Does your company manufacture products? Do you have to talk to customers about those products?
How do you describe a product?
One way is to start with the questions that customer might ask about the product.
Watch our video. We ask and answer questions about a common piece of computer equipment. At the end we put the answers together to create a short, clear description of that product.
Now test yourself
Here’s information about another product. See if you can make a question for each piece of information and then write down the answers to create the product description. The answers are at the bottom of this page.
Information
Product type
steam iron
Dimensions
275mm x 117mm x 150mm, 550gms
For use with
silk, nylon, wool, cotton, linen
Country of origin
China
Price
€30
Answers
These are some suggested answers.
What’s this?
It’s a steam iron.
What do you use it for?
You use it to iron or press clothes.
How big is it?
It’s 275mm long, 117mm wide and 150mm tall.
What does it weigh?
It weighs 550 grams.
What materials can you use with it?
You can use it with silk, nylon, wool, cotton and linen.
What’s it made of?
It’s made of metal and plastic.
Where was it made?
It was made in China.
How much does it cost?
It costs €30.
How well did you do? Did you make any other questions and answers? Use the comment box and share them with us.
Do you need to expand your business English vocabulary? Contact us to talk about it.
This week we have a vocabulary mind map on the same topic. It’s divided into three reasons for losing your job. Those are then split into verbs (blue boxes) and nouns (pink boxes) with an example sentence to illustrate each one.
You can see the mind map on the Popplet website or download an image file.
You receive a P45 document from the tax office in the UK when you leave your job
This week the Bank of England forecast that 75,000 people working in the banking sector in the UK could lose their jobs. This is because many financial services companies are making plans to leave London to avoid the impact of Brexit.
Lose your job is just one of the many ways of saying that a company has stopped employing you. If a company decides they don’t need you any more, they make you redundant, lay you off or let you go.
Grammar is important here. If we focus on the actions of the company, we use the active voice:
“The bank made 2,500 people redundant when it closed its High Street branches.”
If we focus on the person affected, we use the passive voice:
“I was laid off by the insurance company at the start of the year.”
We use a different set of words if you lose your job because of something you did. For example, if you broke the company rules or broke the law. The formal word is dismiss. However, there are lots of slang terms: fire, sack, get the sack, get given your marching orders.1
So, the company report might say:
“Barry Johnson was dismissed for stealing from the Production Department.”
Nobody likes to be made redundant and we all hope we’ll never get the sack. However, there’s one day many of us will welcome. That’s the day when we reach the age that we can retire and don’t have to go to work anymore.
Practise your listening. Click on play to hear Barney reading this text.
1
In the US they also say terminate. However, in the UK this word makes us think of the Arnold Schwarzenegger film so we associate it with something much worse than losing your job.
2
To nick is a British slang term which means to steal something.
Every day, all around the world, business people write hundreds of millions of emails.
However, there is a limited number of different types of business emails. This means that many of the emails you send are very similar. For example, they are emails requesting information, asking for and confirming payment, arranging and confirming meetings and so on. They contain the same standard email phrases. It’s just the specific details that vary.
One way to save time and make your emails more accurate is to use emails templates. A template has the structure of a common email. All you need to do is change the details to fit the specific situation.
Watch the video to see some examples of using email templates.
The emails in the video use standard business email phrases. Download this pdf for more information about those phrases.
This week you can test yourself. How well do you know the words that go together with deal?
Read and listen to the text again then try the exercises.
Words making the headlines – deal
All across Europe, people, companies and governments are trying to make deals with each other. The British government wants to get a deal on Brexit so that it can then negotiate trade deals with other countries. Taxi company Uber is hoping to strike a deal with the transport authorities in London over its licence to operate in that city. French public sector trade unions want to cut a deal with President Macron over budget cuts. In Germany, newly re-elected Chancellor Merkel is working hard to close a deal with possible coalition partners.
Of course, everybody wants to get a good deal. Prime Minister May is worried that the UK may not get a fair deal from the European Union. She is even making plans for a no deal Brexit in case any deal with the EU falls through. Many people in Catalonia think they get such a rough deal from the government of Spain that they want the region to declare independence.
