Whether it’s ridesharing with Uber, lending your power drill to a neighbor with Peerby, taking advantage of a home exchange with Airbnb, or dozens of other examples, the so-called “sharing economy” is firmly established in our daily life. While the concept has been in place for some time, numerous enterprising groups have found a way to make the most of the current economic environment.
Welcome back to Business English Pod for today’s lesson on business English collocations for talking about strategy.
Think about the future of your company. How will it remain competitive? What are the long-term goals of your company? What does your company want to achieve? And how will it do that? These are just some of the questions that you might consider when you discuss business strategy. You need to think about what your business does well, how you can use your resources wisely, and what you need to do to grow the company. And when you discuss these ideas, you can use some common expressions, or combinations, which we call “collocations.”
But what is a collocation? A collocation is a group of words that sound natural together. They sound natural because native speakers commonly use them. And you can sound natural too if you learn these collocations. For example, you can say “implement a plan.” That sounds natural. But how about “do a plan?” Well, that’s not a common collocation and so it doesn’t sound natural.
As you listen to the conversation in this lesson, try to pick out some of these collocations and we’ll discuss them later in the debrief.
In the dialog, we’ll hear Anne, Jenny, and Max, three executives at a food company called Healthy Organics. They are discussing their strategy for developing the company into the future. They’ll talk about some important strategic decisions, and they’ll use lots of useful expressions.
Listening Questions
1. According to Anne, why do they need to broaden their product offerings? 2. What does Jenny think they need to build on? 3. What specifically does Anne want to figure out for the next three to five years?
Welcome back to Business English Pod for today’s lesson on English collocations for discussing business strategy.
Look behind any successful business and what will you find? Good strategy and wise planning. Good strategy involves understanding the environment, the market, the customers, and the competition. And good planning means taking all that knowledge and deciding how to compete now and into the future.
In this lesson, we’ll hear how the executives in a food company discuss business strategy. And as they strategize, the speakers will use some useful expressions that we call “collocations.” Learning English collocations will help you improve your vocabulary and sound more natural. So what exactly is a collocation? Well, it’s just a group of words that we commonly use together. For example, we often say “reach a goal.” It sounds natural, because that’s what people say. But what about: “grasp a goal” or “arrive at a goal?” Well, those don’t sound natural because they’re not common combinations or collocations.
As you listen to the discussion, try to pick out some of these collocations and we’ll discuss them later in the debrief.
In the dialog, we’ll hear Anne, Jenny, and Max, executives at a food company called Healthy Organics. The speakers have gone on a weekend retreat to try to create a good strategy for moving their company into the future. They’ll talk about their vision and a strategic plan for growth.
Listening Questions
1. What does Anne say they have managed to accomplish so far during the retreat? 2. What does Max say is the goal over the next two days? 3. What does Jenny want to figure out first?
In today’s Business English News lesson, we look at developments in employment practices and how these effect job stability and opportunities for career development.
The world quietly passed a significant milestone recently – the global jobless total surpassed 200 million people, according to a study by the UN. To put that into perspective, that’s 30 million more without work than at the height of the recession in 2008. As CBC News reports, these figures could have grave implications for the future.
In this Video Vocab lesson, we’ll look at vocabulary related to human resources.
Human resources, or HR, is concerned with talent management and staff development. This may involve performance appraisals as well as learning and development to improve employees’ proficiencies. Employees may develop through on-the-job training as well as coaching. We’ll also cover equal opportunity initiatives and leadership development.
