........................................................
9. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
...........................................................
10. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
...........................................................
11. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
...........................................................
12. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
...........................................................
13. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
...........................................................
14. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
...........................................................
15. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
...........................................................
16. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
...........................................................
17. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
...........................................................
18. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
...........................................................
19. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
...........................................................
20. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
...........................................................
Where your words are different from those found in the text, decide if they are possible
alternatives.
Resource File 6 © Heinle
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RESOURCE FILE 7
Clarification Game
Media:
Business skill:
Time:
The business press
Asking for clarification
30 minutes
Rationale
Keeping track of what is going on in meetings and discussions is an essential business skill. But
too often learners feel unable to interrupt the flow of conversation to clarify something they
either did not hear properly or did not fully understand, and so end up talking at crosspurposes.
Of course, short rescue phrases like ‘Sorry, could you say that again?’ and ‘Sorry, I don’t quite follow’
are helpful, but they are sometimes too vague. Areas of confusion need to be clearly pinpointed.
eg. A:There are two main BLAH-BLAHS that I can see here.
B: Sorry, two main WHAT?
A: Advantages.
B: Ah, right.
A: Profits have fallen by BLAH-BLAH over the last three years.
B: Sorry, profits have fallen by HOW MUCH over the last three years?
A: By 35%.
B: Really, as much as that?
Procedure
1. Select a short business text. Go through it quickly before the lesson underlining 16 key
facts, figures, names, places, dates etc. then make copies of the marked text for your class for
distribution after the activity.
2. Tell your class you are going to read out some information to them, but that some of it may
be unclear. If there is anything they do not follow, they are to stop you and ask you to
repeat or clarify what you said.They make a note on their worksheets of the points they get
you to explain.Warn them that if no-one interrupts you to check unclear information, you
will simply carry on reading.
3. Read out the text at a reasonable pace as if it was a presentation, mumbling the words you
have underlined. Do not pause for your learners to interrupt you, but keep reading until
they do.
eg. Teacher: Today we are looking at the annual rates of return on American investments since
BLAH-BLAH. In fact, betwe...
Learner 1:
Sorry, since WHEN?
Teacher:
1985.
Learner 1:
1985. OK.
Teacher:
Yes, in fact, between 1985 and 1994, the lowest rates of return
were on BLAH-BLAH – only about three percen...
Learner 2:
Sorry, the lowest rates of return were on WHAT?
Teacher:
Treasury bills.
Learner 2:
Treasury bills.What are they?
4. Distribute the copies of your marked text so that learners can check their information.
Notes
Make sure the words you underline in your text are not too close together.Your learners need
a little time to get ready for each new piece of information.
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CLARIFICATION GAME
Listen to your colleague. Some of the information read out to you may be unclear.
If it is, stop your colleague and ask for clarification.
For example:
BLAH-BLAH was 16%.
BLAH-BLAH has refused to comment.
The greatest demand is in BLAH-BLAH.
The company went public in BLAH-BLAH.
Costs increased by BLAH-BLAH.
Sorry,WHAT was 16%?
Sorry,WHO has refused to comment?
Sorry, the greatest demand is WHERE?
Sorry, the company went public WHEN?
Sorry, costs increased by HOW MUCH?
Write down the information you ask them to clarify and check it at the end.
INFORMATION CLARIFIED
CORRECTLY CLARIFIED OR NOT?
1. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
..........................................
2. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
..........................................
3. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
..........................................
4. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
..........................................
5. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
..........................................
6. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
..........................................
7. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
..........................................
8. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
..........................................
9. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
..........................................
10. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
..........................................
11. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
..........................................
12. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
..........................................
13. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
..........................................
14. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
..........................................
15. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
..........................................
16. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
..........................................
Resource File 7 © Heinle
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RESOURCE FILE 8
Points of View
Media:
Business skills:
Time:
Business press / radio / television
Comparing views & reactions
20-30 minutes
Rationale
The problem with most comprehension questions is that a) they tend to check only simple
matters of objective fact, and b) they tend, necessarily, to be in the third person (What
happened in 2001? Who developed the idea of lateral thinking? Where is agriculture heavily
subsidised? etc).
In real life, however, understanding simple facts is merely a pre-condition for forming a subjective
opinion.Who cares what it says in paragraph three! It is what I think about what it says in
paragraph three that matters. Learners need much more practice in using the first person and
voicing their own opinion than in confirming or refuting facts.
This Resource File provides a framework for giving your personal reactions to a text or
broadcast.
Procedure
1. Take any article, audio or video recording which is likely to interest your class and, instead
of setting comprehension questions, distribute copies of the worksheet on the next page
one per learner.
2. Go through the worksheet with your class, explaining some of the words or expressions
they do not know, but do not spend too long on those at the bottom of the worksheet –
you may be able to introduce them in the context of your discussion later.
3. Refer your learners to the text or play the recording in the usual way. Let them simply read
or listen without taking any notes.
4. Now give them ten minutes or so to collect their thoughts and complete relevant parts of
the worksheet.They are not expected to complete all of it unless they want to. Monitor this
stage.They may need some help completing some of the sentences.
5. Bring them together in groups or as a class to discuss their reactions. Include yourself in the
discussion. Accept that some people will have more to say than others and that, occasionally,
some people will have no strong feelings about the text either way. Be prepared also for a
discussion which may grow beyond what you expected.
Notes
Obviously, the more controversial or sensational the material you use is, the more likely you are
to provoke strong reactions and the better this activity will work.
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POINTS OF VIEW
What in the text / broadcast did you personally find ...
... most interesting?
What interested me was . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
...............................................................
... most surprising?
What surprised me was . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
...............................................................
... most shocking?
What shocked me was . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
...............................................................
... most amusing?
What amused me was . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
...............................................................
Was there anything in the text / broadcast that ...
... you didn’t know before? I wasn’t aware that . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
...............................................................
... annoyed you?
It annoyed me that . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
...............................................................
... you think is wrong?
I’m not sure about . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
...............................................................
Do you find yourself mostly agreeing or disagreeing with the text / broadcast?
Indicate where you stand on the scale below:
I totally agree!
There’s some truth in it.
It’s complete nonsense!
I agree with what it said about
......................................................
But the thing I disagree with most is . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Useful expressions:
a bit worrying
quite encouraging
just not true
totally ridiculous
over-optimistic
too pessimistic
pretty accurate
completely misinformed
well-researched
very superficial
a bit out-of-date
quite amazing
Resource File 8 © Heinle
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RESOURCE FILE 9
Question-and-Answer Session
Media:
Business skill:
Time:
Business press / radio / television
Question formation
30-60 minutes
Rationale
Except in tests, the natural response to reading or listening to anything is to want to ask
questions not answer them. And it is learners who need practice in asking questions, not
teachers.
This Resource File can obviously be used with any text (written, audio or video) and requires
very little preparation on the part of the teacher, for here it is the learners who take the
initiative and set the agenda by asking the questions.
The question starters at the bottom of the worksheet are suggestions only, but experience
shows that you will get better questions from your learners if you guide them towards the
more sophisticated level of question-formation required in business.
Procedure
1. Put your class into small groups or pairs and set the task of reading / listening to / watching
the extract.They should take simple notes at this stage.
2. Repeat the previous step, giving the learners time to flesh out their notes.
3. Now give your learners 15 minutes or so to put together a set of questions which they
think the other group(s) will not be able to answer. Point out that only factual questions
should be asked (ie. those which can be answered correctly or incorrectly).
4. Conduct the question-and-answer session competitively, giving points for correct answers.
You may decide to allow people to reread / review the text (within a time limit) for the
answers to questions they could not get the first time. Declare the winning team.
5. Collect in the worksheets for correction / reformulation.
Alternatives
1. Get learners to prepare questions on different texts, and then exchange both texts and
question worksheets.
2. Establish a rule that only grammatically perfect questions will be answered. Defective
questions will mean a point automatically goes to the other group(s).
3. Run the activity cooperatively, rather than competitively, with learners asking questions
about things they really did not understand in the text.
4. Instead of competing with each other, get your class to compete with you.Your English may
be better, but there are several of them and only one of you, so it is an even contest! Take a
selection of texts (say, ten) into the classroom and let your group choose the one they want
to read.They have 15-20 minutes to prepare a set of fifteen questions to ask you, the most
difficult they can think of.You have just five minutes to prepare your fifteen questions.Try
not to let them win too often!
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QUESTION-AND-ANSWER SESSION
Read the text / listen to the broadcast and prepare a set of questions to ask your
colleagues / your teacher.
1. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ?
2. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ?
3. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ?
4. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ?
5. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ?
6. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ?
7. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ?
8. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ?
9. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ?
10. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ?
11. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ?
12. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ?
13. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ?
14. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ?
15. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ?
The following question starters may help you to prepare better questions:
What exactly ...?
In what way ...?
In what context ...?
Why exactly ...?
What are the chances of ...?
Why is it that ...?
Who said ...?
Who’s responsible for ...?
What effect ...?
What’s the reason for ...?
What evidence is there ...?
Why can’t ...?
What are the implications of ...?
What’s the significance of ...?
What’s likely to ...?
Resource File 9 © Heinle
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RESOURCE FILE 10
Mini-presentation
Media:
Business skills:
Time:
Business press / radio / television
Language awareness & presenting
40-60 minutes
Rationale
Once your learners get used to the idea of searching text for useful word partnerships and fixed
expressions, you can start to capitalise on their new lexical awareness by using the worksheet
on the next page.There is an example of a similar flowchart on page 39 of the Coursebook.
Procedure
1. Choose your text or listening extract. Note down key phrases and sentences in the boxes
on the flowchart, leaving one or two important blanks in each.
eg. If you used the article in unit 6 of New Business Matters, the first part of the flowchart
might look something like this:
Wining and dining could
add up to . . .
➔
If the Pareto principle
is true . . .
➔ How cost-effective is it . . .
To some, it is about . . .
➔
Recognizing the major
contribution . . . the Ritz . . .
➔
Business lunches are an
➔ important part of corporate
culture . . .
➔
2. After your learners have read the article / listened to the broadcast, give them a copy of the
flowchart, one between two, and ask them to complete the notes, without referring back to
the text.
3. Play the recording again / refer learners to the text so that people can check their answers.
4. Now set your learners the task of preparing to present the notes.This is not quite as simple
as just reading them out.They will sometimes need to use links (and, but, so, however etc.)
and adverbials (unfortunately, basically, actually) to connect up the information into a coherent
mini-presentation.
5. With a small group there might be time to let everyone have a go at giving the whole
presentation, which will only take about three minutes. Make it clear, however, that the
objective is not just to read out the information clearly – after all, everyone has heard it
several times already.The aim is to put as much feeling into the delivery as possible by
pausing, stressing important words, speeding up and slowing down your speech and raising
and lowering your voice for effect.
With a larger group do team presentations with two or three speakers giving alternate
pieces of information. Good presentations (however brief) are not about being clear; they
are about making an impression. Have fun trying out different techniques.
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MINI-PRESENTATION
Without referring back to the article you read / broadcast you listened to, complete
the following flowchart.Then link the notes together into a short presentation.
➔
➔
➔
➔
➔
➔
➔
➔
➔
➔
➔
➔
➔
➔
➔
➔
➔
➔
➔
➔
Resource File 10 © Heinle
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RESOURCE FILE 11
Lexi-cards
Rationale
A great deal of emphasis is placed in New Business Matters on the importance of word
partnerships. And the simple card games suggested here provide an ideal way of consolidating
and reinforcing your learners’ word partnership awareness.
