focus on business english

Companies, even in industries such as construction and engineering, where training costs were high, found that young people in the later years of their apprenticeships were making ‘a high contribution relative to their wage costs’, said the task force.

Honda had reported that it took two years to retrain someone trained by another car manufacturer. Apprentices by contrast ‘quickly understood their (Hondaj )company values and practices’.

Apprenticeships were also a ‘costeffective way of replacing an ageing workforce and ensuring the effective transfer of knowledge’, Xerox, the office equipment group, told the task force

From the Financial Times

COMPREHENSION

1.Answer these questions.

1.Who is Mike Turner?

2.How much does BAE expect to save by training apprentices?

3.What three major advantages of recruiting apprentices are mentioned in the task-force report?

4.How much did ВТsave?

5.When do apprentices make a productive contribution to a company? 6.Why does Honda like apprentices?

7.What are the two main benefits of apprenticeships, according to Xerox?

2. Match the words to form expressions from the article.

FOLLOW UP

Discuss these questions.

1. Do you think experience on the job is more important than qualifications? 2. . Is it important for bank managers have a degree from a good university?

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AUDIO SCRIPTS

Unit 1 Employment

1.1

Well, what usually happens is that an employer will advertise a vacancy or new post – sometimes both inside and outside the company. Then, after they receive all the applications, they shortlist the candidates, choosing those who appear to meet their criteria. Next, they will assemble an interview panel and call the candidates to an interview. Some employers choose to check references at this stage to avoid delays later, while others wait until after the interview when they have chosen one of the candidates. Provided the panel are happy, the employer will make a job offer and the successful candidate starts work. Often they attend induction sessions or are given a mentor who helps to train new staff.

1.2 (I = Interviewer, SK = Dr Simon Kingston)

I How do you identify and attract the best candidates for a particular job? SK Well, the most important thing for us at the beginning is to have clear

and full briefing from our clients. So we spend a great deal of time talking to a range of people in the client organization. And then, according to the sort of job that we are seeking to fill, we will use three different sorts of method for identifying candidates. One, the most obvious one, is advertisement in appropriate newspapers or journals. The second is by asking for nominations from within our client organization of appropriate candidates. And the third, and most labour intensive for us, is our own, original research. And that will be derived from our database, from talking to authoritative sources in the relevant market place, and then from beginning to map the business sector in which we think we are most likely to find good candidates. All three of those different methods of identifying candidates will cross-reference, and ideally we’d like to find candidates who’re sourced from each of the three areas. And sometimes, when we’re very fortunate, we will find an individual who comes referred from each of the three approaches.

Unit 2 Quality

2.1 (I = Interviewer, MA = Mike Ashton) I How do you define quality in business?

MA Delivering good quality is absolutely fundamentally important to any business. I believe the best way to define quality is to look very closely at customers’ expectations and then to look at the ability of a business to meet or exceed those expectations, consistently.

Customers generally place great trust in the ability of their favourite brands or companies to address their requirements dependably, whether it be a soup powder, a hotel room, or a massive conference facility. Our job in our business is

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to make sure that our customers’ requirements are very clearly understood, and to ensure that at every stage in the guest’s journey through our hotels, we are able to address our guest’s needs smoothly, easily and efficiently.

2.2 (I = Interviewer, MA = Mike Ashton)

I How should quality improvements be measured?

MA Well, as a general guide, I’d say quality improvements should be measured consistently over a period of time, and very accurately, so that everybody believes in the reports and the figures that are circulated round an organisation. But in three specific ways, we at Hilton measure the quality of our performance. Every year we contact thousands of guests to understand just how satisfied they are with all the important areas in our business, whether it be the way they arrive and depart from a hotel, or the quality of their bedroom and the food that they eat. We contact all of our team members, the people who work for us around the world to understand how satisfied they are with the experience of working for Hilton, their career development, and the training they receive. And finally we look at how efficiently and consistently we deliver our own operational standards. So, if we for example say that no one should take longer than a couple of minutes in a queue to be checked in our hotel, are we delivering that consistently around the world? And we do that through mystery visits to all of our hotels. That gives us guest satisfaction, operational efficiency and the satisfaction of our team members, in all of our hotels around

the world.

2.3 (I = Interviewer, MA = Mike Ashton) I Does high quality mean high cost?

MA I guess it can do, but I think what’s more important is, is investment in high quality, something that will pay dividends to a company, will it help to build profitability? Certainly delivering good quality consistently is not something that can be done without any cost to an organisation. Investment in good people, in good training, in efficient practices and processes will always mean that there is investment required. However, it should also be at the heart of delivering what any organisations’ customers are looking for, and if they are satisfied, and if they keep coming back as a result, then what should follow, is healthy revenues, and even healthier profits, and that for me makes investment in quality something that’s very affordable, in fact it’s absolutely essential.

Unit 3 Marketing Change

3.1 (I = Interviewer, RB = Richard Brown)

I How does Cognos analyse the character of a business?

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RB Understanding the character or personality of a business is important because it shapes and defines everything the organization does and can do. So we use a combination of four approaches. First, we study the tone and styleof the company’s communications. Second, we interview the company’s top executives in depth. Third, we conduct research, more broadly, across the company’s staff and its customers. And finally, we’ll analyse the company’s internal documents. That provides insight into how the business talks to itself. And when we’ve got that sort of input we can classify a business as one of sixteen distinct character types. And these handle aspects of change, innovation and relating to customers in very different ways.

3.2 (I = Interviewer, RB = Richard Brown)

I Can you give an example of how a business changed its organization and why?

