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Prices and the Economy

February 17th, 2013 | Posted by rachael in Business English - (0 Comments)

Professor Paul Cwik brings us a new perspective about the economy and prices.

Every society  has to solve the problems of production and distribution.  Which products do we produce? How does the society as a whole decide which is the most desirable.  Dr. Cwik teaches us guidelines that every society uses to determine the answers.

Watch this video for enlightenment.

Questions

What function does prices serve?

How do we determine what products to produce?

How does the customer know if a product is scarce or not?

How does a producer know how to make a product?

Pay attention to the types of products that are available for sale in your city.  Do you see this pricing mechanism at work?  What types of products have low prices, and which have high prices?

Thanks to Dr. Paul Cwik for these wonderful insights.

 

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Is the cost of living really rising?

January 20th, 2013 | Posted by rachael in Business English - (0 Comments)

According the Professor Steve Horowitz, the cost of living is actually going down.  Workers can buy what they want with much less time worked now than in the 1970′s.

This is not a new concept.  Actually, I found it in Mark Twain’s fiction book, “A Connecticut Yankee in King Author’s Court.”  He compares the amount of work that a person needs to do in order to get the buying power of goods. This concept gets the main character in a lot of trouble in the novel. The people of the 6th Century are stuck on the amount of money that a person makes per day, not the  buying power of that money.   Of course, Mark Twain is  really talking about the 19th Century, by means of an allegory, and we are now in the 21st.  The same principles apply.

There are  also technological advancements that make the products that we buy nowadays more valuable.

Questions:

Give an example of a product that in fact the price in terms of time worked has gone down

Do the products that we can buy now give more value?

Do you feel that your income is keeping pace with the prices?

What factors do you take in account when buying a new large appliance?

Does this information about hours worked vs prices help you to make financial decisions?

 

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Bank of America looks to slash 16,000 Jobs and other news

October 23rd, 2012 | Posted by rachael in Business English - (0 Comments)

Even though there is talk of an economic recovery, the recent news from Bloomberg sees things differently. View this video for more details.

Usually in an election year, the incumbent candidate points to how he has lowered taxes and made the ecomony better. This year however the opposite is true. Bank of America, the flagship bank in the United States is in trouble, and Nike the shoemaker has to buy back stock. Even Obama’s prime program, the Health Care system, is going to cost people more. If a person can’t afford medical insurance, they will have to pay a tax.

Questions to think about

What do you feel about these changes?

Do you see the economy going up or down? Explain in detail what you see in your community.

Does what happens in America affect other countries?

How does this news about the economy affect your opinion about the upcoming elections?

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Facebook as a public company

August 2nd, 2012 | Posted by rachael in Business English - (0 Comments)

Watch this business English video about Facebook and answer the following questions.

Business vocabulary words and phrases to help you

IPO - Initial Public Offering
public company – the public determines the value of the company by the price of the outstanding shares
company headquarters – Main office of the company
the product guy – the person who produces the product
social network – where people can get together on the Internet
write code – write computer programs
shareholders - people who bought the shares of the company
addressing the stock-fall – finding out why the price of the shares is less now than it was before
day in and day out – everyday
a deal getting stamped – a finalized deal between two companies
relationships get started – business people meet each other

Questions about the video

What has been the most important event in Mark Zuckerberg’s life since the IPO?

Why are the shareholders concerned?

What function does Zuckerberg do?

What is the major challenge for Facebook?

What is the difference between the advertising on a desktop versus mobile?

What makes Facebook so successful?

What information do the advertisers want about your phone?

Who does Mark Zuckerberg hang out with at the Sun Valley Conference?

Why do you think the conference is informal?

How much privacy is there at the Sun Valley conference?

Over to you

Do you use Facebook?

What do you use it for?

Would you buy shares in Facebook?

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The Student Loan Crisis

July 26th, 2012 | Posted by rachael in Business English - (0 Comments)

This video give some very important facts about student loans.

View the video twice and then answer these questions.

What was the average cost of a year of tuition in 1952?

What should be the equivalent cost today? What is the real cost?

By how much is the cost of college tuition rising over the rate of inflation?

What is the total national student debt?

Why does the cost of a college education rise so much?

How much in debt does the average college student have by the time he graduates?

What are three reasons that a college education is worth less?

Why is it so easy to get a student loan?

What is the student loan default rate in 2009?

Why does the student go back to get more degrees?

Why do college graduates have to post-phone major life events?


Over to You!

Do you think that taking a student loan is a good idea?

In your opinion, Is going back to get more college degrees a good idea or not? Explain your answer.

Is this the best way to create an educated, competitive, entrepreneurial society?

How do students pay for college in your country?

Is it as expensive to go to college in your country?

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Terry Kellogg CEO of 1% for the Planet

June 27th, 2012 | Posted by rachael in Business English - (0 Comments)

Look and listen very carefully to this Business English video and answer these questions.