Preparation
Establish what the key concepts are in your learners’ work and prepare sets of cards
accordingly. For example, if some or all of your learners work in sales, then it is a safe bet that
sales would be a key concept for them – something they have to talk about every day. Other key
concepts for them are likely to be prices, markets, figures, contracts, agreements, demand etc.
A set of cards will normally consist of one key word (eg. sales) plus up to twenty partner
words.With weaker groups, reduce the number of partner words. Make sure you have a good
selection of verbs, adjectives and nouns, but pay especially attention to verbs.Where possible,
include both words which come before the key word and words which come after it. If you find
you cannot think of very many partner words, then the chances are your key word is not a real
key word after all.
Here is a selection of key words and their word partners to get you started (see the Glossary
in the Coursebook on page 169 as well):
ADVERTISING
(A) BUSINESS
(A/THE) COMPANY
CONTRACT /
AGREEMENT
COST(S)
(A) DECISION
DEMAND
(THE) FIGURES
(AN) IDEA(S)
(A) LOSS(ES)
(THE) MARKET
(A/THE) MEETING
56
agency, campaign, budget, executive, expenditure, industry, space, global,
subliminal,TV
contact, lunch, matters, objectives, opportunities, relationship, build up,
close down, get down to, go into/out of, manage, run, streamline, family,
lucrative, risky, successful, urgent, is booming, is thriving
blue-chip, holding, limited, medium-sized, parent, private, rival, sister,
subsidiary, buy out, close down, downsize, establish, found, join, leave,
liquidate, restructure, run, set up, start up, take over, went bust, went
under
sales, non-renewable, three-year, unworkable, verbal, terms of,
draft, draw up, finalise, go over, renew, review, terminate
(in)direct, fixed, material, mounting, rising, running, overhead, prohibitive,
total, unit, variable, bring down, cover, hold down, increase, push up,
price, of living
clear-cut, crucial, final, hasty, last-minute, major, right, snap, unanimous,
arrive at, come to, make, reach, reconsider, reverse, take, be faced with
boost, create, gauge, keep up with, meet, satisfy, stimulate, excessive,
fluctuating, great, growing, little, seasonal
annual, ball-park, (un)official, rough, round, sales, six, back up, discuss, go
over, look at, massage, quote, refer to, round up/down, run through, talk,
speak for themselves
brilliant, clever, stupid, brainstorm, come up with, develop, generate,
implement, promote, put forward, put . . . into practice
considerable, partial, total, tremendous, make, make up for, compensate
for, minimise, offset, realise, recover from, suffer, sustain, write off
economy, domination, forces, leader, leadership, penetration, pressure,
research, saturation, share, survey, trends, be pushed out of, be squeezed
out of, break into, come onto, corner, dominate, enter, flood, penetrate,
saturate, black, bear, bull, buoyant, buyers’, competitive, declining,
domestic, expanding, foreign, free, growing, healthy, ready, volatile, the
bottom has dropped out of
annual, board, budget, departmental, emergency, general, arrange, attend,
bring forward, call, cancel, chair, close, hold, interrupt, miss, open,
organise, postpone, put off, skip, wind up
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LEXI-CARDS
NEGOTIATIONS
(AN) ORDER
(A) PROBLEM(S)
PRICE(S)
PRODUCT
PRODUCTION
(A) PROFIT(S)
RESEARCH
SALES
STAFF/PERSONNEL
complicated, delicate, difficult, lengthy, prolonged, tough, abandon, be
engaged / involved in, break off, enter into, hold, interrupt, prejudice,
resume, speed up, are nearing completion, broke down, came to nothing,
dragged on, failed, got under way, reached a deadlock
bulk, initial, minimum, regular, repeat, cancel, check, confirm, dispatch, get,
handle, lose, phone about, phone/fax through, place, receive, rush
through, win, form, stock
basic, common, complex, difficult, fundamental, main, major, serious,
severe, unexpected, address, aggravate, cause, come up against, create,
define, overcome, pinpoint, run into, solve, tackle
attractive, bargain, competitive, discount, high, low, retail, unbeatable,
wholesale, agree on, cut, fix, quote, raise, reduce, undercut, list, range,
reduction, rise, sensitivity, war
best-selling, improved, new, advertise, design, develop, discontinue, invent,
launch, modify, phase in/out, test, upgrade, withdraw, demonstration,
development, features, specifications
capacity, costs, engineer, levels, line, manager, methods, plant, rate, target,
go into/out of, half, hold up, monitor, scale down, step up, supervise,
mass
enormous, massive, net, slight, substantial, boost, clear, cut into, generate,
make, realise, margin, share, plough . . . back into
basic, intensive, ongoing, recent, vital, consumer, market, product, back,
carry out, conduct, cut back on, fund, invest in, promote, put money into,
undertake, costs, team, methods
disappointing, encouraging, poor, potential, steady, boost, increase,
maintain, promote, figures, forecast, manager, prospect, tactics, team,
technique, territory, volume, are booming, are brisk, are sluggish, are
static, are plunging
efficient, dedicated, extra, full-time, loyal, part-time, permanent, qualified,
(un- / semi-) skilled, temporary, attract, dismiss, employ, fire, get rid of,
headhunt, hire, lay off, lose, motivate, recruit, sack, take on, train,
shortage of, appraisal
Photocopy, complete and cut out the lexical cards on page 96.
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RESOURCE FILE 12
Information Gathering
Media:
Business skills:
Time:
Radio / television news
Gathering & summarising information
40-60 minutes
Rationale
Being able to piece together the information you were able to follow in a presentation and
work out the rest is a valuable business skill. And, until learners reach a very high level of
proficiency, it is what they will always have to do.
This Resource File tries to reflect the information gathering process itself. It can be very quickly
prepared, but has sufficient mileage to provide up to an hour’s work.
Procedure
1. Listen to / view a short news or business news summary (5-10 minutes maximum), and note
down in random order in the boxes on the worksheet names, dates, places, times, important
events, acronyms etc. mentioned in the broadcast. If you like, include useful word
partnerships mentioned too.Write one piece of information in each box.
eg. UN six 2001 Washington hunger strike European summit attack
Brussels ICI industrial action 173 renewed outbreaks of violence takeover
Notice that some of the information is self-explanatory (eg. European summit), and some
meaningless out of context (eg. Six what? 173 what?).
2. When you have filled the boxes with as much information as you want from each of the
news stories, make copies of the worksheet, divide your class into groups and give one copy
to each group in your class. Ask the groups to cut out the boxes into separate information
cards (this is much quicker than cutting up all the boxes yourself!).
3. Ask your learners to spread out all the cards in front of them. From what they know of
world events, can they begin to group the cards into what they think might be the different
news stories?
4. Now play the tape, pausing between each news item. No information cards can be moved
while the tape is playing, but only in the pauses. Groups must try to reach agreement on
which cards go where before they move them. If necessary, let the groups go back through
the broadcast to check their information.
5. Ask your class if they can summarise one of the news stories using the information cards
they grouped together for it.The chances are, there will be both agreement and
disagreement as to what refers to what! Encourage this.
6. Play the tape through one last time, checking the information as you go. Give scores.
Alternatives
1. With lower level groups simply reduce the number of information cards.
2. With more advanced groups put in a few red herrings (things not mentioned in the
broadcast). It is important to know what you did not hear, as well as what you did.
3. With a stronger class, try getting groups to write the information in the boxes themselves,
and then pass the worksheet to another group to cut up and organize.
4. If you want to do the business news and have difficulty finding an off-air programme, try
reading out and recording the Business Review column in The European.
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INFORMATION GATHERING
Listen to / watch the broadcast and organise the following information.
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RESOURCE FILE 13
Text Summary
Media:
Business skills:
Time:
The business press
Reading & summarising an article
10-30 minutes
Rationale
On a business English course one of the teacher’s prime responsibilities is the selection of
maximally useful input, and the articles in New Business Matters have been specially written to
provide your learners with a lot of the essential business language they need – much more than
they would get by reading randomly. But in real life we generally choose what we want to read
and this is too seldom reflected in the classroom.
This Resource File provides a simple conversational framework for presenting the gist of a news
story or business article the learner has chosen.
It is a good idea to encourage your learners to read widely outside the classroom and to bring
articles that interest them to the lesson, where they can discuss them with their colleagues.
Procedure
1. Choose a short business article yourself (or use one of the articles in New Business
Matters) and summarise it using the worksheet as a framework.
2. Read out your summary to your class, pausing for reactions. Invite a few questions at the
end. Keep the tone conversational.
3. Distribute copies of the article for your learners to skim through.They may want to check
certain things in the article against what you said.With a fairly advanced class you might
decide to deliberately misinterpret parts of the article in your summary and see if they spot
the discrepancies.
4. Give out a blank copy of the worksheet to each learner, and set them the task of finding an
article to talk about in the next or subsequent lesson.You could also give them copies of
the summary you wrote, as an example.
5. Set aside at least ten minutes in each lesson for people to talk about what they have read
since they last met.
6. Collect in the summaries at the end of the lesson for correction or reformulation.
Notes:
The summary suggested here is very simple. Some learners may want to step outside this
framework and give a fuller presentation.This is fine, of course, but the idea is really to get
learners into the habit of talking regularly for just a few minutes about topics that interest them.
You could keep a file in the classroom containing copies of the articles that people have talked
about.
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TEXT SUMMARY
Choose a magazine article or news story which is of interest to you and prepare a
short summary of it, using the framework below to help you get started.
I was reading this article the other day in . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
........................................................................................
And it talks about . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
........................................................................................
I thought you might be interested because . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
........................................................................................
Basically, what it says is . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
........................................................................................
........................................................................................
........................................................................................
........................................................................................
........................................................................................
What interested / surprised me most was . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
........................................................................................
........................................................................................
........................................................................................
........................................................................................
I’m not sure I agree with / believe what it says about . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
........................................................................................
........................................................................................
........................................................................................
What do you think about . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
.........................................................................................
I could let you have a copy if you like.
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RESOURCE FILE 14
Facts and Figures
Media:
Business skills:
Time:
Business / financial news
Contextualising facts & figures
20-30 minutes
Rationale
A key skill in business is the rapid assimilation of facts and figures. Activities in coursebooks
which ask you to circle the numbers you hear miss the point entirely. Facts without figures (‘The
basic rate of income tax has gone up, but I’m not sure by how much’) are much more useful
than figures without facts (‘Something’s gone up by 2%, but I’m not sure what’). Ideally, of course,
the fact and figure will be understood as a unit.
A lot of business English learners need practice here. Complicated figures often distract them
from the facts to which they relate.This is particularly the case when listening to figures quoted
at speed.
Procedure (audio / video extract)
1. Find a short audio or video extract with a high concentration of figures and statistics.The
business and market news on the BBC or CNN is especially good for this, but you could
also record an extract from the Financial Times or The Economist onto cassette.
2. Write all the figures in the order you hear them in the boxes on the left-hand side of the
worksheet.
3. Distribute copies of the worksheet, one per learner.
4. Put one of your learners in charge of the cassette player or video.They play the extract,
pausing it whenever they hear one of the figures and rewinding the tape to listen for the
context again. If they miss the figure, too late! They must go on to the next one.
5. Give a score for accuracy
Procedure (written text)
Prepare worksheets as above but put your learners into groups and give them a strict time limit
in which to find and contextualise all the figures.Two minutes is ample for ten figures. If you have
more figures, you will need two worksheets per learner.
Alternatives
1. Write in the context but leave out the figures.
2. Give weaker groups the context and stronger groups the figures.They listen, take notes and
then compare.
3. With more advanced groups, write the figures out of sequence or put in a few red herrings
(figures which do not appear at all or are slightly inaccurate).
4. Get your learners to listen to / read different texts, note down the figures and exchange
texts.They then contextualise each other’s list of figures.