RB Yeah. Many businesses try to change their organization – their culture – and they do that to be better able to compete and grow. But it’s a very hard thing to do. It’s often easier to change a business’s character by merging with or a competitor. A good example of this was the merger of Guinness and Grand Metropolitan in 1998. This created a twenty-three-billion-pound company, Diageo, the world leader in spirits. The top team achieved a very substantial change in culture by being very clear at the outset that it was creating a new and different culture from the two companies that merged. And they did that by laying out a very clear vision. They were very specific about how the new business would be run. They laid out clear values and ways of working for staff and they backed this up with a huge investment in staff training. This created a completely new culture which has been hugely successful.

3.3 (I = Interviewer, RB = Richard Brown)

I Are some types of business organisation always more successful thn others? RB Well, our research suggest that there are sixteen different types of orga-

nizational character, or culture. And no single type is consistently associated with business success or market leadership. Having said that, we o find that particularly successful companies tend to be similar in three ways. First, they’re future oriented: they have a very clear sense of where they are headed. Second, they’re customer-driven: they invest huge time and energy in understanding and responding to their markets. And third, they’re value-driven. By that I mean that people inside the organization are very clear about the values that should guide their decisions and behaviours – the principles by which the business is run.

Unit 4 Careers

4.1 (I = Interviewer, SK = Dr Simon Kingston)

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I What advice would you give to someone planning an ambitious business career?

SK I think there isn’t one single pattern for success in a business career. But there are one or two things that are apparent and common themes in the careers of a lot of successful people. One of those is an honest understanding of the individual’s own strengths and weaknesses, and that allows them, I think, both to plan the sort of organisations in which they will work and which they are likely to succeed; but also, very importantly, allows them to react rapidly but appropriately to opportunities that are unplanned that present themselves. And I do think that’s something that distinguishes really successful people from those who are average in their professions. I do think one of the other characteristics that is apparent amongst very successful business leaders is a curiosity that even thirty years in the same sort of business doesn’t dilute or indeed destroy. At the very top of major organisations, people like Sir John Browne, now Lord Browne, at BP, say has meant he has been engaged in a very similar sort of activity for the whole of his career – he demonstrates real interest in innovation and also an open-mindedness about the structure of the industry that he leads and how it ought to consider its role and indeed the very essence of what it does in the future. That ability to remain interested in the core essence of one’s business is, I think, something that distinguishes the successful. Many of the rest of us lesser mortals get bored very easily, or lose the ability to spot the interest and to sustain motivation and momentum on the strength of it.

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СПИСОК ИСПОЛЬЗОВАННОЙ ЛИТЕРАТУРЫ

1.Bethell G., Aspinall B. Test Your Business Vocabulary in Use / G. Bethell, T. Aspinall. – Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. – 101 p.

2.Cotton D., Falvey D., Kent S. Market Leader. Intermediate Business English Practice file / D. Cotton, D.Falvey, S. Kent – Harlow: Longman, 2005. – 125 p.

3.Cotton D. Falvey D. Kent S. New Edition Market Leader. Intermediate Business English Course book / D. Cotton, D.Falvey, S. Kent. – Harlow: Longman, 2010. – 169 p.

4.Cotton D. Falvey D. Kent S. Market Leader. Intermediate Business English Course book / D. Cotton, D.Falvey, S. Kent. – Harlow: Longman, 2005. – 176 p.

5.Emmerson P. Business Grammar Builder / P. Emmerson. – New York: Macmillan Publishing Limited, 2002. – 273 p.

6.Evans V. Successful Writing Proficiency / V. Evans. – Newbury: Express Publishing, 1998. – 160 p.

7.Flinders S. Test Your Professional English. Business: General / S. Flinders. – London: Pearson Education limited, 2002. – 114 p.

8.Flinders S. Test Your Professional English. Business: Intermediate / S. Flinders. – London: Pearson Education limited, 2002. – 106 p.

9.Hollett V. Business Opportunities / V. Hollett.– Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. – 192 p.

10.McKellen J.S. Test Your Business English. General Usage / J. S. McKellen. – New York: Penguin, 1990. – 95 p.

11.Mascull B. Business Vocabulary in Use. Intermediate. / B. Mascull. – Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. – 172 p.

12.Mascull B. Market Leader. Intermediate Business English Teacher’s Resource Book / B. Mascull. – London: Pearson Education limited, 2005. – 213 p.

13.Mascull B., Wright L. Market Leader. Pre-Intermediate Business English Teacher’s Resource Book / B. Mascull, L. Wright. – London: Pearson Education limited, 2007 . – 157 p.

14.Mascull B. Market Leader. New Edition. Intermediate Business English Teacher’s Resource Book / B. Mascull. – London: Pearson Education limited, 2006. – 213 p.

15.Rogers J. New Edition Market Leader. Intermediate Business English Practice File / J. Rogers. – London: Longman, 2010. – 110 p.

16.Sweeney S. Test Your Professional English: Marketing / S. Sweeney. – London: Pearson Education limited, 2002. – 114 p.

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СПИСОК ИСПОЛЬЗОВАННЫХ ИНТЕРНЕТ-РЕСУРСОВ

http://www. BrainyQuote.com

http://www. WorldofQuotes.com

http://www.ft.com

http://www.economist.com

http://www.howabout.com

http://www.bestsampleresume.com

http://www.guardian.co. uk

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Учебное издание

FOCUS ON

BUSINESS ENGLISH

Part 1

Учебно-методическое пособие для вузов

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Отпечатано в типографии Издательско-полиграфического центра Воронежского государственного университета.

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