Questions about the video

1. What is the purpose of the company 1% for the Planet?
2. How long has Terry Kellogg been involved with this project?
3. What kinds of businesses do they deal with?
4. How many agriculture companies were there a few years ago?
5. How many are involved now?

Comments about the video

Speaking speed. In business English many speakers talk very fast. It is important to be able to follow English spoken at any speed, especially in a business situation. Mr. Kellogg gets his point across simply by the force of his words and the many different pictures that he throws at you in the video.

Notice how Terry Kellogg speaks very fast, not pausing very often.

Formal English vs Informal English. In a formal Business context you will hear more statistics, information about sales, marketing. Usually the CEO’s are shown wearing business suits and being very straight laced, not showing emotion. You will hear about Strategic Diagnosis, Competition, and Marketing. There will be lots of numbers quoted. The dress will be very formal with people wearing business suits with ties.

Informal Business. In an informal Business context, you will see lots of images of people wearing casual wear, showing emotion, and concentrating on feelings. Notice the casual shirts and pants that Terry Kellogg is wearing. He doesn’t tell us a lot numbers except to mention about the number of agricultural companies. He also uses informal speech, and sometimes not even complete sentences. He is speaking as if to a friend with place filler words such as “you know,”

To go further

Which context is this video? Why do you think that the information is presented in this format? How does it make you feel? Would you buy products that use this logo based on this video?

Video transcript

Read the transcription to check your listening comprension.

Terry Kellogg I’m CEO of 1% for the Planet. 1% is a network of companies that give at least 1% of their revenue, that’s top line sales to organizations working on issues of sustainability. We license a trademark which is a 1% logo for those companies to use and we certify that they do their giving. The quotes we are most well known for is “There is no business on a dead planet.” and for me, you know, as a young man, that was my true north, this is very clear that is the case and that my role was going to be protecting the planet so we can preserve business on it. Over those 20 years that I’ve been in this field, you know I’ve been in just about as any sectors you can imagine, from non Profit where we were trying to prevent one company from doing one thing to actually going inside a large publicly traded company and try to help them become more sustainable in their operations. and now I’m in a position where I’m trying to knit all those forces together. Now I was just talking to people involved in the local food movement recently for example and There are a hundred you know fully locally integrated food processing centers in existence in this country today , three years ago there were only 25 and so there is um, there is a new base in the economy that’s emerging around the interests of people who are interested to coming more connected to their food supply, that’s just one example it’s great to see a lot of innovative practices in place , um but there is a huge amount of distance that we need to travel, actually to get real impact out of some those practices and The most successful strategies out there um today um are ones, you know equally productive for the business and for the planet.

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Business English to improve your intonation

May 19th, 2012 | Posted by glenn in Business English - (0 Comments)

This video on whether tax incentives are effective in encouraging innovation is a good example of how people speak in a natural way when they are the only person speaking.  It is useful to listen to the rhythm with which the speaker speaks and which words they stress more than the others.

Intonation

Remember that English is a stress-timed language so if you put the stress on the important (information-bearing) words in the sentence, the rest of the words which are not so important are pushed together.  Think of the sentence:

I went to the park for lunch.

The information is in the words: went (action), park (place) and lunch (reason).   You can probably get my meaning if I just say went, park, lunch.

IWENT      titherPARK          faLUNCH

So we keep the beat:

One                  Two                   Three

IWENT      titherPARK          faLUNCH

Keep this in mind as you listen to the video again.  Then try to repeat the monologue back section by section.  If you think you can say it fluently, try it without the video, just reading the script.  This will help you to sound more like a native English speaker.  Give it a shot!

Business English: Do tax incentives really stimulate innovation?

There’s been a lot of work by economists, ah, looking at the effectiveness of Research and development tax credits and actually they are pretty effective.  This is one area, you know, where economists again, they kind of agree on the notion that, look, the private sector doing this is creating knowledge that can be used by competitors, can be used around the globe, there’s spill-over benefits so let’s give them an incentive.

But then a lot of economist have spent years actually looking at, well, does it work?  If you give them a dollar of credit, do you get more than a dollar of innovation?  The answer is yeah, it does work, it’s one of the tax incentives which has a good track record of performance, now countries around the world are really competing on this now coz I think another thing that’s really important here is that, and we know this, research is becoming much more of a global activity.  Countries want nothing more, as a government, than encouraging, ah, large researchers and large research establishments to come to their country.  It’s part of their soft power right?

So if you can convince Microsoft or Google or GM to come and do frontier research in China, that’s really good for China. So countries are using all kinds of tax incentives to do this, including tax holidays for several years, land grants, everything..

