Business English Skills Programme (Bildungsurlaub or other)

Course details

All skills - reading,writing, listening, speaking and pronunciation are covered but with a Business English theme and covering the relevant topics below:

Company Structure

• Job titles
• Departments
• Present Simple
• Describing your job.
• Describing your company.
• Drawing an organigram.
• Meetings
• Conditionals
• Modals
• Vocabulary for organising meetings (minutes, secretary, chair, etc)
• Phrases for meetings
• Stating aims
• Agreeing / Disagreeing
• Giving opinions
• Interrupting / Dealing with interruptions
• Asking for clarification
• … etc

Telephoning • Phrases for telephoning

• Prononciation: Spelling names, addresses, etc
• Politeness
• Modals (Could I, Would you like to, etc)
• Profit and loss accountants
• Requests
• Offers
• Complaining
• Dealing with complaints
• Making arrangements

Financial English

• Talking about cash flow
• Terminology of finance
• Requests
• Offers
• Complaining
• Dealing with complaints
• Making arrangements

Socialising

• Phrases for greetings, introductions, partings
• Lexis for hobbies, interests, family
• Levels of formality
• Present simple
• Question forms Introducing yourself, Introducing Others, Greetings, Saying Goodbye, Talking about hobbies, interests, families

Employment/Job Applications

• Lexis of working conditions-perks, benefits, holidays, salary, income, K, promotions, etc.
• Comparatives
• Lexis describing character - hard-working, a team player, a self-starter, etc.
• Writing CVs and letters of application
• Being interviewed and interviewing
• Discussing advantages and disadvantages of candidates

E-business/ the Internet

• Internet vocabulary
• IT vocabulary
• Writing emails

Management

• Question forms
• Imperatives
• Levels of formality in requests/orders
• Talking about Total Quality Management
• Talking about different management structures, philosophies
• Role play - getting people to do things more or less politely

Business ethics

• Modals
• Lexis of corruption, rights, etc.
• Talking about maternity rights, business and the environment
• Marketing/Advertising
• Marketing Lexis - brands, awareness campaign, etc
• Talking about adverts they know - what is effective
• Discussing marketing strategies - e.g. for famous brands
• Task - design a campaign
• Corporate Culture/Cross-cultural relations
• Comparatives
• Lexis to describe personality traits
• Polite language • Describing the culture of a business/a national culture/regional culture
• Talking about experiences of culture clash/misunderstanding
• Talking about your ideal company culture
• Practising polite language - greetings etc.

Negotiations

• Conditionals
• Request, Offers
• Typical phrases; starting, making offers, refusing, accepting, asking for clarification, bargaining
• Typical functions of negotiation: Requests, Offers, Refusal, Acceptance etc.

Describing Company History

• Past tenses, Present Perfect
• Key Lexis - (was) launched, was established
• Talking about the history of your company/another company
• Presentations
• Language of presentations, OHP, slides, etc.: signaling language: dealing with questions
• question forms
• giving a presentation
• handling questions
• asking questions

Business Writing

• Language of formal and informal letters
• Language for CVs (experience, qualifications, etc)
• Language for reports (if requested)
• Writing letters, emails and faxes
• Writing CVs, letters of application
• Writing letters of complaint, enquiry, etc
• Writing short reports