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BEP 67 INT - Travel: Morning Greeting and Chat
23/09/2007
Download BEP 67 INT - Travel: Morning Greeting and ChatThis is the fourth in a series of intermediate business ESL podcasts that focus on business travel. In this series we’re following a group of trainees who work for the telecommunications company Ambient as they visit their head office in Michigan in the U.S. How do you make friendly chat with your colleagues? What kinds of topics can you talk about? We’ll be looking at some answers. In particular, we’ll cover informal greetings and how to chat about movies. As almost everyone loves to go to the cinema, movies are usually a good topic for small talk. As our listening begins, it’s Monday morning. Honesto, a trainee from the Philippines, says hello to his American colleague Brenda as she comes in to the office. Listening Questions: 1) What does Brenda mean when she says “veg out”? 2) What are critics and what did they think about Rush Hour 3? 3) How does Brenda like her coffee? Transcript Study Notes. Online Activities Exercises Share This
BEP 66 INT - Travel: Hot Desking and Making Requests
16/09/2007
Download BEP 66 INT amp;ndash; Travel: Hot Desking and Making RequestsWhat do you do if you don’t have office space for all your employees or many of them usually spend most of their time traveling or working offsite? In the 90s, some clever manager came up with a solution – hot desking – and the rest is history. Hot desking refers to using temporary work areas that are set up for any staff who needs them. With the invention of laptop computers and the Internet, we can pretty much work anywhere. Now, in many companies around the world from hi-tech software firms to management consultancies and even increasingly in more traditional industries such as banking and engineering, a certain number of work areas are made into “hot desks.” As long as they are empty, any one can work there. Sit down, plug in your computer, and you are ready to go! In companies where a lot of people are traveling, this is a great way to save money because it reduces unused space to a minimum. In this episode, we’ll be continuing our series on Business Travel. We’re following Honesto, an Ambient Telecommunications employee from Manila, on a training trip to head office in Michigan, USA. The main language focus of the lesson is on making polite requests. Along the way, we’ll also look at some different ways to express likes and dislikes. Honesto has found himself an unused desk and is working along when all of the sudden he gets a new neighbor, Megan. Listening Questions: 1) What kind of expressions do Honesto and Megan use to make polite requests? 2) What type of training is Honesto taking part in? 3) Where is Megan from? Transcript Study Notes. Online Activities Exercises Share This
BEP 65 ADV - Questioning Techniques (Part 2)
09/09/2007
Download BEP 65 ADV - Questioning Techniques (Part 2)This is the second in a two-part Business English Pod series on questioning techniques. Last time in BEP 64 we looked at making small talk and gathering information with open questions, getting specific information with probing questions and guiding the conversation by showing interest. This time we’ll learn several more advanced questioning techniques, including direct questions, to get information from someone who is being uncommunicative, reflective questions, to guide the conversation, and hypothetical questions, to suggest possible action. Together these techniques form a series that can be used to drill down to the information you need. As you’ll remember, the listening takes place in a customer needs analysis: Brad, from chemical coatings producer Forrest and Brown, is visiting his customer Andy. Andy���s company, Stratos, puts together circuit boards for use in consumer electronics. At the end of Part 1 , Brad had just used a probing question to determine what exact kinds of products Andy’s company focuses on. When he discovered that Stratos was making a lot of boards for TVs, Brad decides to follow this line of questioning. As we’ll see, this is because TVs are a good match for Brad’s products. The specific kind of TV they are talking about is an LCD TV, often referred to as a flat screen TV. Listening Questions: 1) LCD TVs produce a lot of heat. Why is this important to Brad’s sales pitch? 2) What are Andy’s main priorities in selecting conformal coatings to protect the circuit boards Stratos produces? 3) What are the main good points of the coating that Brad wishes to sell to Andy? Transcript Study Notes. Online Activities Exercises Share This
BEP 64 ADV - Questioning Techniques (Part 1)
02/09/2007
Questions are an important part of almost every conversation. So being able to ask good questions is critical to communication. How can we make our questioning more effective and efficient? In this two-part series we’ll be looking at some answers.
BEP 63 PP: Indirect Persuasion in a Social Context
26/08/2007
Download BEP 63 PP: Indirect Persuasion in a Social ContextLife is actually a constant exercise in persuasion, wouldn’t you say? What I mean is we don’t just need to persuade people in the meeting room; actually, we are constantly using the tools of persuasion across a wide variety of situations ranging from serious to casual. In addition to formal situations, everyday persuasions include when to meet, whether to extend a deadline, and even such common things as where to have lunch or which movie to see. So the persuasive process we learned in BEP 59 , 60 62 is useful not just for formal business situations, but across all sorts of contexts that come up many times every day. You don’t always want to use the indirect approach to persuasion, but it’s often very useful. Here’s an example of the persuasive process at work in an everyday situation: Julie is persuading her husband, Steve, to try a new vacation spot. As you listen, see if you can identify the five steps of the Monroe sequence: 1) Getting attention 2) Establishing need 3) Satisfying that need 4) Visualizing the future 5) Asking for action Because this is an informal situation, the language Julie uses is obviously quite casual and she doesn’t include any numbers or statistical data; but, as always, a convincing description of the problem in the need step is the key to successful persuasion. And it’s important to state the problem from the perspective of the audience, which in this case is Julie’s husband. Transcript Study Notes. Online Activities Exercises Share This