Across the Atlantic, however, the author of a book called ‘The Art of the Deal’ is not interested in doing deals. President Trump says he wants the USA to back out of the deal to address climate change made in Paris last year. At the same time, he has made it clear that he doesn’t want to discuss a deal with the leadership of North Korea to avoid military conflict.
Mr Trump, famously, is not an easy man to deal with. Try to remember that next time you’re finding it difficult to make a deal with a customer or colleague.
Exercises
Exercise A
Read and listen to the text and then answer the questions.
1. What three expressions can you find in the text which mean ‘make a deal’?
2. What expression in the text means the opposite of ‘a good deal’?
3. What expression can we use when a deal is unsuccessful or does not happen?
4. What expression in the text means to change your mind after you have agreed a deal?
Exercise B
Now use the expressions in the box to complete the sentences.
fair deal
cut a deal
fell through
backed out of the deal
close the deal
rough deal
deal with
1. Although they have not announced an agreement, negotiators from both sides are working hard to ____________________ before Friday’s deadline.
2. The young entrepreneur is hoping to ____________________ with financiers which will enable him to start production of his latest invention.
3. A recent report claimed that budget airlines were giving passengers a ____________________ by charging extra for services such as hold luggage, meals and seat selection.
4. Strepco and Matrite had agreed on a merger but the deal ____________________ when the two sides failed to agree on the members of the new Board.
5. The company said it would refuse to ____________________ unelected union representatives.
6. United had agreed to buy City’s goalkeeper for an undisclosed sum, but ____________________ at the last minute.
7. Consumer rights groups said payday loan companies were taking advantage of customers, and new lending regulations were needed to help customers get a ____________________ on short-term loans.
Answers
Exercise A
1. strike a deal, cut a deal, negotiate a deal
2. a rough deal
3. to fall through
4. back out on a deal
Exercise B
1. close the deal
2. cut a deal
3. rough deal
4. fell through
5. deal with
6. backed out
7. fair deal
How many did you get correct? Make a note of the vocabulary that is useful for your job and use it when you speak and write in English.
Prepositions are little words but they can have a big impact on the meaning of what you say. Sometimes using the correct preposition can make the difference between successful communication and confusion.
There are some rules for using prepositions. For example, we use at when we give a clock time: We’re meeting at 2 o’clock. And we use in to describe the location of something: My phone is in my bag.
However, it’s usually better to learn prepositions as part of a collocation or word partnership. For example, we use in in partnership with the adjective interested: I’m interested in musical theatre.
How do you find the correct preposition? You can probably guess our answer: look in a learner’s dictionary.
Now you have opened these two learner’s dictionaries, try this exercise. Each of the sentences use the verb work in partnership with one of the prepositions in the box. If you don’t know the answer, don’t guess, look in a dictionary.
on
as
in
in
in
for
with
at
1. They work ____ a large pharmaceutical firm in Switzerland.
2. She works ____ a software developer.
3. For the last three months, we’ve been working ____ a project in Canada.
4. It’s a multinational company. I work ____ people from all over the world.
5. When he graduates, he hopes to work ____ the film industry.
6. Do you work ____ London?
No, I work ____ Head Office in Edinburgh.
7. Before she moved to Sales, she worked ____ the Production Department.
The correct answers are at the bottom of this page. After you check them, think about the word partnerships in the exercise that you didn’t know. Are they useful to you? If they are, you need to learn them. Modify the sentences from the exercise and make them about you and your job. Think of situations in your life in which you could use those sentences.
1. They work for a large pharmaceutical firm in Switzerland.
2. She works as a software developer.
3. For the last three months, we’ve been working on a project in Canada.
4. It’s a multinational company. I work with people from all over the world.
5. When he graduates, he hopes to work in the film industry.
6. Do you work in London?
No, I work at Head Office in Edinburgh.
7. Before she moved to Sales, she worked in the Production Department.
A good way to collect and organise vocabulary is using mind maps.
Mind maps allow you to group together related vocabulary. This could be vocabulary for a topic or a situation. You can do it on paper or use a website or app. Here’s an example using the vocabulary from our most recent Word making the headlines article about trade.
