In Company Web Guides - Pre Intermediate level

In Company Web Guides

Pre-intermediate

The In Company Web Guides provide a quick and helpful way to motivate your students and contain resources which are up-to-date and enjoyable. Click on the unit numbers below to jump to the units you want:

General
Quotes
http://www.planware.org/quotes.htm
Every unit in In Company begins with a short quote. Here are a lot of quotes that are linked to business.

Unit 1
Selling your company
Find out more about the Elevator Pitch sales technique.
http://www.presentationbiz.co.uk/tips/factsheets/elevatorpitch.htm
http://www.salesrepswinner-net.com/salesrepswinner-net/academy/apitch06.html
http://www.salesrepswinner-net.com/academy/apitch07.html
http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/2000/11/wallraff.htm

Business collocations
http://esl.about.com/library/business/bl_vocab_buscollocations1.htm
Talking business on page 6 takes a quick look at some verb + noun business collocations. To expand your students' business collocations why not encourage them to try this online quiz?

A dog's life
http://www.betterdogfood.com/
Betterdogfood.com is a real website! Students can find out more about the company and write some more questions based on the pages here.

Unit 2
Women in business
http://www.fortune.com/fortune/powerwomen/0,15940,,00.html
Women in Business is the title of Unit 2. But who are the most successful women in business? Click on the Fortune list to see the top 50 and then click on a name to find out more. One idea to exploit this material would be to devise a jigsaw reading activity.

How often do you .?
http://www.arc.sbc.edu/stressquiz.html
You or your students could take this online stress quiz to see how stressed or relaxed your lives are. The quiz fits in nicely with the material on page 13 as it includes adverbs of frequency.

http://www.hrtoolbook.com/subsites/stress/stressquiz.html
A much longer stress quiz which again uses adverbs of frequency as well as true/false questions.

Unit 3
Telephone skills
http://www.oxford-english.com/activate/introAudio.cfm
An excellent online listening activity designed to help students with both their listening and telephone skills.

http://esl.about.com/library/weekly/aa092000a.htm
Lots of links to telephone skills materials.

http://www.hio.ft.hanze.nl/thar/listen.htm
More online listening materials on the topic of telephoning. A number of these deal with complaining on the phone which links in nicely with the theme of telephone frustrations.

http://www.esl-lab.com/tel1.htm
So what exactly do you say? All those role plays and listening activities are all well and good but if you get the basics wrong . Students can practise getting it right first time with this online listening task, which can be done as text only as well.

Unit 4
Small talk
http://www.linguarama.com/ps/294-3.htm
Meeting people for the first time and starting a conversation can be quite difficult, especially in a foreign language. Here's a chance for students to practise with some typical questions and responses.

http://www.celt.stir.ac.uk/staff/HIGDOX/VALLANCE/Diss/3C.HTM
Although the topic of the unit is strictly to do with starting conversations and introducing yourself in social situations, a lot of what you need to do is the same as when you meet somebody for the first time in a business scenario. This interactive online activity will certainly help students make the right choices and think about why they are making those choices.

Unit 5
Timelines
http://www.nintendo.com/corp/history.html
On page 23 there is a short history of Nintendo, the Japanese entertainment company that make Game Boy. Here is a fuller version of the company history which could be turned into a jigsaw information gap activity.

http://www.pbs.org/internet/timeline/
A nice simple timeline plotting the history of the Internet from 1960 onwards. Clear and easy to use, you could write a few comprehension questions and use the material for a speed reading activity.

Unit 6
Does grammar matter?
http://www.linguarama.com/ps/grammar.htm
Well, if you think it does here is a selection of grammar activities all with a business theme. Select the ones that you think will help your students the most (or that link in with a particular unit in the book, eg, simple past Vs present perfect for Unit 9).

