It’s interesting to know.

People have different areas of their life, which we can call “life spaces”. Our personal or private life space is the part which we keep to ourselves or share with our family and very close friends. Our public life space is the part that we are happy to share with the people we meet on a casual or short-term basis. People from specific cultures have a small private space and relatively large public space: those from diffuse cultures have a much larger private space.

Which are you?

People from specific cultures… People from diffuse cultures…..

seem friendly and accessible because seem hard to know because they don’t

they give information about themselves tell you much about themselves unless

freely from the very first meeting. they know you well.

have friendly relationships with a lot have a few close friends with whom

of people who are not necessarily close they have a long-term relationship and

or lifetime friends. These relationships share many aspects of their private

may seem superficial to people from lives.

diffuse cultures.

are happy to talk about personal don’t like to talk about personal matters with anyone they meet. matters in the context of a business

relationship.

M O D U L E 2. Telephoning.

Unit 4. Preparing to make a telephone call.

Vocabulary

. Making a call

Taking and leaving messages

A cold call

Unit 5. Cross-cultural communication on the telephone.

Barriers to oral communication

Handling complains.

Improving a conversation.

Unit 4. Preparing to make a telephone call.

Telephoning is not a problem, the problem is how to do it.

Introduction.

Making a phone call isn’t always easy – especially if you don’t know the person on the other end of the line very well. Why is it so?

Discuss the following questions :

1.What is difficult about making a first-time call to a stranger?

2.What can you do to make calls easier?

3.What can you do to establish a relationship more quickly?

4.How can you make sure that the stranger knows who you are and what you want?

5.What is difficult about dealing with an angry person on the phone?

6.Should you be an active listener and always polite while speaking on the phone?

Text 1. Read the story and correct the statements which you think are not right.

Many people nowadays avoid the telephone and prefer to send emails instead. But calling is more effective in a number of situations: dealing with urgent problems, getting an immediate response, discussions and joint decision-making and making personal contact with your business partners Many of us will do everything possible to avoid telephoning in English. For obvious reasons, using the phone has special difficulties. It is worth pointing out three things you should always keep in your mind.

Firstly, most of the language used on the telephone in the business context is fairly restricted. There are numerous functions that recur repeatedly in various phone calls.

The second point is that with increased practice, confidence develops and so does efficient performance.

The third is that it is possible to control what happens in a telephone conversation, to ask the caller to call back, to ask for repetition, to ask the other person to speak more slowly, to check and to summarize information.