Daily English Activities: Business English

Showing posts with label Business English. Show all posts

A Virtual Job Interview

Doing a job interview can be a very stressful experience, especially if you have to do it in another language. That's why it's good to get as much practice as possible and have a chance to try different answers to common interview questions.

Today's activity gives you the chance to be interviewed, try different answers and improve your listening and reading skills. You'll also get some good interview tips too.

Task:

In a moment you will be able to try the interview. Here is what you will need to do. Click and watch the video introduction.
Then click 'Start' and watch the video for the first question.
Select what you think is the best answers.

Once you have chosen your answer you will get a score.
You can also get advice on how to answer the question by clicking on 'See our advice on how best to answer this questions'

Okay you are ready now, so start by watching the video below. Good luck and make sure you answer all the questions.

I hope you enjoy this activity. Here you can find more Business English Activities.

Related links for teachers:

Best

Nik Peachey

Develop Your Marketing Vocabulary

For people who want to use English within their profession, it is becoming increasingly important to be able to develop your English within specific work related topics. So in today's activity we are going to look at how you can do that.

Today we will be looking at how you can develop you listening and vocabulary knowledge of marketing and particularly online marketing. We will be using a listening and script from the Double Click website as well as some web based tools to help you learn, record and remember new words.

Task:

Go to: http://www.doubleclick.com/nervecenter/ Here you will see an image of Carl Hendra. If you click on one of the topic areas on the left hand side menu you will hear her talking about those marketing topics.
As you listen you will see keywords on the right of the screen. Listen and try to understand what you can.
Once you have listened once download the tapescript and listen again. This time you can follow with the script as you listen.

To download the script you will need to click on 'Download Transcript' and then 'Carla Hendra'

Once you have done this, copy the first section of the script and go to the VocabGrabber website.
Paste the text from the script into the field and click on 'Grab Vocabulary'.

This will produce a 'word cloud' of the words in the text.

Now you can click on each of the words to get a definition of the word and some information about related words. You can also see examples of the words in use. If you want to be sure to remember these words you could use Wordie to create a word list. There are some instructions on how to do this in the List Your Favourite Words activity.
Lastly, listen through to Carla Hendra talking again without the script and see how much you remember. Write a summary of the main parts of the talk using FutureMe and send it to yourself so that you receive it in two weeks time along with the link to the DoubleClick website.

Then you can check your notes and listen again. This will help you to see how much you remember and refresh your memory of the vocabulary.

Hope you enjoy listening and learning more about marketing. Here you can find more Business English activities.

Related links for teachers:

Best

Nik Peachey

Write Your English Resume

Many people learn English because they need it to help find work. Having a resume or CV in English can also help you and help to display your English skills, but writing a resume isn't easy.

In today's activity you are going to create an English resume using a tool that will help you with the structure and the wording of your resume.

Task:

Go to: http://www.howtowritearesume.net/ and click on 'Start Your Resume Now'. You will need to register to use the site, but this is quite quick, especially if you already have a Yahoo or Google account.
Once you have registered the 'Resume Builder' will take you through the steps involved in creating your resume. First, you can start to add your details to the resume

You will then be asked to add a headline. If you click on the template tab you will get some suggestions for the wording of this.

You can then add details about your education, work history, achievements, qualifications etc. Again you can get help wording these where you see the template tab. You just select the appropriate words from the structure.

Finally, when you get to the format stage you can either download you resume as a text file (then edit on your computer using a word processor) or html (if you want to put it on a website)
You can also post it to a range of free job searching websites, but only do this if you are serious about finding work and your information is true.

I hope you have enjoyed creating your English resume. Here are some more Business English Activities.

Related links for teachers:

Best

Nik Peachey

Culture and Small Talk

A very important aspect of conversation is the ability to make 'small talk'. This helps to make people feel more comfortable and helps you get to know them better.

Today's activity comes from Business Spotlight and is based around a video clip from a series on building up Business skills. Being good at socializing and making small talk can be very important in business.

Task:

Think about the kinds of topics you usually make small talk about. Could you talk about the same things in English? What would you say?
Now go to: http://www.business-spotlight.de/language-skills/videos/socializing/culture-and-small-talk

Here you will see a video of Bob from Business Spotlight talking about two different styles of socialising and making small talk. He describes them as Peach and Coconut. Watch the video and decide whether you are a Peach or a coconut.

There are more videos you can watch and learn from at: http://www.business-spotlight.de/language-skills/videos

I hope you enjoy these and develop your listening and business skills.

Here are some more Business English Activities.

Related links for teachers:

Best

Nik Peachey

A Job Interview in English

Interviewing for a job can be very stressful in any language, but if you have to do it in English then it's a good idea to make sure you do some extra preparation.

Today's activity looks at the kinds of questions you may get asked at an interview, how to answer them and some tips for possible questions you could ask.

The activity is based around the E-Microsoft Interview website. The website isn't produced by Microsoft, but it is a site designed to help people who want to work for them. I've also used some videos from YouTube. YouTube can be a great place to research possible interview questions and answers.