How to communicate effectively
http://www.basic-learning.com/wbwt/tipstw.htm
Unit 6 is based around correspondence and takes a broad look at the topic. One area of correspondence is through the medium of writing, but many students have problems with writing. This website gives you hundreds of useful tips focussing on lots of different aspects of business writing. Click here and browse through the tips, choosing the ones that will benefit your students the most.

E-mails
http://writing.colostate.edu/references/documents/email/index.cfm
http://www.eslnetworld.com/email2.html
http://www.learnthenet.com/english/html/20how.htm
Three sites devoted to teaching your students more about e-mails. However, probably the most effective learning tip is to encourage students to practise writing e-mails to each other.

Unit 7
Hotels
http://www.esl-lab.com/checkin/checkinrd1.htm
http://www.esl-lab.com/hotel1/hotel1.htm
So your students think they know all about hotels? But, can they do the most basic thing and check-in successfully? Encourage them to try these online listening tasks to see how good their skills really are.

Comparing hotels
http://perso.wanadoo.fr/tefl.teacher/page7.htm
A couple of excellent activities specifically designed for business English students. Click on the 'View the activities in PDF form' and then use the scroll bar on the left to click on one of the last two activities; 'Ranking hotel facilities' and 'Find the differences: two hotels'. Both these activities focus on exactly the same language and topic covered in Unit 7.

Note that you need to have Adobe Acrobat Reader installed on your computer in order to read these activities (this can be downloaded for free).

Unit 8
Have you ever .?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/business/features/confessions/index.shtml
The BBC Business site brings you stories (and confessions) from some of the top British business people. Put your students into groups of four. Choose four stories and ask each student in the group to read a different one. Then ask students to retell their stories to the others in their group.

http://www.csw2.co.uk/humour/h_comeagain.htm
Have you ever . had problems with your computer? Here are lots of amusing anecdotes about computer problems (or should it be 'people' problems?).

It's in the telling
http://www.onestopenglish.com/section.asp?sectiontype=listsummary&theme=mag&catid=58178
Telling anecdotes isn't easy, so why not show your students some good examples? Although this site is all about teaching anecdotes, the format is clear. You'll also find that your students can relate to many of these anecdotes as they have spent quite a bit of time in classrooms (albeit 'on the other side of the fence').

Unit 9
Strange ideas
news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/working_lunch/education/2872223.stm
Not just a strange business idea, but a strange advertising technique. Use the story here for some basic comprehension questions (you could either write the questions before the lesson, or the students can write questions for each other while they read the article).

The spirit of enterprise
http://www.channel4.com/life/microsites/R/realdeal/have_you/index.html
http://content.monster.com/tools/quizzes/entrepreneur/
Do your students have what it takes to be an entrepreneur? Why not get them to find out by taking one of these online quizzes. Encourage the use of dictionaries to check the meaning of any new words. When they have finished the quiz they can discuss their results with their classmates.

Unit 10
Most stressful jobs
http://www.britcoun.org/italy/students/rome/topjobs.htm
What do you think the most stressful jobs are (in your country)? Write down your ideas and then compare them with the ideas expressed by some students in Italy. Are your ideas the same? Different? Surprising?

Stressed?
http://library.thinkquest.org/12153/stress.html
Ten tips on how to deal with stress. Start off by asking your students to write down three ways of reducing stress. Then get them to look at this web page and see if their ideas are there.

http://chealth.canoe.ca/calculator.asp?which=stress
http://www.arc.sbc.edu/stressquiz.html
Two online stress tests that are designed to tell you how stressed you are. After students have taken the tests they can look at the results and see if they agree with them. Finally, why not get students to design their own stress quiz?

Unit 11
Microsoft
http://www.microsoft.com/museum/mustimeline.mspx#
In Unit 5 we took a look at company histories. Again in Unit 11 the focus is on the history of a couple of famous companies - one of which is Microsoft. Find out more about Microsoft from this interactive timeline.

