Archive for September, 2007
BEP 67 INT (Transcript & Exercises) - Travel: Morning Greeting and Chat
Continuing our series on business travel ( see BEP 55, BEP 56 & BEP 66), this intermediate business ESL podcast covers informal greetings and conversations in the workplace.
What are some examples of informal English you can use to greet your work mates? How do you make friendly chitchat 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.
Key Language: Informal Greetings & Talking about Movies.
Listening Questions: BEP 67 INT - Morning Greeting and Chat
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?
BEP 66 INT - Travel: Hot Desking and Making Requests
In this intermediate Business English Pod lesson, 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.
BEP 66 INT - Travel: Hot Desking and Making Requests
1) What kind of expressions do Honesto and Megan use to make polite requests?
2) What type of training is Honesto taking part in?
BEP 65 ADV (Transcript & Exercises) - 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.
Listening Quiz: BEP 65 ADV - Advanced Questioning Techniques (Part 2)
1) LCD TVs produce a lot of heat. Why is this important to Brad’s sales pitch?
3) What are the main good points of the coating that Brad wishes to sell to Andy?
BEP 64 ADV (Transcript & Exercises) - Questioning Techniques (Part 1)
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 Business English Podcast series we’ll be looking at some answers.
The communication skills we’ll be learning can be used in any situation, but we’ll be focusing in on an area where questioning techniques are particularly important: needs analysis. This refers to analyzing the needs of a customer as part of the sales process. We’ll study a series of questioning techniques that can be used to “drill down to” – that is, get to or uncover – the information you want.
Listening Quiz: BEP 64 ADV - Advanced Questioning Techniques (Part 1)
1) What does Brad think of the Stratos’ facility?
2) How long has Stratos been located in its current location?
3) How long has Stratos been located in its current location?