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FACTS AND FIGURES
In what context were the following facts and figures mentioned in the text / broadcast?
FIGURES
CONTEXT
➜
➜
➜
➜
➜
➜
➜
➜
➜
➜
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RESOURCE FILE 15
Mini-report
Media:
Business skills:
Time:
Radio / television interview
Reporting & paraphrasing
30-40 minutes in class plus 30 minutes homework
Rationale
Being able to write a short report on what was said at a meeting or conference is a useful skill
in business. And, by and large, this involves the use not of reported speech but of reporting
verbs.The comment ‘I think it’s absolutely vital that we do some kind of market research on this’ is
unlikely to appear in a subsequent report as ‘The European Sales Manager said she thought it was
absolutely vital that we did some kind of market research on this’, but rather ‘The European Sales
Manager stressed the importance of market research’.
This Resource File gives learners practice in reporting and can be used with any recording or
transcript of an interview.
Procedure
1. Select an audio or video recording of an interview you want to work with. Interviews on
news programmes are ideal because they tend to be very short and concise with perhaps
only five or six exchanges in all.
If you do not have access to these media, you can often find transcripts of interviews with
well-known business people and politicians in business magazines. Time magazine regularly
features an interview with someone currently in the news.When well-edited, these
transcripts are often better than the original interview. Record them onto a cassette with a
colleague.
2. Make sufficient copies of the worksheet for your class, one copy per learner. If your
interview is more than six questions long, you will need to give each learner two
worksheets.
3. Play the extract twice, pausing the tape after each question and answer.Your learners should
only write the key points in each question and answer in the speech balloons on the
worksheet.
4. Put the learners together in pairs or small groups to combine their notes.
5. For homework get them to write up a short report of the interview using their notes and
the suggested list of reporting verbs to help them.
Alternatives
Set two of your classes the same report-writing task, but use different interviews with each
class. In a later lesson give each class the reports written by the other class, and then play them
the interview the reports refer to. How do they rate the other class’s reports for accuracy?
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MINI-REPORT
Listen to / watch the interview and take notes on the questions and answers.
Media Source: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Interviewee: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Topic: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Now use your notes to help you write a short report on what was discussed in the interview.
The following reporting verbs may help you:
said
explained
told him / her
argued / claimed / admitted / insisted / confirmed that
asked about / if / whether
felt that
welcomed
praised / attacked / criticised ... for
raised the question of
questioned the need for
stressed the importance of
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Unit 1
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Women on Wall Street
Video Summary
The report looks at a number of women who have
made a major contribution in changing the face of Wall
Street. Muriel Siebert was the first woman to buy a
seat on the New York Stock Exchange in 1967. She
suffered considerable discrimination in the early years.
She recounts the tale of not being allowed to use the
elevator to get to meetings.
Alexandra Lebenthal of Lebenthal & Co. talks about
her grandmother who founded the company with her
husband and then took over the running of it until the
age of 93.
Background
Buying a seat on the New York Stock Exchange means
you become a member of the New York Stock
Exchange.
Make sure that learners know that Wall Street is New
York’s financial district.
Before You Watch
1 (Suggested answers)
work their way to the top: work to get to the
top of the career ladder, to the most senior
positions
a glass ceiling: a point beyond which they cannot
get promotion
barriers: obstacles
outnumber: be many more of, greater in number
old boys’ network: the friendships, connections
and favours that exist between men who have been
to the same schools, universities, etc.
achievement: something which is hard to do, but
which you have succeeded in
a struggle: a fight, something which requires a lot
of effort and is difficult
balance a career and family: succeed in giving
enough time to both these things
support network: a group of people you can
depend on
Start 1:24 End 5:54
While You Watch
Play the report all the way through for learners to
answer questions 1-2.
Then play it again in two parts for learners to answer
more detailed questions.
66
General comprehension from first viewing
of whole report:
1b
2A: c
2B: a, b
Detailed comprehension from part one:
3
a T: She says, ‘For almost ten years I could say
thirteen hundred and sixty-five men and me.’
b T: Her granddaughter grew up thinking it was
very normal for a woman to run a company
because her grandmother did.
c F:Alexandra Lebenthal’s daughter has an
imaginary company called Diamonds,
Diamonds, Diamonds.
d T: She was not allowed in the elevator.
e F: Getting to a meeting became more
of a barrier than partaking in it.
f F: It made her very angry (mad).
Detailed comprehension from part two:
4 An organisation for women in finance.
5 Women in finance who worked for Goldman
Sachs.
6 To balance a career and family.
7 She thinks that the opportunities are there for
women to get to the top if they choose to
take that path, but some do not because of
having a family.
8 No, not yet.
After You Watch
Ask learners to invent their own contexts based on
their experience.
TRANSCRIPTION
CNN Reporter: Wall Street, the old boys’ network,
has always been home to men in
suits. And, though they are quick to
open the door for a lady, it is Wall
Street’s women who have walked
through that door and changed old
perceptions.When Muriel Siebert
bought a seat on the New York Stock
Exchange in 1967, she was the first
woman to do so.
Muriel Siebert: I took the constitution of the New
York Stock Exchange home, I felt that
I qualified, ... there was no prohibition
- in so many words - against women.
And, uh, I bought a seat on the New
York Stock Exchange, December
twenty-eighth, 1967, I made the stock
exchange co-ed. For almost ten years
Wo m e n o n Wa l l S t r e e t
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TRANSCRIPTION
I could say thirteen hundred and
sixty-five men and me. I was more
than delightfully outnumbered. I will
tell you that ... there were some
tough times ...
CNN Reporter: And, though she’s been called the
first woman in finance, she was not
the first to make waves on Wall
Street. In 1925, Sayra Lebenthal met
her future husband while studying for
the bar exam.Together they founded
Lebenthal and Company.When her
husband was forced to stop working
due to illness. Sayra took over the
company and became a major player
on Wall Street. She stopped working
at ninety-three. Her granddaughter
Alexandra now runs the company.
Alexandra
Lebenthal:
What probably was most important
was the fact that when I was four
years old ... five years old, I would
come down to the office and my
grandmother would be sitting behind
this desk. And so, to me, your
grandmother working and working
on Wall Street and running a
company, was a completely normal
thing.Therefore, I should assume I
could do the same thing. And I do
see that in my own daughter. She has
an imaginary company - Diamonds,
Diamonds, Diamonds - she is the
CEO of it, and I think to myself, you
know, there’s only one place you
picked this up.
CNN Reporter: Having female family members in
finance has helped pave the way. But
for most of the women veterans on
the street, bumping into a glass
ceiling was the norm. Sometimes,
getting to a meeting became more of
a barrier than partaking in it.
Muriel Siebert: I’d go to the elevator, and they
wouldn’t let me in the elevator. So I
had to walk through the kitchen and
up the back stairs. And I was sitting in
that room getting madder and
madder and madder. I mean, really
mad. So much so that I really did not
know what was going on in the
meeting. And a couple of men asked
me, “Hey, what happened? What’s
wrong?” And I told them. So after the
lunch, they said, “Come on with us to
the elevator.” Well, they wouldn’t let
them in the elevator with me. So we
all walked down the stairs and
through the kitchen.
CNN Reporter: Eighty-five Broad is an organization
for women in finance. It was started
by women in finance who worked for
Goldman Sachs and named after the
company’s street address.Women in
finance had a strong support
network. But balancing career and
family is still a struggle for female
executives.
Patricia
Chadwick:
I think the door is wide open for
women and, I think that at certain
points in everybody’s life, they have
to make decisions about how much
farther they want to go. Family is a
very important decision, in all that.
And women have to understand that
as well.
CNN Reporter: It’s been more than seventy-five years
since Sayra Lebenthal started on Wall
street, thirty-five years since Muriel
was the first woman to buy a seat on
the exchange, and thirty years of
working her way to the top for
Patricia Chadwick.These women of
Wall Street have different
perspectives, but they seem to share
a common hope for the future.
Alexandra
Lebenthal:
If we reach a point in time where
those women have access to the
same opportunities, access to capital
- both in the public and private
markets - and really recognize the
power of the female entrepreneur ...
again, I’ll feel that that’s a significant
achievement for all of us.
Patricia
Chadwick:
There were both opportunities, and
times when it was more difficult. I
think sometimes people have a
tendency to remember the more
difficult times and forget how, in fact,
there were some opportunities,
perhaps, because one was a woman.
Muriel Siebert: You know, you really hope that one
of these days we ’re going to see that
a woman can make the same
mistakes and be head of a company
the same way a man can.
CNN Reporter: For Business Unusual, I’m Rhonda
Schaffler, CNN Financial News, New
York.
Wo m e n o n Wa l l S t r e e t
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Unit 2
Page 68
The Limited Entrepreneur
Video Summary
The report is about Leslie Wexner who owns a $9
billion retail empire. It charts his rise to billion dollar
success from the money-making projects of his
childhood, to getting a business degree, dropping out of
law school to join the family business and finally
opening The Limited.
It also tells of his relationship with his parents, who
owned a small women’s clothing store. He hated the
fact they worked so hard and earned so little. He
swore he would never join the family firm, but did so
to prove his worth to his father on his own territory.
His father dismissed his ideas for re-focusing the family
store, but his parents finally closed their store and
joined his business,The Limited.
After You Watch
Discuss
Learners could also discuss the following:
Think of other people you consider entrepreneurs.
Have they all done many different things?
Role-play alternative
Get learners to work in pairs or groups and think of
an idea for a new business.
Learners then present their ideas to the rest of the
class.
Before You Watch
a 7, b 5, c 3, d 6, e 8, f 2, g 4, h 1
Start 5:56 End 10:07
While You Watch
Learners are not expected to give answers in great
detail: for example, in question 2 elicit examples but do
not expect a comprehensive answer at this point.
1
As a child.
2a Shoveling snow, cutting grass, washing cars,
running a day camp, he sold T-shirts and
stationery, he did landscaping.
2b He hated it because they worked so hard,
seventy or eighty hours a week, and earned so
little. As he says, they were “just eking out a
living.”
3
The answer is visual: a, b c, d
4
a, c, d, e, f, h, j, k, l, n
Notes
not b: Cutting grass was one of his money-making
jobs, so he didn’t do it for free.
not g: He studied law, but dropped out of law
school so he didn’t get a law degree.
not m: He was worried he might go bankrupt, but
his worries were unfounded: the store was a
great success.
68
5
He realised he could earn more money taking
ten children to the park at the same time than
babysitting children one at a time.
6
a T, b T, c F, d F
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TRANSCRIPTION
Leslie Wexner:
CNN Reporter:
Leslie Wexner:
CNN Reporter:
Leslie Wexner:
CNN Reporter:
Leslie Wexner:
CNN Reporter:
Where you take risks and where you
don’t does get your motor going and
your heart thumping, uh, ... but it’s
also a very dangerous place. First
store ... one of a kind ...
Leslie Wexner has lived a life on the
edge - the cutting edge - peddling
fashion-forward clothing to the
masses.Turning a small women’s
store in the Midwest into a ninebillion-dollar retail empire, home to
some of America’s fashion’s bestknown brands.
As a kid, he was always trying to earn
a buck. But all work and no play did
not make Les Wexner a dull boy - it
made him rich!
I can remember as a kid, that when it
snowed, I was really happy. And the
reason I was happy was I could go
out and shovel snow and make
money. And in the summer days, I
could cut grass or wash cars.
His parents encouraged him to work.
But for young Wexner, there was
more to it than earning a bit of
pocket change.
I figured out when I was ten or
eleven years old, I could make more
money taking ten kids to the park on
Saturday, if you would - my own day
camp - than I could babysitting kids
one at a time. It just simply did work.