Click on the image to investigate the mind map more closely. Or view it on the Popplet website. The black boxes have collocations using trade. The orange boxes have examples sentences using those collocations.
When the business and finance sections of British newspapers are not expressing concerns about Brexit, they’re discussing the gig economy.
So, what is the gig economy? Let’s start by looking at the meaning of gig. For about 100 years, a gig was a single performance by a musician or group of musicians. For example,
Did you get tickets for the Ed Sheeran gig at the O2 Arena?
We’re playing a gig at the Rose and Crown* tomorrow. Tell your friends.
In the last few years, the word gig has been adopted by freelance workers. They used it to describe a single job for a client.
I’ve got a 2-week gig consulting in Dubai for IST Engineering.
So, a gig is a single event or piece of work. The gig economy refers to companies who employ and pay people on the basis of individual jobs.The most famous examples are the taxi firm Uber and the food delivery company Deliveroo.
Why is the phrase gig economy in the headlines?
This is because of the controversy about the status of people who work for companies like Uber and Deliveroo. At the moment, the people who drive the taxis or deliver the food are classified as freelancers or independent contractors. The companies say that these people benefit from the flexibility of this arrangement. They can work as much or as little as they want.
The workers see the situation differently. Many of them rely on these companies for most of their income but they only get paid when the companies give them a gig. When the workers divide the amount of money they earn by the number of hours they’re available for work, they say that they earn less than the minimum wage.
It’s not only the money. An employee with a traditional contract has legal benefits. For example,
Paid holidays – This is when you’re guaranteed holiday time while still receiving your salary.
Sick leave – This is when you continue to receive your salary for a period of time while you’re unable to work because of your health.
Maternity and Paternity leave – This is when you receive your salary while you’re away from work after you have a baby (maternity leave) or your partner has had a baby (paternity leave).
Gig economy workers don’t receive these benefits because they are classified as independent contractors. They argue that covering the costs of these things pushes their calculated hourly-rate even lower while the company they work for has higher profits because they don’t have pay for these benefits.
What makes so many people nervous is that many of the companies that benefit from the gig economy are the technology companies that are changing the world in so many ways. What about your job? Do you think you’ll have to become a gig worker in the future?
*Rose and Crown is a very common pub name in the UK.
If you would like to suggest a word from the news for future blog posts, please use the comment box.
Practise your listening. Click on play to hear Barney reading this text.
How well do you know English computer vocabulary? Here’s a little test. Each of these pictures represents a word or short phrase connected to using computers.
The answers are at the bottom of the page.
Part 1
Can you identify the words and short phrases?
1.
5.
2.
6.
3.
7.
4.
Part 2
Now use the words from Part 1 to complete these sentences.
This is a shared computer. Don’t forget to _________ after you’ve finished checking your email.
It’s important to _________ and install the latest security updates every month.
Your _________ should contain at least one number and one capital letter.
The information you want is near the bottom of the page. You need to _________ to find it.
I’ve forgotten my username so I can’t _________ to my account.
Have you ever tried to _________ a video to YouTube? It’s really easy.
Just type what you want to find into the search box and press _________ on your keyboard.
Answers
Check your answers. How many did you get right?
Part 1
log on
upload
enter
password
scroll down
log off
download
Part 2
This is a shared computer. Don’t forget to log off after you’ve finished checking your email.
It’s important to download and install the latest security updates every month.
Your password should contain at least one number and one capital letter.
The information you want is near the bottom of the page. You need to scroll down to find it.
I’ve forgotten my username so I can’t log on to my account.
Have you ever tried to upload a video to YouTube? It’s really easy.
Just type what you want to find into the search box and press enter on your keyboard.
All across Europe, people, companies and governments are trying to make deals with each other. The British government wants to get a deal on Brexit so that it can then negotiate trade deals with other countries. Taxi company Uber is hoping to strike a deal with the transport authorities in London over its licence to operate in that city. French public sector trade unions want to cut a deal with President Macron over budget cuts. In Germany, newly re-elected Chancellor Merkel is working hard to close a deal with possible coalition partners.
When the business and finance sections of British newspapers are not expressing concerns about 
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