BEP 57 – Water Cooler Chitchat: Sports Idioms (1)

This Business English Podcast lesson is the first in an ongoing series where we’ll listen in on some typical chitchat around the office water cooler. You’ll find a water cooler in offices around the world – usually in the break room where employees gather to drink a cup of coffee or tea and take a rest from work.

And during these breaks, you might meet with a colleague and exchange words about life, your jobs, your company, sports, politics or whatever. So “water cooler chichat” has come to refer to all types of informal communication that take place at the office.

We’ll be listening in on Jan and Jen, who work in the same office of Ambient, an American telecoms company, gossiping around the water cooler. They are discussing the latest industry news: Accent, a major European player in the market, has just announced the takeover or buy out of Ambient’s main competitor,TelStar.

Listening Questions

1) Do Jan and Jen think Accent’s takeover of TelStar was a good idea?
2) Why was there a delay in the takeover?

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Business News 11 – iPhone Launch

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Today, were talking about Apple’s new mobile phone: the iPhone. Actually it’s a combination of phone, iPod and internet browser all rolled into one gadget. We’ll be looking at the hype – or massive publicity – surrounding the launch of the iPhone and taking a closer look at the marketing vocabulary we use to describe product launches and the retail market.

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Business News 10 – Viacom Sues YouTube for 1 Billion Dollars

Today we have a Business English News story on a company that’s been in the news quite a bit recently – YouTube. In particular, we refresh and discuss some of the key vocabulary we covered in our Video Vocab series on the law and legal vocabulary:

Video Vocab 04 – Basic Legal Terms
Video Vocab 05 – Court Cases
Video Vocab 06 – Commercial Law

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Video Vocab 05: Law 2 – Court Cases

YouTube video

This is the second in our 3-part Video Vocab series on the law. Today we focus on the vocabulary used to describe the actions and people involved in a court case.

Key Vocabulary:
Court case, trial, judge, jury, witness, defendant, innocent, guilty, plea, testify, deliberate, verdict, convict, sentence, fine & prison sentence.

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