Business English Pod / Articles by: BEP / Page 121

BEP 134 – Travel English: Getting Online at the Coffee Shop

Business English, ESL Podcast, Intermediate English, Travel /

For many people, visiting a café or coffee shop is a normal part of business travel, if not everyday life. Not only are coffee shops a good place to get a cup of espresso, they are also a great location to have a quick meeting with a customer, take a short break, and – most importantly for the business traveler – get online to check your email. Many cafés are now equipped with WiFi, or wireless internet. So while you sip on your latte or your mocha, you can surf the web and keep connected.

But despite people’s attempts to make WiFi services user-friendly, or easy to use, they are sometimes difficult to connect to. So in this lesson, we’ll not only look at ordering coffee, we’ll also practice troubleshooting an internet connection.

For today’s lesson, we’ll be rejoining our friend Honesto as he stops by a coffee shop at the airport. We’ll hear to Honesto ordering a drink and attempting to connect to the café’s WiFi. As you listen, try to answer the following questions.

Listening Questions

1) What kind of drink does Honesto order?
2) What “deal” does the coffee shop offer Honesto?
3) Why can’t he get online?

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BEP 133 – Sales and Interviews: Elevator Pitch in English

Advanced, Business English, ESL Podcast, Presentation in English, Sales English /

In this Business English Podcast, we’re going to look at delivering an elevator pitch.

A sales pitch is a presentation designed to introduce a product or service in order to convince people to buy it. An elevator pitch is a very short presentation designed to do the same thing in 60-seconds or less and often the “product” being presented is you. An elevator pitch should be short enough that you could complete it during an elevator ride. A key point being that you’re not asking the person to do something for you, you’re telling them what you can do for them.

In today’s lesson, we’ll be listening to two pitches. First up is Jonathan, a university student visiting a job fair in search of his first job. Then we’ll hear Dominic, a manager for a logistics company, make his pitch to a potential customer while attending a local Chamber of Commerce meeting.

Listening Questions

1) What does Jonathan highlight as his key strengths in the first dialog?
2) In the second dialog, how does Dominic get Graham’s attention?
3) What’s the key advantage of Dominic’s company?

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VV 15 – Financial English: GM Bankruptcy

Business English, Business English Vocabulary, English Video, Finance and Accounting /
YouTube video

For the final lesson in our two-part business English vocabulary series on financial English vocabulary related to bankruptcy, we’re going to look at General Motor’s impending Chapter 11 filing. A bankruptcy filing by GM would rank as the third-largest bankruptcy in U.S. history.

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BEP 132 – Job Interviews: Telephone Screening Interview

Advanced, Business English, ESL Podcast, Job Interview in English, Telephone English /

In this Business English Pod episode we’ll be looking at how to handle a telephone interview for a new job. If you’re joining us here, you may want to check out BEP 82 and BEP 83 first to see how to talk about your experience in a face-to-face interview. Unit 301 from our Interviews e-book also gives a good overview of all our previous lessons on job interviews.

We’ll be listening to James, who has lots of experience in his field, but has nevertheless recently lost his job due to downsizing at his company. He has been applying for jobs and has completed a series of aptitude and attitudinal tests at an agency that is representing Xeon IT, a multinational IT company.

Angie, who works in Human Resources at Xeon’s head office, calls James at home in the evening to do a screening interview. She needs to ask him some preliminary questions to decide if he will be invited for a face-to-face interview at Xeon.

Listening Questions

1) Why does James want to call Angie back?
2) Why did James leave his previous job?
3) How long does James have to wait to find out if he has a second interview with Xeon?

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