Task:

Start by imagining the kinds of questions you might get asked at job interview. Make a quick list of them.
Then go to: HR Questions
Here you will see a list of popular interview questions. Compare them with your own list.
Now think about how you would answer the questions. Here's a sample answer to a very popular question "Why should we hire you?"

Now go back to the HR Questions and look at the advice on giving answers. You can do this by clicking 'Read more..'

After you have read the advice, think again about how you would answer the questions. If you have a video camera or a web cam on your computer, you could record yourself answering the questions, then look at the video and decide what improvements you could make.

It is also important when you go to an interview to ask questions about the post you are applying for. Here are some questions that you might like to ask at your interview.

Here are some interview tips that you might want to think about too. Lastly, to give you some inspiration, here's a video telling you about what it is like to work at Google. Would you like to work there?

Good luck with the interview and I hope you come back for more EFL ESL activities tomorrow.

Here are some more activities to improve your Business English

Learn More About Business

Today's activity is a business listening one. For this activity we are going to use a website called Openforum which has lots of information about business and also lots of short video clips from very successful business people.

This site has a lot of other information on if you are interested in business and even has business discussion forums that you can read or if you become a member you can join in the discussion.

Task:

You are going to watch two video interviews with Richard Branson the owner of 'Virgin'. In the first he will talk about 'Brand' .
Before you listen try to remember what you know about 'Virgin' and what kind of products and services they have produced.
Listen to the first interview and see which of those products are mentioned and what information he gives about his ideas of the importance of 'Brand'.
Click here to watch the video: Branson on Business: Protecting your brand

Now watch this second video. Richard Branson defends some of his more unusual business decisions. Listen and make notes about:
- What other Brands are mentioned?
- What decisions does he defend?
- What arguments does he use to defend the decisions?

Click here to watch the video: Is the Virgin way the way of "insanity"?

Well I hope you enjoyed this task and learned a little about business and English from it. If you did enjoy it then try to spend some more time each day watching some more of the videos. Watching one each day will help to boost your listening skills and improve your business vocabulary.

Come back tomorrow for more EFL ESL activities.

Related links for teachers:

Best

Nik Peachey

Playing the Stock Market

Today's activity is very topical considering all the problems that stock markets around the world are having. The activity is based around a stock market game and will help to mprove your business and financial vocabulary as well as give you lots of quick reading practice.

Task:

Go to: http://www.stocknewsgame.com/play_game.php You will see a financial news report and some information about the stock prices of a company.

You should quickly study the information and then try to decide if the stock prices of the company will go up or down. You have 4 choices ranging from a large drop to a large rise (Surge).

Click on one and then you can find out how other users guessed and how many points you have earned or lost.

You only have 3 minutes each time to make your decission, so you'll have to read quickly and not worry too much about understanding every word. There are lots of texts so you can play for as long as you like. If you really like the game you can register, log in and then record your score.

Good luck and I hope you get richer than I did.

Realted links for teachers:

Best

Nik Peachey

Improving Your IT Skills and Vocabulary

English is a key qualification in many jobs, another important skill that can help you is your knowledge of computers and IT (Information Technology)

Now you can improve both at the same time by using the free interactive courses available at ALISON.

Task:

Got to http://alison.com/courses/IT-Basics/The-Computer watch and listen to the presentation and work through the simple activities.

Make notes of any new words or IT related words that you want to learn. There is a list of computer related words and their definitions in English here at: Learn English Today

If you enjoy learning in this way you can sign up for a number of other free interactive courses

There's quite a range to choose from, including a test of your Business English, but for these you will need to register. It is free though.

Hope you enjoyed this activity. More EFL ESL activities tomorrow.

Best

Nik Peachey

Create an Online CV in English

The ability to speak English well and to use computers are definitely both big advantages when applying for a job, so why not highlight those advantages by creating an online English CV that allows you to show off your portfolio of English and ICT skills.

You can do this using a free website called Visual CV. Creating your online CV is also a good way to practice your English and think about the things that you would want to tell a potential employer.

Task:

So the first thing you need to do is got to the http://www.visualcv.com website, take a look at the tour and then register for a free account.

Once you have done this you can start to fill out information about yourself, add images, documents and videos.
You can create a private CV that only specific people access, or you can have a public one that you can share thorugh social networks.
You can choose the types of information your CV includes

When you create your public CV be sure not to include your home address or telephone number. Only give this information to potential employers.

Happy job hunting!

Hope you find this useful. Come back tomorrow for more EFL ESL learning activities.

Best

Nik Peachey

Daily English Activities

Pages

A Virtual Job Interview

Develop Your Marketing Vocabulary

Write Your English Resume

Culture and Small Talk

A Job Interview in English

Learn More About Business

Playing the Stock Market

Improving Your IT Skills and Vocabulary

Create an Online CV in English

My Books & Lesson Plans

My Free Newsletter