Advice on business communications- Market Leader Upper U1
(This worksheet is designed to supplement Market Leader Upper Intermediate New Edition Unit 1, but will work with any Business English lessons on “communications”)
Pick one of the situations below and ask your partners’ advice (explaining your problem in more detail and with fuller sentences).
- An American boss who keeps telling you to relax
- Suddenly finding out that the gesture you have been using for the number two is rude to all your British colleagues
- A boss who only has an Elementary level in your shared languages
- Working in a French company and never knowing how to pronounce or spell people’s names
- Your boss receiving complaints about your telephone manner
- Being asked to give a presentation on communication skills to this year’s new recruits
- Always mixing up 15 and 50, 16 and 60 etc when people dictate numbers to you
- Being asked by your American boss “What are you looking so guilty about?” when you are not feeling guilty at all
- Rivals for promotion who are much more articulate than you
- Long and rambling emails from your boss
- Everyone saying that you are too direct or even rude, even though you followed the new company policy on succinct memos
- Your colleagues being too susceptible to persuasive salesmen and so often choosing the wrong suppliers
- Being naturally reserved but getting a new role that involves lots of networking
- Not understanding your Australian colleagues’ jokes
- Latin colleagues who are happy digressing from the agenda of the meeting, which drives you nuts
- Someone on a technical support helpline who uses loads of technical jargon
- A colleague who uses abbreviations and emoticons you don’t understand
- Leaving meetings without really getting what the main point was
- Being blamed for a breakdown in communication that resulted in lost business
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Word version for easy editing: advice-on-business-communications
PDF version for easy printing: buscomm