Top jobs
Why not ask your students to find the best job they can. Direct them to any online job site (simply enter "Top jobs" in the search bar on your search engine and choose the best site for your country/region). Set a time limit and ask the students to find the best job they can and write down the details. Afterwards, ask the students to share their findings and to vote on the best job.

Unit 12
The remote lounge
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/1634607.stm
An article all about the Remote Lounge, described on page 54. Use the text here for reading comprehension and vocabulary expansion (eg, pick out five or six words that might be new for your students, write definitions and then ask the students to match the words with the correct definition).

http://www.remotelounge.com/
Now you've read about it, why not visit it? Click on the link and be transported to downtown Manhattan.

What do you say?
http://www.esl-lab.com/greet.htm
One of the key things with conversations is being able to respond appropriately. This online listening activity (which can also be done in text form) helps students practise some of the most typical exchanges.

Unit 13
Air travel
http://www.esl-lab.com/plane1/pln1.htm
http://www.esl-lab.com/airport/airportrd1.htm
One of the biggest problems with air travel is understanding the announcements at the airport. See how well your students manage with these online listening tasks.

Air rage
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/309291.stm
http://www.spiked-online.com/Articles/00000002D1E3.htm
What is air rage? What is the main cause of air rage? Is air rage a big problem? These are some of the questions that students could answer after reading these two short articles on the topic.

Unit 14
Finding a job, sacking staff, being sacked
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/working_lunch/guides/workplace/
This is a perfect website for the topics covered in this unit. Just use the material here for the basis of reading and discussion lessons.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/business/work/issues/articles/starting_up120.shtml
What can you do if an employee is not doing his/her job? Ask students to write down three reasons they think somebody could be sacked, and two they think wouldn't be acceptable reasons. Then get them to read this short article and compare their ideas with the ones in the text.

www.bbc.co.uk/business/work/issues/articles/in_the_workplace136.shtml
Usually all that business books talk about are the success stories, but what happens when things go wrong? This web page looks at what you can do if you are sacked. Before students look at the web page, get them to brainstorm three things they think they might read about here. Then ask them to read and check to see if they were right.

CVs and Résumés
http://www.jobsite.co.uk/career/advice/cv_faq.html
What do you put on your CV and where? FAQs answered to give students a better idea of CV conventions.

http://ihome.ust.hk/%7Eustscs/plc/jsg-3.htm
Conventions differ between Britain and the USA. Here is a standard US résumé.

http://www1.umn.edu/ohr/ecep/resume/index.htm
Résumé Tutor is an online guide to writing the perfect résumé. Read the information, follow the steps and then check the results.

http://www.how-to-write-a-resume.org
How to Write a Résumé offers free cover letter, thank you letter, and résumé writing tips. Research how to write a résumé, distribute your résumé to hiring managers, and tips for how to get an interview.

Interview questions
http://www.collegegrad.com/jobsearch/16-15.shtml
Students can practise interviews using a selection of questions from this web page which lists the 50 most frequent questions used at interviews.

http://esl.about.com/library/weekly/aa120797.htm
Another site with standard interview questions but one which goes a little further by giving example answers and commentary on the answers. The material here could easily be adapted for a role-play or simulation activity.

http://www.careers.lon.ac.uk/advice/vintvw.htm
The perfect site for students to practise what they've learnt - an online virtual interview. Students look at the questions and choose from a selection of answers. Will they get the job?

Unit 15
Time management
http://content.monster.com/tools/quizzes/pareto/
Here's an opportunity for your students to find out how good their time management is. They can take this online quiz to see how effectively they manage their time. They will also find this useful reading practise and a good opportunity to use dictionaries to check on any unknown words. When they have finished, they can discuss the results.