And so I had some sense of
proportion or leverage then.
Those after-school jobs became small
businesses.The little day camp, selling
T-shirts and stationery from a
college-dorm room, a landscaping
business that one summer brought in
three thousand dollars.
So, really, right there, imprinted in
your DNA, was an entrepreneurial
spirit.
Yes. In hindsight, I think so … that …
I think I realised by the time I was
maybe in my early thirties, that I
really never had worked for any one.
And I didn’t see that. It just happened
that I could … figure out how to
make a better living for myself.You
know, more date money or, you
know, have a little bit nicer clothes.
But one thing he swore he’d never
do: join the family business - Leslie’s a small women’s clothing store his
parents opened in Columbus in 1952
and named after him.
Leslie Wexner: Oh, I hated it. Both of them probably
working seventy or eighty hours a
week, just eking out a living. And,
here I was, in my own business,
selling sweat shirts, and stationery,
and, you know, my landscaping
business; and doing better than they
were.
CNN Reporter: The landscaping business was so
lucrative that Wexner decided he’d
become a landscape architect. But his
father pushed him to get a business
degree.Wexner got one from Ohio
State University and then went on to
law school there. But, despite his vow
to stay away, he dropped out to work
in his parents’ store.
Leslie Wexner: In hindsight, I think it was a very
typical father-son kind of relationship
and conflict in that the son wanting
to prove to the father his value. And,
I think, quite deliberately and quite
unconsciously, what I decided was I
could only prove my worth to my
father in an endeavour that he would
understand.
CNN Reporter: After a few years working with his
parents,Wexner came to his father
with an idea. Since coats and dresses
weren’t turning a profit, why not
focus on women’s sportswear, the
store’s best-selling item. His dad’s
response? “You’ll never be a
merchant.” So Wexner borrowed
$5,000 from an aunt and opened The
Limited. And, even though he was
operating on an educated hunch
about sportswear, he had a recurring
nightmare: it would fail.
Leslie Wexner: It’s the first day, and people just stare
through the shop windows in the
store, but no one crosses the
threshold. And I worked myself ... up
into a point where I had a stomach
ulcer. And I figured out that at one
point, that I had a negative net worth
of a million dollars. So I, I thought it
was going to be the biggest and
youngest bankruptcy the Midwest
had ever seen.
CNN Reporter: Far from it! Wexner’s gamble paid off
with profits that exceeded his
expectations. And, just three years
later, his parents closed their shop
and joined their son.
The Limited Entrepreneur
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Unit 3
Page 70
E-tombs
Video Summary
Start 10:09 End 12:44
The report is about an unusual use of the Internet –
some Chinese are creating e-tombs to commemorate
their loved ones who have died.The report looks at
the traditional annual festival of grave-sweeping on
which the Chinese visit their ancestors’ and relatives’
graves, sweep and clean them, burn incense and lay
offerings of food and flowers.
While You Watch
Background
Question 3 allows learners to say what they have
understood.Watching for detail will focus on the detail.
1
You can open an e-tomb web site through
Netor.com.
2
Because you can visit them easily, at any time.
These virtual burial sites are much less
expensive than real burial sites to maintain and
visit.
3
You can light candles, burn incense, and offer
flowers and songs.
4
1T, 2T, 3E, 4E, 5E, 6E, 7E and T, 8E
5
1c 2a 3b
6
a three b four c $3,000 d two; 12,000
e $24 f two, 2,600, 90%
Grave-sweeping day takes place on April 5th each year
and is also called Ching Ming or Qin Ming. Ching means
pure or clean and Ming means brightness.
The Chinese government is encouraging cremation in
an attempt to stop the expansion of cemeteries.There
is a limited area of land on which to grow crops to
feed the Chinese, the world’s largest population.
Part of the tradition of grave-sweeping was also to
burn money for the dead, so that they would have
money in the next life.This practice has been banned in
one northern Chinese province because of the risk of
forest fires.
Netor.com is the web site operator.There are many
web sites dedicated to ordinary and famous people.
Amongst them are sites to the victims of 9/11 and to
Princess Diana
Follow-up
Before You Watch
You can ask learners if they think the family who they
saw grave-sweeping would benefit from opening an
e-tomb.
Possible answer:Yes, as there are a number of elderly
relatives in the group who might find it easier not to
have to travel to the graveside.
Play the video excerpt with the sound turned down
and elicit as much vocabulary as you can. Deal with all
the words in the list.
After You Watch
Role-play
1
Learbers’ own answers
2
the Internet
to attract visitors
a click of the mouse
cyberspace
to feature
memory
a message board
modernisation
technology
a subscriber
a web page
Learners can also choose e-tombs as their service if
they wish.
the dead
to bury
a graveyard
in memory of
to commemorate
memory
a memorial
70
E-tombs
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Page 71
TRANSCRIPTION
CNN Reporter: To Beijing, where technology is
catching up with people in life as well
as in death.You may have gone to a
cemetery to visit a graveside of a
friend or a relative who has died.
That’s a tradition familiar to most
people, but in China, tradition is
meeting technology. In something
called “E-Tombs,” memorials live on
in cyberspace as Jaime Florcruz
explains.
Jaime
Florcruz:
Incense burning, three deep bows in
memory of the dead. Ancient rituals
that have survived the Chinese drive
to modernisation.
Zhang Jiabin:
[Translator] We come here four
times a year during holidays.
Jaime
Florcruz:
On this annual grave-sweeping
festival, Zhang’s family gather to
sweep his wife’s burial site built two
years ago at cost of three thousand
U.S. dollars. A lot of money and
hassle for some Chinese who are
turning to cemeteries online, like the
Netor dot com, set up in Beijing two
years ago and now serving twelve
thousand subscribers.
Liu Yi:
[Translator] [A] traditional cemetery
can hardly contain a biography of the
dead. [The] Internet offers a better
way to commemorate them.
Jaime
Florcruz:
Yang Tuan spent only twenty-four
dollars to open an e-tomb for her
mother, a famous Beijing writer who
died recently. It now features a
biography, photos, essays, and a
message board. “E-cemeteries will
not replace traditional graveyards,”
she says, “but they offer a convenient
alternative.”
Yang Tuan:
[Translator] With the online
memorial, we can pay our respect
and show our love any time we wish.
Jaime
Florcruz:
With a click of the mouse, relatives
can light candles, burn incense, and
offer flowers and songs.They can also
propagate the memory of their loved
ones. In two months since Yang
opened her mother’s e-tomb, it has
attracted more than two thousand
six hundred visitors.
Yang Tuan:
Jaime
Florcruz:
E-tombs
Ninety percent of them are
strangers. I was very touched by the
words they left on the web page in
my mother’s memory.
The most important thing in life, a
Chinese saying goes, is to get buried
well. Now, on the Internet, the buried
may also be remembered well. Jaime
Florcruz, CNN, Beijing.
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Unit 4
Page 72
Auto Brands’ DNA
Video Summary
Ford owns the following prestigious brands which
make up its PAG (Premier Automotive Group): Aston
Martin, Jaguar,Volvo and Land Rover. Many people do
not know that these vehicles are Ford’s and the
current head of PAG, 41-year-old hot-shot executive
Mark Fields is happy to keep it that way.The Ford
badge, the famous little blue oval, is nowhere in sight
and the brands are displayed in separate showrooms to
highlight their individuality.
The brands do benefit from being part of Ford. Costs
are helped by sharing sales, marketing, repair shops and
where appropriate, components.
The report shows Mark Fields in London, the UK
headquarters of PAG and a dealership in Dortmund,
Germany.
Before You Watch
You could play the report without sound and elicit
vocabulary from learners, especially:
luxury cars, dealership, showroom, back office, repair shop,
safety tests, navigational systems.
1
Jaguar, Aston Martin,Volvo, Land Rover
2
They don’t.They’re happy for customers not to
associate these prestigious brand names with
Ford.
3
1a 2b 3b 4a 5b 6c 7c
After You Watch
You could give learners the context of one working in
a dealership, the other a customer, or just ask them to
describe the brand in a less defined context.
Extra Activity
Ford’s badge is referred to as ‘the little blue oval’.
‘Ford built a one-hundred-sixty-billion-dollar business
on a little blue oval.’
Get learners to describe other well-known car badges
or logos of other products.You could do this as a
guessing game: one person describes the logo, others
guess the brand.
You could ask what sort of a person they think Mark
Fields is, eg. ask, ‘Does he seem confident and
successful?’ To teach hot-shot executive you could ask
how old they think he is.
1
a7 b5 c6 d3 e1 f4 g2
2
automaker: a
component: a, b
dealership: a
high-end brand: a
luxury market: a
parts: b
safety systems: b
suspension: b
vehicle: b
retail: b
3
Learners’ own answers.
This question is focused on in detailed
questions, ex 1 question 3 and ex 2.
Start 12:46 End 15:34
While You Watch
Ask learners to describe each vehicle’s DNA from
what they know about the brand and from what image
this footage conveys.
72
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Page 73
TRANSCRIPTION
CNN Reporter: Ford built a one-hundred-sixtybillion-dollar business on a little blue
oval. In the late eighties, to lure
wealthy customers, the number two
automaker began its push into the
luxury market, buying Ford brands
outside the U.S.: Aston Martin, Jaguar,
Volvo, and Land Rover.Today, they
make up Ford’s Premier Automotive
Group, or PAG. Mark Fields is PAG’s
new chief. At forty-one, he’s a hotshot executive, with cars in his blood.
Mark Fields:
This is a dream job for me. And, and
the reason for that is ... I remember,
when I was growing up in New
Jersey, and I used to go by the, uh, ...
Jaguar dealership. And my friends and
I used to go by there and think, oh,
one day ...
CNN Reporter: Today, Fields has his choice of a Jag
or an Aston Martin, or two other
high-end brands.
One of the things you said about
your industry and about your cars is
that it has a brand DNA.What does
that mean?
Mark Fields:
Brand DNA, very simply, ... if, if the
vehicle was a person, how would you
describe them? Or, alternatively,
when you look at the vehicle and you
get in the vehicle and drive it, what’s
the taste or the flavour of that
vehicle?
CNN Reporter But selling luxury and getting the
flavour right means keeping the Ford
brand out of sight.
Mark Fields:
Most people don’t know that Ford
owns the brands in PAG. And we
want to, ... I think for the most part,
... we want to keep it that way.
CNN Reporter: At the retail level, the Ford blue oval
is conspicuously absent. Dealerships,
like this one in Dortmund, Germany,
sell the Ford PAG brands under one
roof. Separate entrances and
showrooms clearly distinguish each
brand.
Mark Fields:
For those customers that do not
know that we own these various
brands, that’s fine, ... that’s fine with
me.
CNN Reporter: But, behind the scenes PAG and Ford
reap savings on common back offices,
sales, marketing, and even repair
shops.The Ford global muscle also
comes in large-scale investment in
safety and navigational systems that
could be shared.
Engineer:
And so ... we can do the comparison
... and we look at it for commonality
in areas where the customer doesn’t
see ...
Mark Fields:
Right
CNN Reporter: But critics warned that, to increase
profits, Ford parts may wind up in
Jaguars or Aston Martins. Fields says
cost-cutting won’t harm the brands’
integrity.
Mark Fields:
If we say, well, we can save a certain
amount of money by going to a
certain suspension, but we realise
that if we do that, we would
compromise the brand character of
the vehicle, then we will not do that.
Because, in the long term, that will
degrade the brand. At the same time,
there’ll be other instances, for
example, where we find some
components, which do not affect the
dynamic personality of the vehicle,
that we can share amongst the entire
group.That does bring costs down.
