Иностранный язык в сфере профессиональной деятельности (Intercultural Business Skills). Учебное пособие по английскому языку

9. Match the vocabulary units (1–6) with explanations (a–f).

f)to be caught in perspective

10.Give synonyms to the words from the box.

GRAMMAR REVIEW: PAST MODALS

11. Comment on the meanings of the modal verbs.

1.They should not have devoted all their energy to their careers.

2.They must have been trapped in their jobs that are unrewarding and undeniably stressful.

3.Workaholics can’t have chosen to be workaholics.

4.To help these individuals, some companies should have introduced childcare, generous maternity and paternity leave.

5.These initiatives can’t have been ineffective for workaholics.

6.Consultants can have adjusted working practices to accommodate other responsibilities.

7.We might have expected to see improvements in staff turnover, absenteeism or days lost through industrial action or illness.

8.Their career and the resultant imbalance can’t have been much more interesting to them than the spouse and the family.

9.Running a business must have offered a unique opportunity to express one’s talents.

10.The levels of stress among their staff must have been rising.

11.If they wanted people to work for them further they must have been adjusted their expectations.

12.Modal verbs often have different forms to refer to past time depending on the

meaning. Study the examples: I had to visit the dentist. It must have been an awful experience.

Fill in the gaps by putting the concept expressed by the verb form from the first centence into the past. Notice that in some cases a different form of the modal verb is needed, and in others a totally different verb.

1.He can ski really well. – He ______ really well when he was ten.

2.Tom can’t live here. – Shakespeare ___________ in that house, it wasn’t built until 1840.

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3. You must try harder! – You ________ work hard to pass your exam yesterday.

4. I can finish my work by Saturday, but it won’t be easy. – I ____________ by Saturday, but it wasn’t easy.

5.I must check the oil before we leave. – I _______ the oil before we left.

6.I could visit you next Saturday. – I _________ last Saturday but you didn’t invite me.

7.Let’s take the map. We may get lost. – I wonder where they are. They

_______.

8.You should stop smoking before it’s too late. – You __________

smoking before it was too late.

9.It must be raining. Everyone has their umbrella up. – It ____________. The ground is wet.

10.My child may do whatever she wants. – My child __________

whatever she wanted when she was young.

13. Choose the correct modal verb in the following extract.

Your team must be / might be just forming / formed, or you may be / can be renewing your goals for the near future. You should / could have lost some members recently or have recruited new ones. The course on building a successful team may / might help you and will / must take you through the various stages of a team’s development.

DISCUSSION

14. Comment on the following statements.

1.Happy people contribute better!

2.Can people dying at work be happy?

3.Can they fully contribute?

WRITTEN REFLECTION

15.Write a review of this article.

16.Prepare a brief outline of useful tips for professionals who are going to work with people of different business cultures about time management in your country.

SPEAKING

17. Read the following text.

WORKING ABROAD

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Chuck Walters: Yes, meetings are rather a problem. All the subjects are discussed at once and no time is allotted to each, while the Germans have an agenda, a schedule for each subject and you know when the meeting will end. Of course, there are drawbacks to the German, rule-based approach. They don’t find it easy to change their strategy according to the behaviour of a client during an interview for example, often their inflexible approach ruins the deal.

Susan Summers: I guess I’m going to have to get down to some serious reading before I go over or else I might find myself in some embarrassing situations!

18. Discuss these questions.

1.How do French and German management styles differ?

2.The French view the organization (firm) as an authority network, how do the Germans view it?

3.How does the decision-making process function in the two countries?

4.What does the French education system teach people?

5.How do attitudes toward time differ?

6.And how does this reflect in meetings?

7.What is the drawback of the rule-based approach of the Germans?

19. Prepare a list of tips for doing business in Russia using past modals: (should do, should have done…).

Lesson 3. TIME MANAGEMENT

INSIGHT INTO THE TOPIC

A recent Microsoft ad proclaims, “You can’t control your boss, your workload, your weight, your backhand, your weeds, your life. At least now you can control your cursor!”

Are these things totally beyond our control? Why? Can we control time? If yes, then how?

VOCABULARY

1. In the United States, the proverb “time is money” is commonly used. Time is spoken about as if it were money. According to US idioms, one can budget, lose, save, invest, give, and spend time. Complete the following sentences with the correct idiom from the box.