Collocations
http://www.quia.com/jg/28284.html
A couple of matching activities with time expressions - fun and educational.

http://www.learnenglish.org.uk/words/activities/verbnouns02.html
If you think that collocations are very important for your students, why not help them expand their knowledge of some typical collocations. Try out this simple 'drag and drop' activity before designing one of your own (or get the students to design one).

http://www.onestopenglish.com/News/Magazine/Vocab/studyskills.htm
Here you will find a worksheet on 'Money' from the vocabulary section of www.onestopenglish.com. This would expand on collocations with money that are introduced in Unit 15. You can find the worksheet by scrolling down the page and looking in the British English column.

Unit 16
Getting things done
http://www.linguarama.com/ps/194-4.htm
http://www.linguarama.com/ps/392-3.htm
Getting things done is often a matter of behaving in the correct way. The first link has a brief text which links nicely to this topic. The second link looks at tact and politeness - always a useful thing to have if you want to get things done.

http://www.linguarama.com/ps/196-3.htm
http://www.linguarama.com/ps/295-3.htm
Two more activities that link nicely with the topics in Unit 16; the first looks at different ways of making requests and the second at how to say no, which is briefly covered at the bottom of page 73.

Unit 17
Memos
http://writing.colostate.edu/references/documents/memo/
Although many businesses now use internal e-mail for correspondence, memos are still used (especially in companies that like to keep written records). Of course, memos have their own conventions. Students can click on this site and find out more.

Office gossip
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/low/talking_point/1035367.stm
Is office gossip good for you? What do your students think? In groups, get them to discuss what they think about office gossip and then they can take a look at a few opinions posted on this site. Alternatively, print out a number of the opinions posted on this site and develop them into character cards to be used in a role play/debate on the topic of office gossip: a good thing or not?

http://euro.jobex.co.uk/career/advice/office_gossip.html
A short article that takes a look at the topic of office gossip.

Say Vs tell
http://home.freeuk.net/lumi/tell.htm
http://www.collegeem.qc.ca/cemdept/anglais/saytell.htm
http://www.collegeem.qc.ca/cemdept/anglais/saytell7.htm
Three sites that deal with this tricky problem. If you think your students need more practise then why not guide them here.

Unit 18
E-commerce
http://www.school-for-champions.com/ecommerce/basics.htm
Nice clear site that takes you through the basics of e-commerce and compares it to more traditional sales techniques. Looks at both the advantages and disadvantages of e-commerce and then tests students' knowledge with a fun online quiz.

http://ecommerce.about.com/cs/faqstutorials/
Everything you could ever want to know about e-commerce and more.

In the news
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/e-commerce/default.stm
The realities of e-commerce from the business news. Use the short articles here for reading practise and for the basis of discussions. Remember that this site is constantly being updated so you need to check it just before your lesson.

Unit 19
Telesales
http://www.esl-lab.com/market/marketrd1.htm
An online listening activity specifically designed for English language students. This activity is based on a telesales phone conversation.

Working from home
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/1454583.stm
Ask students to make two columns on a piece of paper; one with the heading Advantages and the other with the heading Disadvantages. Then get them to read through the article about working from home and write down the arguments under the appropriate headings. Use these arguments as the basis for a class discussion or debate.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/working_lunch/2265994.stm
Another article on working from home.

Unit 20
When in Rome .
http://iteslj.org/Lessons/Kajiura-Intercultural.html
Unit 20 deals with intercultural communication and the need to understand the culture of the people with whom you are trying to do business. Here is a simple lesson plan outline which sets up a role-play/simulation activity designed to examine intercultural issues. If you like, you can give each group a set of characteristics that they need to follow (eg, Group A: you cannot say no; when you meet people you do not like any physical contact etc. Group B: you want definite answers to all your questions; you like to shake hands when you meet people and when you leave etc).

http://www.executiveplanet.com/index2.jsp
If you'd like to expand the topic to business etiquette for other countries then this is the site for you. Simply click on the country you are interested in and choose an article. It might be interesting for students to choose their own country and see if they agree with the advice.

http://www.linguarama.com/ps/392-1.htm
A short reading text with some vocabulary questions. A good place to start and then lead into a discussion.

www.businessenglishonline.net