Auto Brands’ DNA
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Unit 5
Page 74
Truffle Wars
Video Summary
The French truffle is a luxury item and has a price tag
to match. Less valuable Chinese truffles are being
exported to France and sold as if they were French by
unscrupulous merchants. French truffle growers are
unhappy as their business is being undermined. French
scientists are working to crack the genetic code of the
Périgord, a prized French truffle, so that the truffles can
be tested to check their origin.
The report focuses on the qualities of the French
truffle over the Chinese truffle and ends in a lighthearted experiment to see if a pig can tell the
difference.
1
Imported Chinese truffles are being sold in
Europe as French truffles.The Chinese truffles
have a market value of less than 5% of the
French truffles.
2
Yes, it eats a French truffle.
3
French truffles: $600/kg exported from
France high-priced gourmet food
Chinese truffles: cheap $30/kg imported to
Europe
4
a underground
b find
c can
d southwestern
e French, Chinese
f flavour
5
1b
2b
6
investigates thoroughly: 3
rejects Chinese truffles: 4
returns to the French truffles: 5
switches allegiance: 2
favours the French truffles: 1
You may want to point out to learners that all the
interviewees have very strong French accents.
Before discussing the questions in the introduction,
make sure that learners know what truffles are.You
could show the first images of the report where they
are being put in the bowl and also tell them that pigs
are used to find them as they grow underground.
You could ask learners further warm-up questions, eg
Have you ever eaten truffles?
Do you know the price of truffles in your country? Can you
guess?
You could find out the price, or ask learners to do so
for the next lesson.
Before You Watch
a
b
c
d
e
f
g
h
i
j
k
After You Watch
(Suggested answers)
1 Not very aware.
create controversy
have a market value
undermine business
highly developed
switch allegiance
gourmet food
crack the genetic code
sense of smell
scientific test
put something to the test
competing products (business)
2
Start 15:35 End 18:14
While You Watch
Extra Activity
If learners are close enough to the screen, you could
also ask them who Michel Courvoisier represents.
(Answer: French Federation of Truffle Growers.)
You could ask learners what the man looking into the
bag does.
(Answer: He’s a truffle importer.)
74
Tr u f f l e W a r s
Food labelling could be standardised
internationally.
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Page 75
TRANSCRIPTION
CNN Reporter: Truffles, like these from western
China, have a market value of thirty
US dollars a kilogram ... about five
percent of what you’d pay for French
truffles. Recently, they’ve created a
lot of controversy.That’s because
cheap Chinese truffles are being
exported to Europe and sold to
consumers there as high-priced
gourmet food. French truffle growers
say their business is being
undermined by unscrupulous local
merchants.
Michel
Courvoisier:
It’s not the Chinese we are fighting,
it’s the people in Europe ... in France.
CNN Reporter: Truffles grow underground and,
traditionally, pigs are used to uproot
them since they have a highly
developed sense of smell and can
forage for the delicacy, although dogs
can be trained to find truffles, too.
Eventually, they end up in kitchens
like this one in Hong Kong, where
Executive Chef Marc Toutin
especially likes Périgord truffles from
southwestern France. He says they
have far more natural flavour than
competing Chinese products.
Marc Toutin:
The French truffle you can make up
a sauce, okay, with no additive.
Chinese truffles, what people have to
do - kind of trick- is just to put, like,
truffle oil on it.
CNN Reporter: Many consumers don’t know about
these tricks.That’s why French
scientists have worked to crack the
genetic code of the Périgord ... so
they can test food and positively
identify the source of the
ingredients. Many truffle importers
welcome that effort.
Man:
It will stop, that we got … truffles,
eh, supposed to be, eh, French
truffles, and we get Chinese truffles.
CNN Reporter Which is good news if you really
think there’s a difference between
the two.
So, let’s put that to the test. On the
right-hand side of your screen, these
French truffles that just came out of
the oven this morning, and on the
left-hand side these Chinese truffles.
Let’s see which one is more popular.
Tr u f f l e W a r s
At first, pigs from Hong Kong’s
Kadouri farm seem to favour French
truffles.Then they switch allegiance.
But, after thorough investigation, this
sow rejected the Chinese truffles,
returned to the tray full of Périgord,
and ate one.You couldn’t call this a
scientific test but it’s firm proof that
pigs are picky ... .
Andrew Brown, CNN Hong Kong.
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Unit 6
Page 76
Summit Living
Video Summary
After You Watch
Critics accuse the Johannesburg Earth Summit of being
a UN extravaganza, an excuse for high living in a
country where there are huge differences between rich
and poor. Although delegates stay in up-market hotels,
they refute the suggestion that they live the high life.
This summit cost just a tenth of the Rio Earth summit
ten years beforehand.
You can tell learners that they can decide how to
present the news to their staff - either by supporting
their own boss’s decision or by not agreeing with it.
Background
At the Johannesburg summit the following important
new targets were established:
• to halve the proportion of people without access
to basic sanitation by 2015;
• to use and produce chemicals by 2020 in ways that
do not lead to significant diverse effects on human
health and the environment;
• to maintain or restore depleted fish stocks to
levels that can produce the maximum sustainable
yield on an urgent basis and where possible by
2015;
• to achieve by 2010 a significant reduction in the
current rate of loss of biological diversity.
Before You Watch
Check learners understand the meaning of all these
words. Ask them to predict which they will see in the
report.
You can then show the report with or without sound
to elicit these expressions, before learners watch to
answer comprehension questions.
1
Learners’ own ideas.
2
a bonanza
3
a flock
b delegate
b affluent, seedy
c high living
c host a function
Start 18:16 End 21:37
While You Watch
76
1
Not according to members of the UN.
(Learners can make up their own minds).
2
It creates employment opportunities in the
hotel industry.
3
It is much cheaper – a tenth of the cost.
4
d, a, b, c
5
1
2
3
4
a
b
a
a
Summit Living
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19:05
Page 77
TRANSCRIPTION
CNN Reporter: Wining and dining at the Earth
Summit as world leaders flock to
Johannesburg for the largest
gathering of heads of states ever
outside of New York City. Add to
that tens of thousands of delegates
all converge in one of the city’s most
affluent neighborhoods and a stone’s
throw away from its seediest slum.
Hotels and guesthouses, restaurants
and diners all put on their broadest
smiles and waited to cash in on the
Summit bonanza.
This is up-market West Cliff Hotel, a
fifteen-minute drive from the Summit
site. Delegates here dine on the
finest of foods, everything from fresh
oysters to caviar, under a backdrop
of the city’s imposing skyline.
Delegates pay for their own meals
and, general manager Mark Holden
says, they aren’t any different from
any of his regular guests.
Mark Holden:
I haven’t seen any extravagance, uh, in
my hotel ... much, as though I might
have wished for that. But that
notwithstanding uh, I think really ...
uh, we’re missing some of the, the
true point … point of this ... I think
the World Summit, certainly with the
amount of delegates that we’ve had
to look after in Johannesburg - I
think we’ve looked after somewhere
between thirty-five to forty thousand
delegates from all corners of the
Earth - that has provided, um, many
more employment opportunities.
CNN Reporter: Employment opportunities that have
enabled the one-hundred-twentyroom West Cliff to hire additional
staff for the Summit period.
But it’s not just the up-market
neighborhoods that are attracting the
delegates.This is Soweto: scene of
some of the most violent incidents
during the Apartheid era.
And this is Wandies—a local shebeen
and one-time illegal gathering place.
Today, it’s a famous restaurant for
both tourists, and now Summit-goers.
There are no frills here; just a buffet
lunch of homegrown delicacies.
First Man:
The business is very good.We make
sure that when they think of coming
to this country, we are number one the first choice.
CNN Reporter: Conference organizers say, despite
critics calling this Summit just
another UN extravaganza, there’s
very little to show that it’s been all
about high living.
Second Man:
Well first we didn’t live a high life. I
hope you saw that. And one of the
things that we did do was to really
encourage a certain frugality. For
instance, the UN didn’t host any
functions.We worked with the ... I
hope you people realise this. I’ve
lived on sandwiches most of the
time, and so have most of the
delegates. And this has not been a
place full of these lavish dinners and
parties ... .
CNN Reporter: But many agree there are great
disparities between the rich and
poor throughout the world. And
Johannesburg is no different.
Kofi Anan:
We would want to change these
inequities, we would want to be able
to uplift the poor, we want to be able
to improve their conditions and so I
… whilst the observation may be
accurate, it really is not the issue … .
CNN Reporter: Total running costs to the UN of the
entire World Summit, roughly
$1million, one tenth of what it cost
to host just over half as many
delegates at the Rio Earth Summit
ten years ago.
Summit Living
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Unit 7
Page 78
Location Innovation
Video Summary
After You Watch
With a tracking device from the Pinpoint company,
developed for the Hong Kong market, employers know
where their workers out in the field are.The device
does not use expensive satellite technology, but mobile
phones and costs on average $20 dollars a month for
each employee. Productivity in companies that use this
device has increased by between 10 and 15%. Critics
think the system is intrusive, but the Pinpoint company
insists that they protect the privacy of the user.
Students’ own answers to the questions in the
introduction.
1
Learners’ own answers
2
Once learners have done this exercise, you can
tell them that Pinpoint has, in fact, developed
all of these.
You could also ask them what features they
think are essential. For example, a button that
allows the user to switch off the device.
3
Learners’ own answers
Before learners do the exercise, you could play part of
the video and ask learners why they think Thomas Joy
keeps looking at his mobile.
Before You Watch
a: tracks his movements: shows where he is
as he moves from place to place
b: out in the field: working outside the
company, not in the office
c keep tabs on: make sure you know where
someone is and what they are doing;
intrusive: when something or someone is
involved in something or somewhere where it,
he or she is not wanted
Start 21:39 End 24:14
While You Watch
Question 2 is not directly answered in the report, but
it draws on learners’ understanding of the device, and
is also a way of teaching the expression ‘to pinpoint
something’.
78
1
b
2
To pinpoint something means to show exactly
where it is, so it is a good name for the
company.
3
aT
b F:The information is delivered in real time.
cT
dT
eT
fT
gT
Location Innovation
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19:05
Page 79
TRANSCRIPTION
CNN Reporter: If you want to know where Thomas
Joy is, just contact him on the mobile.
Don’t worry if he doesn’t pick up.
Joy’s phone is linked to a computer
that tracks his movements.
As he roams around Hong Kong,
dispatchers from his company can
see his position on a map.The
information is delivered in real time
and is accurate within two hundred
meters.That’s not a precise fix, but it
can be delivered without the use of
expensive satellite technology.
First Man:
Previous technologies have tended to
rely on, um, hardware-driven
solutions, and that has proven to be
an expensive proposition for
companies.
CNN Reporter: The Pinpoint Company has
developed a tracking service for the
Hong Kong market. Regular mobile
phones are used and subscribers are
also able to receive text messages
from their employer.This service has
been adopted by, among others,
Watson’s Water, which has hundreds
of workers out in the field, delivering
supplies and fixing water coolers.
That’s what Thomas Joy does.
Companies are paying on average
twenty dollars per month to keep
tabs on each of their employees.
Firms use the tracking system to
improve efficiency.
First Man:
It typically ranges anywhere between
ten to fifteen percent in increase
productivity; that is a tangible saving,
okay, which you can measure by how
many additional jobs the field
workers are doing in a month.
CNN Reporter: Some analysts point out these
systems can be intrusive, since
employees are always carrying a
mobile.
Second Man:
As an employee, there’s just not
much you can do about it if your
boss wants to know where you are.
