25 Mar 2020

Online sessions, March 25th / 26th.


LEVEL: C1.2
GROUPS: A, B, C
DATE:    March 25th, 26th

ZOOM MEETING

SPEAKING (oral production):

In activity 4 and 5, page 125 they were dealing primarily with business. However, they also engaged in small talk. This is considered to be quite important in business when it comes to networking. In countries such as the UK, small talk may involve asking about health, family,  the trip made to get there; it may involve talking about the weather, the economy, a favourite team, programmes on TV, plans for the weekend or (at this moment) talking about coronavirus.
NOW YOU: Go to activity 6. Let’s discuss the questions included here.

SPEAKING (oral coproduction):

In our last online session, I told you to practice with one of your classmates developing conversations about these two topics included in activity 9, page 125:
1.- arranging a convenient time and place for a meeting.
2.- chasing up an order that hasn’t arrived yet.
After doing it, I suggested that you could watch clip n. 32 on your DVD-rom so that you can compare their performance and the one that you put on.
NOW YOU:  Let’s do some practice in pairs here. Later, I’ll give you some feedback.

ORAL PRESENTATIONS:

I remind you that those of you who were scheduled for today should record a track (preferably on MP3) and upload it on www.padlet.com. Remember that you have the link for your group in my blog.

ANWER KEY FOR ACTIVITY 4, PAGE 125

Conversation 1
1 to check whether the delivery sent out on Monday has arrived yet
2 Business is OK. They’re hanging in. Sales have actually picked up a bit this quarter. They’ve taken on a couple of new people.
3 second speaker’s child, her husband / partner, her holiday in Crete

Conversation 2
1 to sort out a time for a meeting during the trade fair next week
2 Not too bad. Planned relocation will save money as overheads will be cheaper, but some staff are threatening to leave the company if it goes ahead.
3 the draw for the European Championships

ANSWER KEY FOR ACTIVITY 5, PAGE 125

1 I was just panicking over nothing
2 Sales have actually picked up a bit this quarter
3 we’ve actually taken on a couple of new people
4 she’s crawling around everywhere (and babbling away to herself all the time)
5 (He’s been away a lot with work recently), which has been a bit of a pain, (but hopefully that’ll ease off a bit soon).
6 I saw the draw for the European Championships
7 Don’t count your chickens yet!
8 just think of all the savings you’ll make on your overheads
9 And on wages if half the staff who’re threatening to leave actually do!
10 Is Thursday any use to you?

ANSWER KEY FOR ACTIVITY 7, PAGE 125:

Possible answers  (not the only possibilities)

1 How’s business? / How’re things going?
2 How did you end up in this job? / How did you get this job?
3 How are things over there? / How’s the economy (doing) there?
4 How are the kids? / How are your kids?
5 Lovely weather, isn’t it? / Isn’t it amazing weather?
6 How’s your week been? / Good week? / Have you had a good week?
7 How’s your team doing? / Is your team having a good season?
8 What are you doing / up to tonight?
9 How was your holiday? / So what was your holiday like?
10 How was your journey / the flight?

ANSWER KEY FOR ACTIVITY 3, PAGE 126: 

1 No, they weren’t. They were taken to court because they knew about the poor financial state of the bank and to try and cover this up and calm shareholders, they illegally lent money to someone who bought a share in the firm. This was intended to boost confidence, but they had actually lent the buyer the cash illegally. This is what they were arrested for: fraud, in essence.

2 Not explicitly stated, but presumably because they hired excellent lawyers, evidence was hard to access, the bank itself may not have been cooperative, there were bankruptcy procedures to go through first, etc.

3 That it’s easy to see – you don’t have to be good at maths to see that the money the UK government has given the banks to bail them out is much more than the money the banks have paid in fines.

4 A period of austerity is a time when the government dramatically reduces public spending and makes lots of cuts to the public sector. The writer clearly doesn’t agree with it as the writer is angry about the amount spent bailing out banks – and points to Iceland to suggest another way of sorting out this problem is possible,

5 Banks were part of local communities and so were more likely to protect investments, support local firms, and avert risks as people working in the banks may even have known the people whose money they held.

6 Optimistic. The writer sees the Icelandic situation as offering an alternative model of hope, believes we can change things for the better and believes banks can return to a more people-centred way of working.

HOMEWORK:   

Grammar. Relative clauses. Go to page 181. Read the theoretical information about relative clauses and do exercises 1, 2 and 3 (pages 181 and 182)






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