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Innovation in business

May 13th, 2012 | Posted by glenn in Business English - (0 Comments)

What is innovation to you?  What products do you think of when you hear the word innovation?  What companies do you think are the most innovative companies in the world?

The video we are looking at today is all about what innovation is and how we can define the word.

Business English – Innovation

Take a look at the video once.  Then, watch the video again and try to catch the missing words:

  1. It’s anything that you do that goes against _______________
  2. Find the problem, find the solution, find the customer and __________.
  3. Innovation is definitely our ability to use what we have to change our ________ for the better.
  4. It’s a combination of __________ culture, one might say, versus something that is completely new.
  5. Innovation is more identifying something that can be done better, faster, easier, more _________.

The missing words are not easy so don’t worry about spelling, this is an exercise in catching difficult words that are unfamiliar to you and being able to note them down so that you can ask your teacher or look them up.

Remember- Whenever you come across a word that you are not familiar with, try to catch the sentence not just the word so that the teacher can easily identify it even if you spell it wrong.

innovation in business

Answers

  1. Status quo- The existing state of affairs
  2. Iterate- To repeat a process
  3. Environment- The surroundings or conditions in which a person, animal, or plant lives or operates
  4. Remixed- Produce a different version of by mixing elements of existing ideas
  5. Eloquently- Characterized by persuasive, powerful discourse

Innovation is key to business. This exercise has been presented to you by Live-English.net, your online language school that helps you improve your English for business.

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Business English video: Stimulus money

April 1st, 2012 | Posted by glenn in Business English - (0 Comments)
Business English video: Stimulus money

Questions to think about before watching the video

What is stimulus money?  What does it stimulate?

Why does the government give out stimulus money?  How does this help the government?

How can a company make money by helping other companies to qualify for government stimulus money?

 

Questions to think about after watching the video

What is happening with Growth Management Group?

A)     It is using government stimulus money to increase its capital

B)      It is down-sizing and letting more than 100 people go

C)      It is undergoing growth and expanding its headquarters

D)     It is claiming government stimulus money to give executives a raise

 

What new positions are NOT mentioned?

A)     Sales and marketing

B)      Human relations

C)      Customer service

D)     Project management

 

One employee was interviewed, what did they say about the job?

A)     It was horrible and she quit

B)      It has great training and support

C)      It is well-managed and highly-paid

D)     It has a great atmosphere and she recommends it

 

What kind of people should apply for these jobs?

A)     Dedicated and diligent

B)      Energetic and dynamic

C)      Educated and well-dressed

D)     Low-energy and low-patience

 

Why is this a good economy for the company to grow?

A)     An up economy is a good economy to grow in

B)      A down economy is a good economy to grow in

C)      Any economy is a good economy to grow in

D)     No one knows what kind of economy is best

 

Answers    C, B, D, B, B

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Business English: Digital Marketing News

March 12th, 2012 | Posted by glenn in Business English - (0 Comments)

 

 

Improving your business vocabulary can be as easy as watching the video and answering some questions.  Give it a shot.

 

 

 

Mobile Banking on the rise with new start-up companies

1)      What kind of company is Bank simple?

2)      Why did BankSimple raise 10 million dollars?

3)      What did Josh Reich announce about VISA?

4)      Is CBW FCID insured?

5)      According to the blog, what is BankSimple designed to replace?

6)      Bank Simple plans to add transparency to eliminate what?

Consumers losing trust in popular social and tech companies

1)      What did the study discover about consumer’s trust in Facebook compared to Visa?

2)      How do people make payments with the Paypal application?

3)      What did the reporter suggest is important for companies like Facebook to maintain?

Hacker group threatens to crash Facebook

1)      What is the name of the hacker group?

2)      Why is the group targeting Facebook?

3)      What has been Facebook’s response to the threat?

4)      What date did the group choose to attempt to end Facebook?

Answers

Mobile Banking on the rise with new start-up companies

1)      Bank simple is a mobile bank startup (a proposed company that deals with banking by phone and internet)

2)      They raised money to launch the company

3)      Josh Reich announced that BankSimple will collaborate with VISA (cooperate with VISA)

4)      Yes.  Both CBW and BanCorp are FCID insured

5)      According to the blog, BankSimple is designed to replace your bank

6)      Bank Simple plans to add transparency to eliminate surprise fees

Consumers losing trust in popular social and tech companies

1)      It found that for mobile payments, consumers trust credit card companies such as Visa, MasterCard and American Express — over Facebook, Google and Apple.

2)      Users make payments with one another by tapping their devices together.

3)      It is imperative they maintain customer trust in order to see true success.

Hacker group threatens to crash Facebook

1)      The hacker group is called Anonymous

2)      Facebook is “selling information to government agencies” and “giving clandestine access to information security firms”

3)      Facebook has not responded to threat directly but they are said to be taking them seriously

4)      The group chose 5th November (Guy Fawkes Day)

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