You could, in the past, say that you
were at the office, when in fact you
were at some bar. In fact, there are
some bars called “The Office” where
you can actually tell truthfully to your
boss or in fact your spouse that
you’re still at some bar.
First Man:
All of our services are developed
around the fact that we must protect
[the] privacy of the user.
CNN Reporter: It’s too early to say where this
technology is heading but, in Hong
Kong, the impact could be farreaching. Pinpoint’s technology knows
whether an employee’s downtown or
in the suburbs, on a mountain, or
even in the middle of the ocean.
First Man:
That means one of the guys is
drowning.
CNN Reporter: But, before you mount a rescue, give
the employee a call. Even if they’ve
disappeared, most likely they’ll still be
breathing.
Andrew Brown, CNN, in the Hong
Kong Cross-harbor tunnel.
Location Innovation
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Unit 8
Page 80
Designer
Video Summary
Start 24:18 End 26:31
Amid scenes of Paris fashion shows, the report looks at
the interdependent relationship between the fashion
world and the fashion media and asks whether the
latter can make or break a designer. Contributions
come from a designer who does not appear to worry
too much about the media: from Anna Wintour, Editor
of Vogue, the magazine from which Giorgio Armani has
withdrawn advertisements because of the magazine’s
editorial content: from movie star John Malkovitch
attending a fashion show. One contributor doubts that
when it comes down to the consumer buying, he or
she will make up his or her own mind.
While You Watch
1
Yes. She shows how important the designers
think reviews are: journalists have been banned
from fashion shows after giving negative
reviews.
2
Examples of the ‘love-hate’ relationship:
love
when the right critic writes a positive article,
this can make a designer’s career.
media want to be at every show.
support of designers in the media, eg in Vogue.
hate
when a critic writes an acidic article.
Giorgio Armani pulled ads from Vogue because
they refused to change editorial content.
Consequently Vogue lost thousands in
advertising revenue from Armani.
3
All of them except d. Armani withdrew ads
from Vogue. He was not banned.
You may want to point out to the first person
interviewed has a foreign accent.
Before You Watch
Check that learners understand all the word
partnerships in ex. 2.
Before you ask learners to look at the While You
Watch questions, you could play the report to elicit
vocabulary.
Pause to ask them how they would describe the
journalists’ reactions, and what sort of reviews they will
write. Elicit the words: good review, negative review and
acidic article.
You could ask them how they would describe the
clothes they see to elicit, eg, avant-garde.
You could also ask them what information they think
the report might contain.
80
1
a 3, b1, c 2, d 9, e 8, f 10, g 5, h 6, i 4, j 7
2
1f media attention 2 c two-page spread 3 b
editorial content 4 a publicity stunt 5/6 h/d
fashion media/fashion critic 7 g to promote a
designer 8 e advertising revenue
After You Watch
Learners can work in pairs and then give feedback to
the class.
Designer
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TRANSCRIPTION
Paula
Hancocks:
Designer:
Paula
Hancocks:
Paula
Hancocks:
Anna Wintour:
Paula
Hancocks:
John
Malkovitch:
Paula
Hancocks:
Man:
(Some) times ...
... it can go with the ... with the ...
with the press people and sometimes
it doesn’t do it. So, for me, it’s very
important just to be free and to
dream and then to ... for the others
to ... just to ... understand or not.
There’s no doubt the media attention
is there every single show we have
been to this week, the press have
been clamouring to get that spot. So,
the real question is whether or not
the power of the pen can make or
break a designer.
Paula
Hancocks:
You can promote a designer like
crazy, ... you can take ads like crazy.
Eventually, there’s no editor standing
next to a consumer at the store. She
or he will buy whatever he looks
good in. And, so, no amount of
cajoling from anybody is going to
make them put it on their body.
So, the love-hate relationship
between fashion and media remains.
Unlikely to change, considering they
each financially feed one another.
Paula Hancocks, CNN, Paris
A two-page spread in one of the
glossy magazines could cost about
two hundred thousand dollars a
month. Giorgio Armani recently
pulled ads from Vogue around the
world after editor, Anna Wintour,
failed to change editorial content.
We support the designers that we
feel deserve to be in the magazine
and deserve attention and that we
think that our readers would like to
know about. And, you know, they’re
in the magazine for all sorts of
reasons because they’re avant-garde
or new or, um, maybe they appeal to
more realistic, sense of dress. But, uh,
they’re in the magazine because
Vogue believes in them for whatever
reason.
One of the best publicity stunts:
famous clients attending your show.
The less they are part of the fashion
circuit, the better.
I really don’t follow it religiously ... I
mean, I occasionally watch fashion TV,
... but I don’t really come to these
things very often. Sort of a one-off or
so.
But at the end of the day, does a
good review sell clothes?
Designer
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Unit 9
Page 82
The Britishness Test
Video Summary
After You Watch
Stereotypes of Britishness are contrasted to today’s
multi-cultural Britain.The government is concerned
that the number of immigrants not being able to speak
English leads to problems of isolation within some
ethnic communities.They are introducing a test which
immigrants will have to take in English before they can
be granted British citizenship.This test will include
aspects of British traditions which can be hard to
define. Not everyone is in favour, and Trevor Phillips, a
member of the London Assembly, speaks out against
the test.
Learners should justify their answer in question 1.
Learners could work in pairs and then as a class.
You could also ask learners if they think they would
pass a citizenship test in their country.
Background
The Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act passed in
2002 introduced the evaluation of language skills into
the naturalisation process. People who want British
citizenship must demonstrate sufficient English,Welsh
or Scottish Gaelic! This has caused some to say, why
not recognise, eg Punjabi as an official language as there
are as many Punjabi speakers in UK as Gaelic speakers.
Learners could work in pairs to come up with their
idea of Britain and then pool them as a class.
Before You Watch
a 4, b 6, c 7, d 10, e 3, f 8, g 5, h 2, i 9, j 1
Start 26:33 End 28:58
While You Watch
82
1
The traditional stereotype is of Buckingham
Palace, red telephone boxes, tea and scones.
While these things still exist, the face of
modern Britain is a multicultural one.
2
A citizenship test for immigrants to make sure
they know about Britain and can speak English.
3
b, c, e, f, h, i, j
4
b
5
a, b
6
a
7
b
8
b
T h e B r i t i s h n e s s Te s t
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TRANSCRIPTION
CNN Reporter: When you think of Britain, what do
you visualise to be particularly
British? Changing of the guards at
Buckingham Palace? Or, perhaps, you
think of red telephone boxes, doubledecker buses, and black cabs. Or
maybe your idea of quintessential
Britain is having a cup of tea and
some scones.
But those stereotypes just don’t get
it. Modern, multicultural Britain is
more difficult to define, but the
government is trying anyway. It’s
asked this man, Bernard Crick, to
construct a test for immigrants.
They’ll have to pass it - in English before being granted citizenship. And
if they can’t speak English, the
government will give them free
lessons.
Bernard Crick: We’ll be trying to give a fairly
accurate description of British
customs and habits. Now, that will
have to be at some level of generality
because, after all, they vary in
different parts of the country.
CNN Reporter: In fact, cultural peculiarities are
cherished.
Bernard Crick: If your good cameraman called me
“Luv” in London, I would punch him.
But in Derbyshire and South
Yorkshire, that is how men talk to
men. Little things like that can cause
tremendous problems.
CNN Reporter: But, not being able to speak English
has caused greater problems, leading
to a growing isolation of some ethnic
communities. Prescribing a
curriculum and test for citizens has
some Britons concerned.
First Man:
The whole idea of compulsion and
setting rules, and so on, is a terrible
mistake and is against what I regard
as, uh, British traditions.
CNN Reporter: British traditions? Well, that’s the
whole problem. Even the British are
unsure of what being British means.
Second Man:
Being British means for me, mmm ... ,
good question.
Third Man:
Being British means being kind of
united, individual though at the same
time.
First Woman:
I think I feel more European than
British.
Second
Woman:
I’m proud to be British in the sense
like, you know, I feel that I belong
here.
CNN Reporter: The proposed citizenship test is still
being drafted. Until it is instituted,
perhaps the only real test of
Britishness is if you can stomach
warm beer on a cold day.
T h e B r i t i s h n e s s Te s t
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Unit 10 Hollywood’s Marketing Machine
Video Summary
After You Watch
Hollywood has a powerful marketing machine which it
uses to promote its films in the domestic and
international market. It customises its campaigns and
release dates to suit specific markets.The one thing
that is same all over the world is the need for
promotion, including promotional tours by stars.
1
a revenues b overseas market c marketing
machine d campaigns e customised
f promotional tours g piracy
2-3 Learners can think of a Hollywood film or
a film from another foreign country.
Before You Watch
Before doing the exercises in the worksheet, you could
show the report without sound to elicit vocabulary
including:
videos, video store, DVD, new releases, film, action, film
premier, film stars, to make a film, schedule, studio, piracy,
counterfeiting.
The word flicks appears in the report: tell learners this
is an informal word for films.
You could ask learners what information they think the
report will give.
For exercise 2 learners could work in pairs. Some of
the expressions may be new to them, so tell them not
to be discouraged, but to see which they may know.
Then go through the answers with them - use this as
the teaching phase.
1
a-c: Learners’ own answers at this stage –
answers from report appear in the next box
2
a 4, b 8, c 9, d 10, e 2, f 3, g 10, h 7, i 6,
j 1, k 5
Start 29:01 End 31:30
While You Watch
Answers to Before You Watch after seeing
report.
a They have to listen to what local people tell
them and release films, taking into account the
local calendar, eg school holidays.
b Market by market, but use promotional tours
in all markets.
c Counterfeiting and Internet piracy.
84
1
1a 2a 3a 4a 5a 6b
2
promotion
3
They wanted to make him into a well known
figure and to promote the movie XXX that he
stars in.
4
$150 million
5
DVD counterfeiting and Internet piracy
H o l l y w o o d ’s M a r k e t i n g M a c h i n e
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TRANSCRIPTION
Stephen Moore: We usually say that 50 percent of the
revenues come from international.
But there are many occasions, uh, the
biggest of all time, Titanic, for
example, where the international
market ... can ... uh, ... can contribute
double the domestic market. And, not
only in the cinema business, but
throughout the film’s life through
home entertainment: DVD and video
and television ... .
CNN Reporter: Big stars, big action flicks, and
characters that tug at the
heartstrings typically do well around
the world.
Child:
Yeah, I’m going to see Star Wars!
CNN Reporter: Still, all agree, a big global payday can
be elusive. So the industry turns to
its legendary marketing machine to
hedge its bets.When it comes to
international marketing, there’s no
such thing as “one size fits all.”
Dick Cook:
I can’t think of a single campaign that
we’ve done in the last ten or fifteen
years that has been exactly the same.
CNN Reporter: These films may be made in
Hollywood but, in most cases, local
staffers - in important markets
around the world - help customise
their campaigns.
Dick Cook:
You have to check your own ego and
really, uh, rely upon what your people
are telling you.Time and time again,
they’ve been right, and our instincts
would have been completely wrong.
CNN Reporter: Studios also schedule a film’s release
date with the local calendar in mind.
Dick Cook:
The holidays are different.We want
to schedule them when the families
are available - when kids are
available. And that can differ from
country to country ... .
CNN Reporter: One thing that’s as important in
Trenton as it is in Tokyo ...
promotion, promotion, promotion!
Joe Roth:
A star’s appearance in an overseas
market has an unbelievable, uh-uh,
benefit.
CNN Reporter: Roth’s Revolution Studios - a highprofile, two-year-old startup - sent
the star of Triple X [XXX],Vin Diesel,
a relative unknown around the
world, on a twelve-country
promotional tour.
