Тема 2. Company structure

Business vocabulary - people and workplaces (employees and management, management and administration, labour, personnel and human resources); managers, executives and directors managers and executives: UK, managers and executives: US).

Speaking: describing organization chart (Human Resources department).

Reading: job description.

Speaking: job titles and their responsibilities (What are the main responsibilities of each title? Would you like to do any of the jobs described? What is it about this job that appeals to you? If none of the jobs appeals to you, what is it about them that you don’t like?).

Listening: people talking about working in different departments.

Language in use: present simple (usual activities and routines; with adverbs of frequency; for facts, information and statistics, for the things that are timetabled, scheduled or fixed; for proverbs, sayings and general truths) and present continuous (temporary situation; the action which is happening now; future plans and arrangements; changing situation; annoying situation). Stative verbs. Verbs thing, appear, feel, enjoy, see, hurt, ache etc: the peculiarities of their usage.

Listening: two interviews about their jobs – the analysis of showing the interest in the conversation.

Speaking: Talking about your work or studies. Initiating and maintaining a conversation. Expressing enthusiasm by using fulfilling, satisfying, challenging, dynamic, it’s good to .., It’s fun to …, It’s interesting to … . Softening negative comments by rather, a bit.

Writing: a cover letter, memos (layout, contents, length). Memos giving information. Memos about smoking. Memos: points to remember (purpose, layout – who it is to, who it is from, date, subject, key phrases). Analyzing the patterns, making up the memos.

Тема 3. Business travel

Vocabulary: business traveling by air and train. Adjectives and adverbs connected with business traveling: basic, cramped, luxurious, rapid/ rapidly, etc.

Making contact: making arrangements via email, meeting visitors on arrival, talking about time and the weather, talking about plans.

Reading: Business travel today (facilities for business travelers, the problems facing business travelers, companies’ attitudes to business travel).

Language in use: comparatives and superlatives (synthetic and analytic forms; constructions as … as, not as … as, using phrases a little, a lot, much more, much less, far more, far less; double comparison; more and more, less and less).

Speaking: making contact (making arrangements via email, meeting visitors on arrival, talking about time and the weather, talking about plans).

Listening: Choosing a hotel for a meeting.

Writing: Making request and writing concisely. Finding shorter equivalents (make a telephone call – telephone – phone – call, etc). Requesting a service (different elements). Composing a message. Letter practice.

Тема 4. Communication at work

Speaking: Communication channels: face-to-face, written, electronic. The most appropriate in different situations.

Collocations: save, confidential, time, official, final, immediate, urgent.

Reading: detecting general theme of the text; filling the gaps in the text. Vocabulary: telephoning.

Speaking: telephoning (phones and numbers: phone, call and ring, numbers, doing things over the phone; getting through: phoning scenario, asking to speak to someone, voicemail; messages: giving and taking messages, spelling names, checking information; arrangements: making arrangements, closing the conversation, changing arrangements).

Language in use: countable and uncountable nouns (a, an, the, each, every, a dozen of, a couple of; several various, all sorts of, all kinds of, hundreds of, thousands of, etc).

Listening: likes and dislikes about answering machines and mobile phones.

Writing: Filling registration form; getting the style right (contents, length, style, vocabulary choice).

E-mail requesting information (layout, prepositions of place, sentence fragments, requests, letter practice).