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English Detective #11, Talking about Business Management: April 23,2013 April 22, 2013 |
English Detective #11, Talking about Business Management:
April 23,2013 Introducing this issue:
This issue and the next look at business and finance vocabulary along with BBC discussions of the ideas of several “business gurus.” I found the BBC talks very interesting. Each has a summary version, the “highlights” or main ideas of the talk, with some vocabulary help for English learners. The talk itself is available in an audio version and as a pdf, so you can read along as you listen. There is also a crossword using the business and finance words for both newsletters and a practice page with paragraphs on some basic business activities and blanks to fill in using AWL vocabulary. I hope you find these helpful! Your First Clue: Vocabulary we’ll Emphasize in this Issue
adaptation, administration, annual, commission, credit, economic, estate, fluctuations, funds, highlighted, income, interpretation, lecture, legislation, parallel, policy, sector, shift, stability, summary, theme, visible. Most of these words, as well as much of the vocabulary from newsletter 12, are explained in the Business Terminology Crossword or the Business Vocabulary practice page below. For those that are not (along with other words from the AWL) see Academic Word List Explanations. An estate is a large piece of property, often in the country. It can also be all the property a person leaves to his/her heirs after his or her death. {In the U.S. there are often legal disputes about how to distribute an estate when a person dies without a will or when the will they leave is ambiguous and hard to interpret.) To highlight is to emphasize or call attention to something. Students often use yellow highlighting pens to mark sections of text they want to study and remember. To Interpret is to explain the meaning of something in a way that makes it clear. Sometimes it involves translation into the language of the listener. People may seek interpretation of dreams and technical language as well as foreign languages. “Interpretive dance” expresses ideas and feelings through dance movements. A lecture is an oral presentation of information. (The word comes from ‘reading,’ but in English it no longer means a reading, although a lecturer may read his notes.) University professors give lectures to their students. Sometimes we call oral correction a lecture: “My parents lectured me on getting home before midnight.” Legislation is the set of laws that legislators write. The verb is ‘to legislate,’ as used in the political slogan “You can’t legislate morality,” (meaning that laws can’t make people want to do what’s right.) Parallel lines are lines that run in the same direction at a fixed distance from each other, so that they never meet (like railroad tracks). Parallel thoughts or statements thus have similar form but different content. A summary is a short statement that gives the main points of a longer text or lecture. The theme is the subject of a person’s art or communication. The nature of reality and illusion are major themes of Cervante’s great novelDon Quixote. The theme of a symphony is a musical pattern that occurs repeatedly in the symphony with different variations. Something visible can be seen. Invisible things cannot be seen. 
This issue’s first reading is quite brief: just the highlights of the introductory talk on business gurus here.
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