Joe Roth:
I know he went to twelve different
cities in Europe alone. And he went
to Japan. And he went to Hong Kong.
CNN Reporter: And the result of all those frequent
flier miles for Vin Diesel ... ?
Joe Roth:
It makes him a star ... whatever
movie he does, they now know him
in that territory.
CNN Reporter: Thanks in part to its nearly onehundred-fifty-million-dollar
international box office, XXX is
Revolution’s most successful film to
date. But all that money and all that
marketing may not matter as
Hollywood faces a potentially deadly
opponent to its global dominance:
piracy!
Stephen Moore: We have an epidemic DVD
counterfeiting problem at the
moment. And, on the top of that, we
have an emerging - and potentially
explosive - problem of Internet
piracy.
H o l l y w o o d ’s M a r k e t i n g M a c h i n e
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Unit 11 Bagging a Niche Market
Video Summary
The report looks at the story behind Tote Le Monde, a
popular brand of bag that despite being relatively
inexpensive is sold alongside much more expensive
brands in expensive department stores such as Saks
Fifth Avenue.The report asks how can such a brand
can compete.
It speaks for itself means:
a. it is so good, there is no need to advertise it.
b. it is very uncomplicated.
1b, 2b, 3a, 4a, 5a
Background
Start 31:32 End 34:08
Tote Le Monde created an environmentally friendly,
durable, functional and fashionable ‘carry-all’ bag, made
out of recyclable plastic.
It expanded to making travel bags, placemats, shower
curtains, belts, business portfolios all in its instantly
recognisable signature material of striped recycled
plastic.
Tia Wou does all the company’s advertising and the
brand has been featured in the high fashion press such
as Elle, Elle Decor, InStyle and Oprah.
Ask learners what they think the title Bagging a Niche
Market means. Explain that ‘to bag’ in this context
means to get something that other people want. It is of
course, also a play on words, as the product the report
focuses on is a bag.
Ask learners if they have heard of, or anything about
the company Tote Le Monde.
While You Watch
Before You Watch
1b, 2c, 3a, 4f, 5g, 6e, 7d, 8h,
Extra Activity
The report uses a lot of idiomatic language.You could
photocopy the following for learners, or ask them
verbally to choose the correct answer.
1
86
5
Products which fly off the shelves are:
a. a failure and have to be removed from the
shops.
b. very popular and sell very fast.
2
For some customers money is no object.They:
a. think there’s no point in having money.
b. don’t have to worry about money, because they
are so wealthy.
3
Someone who goes against the norm:
a. does not follow the usual way of doing
something.
b. lacks common sense.
4
It is here today, gone tomorrow means:
a. it is temporary, transient.
b. it travels a lot.
1 a successful
b small
c accessories
d major
e reasonable
f expensive
g Tia Wou
h niche
i skeleton-size
j low
k high
2 company name
products
some products made from
price tag on a Tote Le
Monde bag
annual sales figures
country of design
country of manufacture
designer
number of full-time staff
retail outlets where sold
Tote Le Monde
accessories
recycled plastic
$28
approx. 2 million
US
Bolivia
Tia Wou
8
Neiman Marcus,
Barneys, Saks Fifth
Avenue
After You Watch
1. Learners can work in pairs or groups. Elicit
learners’ opinions of the bags.
Ask learners what sort of consumers the bags
would appeal to, eg. to the fashion-conscious ..., to
the environmentally aware. Ask them if they think
women may be particularly swayed by the
environmentally-friendly aspect of the product.
2. In asking learners to discuss this, you might also
point out that the co-founders are both women. In
what way might this affect the company they run?
Bagging a Niche Market
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TRANSCRIPTION
CNN Anchor:
CNN Reporter:
Tia Wou:
CNN Reporter:
Carmen
Borgonovo:
CNN Reporter:
Neiman Marcus, Barneys, Saks Fifth
Avenue - institutions in high fashion
and in high prices. But don’t tell that
to entrepreneur Tia Wou, a fine arts
graduate from Brown with a flair
for business. Her accessories are
flying off the shelves of high-end
stores at rather low-end prices.
Rhonda Schaffler reports:
In high-end fashion it seems money
is no object. From shoes to
jewellery to handbags, no detail is
too small and no price tag is too
big. But when Tia Wou wanted to
break into the luxury market with
an all-purpose handbag, she went
against the norm. Abandoning high
price points and big overhead for
inexpensive bags and a skeleton-size
staff. Armed with only her credit
card and one sample bag,Tia did the
unthinkable. She made luxury store
buyers take notice of her brand,
Tote Le Monde.
We’d go into the stores and I would
talk to the sales people and I’d say,
‘Is your buyer in?’ And the buyers
are never around. And so I’d say,
‘Well, you know, I designed this bag
and maybe you want to look at it
and then I’ll call your buyer and I’ll
tell her to ask you what you think.’
And then from there it sort of
propelled on and we were into
Barneys soon we were into Barneys
after that and that’s how we
started.
The brand was created in 1993.
Working out of her downtown loft
has kept Tote Le Monde’s costs low
and returns high. But how does a
company with a full-time staff of
only eight, compete with a big-name
luxury brand?
have graced several magazine
covers. At Bendel’s in New York,
they’re placed among bags that are
five to ten times the price.Tote Le
Monde remains a low-priced bag
that is still a status symbol.
Carmen
Borgonovo:
CNN Reporter:
Tia Wou:
CNN Reporter:
It is rare, but then if you hit that
special niche and, you market it well
and if the product is good, you
know, it works. But it is rare. And
they’ve definitely captured a special
market in the accessories market.
Annual sales for the bags are in the
two million dollar range.Tote Le
Monde’s niche is here today.Will it
be gone tomorrow?
I think it’s a very strong concept. I
think it’s a very strong product.You
know sometimes there are trends
that come and go. It’s just got a high
visibility, it’s because it’s so …, the
product is fun and it speaks for
itself.
For Business Unusual, I’m Rhonda
Schaffler. CNN Financial News, New
York.
Well, it’s because it’s so greatlooking. I mean it’s as simple as that.
It’s great to wear. It’s colourful. It
just looks good for the summer.
And just because it’s not expensive,
doesn’t mean it’s not a great brand.
Tote Le Monde’s signature style is a
colourful bag made out of recycled
plastic.The main factory is in
Bolivia, but the design takes place
inside Wou’s apartment. She does all
her own advertising, and her bags
Bagging a Niche Market
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Unit 12 PCCW’s Acquisitions
Video Summary
Start 34:10 End 37:04
PCCW is Hong Kong’s dominant telecom service
provider. Its credit rating assessed by Moody’s (a
company which helps investors to assess credit risks) is
likely to be downgraded. PCCW first acquired Hong
Kong’s main phone company and then acquired
considerable debt when the Internet and telecoms
industry collapsed. It assured Moody’s that it would not
make any new acquisitions until 2004, but then put in
an informal bid for UK’s Cable & Wireless. It has
reportedly also shown interest in Japan Telecom.These
are both companies which would be selling low.
The sale of Cyberport, a high-tech office and residential
development may help PCCW, as it will provide funds
for new ventures.
While You Watch
Background
Thirty-six-year-old chairman of PCCW, Richard Li, is
the son of a Hong Kong tycoon Li Ka-Shing.
PCCW had $4.2 billion in net debt at the end of 2002,
and set a goal of reducing debt by another $1 billion by
the end of 2005.
After this report was made, PCCW was downgraded
by Moody’s in May 2003. One effect of this is that it
will have to pay more interest.
1
Yes, Hong Kong’s main phone company.
2
Japan Telecom. It also made an informal bid for
Cable & Wireless, but did not pursue this.
3
Moody’s wants to review PCCW’s credit rating
downwards.
4
1a
2a
3a
4a
5a
6b
7b
Before You Watch
1
88
a to scotch rumours
b a bold move
c to borrow money
d a mountain of debt
e credit rating
f a buying spree
g to make an informal offer
h mature market
i to buy assets
j to undertake an acquisition
P C C W ’s A c q u i s i t i o n s
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TRANSCRIPTION
CNN Reporter: A few years ago, PCCW turned its
own Internet business into a
promising telecom, acquiring Hong
Kong’s dominant phone company. It
was a bold move since PCCW had
little cash of its own and had to
borrow huge sums of money to back
its bid.
PCCW’s chairman, Richard Li,
persuaded banks to lend him what he
needed. But, as the Internet and
telecom’s markets collapsed, the firm
was left with a mountain of debt,
which undermined its credibility.
Li quickly reassured analysts there
would be no more giant acquisitions.
The Moody’s ratings agency says it
was told buying sprees were being
suspended, at least until the middle
of 2004. So Moody’s was taken by
surprise when PCCW confirmed
February 6 it had made an informal
offer to buy Britain’s Cable and
Wireless.
Moody’s
representative: We’re concerned that, uh, if the
company was to undertake an
acquisition, it may have ... an impact
on its credit profile, specifically, if
there was additional debt that was
taken into the group profile.
CNN Reporter: PCCW has now said it will not be
pursuing Cable and Wireless, and is
trying to scotch rumours it is in talks
with Japan Telecom to buy part of its
business. Both targets are something
of a puzzle.
Analyst:
The only thing that links potentially
Cable and Wireless and Japan
Telecom and any other assets that
might come up in the next week or
two is that they’re simply assets
which are seen to be you know lowpriced, there’s an opportunity for a
deal-maker uh such as Richard Li to
go in and do what he’s done before.
CNN Reporter: But analysts say there are good
reasons for Richard Li to buy assets
outside Hong Kong, which is now a
mature market.
Analyst:
Organically, there’s almost no such
thing as organic growth in Hong
Kong.The economy is slow so we
won’t … until the economy recovers,
... we won’t see recovery in a fixedline sector. And, even then, that won’t
be, won’t be very strong.
CNN Reporter: One bright spot may be Cyberport, a
high-tech office and luxury residential
development, being built by PCCW.
PCCW will be trying to raise extra
funds when the residential units go
on sale very shortly.
Of course, this project isn’t exactly
what you’d call ‘organic,’ either. But it
may stop critics trashing PCCW,
since the firm will have more cash
for future ventures, whatever they
may be.
Moody’s says it intends to sit down
with PCCW officials and reevaluate
the company’s finances. At the
moment, Moody’s has put PCCW on
review for a ratings downgrade.
Moody’s
representative: Our statistics indicate that, about 65
per cent of the time, the outcome is
in the direction of the review.
CNN Reporter: In other words, the odds are against
PCCW.
Andrew Brown, CNN Hong Kong.
P C C W ’s A c q u i s i t i o n s
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Page 90
Unit 13 Environmentally Friendly?
Video Summary
Start 31:32 End 34:08
A consortium of oil companies led by ExxonMobil is
constructing a pipeline from land-locked Chad through
Cameroon to the coast, in order to export Chad’s
crude oil.The report looks at the criticisms levelled at
the project.
While You Watch
Background
This project has taken years to get off the ground in
part because of environmental issues.
The pipeline will be 1,050 miles long and 30m wide and
the project included drilling 300 oil wells in southern
Chad.
1
The answer to question 1 is to some extent
subjective, but the reporter does seem to give
more emphasis to the negative points
surrounding the construction of the pipeline.
2
A consortium of oil companies led by
ExxonMobil.The World Bank.
3
a +, b -, c +/-:The World Bank says it is
complying with environmental standards, but
critics say the project is harming the
environment. d -, e -, f +, g +
4
a The shift starts at 7.00a.m.;
b The workers have to lay 5km of pipeline a
day;
c It is a $4billion project;
d Construction work started in October 2000.
e ExxonMobil and its partners say the Doba oil
reserves will last twenty-five to thirty years;
f Thousands of people are employed in both
Chad and Cameroon, and 85 % of them come
from local villages;
g GDP of Chad before start of the project in
1999;
h Growth in Chad in 2001
Before You Watch
For ex. 1, play the video without sound.
