A global surge in wholesale power and gas prices means households across Europe face higher energy bills this year and beyond. In the worst-case scenario, many of the region’s most vulnerable are facing fuel poverty according to consumer groups. Prices started to rise above historical levels last September and have soared further this year.
According to Donald Trump, “trade wars are easy to win.” しかしながら, as usual, reality appears to contradict Trump’s claims. In the current dispute between the U.S. and China, it doesn’t look like a winner will emerge any time soon. As CNN notes:
The Trump administration made good on its threat to raise tariffs on $200 billion worth of Chinese exports from 10% に 25%, marking a sharp rise in tensions between the world’s two largest economies. After months of talks aimed at ending a year-long dispute that has already hurt global growth and rattled stock markets around the world, the latest US salvo risks triggering a new wave of tit-for-tat responses.
へようこそ ビジネス英語ポッドfor today’sビジネス英語語彙lesson on how to describe company performance.
Every company’s goal is to make a profit. But how they go about that is different. Different industries, different business models, different approaches – There’s no simple recipe for success. And there’s no simple, single way to measure whether a company is performing well.
代わりに, we look at many different factors when we measure company performance. We’ve also got a lot of different expressions in English for discussing the topic. And many of theseEnglish expressionsare what we call “collocations.”
What’s a collocation? 上手, it’s just a natural combination of words. Ever heard the expressions “turn a profit” or “boost the bottom line?” We don’t say “grow a profit” or “up the bottom line.” Those simply aren’t natural collocations. And if you say something like that, you won’t sound natural.
So studying collocations is a great way to sound more natural with your vocabulary. You can learn combinations of words, rather than single words on their own. As you listen to the dialog today, try to pick out some of these collocations, これらについては後で説明します.
ダイアログで, we’ll rejoin a meeting at a private equity firm. Three colleagues, Maria, クラウディア, とテイラー, are talking about some of the companies they’ve invested in. They’ll use lots of great collocations as they discuss the performance of these companies.
質問を聞く
1. What does Claudia think about SmartMoney? 2. What does Taylor think they should do before selling off SmartMoney? 3. What has Claudia been focusing on with Byron Industries?