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5.By the end of the project ___________ between two companies was so good that there were no more time management problems and everyone understood each other.

6.Everything seemed to work so well between the two companies in the beginning that it was impossible ________ all the problems that they had by the second phase of the project.

7.The Italian team _____________ exactly what they wanted the new machines to do. This made it easier for Swiss team to design the computer software.

8.The _____________ plans were much more successful than the previous ones. The changes were perfect.

4. Study time tips.

Lucy Speed runs seminars on how to manage time.

“Everyone complains that they never have enough time. Lots of employees do my time management courses, to learn how to organize their time, Here are some ideas.

Use a diary (BrE) or calendar (AmF.) to plan your day and week. Personal organizers (small pocket-size computers) are good for this.

Plan your day in advance. Make a realistic plan (not just a list) of the things you have to do in order of importance: prioritize them. Work on things that have the highest priority first.

Avoid interruptions and distractions, which stop you doing what you had planned.

Do jobs to a realistic level of quality in the time available, and to a level that is really necessary. Don’t aim for perfectionism when there is no need for it. Try to balance time, cost and quality.”

5. Harry is a magazine journalist. Give him advice based on the ideas of timemanagement. The first one has been done for you.

1. Harry started the day by making a list of all the things he had to do. Harry should make a realistic plan and prioritize the things he has to do,

not just make a list.

1.He started an article, but after five minutes a colleague asked him for help. Harry helped him for half an hour and then they chatted about last night’s television. _______________________________________________________

2.He started on his article again, but he heard police cars outside and went to the window to look. _________________________________________

3.He wanted to make the article look good, so he spent a lot of time adjusting the spacing of the lines, changing the text, etc. even though an editor would do this later. ________________________________________________

4.At 6 p.m. he realised he hadn’t started on the other article he had to write, but he went home. On the train, he realised he had arranged to have lunch with an important contact, but had forgotten. ____________________________

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5. Harry decided he needed some training to help him change his behaviour. _______________________________________________________

DISCUSSION

6. Are you punctual?

PUNCTUALITY

When business people from different time orientations (monochronic and polychronic) do business together, problems can occur especially with punctuality, since monochronic cultures depend much more on fixed schedules than do polychronic cultures. Punctuality means that when you set a time for an appointment or a date, you arrive exactly at the time set and no later.

In your point of view, what is the appropriate time to arrive for the following events? Share your answers with the class.

7. Compare your answers with those of American in Appendix Activity 3. Answer the following questions as a class.

1.How do your answers differ from the other students’ and the American’s answers?

2.For the events above, how late would you have to be before you would have to apologize?

3.What do your answers tell you about your culture and punctuality? Do you think you are from a generally monochronic or polychronic culture? Based on what you know and on the American’s responses, do you think the United States is a monochronic or polychronic culture?

4.Imagine you are going to do business with a person from a different time orientation than yours. How would you react to the differences? How would you prepare yourself for the differences in punctuality and schedules?

5.The following are some more examples of countries whose cultures tend to be monochronic or polychronic. Enter your country and as many other countries as you know about in the spaces provided:

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8. What do you know about time-management? What is the purpose of it? Do you use this technique?

READING

Text 10. CONTROL YOUR TIME

Get Aggressive About Managing Time! Time and money are both very important in business. Yet, like me, many business people tend to give a lot more specific thought as to how to spend their money. Too often, how we spend our time is only thought of in terms of “What am I going to do today?” or “What should I do next?”

Just as a well-run business should carefully develop a strategy to determine how to spend its money, an effective businessperson should carefully develop a strategy to determine how to use his or her time.

Just as a well-run business follows a budget in spending money, an effective businessperson should also follow a budget (or schedule) in spending time.

Prioritize Your Time! The first step in effective time management is not to develop a schedule, but instead to develop a time strategy. The time strategy should be based on a short list of time priorities.

You start by identifying the number one way you can most increase profits by use of your time; then the number two way; then the number three way; etc. This short list of time priorities forms the foundation for your time planning for every week of the year.

These time priorities may be identical to key parts of your company strategy or they may be different. For example, if your company strategy is based upon excellent customer service, spending lots of your time in customer service may not be the best use of your time if you have a terrific customerservice manager.