To elicit laying a pipeline, welding, digging a trench, gruelling
work, you could ask the following questions: What are
these people doing? Do you think it’s easy work?
To elicit rainforests, you could ask: What impact do you
think the construction has on the environment?
What sort of pipeline do you think it is?
2
90
a consortium of companies
b to undertake a project
c to threaten or harm the environment
d to replant crops
e to comply with standards
f an advisory group
g to step out of line
h in dire need of
After You Watch
Allocate parts and then show learners the report once
again before they argue their point of view.
Environmentally Friendly?
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TRANSCRIPTION
CNN Reporter: This is grueling work.The shift begins
at seven in the morning and, before
the end of the day, the men must lay
pipes covering a distance of five
kilometers.They work in teams: one
places the pipes on the surface, then
another moves in and welds them
together, the third team does a
second phase of welding before the
pipes are placed in trenches two
meters below the ground.
This is a $four-billion project
undertaken by a consortium of oil
companies led by ExxonMobil.When
complete, it’ll provide land-locked
Chad with a market for its crude oil.
Construction work began in October
of 2000, including the development of
three oil fields in Chad’s Doba basin.
ExxonMobil and its partners say the
Doba oil reserves will last twentyfive to thirty years.
Environmentalists say the project also
threatens Cameroon’s rain forests—a
vegetation already under threat from
nomadic farmers, hunters and
unregulated logging.Villagers will be
allowed to replant crops on the land,
but no trees or houses.
The World Bank’s involvement in the
project has been criticised by some,
especially since an internal report
released in September said the
project will harm the environment.
But the bank says there is an
independent advisory group
established to ensure that all involved
comply with environmental
standards.
First Man:
We are using or working with
external partners to ensure that this
complies. And I think that’s about as
much as the bank or these
governments can do. And, if the oil
companies were to step out of line, I
think we’ve got enough leverage to,
to ensure that, uh, ... they meet their
commitments.
CNN Reporter: Many of the people here are farmers,
and will lose a significant number of
their crops and farmland.
Towns along the pipeline route are in
dire need of roads, more schools,
hospitals, and other essentials. Critics
say the project brings no such
development to these communities.
ExxonMobil counters that argument
by pointing to the employment
opportunities the project has
provided thus far.Thousands of
people are employed in both Chad
and Cameroon, and 85 percent of
them come from local villages.
Second Man:
Before this project started year
1999, year 2000, the growth of Chad
was 1%, GDP growth of Chad was
1%.We started construction activity
at the end of year 2000. Growth in
Chad in 2001 was 9%.
CNN Reporter: Yet, critics say those figures are
miniscule when compared with the
millions that ExxonMobil stands to
make. And, as construction of the
Chad/Cameroon pipeline nears
completion, there are even calls for a
reevaluation of the project to ensure
that development does indeed come
to towns such as this one, in the
heart of central Cameroon.
Environmentally Friendly?
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Unit 14 Microfinance
Video Summary
Start 40:19 End 44:12
The Ugandan Microfinance Union (UMU) lends small
sums of money to people who are not served by
commercial banks. It was set up by Charles Nayalli and
Rodney Schuster and is making a real difference to the
lives of micro entrepreneurs, people who sell
vegetables, have small stores, make clothing and run the
other small businesses that make up the backbone of
developing economies. UMU is finding that the
repayment rate on loans is excellent.
While You Watch
Background
New members of UMU can borrow 50,000 shillings.
When this loan has been repaid, they can then borrow
100,000 shillings. Loans continue to increase by
increments of 50,000.When Regias Kokkures says ‘I
started with 500,000,’ she probably means 50,000
shillings.
Speakers
You may want to tell learners that Regias Kokkures and
Charles Nayalli have quite strong accents as non-native
speakers. English is the official national language of
Uganda and is taught in schools, though a number of
Niger-Congo languages are also used.
1
a F bT cT dT eT
2
a studying
b 1997 (they conceived of the idea in 1996, but
opened the bank in 1997)
c the Bank of Uganda and USAID
d Large commercial banks
e easier
3
All except f are given as examples
4
a. $100
b people who sell vegetables: have small stores:
make clothing: run other small businesses
c 98%
d 100%
e nearly 4% a month
f about 5
g guarantors
h it costs as much to administer a small loan as
a big loan
i Because of social pressure. If one member of
the group is late paying, the other members
cannot borrow.
Before You Watch
Before you do the exercise, you could play the report
without sound and elicit vocabulary from learners.
Learners should already be familiar with most of the
vocabulary from the Coursebook.
After You Watch
You can see if learners’ opinions have changed as a
result of watching the report. Ask them to recall their
answers to the questions in the introduction.
Master’s students: students studying for a
further high-level degree
to conceive of: to form an idea, a plan
a mission: a goal, an aim
a misconception: an incorrect idea
Check learners understand all the vocabulary.
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Microfinance
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TRANSCRIPTION
CNN Reporter: For Regias Kokkures, 50 thousand
Ugandan shillings - almost thirty
dollars - was enough to change her
whole life.
Regias
Kokkures:
I started with five hundred thousand.
I bought a pig; then one hundred
thousand, I bought another pig ... that
from there I expanded ... two
hundred ... three hundred and
something ... up to now where I am.
CNN Reporter: Three years ago, she owned two
cows.Today, with the help of a loan
from the Ugandan Microfinance
Union - or UMU - she supports a
family of eight on the income from
this farm.
Regias
Kokkures:
I’m happy ... I’m okay ... because I can
buy whatever I feel I want ...
CNN Reporter: Charles Nayalli and Rodney Schuster
conceived of UMU in 1996 as
master’s students at Brandeis
University. Using initial funding from
the Bank of Uganda and USAID, they
opened their doors a year later with
a mission: to reach the people
commercial banks weren’t serving.
Charles
Nayalli:
I think there is another
misconception: that the poor people
do not pay. So the banks find it
rather, uh, unreasonable to go and
bank with “unbankable people,” as
they say. But we have seen that that
is not true.
CNN Reporter: UMU has twelve branches around
the country, like this one in
Kasangati, about nine miles away
from the capital. For most of the
people in this town, microfinance
organisations have offered them the
first assets they’ve ever had from
formal financial services.
Charles
Nayalli:
I think we are really changing the
lives of people. One way is by
increasing their household incomes.
They can now access certain things,
like their children can now go to
school, or even better schools.They
can have better meals.They have
better accommodation and, generally,
life becomes a lot easier when your
income raises.
CNN Reporter: With an average loan size of a
hundred dollars, UMU is helping
micro entrepreneurs ... people who
sell vegetables ... have small stores ...
make clothing ... and run the other
small businesses that make up the
backbone of developing economies.
While larger banks may baulk at
lending such small amounts, UMU
boasts repayment rates that would
be the envy of traditional institutions.
Rodney
Schuster:
We have a ninety-eight percent
repayment record on time, and a
hundred percent historically ...
historical repayment record.
CNN Reporter: Microfinance institutions have been
criticised for their high interest rates
- UMU charges nearly four percent a
month. But, according to Schuster,
that’s the price of staying in business.
Rodney
Schuster:
It essentially costs the same, uh, to
process and administer a thirty-dollar
loan as a five-thousand-dollar loan.
So, um, our costs are much higher.
CNN Reporter: They try to minimise some of those
costs by spreading the risk.
Rodney
Schuster:
What we do is we make people form
small groups of about five people from five to ten - uh, and they
guarantee each other ... they act as
guarantors, essentially. So, it’s quite a
simple concept ... . So one borrows ...
if that person doesn’t pay, no one in
the group can then borrow. So the
other four people then put pressure
on the first borrower who’s not
paying their loan, to pay. And that’s
really how it works. Basically: social
pressure.
CNN Reporter: The Ugandan government has taken
note.Within the next few months,
the parliament is expected to pass a
bill allowing microfinance
organisations [MFIs] to become
regulated financial institutions and
expand their scope of services.
Victoria White: I think the Bank of Uganda really
sees MFIs as a solution to reaching a
broader number of people ... really
providing services on a much
broader basis to micro
entrepreneurs throughout the
country.
CNN Reporter: Micro entrepreneurs, like Regias
Kokkures, who have shown that a
little can go a long way.
Microfinance
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Unit 15 At the Centre of MCIWorldCom
Video Summary
In the 1990s telecom companies were encouraged to
grow. Bernard Ebbers grew WorldCom, acquiring MCI
in 1998.When it then tried to acquire Sprint, the
acquisition was blocked by the regulators. Bernard
Ebbers was CEO of WorldCom, but was forced to
resign. He owed the company $360 million.
Background
In 2001 WorldCom’s ‘creative accounting’ came to light
showing that the company was in debt, when its
accounts had showed otherwise. Its stocks crashed and
employees lost their jobs.
Before You Watch
1
a 3, b 5, c 9, d 1, e 4, f 10, g 2, h 8, i 7, j 6
2
b, i, j
Start 44:14 End 46:19
While You Watch
1
a, d, e
2
Telecoms
3
They built for the future, but built in excess of
any foreseeable demand.
4
To make it as big as AT&T, to build a dominant
global service provider.
5
Not originally from the world of business: he
was a novelist, a poet, a milk-truck driver and a
bar bouncer before buying a long-distance
phone company in 1983.
6
MCI
7
Sprint
8
Because he borrowed $360 million from
MCIWorldCom and because the company was
in severe debt (but did not show this in its
accounts).
After You Watch
Learners can choose how hostile or sympathetic they
are in their presentation of WorldCom and Ebbers.
94
A t t h e C e n t r e o f M C I Wo r l d C o m
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TRANSCRIPTION
CNN Reporter: When you surf the Internet, you’re
not only dipping your toes in the
dot-com ocean, you’re also using
voice and data networks built by
telecommunications’ companies. And,
in the nineties, those companies,
especially WorldCom, rode the
dream of the Internet to new
heights.
Analyst:
They are the foundation of the
Internet and people threw bags of
money at them to go out and build.
Telecom providers at large were
rewarded for building well in advance
of any demand that could actually be
seen in the market.
CNN Reporter: That desire to build sparked Bernard
Ebbers to grow WorldCom to a size
that would rival AT&T.
A former novelist, poet, milk-truck
driver, and bar bouncer, the
Canadian-born Ebbers bought his
first long-distance phone company in
Jackson Mississippi, in 1983.Two
years later, he went shopping, buying
some sixty companies over the next
thirteen years.That buying binge
included the nation’s number two
long-distance provider: MCI in 1998.
Analyst:
The intention was just to build a
dominant global service provider, and
you can really see the energy, the
drive, that relentless ambition that
happened in the bid for Sprint.That
was actually a very bold move.
CNN Reporter: As it turned out, it was too bold for
federal regulators who blocked the
attempt to buy Sprint.That didn’t
help WorldCom stock, neither did
the dot-com bust. Regulators started
wondering about $360 million in
loans that Ebbers got from his own
company.With its debt approaching
$30 billion, Ebbers resigned as
WorldCom CEO in April. But the
alleged fraud happened on his watch.
Now WorldCom investors are
waking up from Ebbers’ Internet
dreams to a reality that includes an
investigation* and possible
bankruptcy.
Ebbers :
You don’t know what it’s like to leave
the farm with cow manure on your
boots and have to put this miserable
suit on to come to the ...
A t t h e C e n t r e o f M C I Wo r l d C o m
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LEXI-CARDS
Photocopy, complete and cut out these lexical cards:
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Resource File 12 © Heinle