Market Leader Video Mini Review

Market Leader Video

This consists of, in fact, two unrelated videos. One shows a group of people involved in negotiations between imaginary airline companies and the second has short ‘articles’ about business problems and concepts. The first makes up a full ‘story’, but is blissfully free of the corny humour that has ruined similar business videos in the past. Despite the fact that the business conditions for airlines became out-of-date shortly after the video was released, running through the whole thing makes a good linker between classes for business students (from any industry) that you are spending a lot of time with. It might even be possible to base a whole course round this video, as each section has language work that could be expanded on. It is not, however, really possible to do a single extract from the video without explaining the whole of the rest of the story.
The second video talks students through business situations and concepts in the manner of an Open University TV programme- interviews with experts and famous businessmen interspersed with bullet pointed summaries of what they have said. The ‘episodes’ are meant to stand alone and are similar in format to each other, so it is probably not possible to do more than 2 or 3 with a single class. It is possible to choose an extract to match language points from the textbook, but it is probably best to use it as a break from normal class- choosing the extracts by your students’ area of business and interests.
All in all, these videos will probably seem increasingly out-of-date in the next few years, but the serious approach and lack of silly humour mean that these are the only business English video I have ever used more than once!