Business

The purpose of English for1st Year Business Students is to develop the written and oral communication skills of business students. Functional-situational in approach, the course focuses on two vital areas of the learning process: improving reading and writing skills as well as developing learning skills. The subject matter, drawn from various business fields, is provocative and timely but never too specialized. Its authors intended the textbook to be formative rather than merely summative.

Seven units are devoted to training students in the skills of reading, developing vocabulary, and writing. As students are guided through the process of learning effectively, they are able to develop communicative strategies that carry over into real-life situations. Proving essential practice in controlled exercises, the text enables students to focus on forms, functions, and the processes of written discourse. These units are designed to help students:

- Become familiar with the various vocabulary items related to business English

- Become familiar with the various expressions related to specific language functions

- Improve reading skills by focusing on both content and the use of theses expressions in task-based writing exercises

- Build up writing skills by practicing the contextual use of the vocabulary items and focusing on grammar in controlled practice exercises.

- Learn and review basic business vocabulary

The main objectives of the course are meant to be externally - oriented and internally useful. The structure of the units is systematic, concise and explicit, responsive to the variety of communicative circumstances in business. The content is formative, aiming at developing students' awareness for the need for communicating correctly in a foreign language. Mainly designed to be used as self-study material, the book intends to encourage students to take individual study more seriously, to offer standardized exercises, to provide concrete examples, to focus on language use (knowledge of language, language skills, awareness of the nature of learning, awareness of the reading process, attitudes to reading: unknown words, strategies, 'meaning', opportunities for discussion/ exchanges of opinion).

The texts provide opportunities for review and expansion of the skills throughout the term. Furthermore, the units' organisation allows the student to take advantage of individual study. The abundance of material in the texts makes them easily adaptable to varying learner interests, student specialties, and language levels. The students can select the exercises, topics, and activities that are most relevant to their needs.

Introduction: to the student

This book is designed to help you to improve your reading and writing skills in business English. The units of the book deal with carefully chosen texts that offer you the possibility of learning specific vocabulary, grammar structures and functional language in appropriate contexts. The tasks you will have to carry out will help you develop your language skills in an integrated way, i.e. extracting the main ideas from a text// taking notes// writing a report etc.

The structure of each unit is the following:

a. Lead-in

b. Reading

c. Vocabulary development

d. Language focus

e. Functions

The lead-in section is devised to introduce you in the topic of the unit. It consists in questions or exercises that forecast the subject matter to be discussed in the reading section.

The reading section contains texts that offer both information connected with the business environment and the opportunity to improve and enrich your vocabulary with new words and expressions.

The vocabulary development section offers explanations about some of the lexical items from the text and expands the learning context to the lexical areas of the words/ expressions studied. It presents both general and specialized vocabulary and the activities initiated here require a sustained individual work with the dictionary with the aim of building your vocabulary.

The language focus section starts from examples found in the text. It has two sub-sections: one that deals with the theoretical input of a certain grammar problem (rules, examples etc.) and the second - Practice - that contains different types of exercises designed to give you practice in using the language correctly and improving your control of grammar.

The functions section contains a number of different expressions that represent certain language functions. This may help you to become familiar with the context in which these expressions are used. You can also add variety to your language. The more expressions that you are able to use, the more effective you can be as a speaker of a foreign language. The section also contains suggested writing activities in order to focus your attention on individual activities that offer you the possibility of making use of the knowledge you acquired within each unit, as a whole.

UNIT ONE COMMUNICATING IN BUSINESS

1. Socialising in business