Narrow Your Focus! Focus is crucial for time management, and the fewer priorities you focus on at once the more productive you will be.

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After you have your major time priorities for the year established, you should allocate them by week or by month. Like it or not, a lot of our time each week is going to be eaten up by non-strategic items that we have no control over; hence it is important to limit the number of strategic time goals we have for each week. So even if you have ten strategic time goals for the year, you may want to focus on no more than one or two of them in any given week.

For example, in a particular week you may plan on working on your number one time objective, let’s say planning improvements for the company’s major product line, and a secondary goal, let’s say re-evaluating the dealer marketing program, but no time on other secondary time goals that you plan on tackling during other weeks.

Set Aside Uninterrupted Time! Every week you should make up a detailed time plan, which you modify each day as needed. Except in times of crisis, try to make sure day-to-day issues don’t push your strategic time priorities off your schedule.

Generally your major strategic time priorities will involve such activities as planning, thinking, and developing ideas. More so than day-to-day issues, such activities require big blocks of uninterrupted time.

Constant interruption kills any hope of effective time management. One way to avoid interruption is to make it clear that when your door is closed you are not to be disturbed. Another is to have regular meetings, such as every week, with the people that you interact with the most and insist on saving nonpromising issues for these meetings.

Avoid My Time Traps! These are some “time traps,” all of which have plagued me that you should guard against:

–spending a disproportionately high amount of time in the offices where the most congenial people are as opposed to where the most important issues are;

–wasting too much time getting daily updates on routine activities as opposed to waiting for a more meaningful weekly summary;

–jumping too eagerly into the routine, more straightforward work and putting off the more complex and difficult work;

–not starting the more important work first thing in the morning;

–not bothering to make up a schedule for each day;

–overscheduling – scheduling each day so tightly that it is impossible to stay on track and the schedule quickly becomes meaningless.

COMPREHENSION

9.Explain, what the author means by: to get aggressive about managing time; to prioritize time; short list of time priorities; to narrow one’s focus; a strategic time goal; to allocate priorities.

10.Expand on the statements from the text 10.

Time and money are both very important in business.

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Focus is crucial for time-management.

Constant interruptions kill any hope of effective time management.

11. Summarise the content of the text 10 in a small paragraph.

READING

12. Read the text and answer the questions.

Text 11. THE SECRET OF TIME MANAGEMENT REVEALED

Why we waste time on trivia and don’t spend enough time on essentials? Life is full of urgencies that really don’t make any difference in the long run (or even in the short run, for that matter). Yes, you’re four minutes late for that department meeting. But the department meeting is a fat waste of everybody’s time (including the person running it), 90 minutes of plodding through announcements you could have read for yourself (or chosen to ignore).

Technology has increased our sense of urgency. An overnight letter cries for more immediate attention than something sent bulk rate or even first class, a fax outshouts an overnight letter, and e-mail outscreams them all. But the delivery system has no bearing on the importance of the content; that e-mail message may be no more important to you than the letter informing you that you “MAY ALREADY BE A WINNER!” in the big clearing-house sweepstakes.

We also have extremely important choices that don’t carry with them any sense of urgency. Of course, I should exercise regularly. I know it’s good for me, mentally as well as physically. And I will. I absolutely will. Just not right now. Hey. I’m four minutes late for the department meeting.

Unless we take conscious control of our decision making, we’ll tend to react to the urgent, even if it’s relatively unimportant, and to the important, unless it also carries a sense of urgency.

Asking the “want to/have to” question. If all this business of dividing activities into four quadrants on an important/urgent grid seems like a lot of work and it is, here’s an easier way to begin to gain control of your daily life.

Again, you’re going to need to develop a way to interrupt yourself several times a day. These interruptions can coincide with your mini-vacations, but they don’t have to.

Simply stop what you’re doing, take a breath, and ask yourself the following question: Is this what I want or need to be doing right now?

You can, of course, modify the question to fit your own circumstances and your approach to life (I’ve created this version by modifying the “Lakein Question” proposed by Alan Lakein in his 1973 book). But be sure to touch on the three key.

Is this what I want or need to be doing right now? Note that it’s “or,” not “and.” Obviously, a task can be a long way from what you’d really like to be doing and still be the thing you need to do.

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