En esta lección de Business English Pod, Continuamos mirando el vocabulario y las colocaciones para discussing a budget.
A budget is a plan for spending money. And you’ll often hear the word “budget” used as a noun. But “budget” is also a verb. We can budget carefully or poorly. We can budget not only money but also time. And how we budget can help or harm our business. If we spend too much money, we may decrease profits. But if we don’t spend enough money, the business may not grow or thrive. It’s all about balance.
A typical budget includes a long list of items that we need to spend money on. And in a budget meeting, you’ll hear people talk, or argue, about where to spend more and where to spend less. Entonces, how do we do this? Bien, in today’s dialog, we’ll learn some of the common expressions we use when we discuss budgets.
Antes de escuchar, hablemos un poco sobre English collocations. Una colocación es un grupo de palabras que los hablantes nativos suelen usar juntas. Una colocación correcta suena natural, mientras que una colocación incorrecta suena poco natural. Por ejemplo, in English we say “budget cuts” to talk about lower spending. But we can’t say “budget slices” or “budget chops,” even though “slice” and “chop” mean “cut.” Those simply aren’t natural expressions.
Escucharás muchas colocaciones útiles en el cuadro de diálogo de hoy.. A medida que escucha, trata de distinguir estas combinaciones naturales de palabras. Luego, explicaremos qué significan y cómo usarlos en el informe..
Today we’ll rejoin Kate, Harry, and Linda as they discuss the budget for their IT department. Kate and Harry are managers, and Linda is their supervisor. Ultima vez, they talked about the past year’s budget. Hoy, you’ll hear them making a plan for the upcoming year.
Preguntas de escucha
1. What does Kate say the finance department wants to focus on?
2. What is Harry’s concern about replacing the workstations?
3. What does Kate think can be changed to save money?
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