1st business English lesson : Story


You will find the definitions to the new words here:
We didn’t put them on the same page because we want you to make some effort to understand them!… Yes, you will notice that you can’t really learn a language without making an effort…

TRY TO GUESS THE NEW WORDS AND THEN CHECK YOUR UNDERSTANDING:

At 8 am, Patrick entered his office. He sat down in front of his computer and opened the file with his presentation. The presentation contained his main ideas for the biggest project of his life. That morning, some hours later, he would pitch these ideas to his boss for the first time. The meeting was scheduled for 11 that morning. This project was overdue: Patrick had already postponed the meeting several times to tweak his ideas, seeing that he was never satisfied with them.

Patrick’s company was an IT firm specialized in creating software programs for learning English online. It had just released the latest, updated version of that program that, unfortunately, hadn’t increased the sales as much as it was hoped. Apparently, its creators hadn’t foreseen the proportional increase in competition that had occured during the development phase. Patrick sometimes felt that his entire company, like him, lacked vision and lagged behind its competitors.

Some months back, Patrick’s boss had found an original solution: he had decided to organize a language fair that would unite the leading experts in language-learning. This project immediately streched the company’s ressources, as it had no experience in organizing conferences. As a result, Patrick and some other managers, in addition to their usual tasks, suddenly became event-planners.

Patrick’s speech that day was going to focus precisely on this upcoming fair: he would present his ideas for the workshops to organize during the fair. Again, just like his company, he was going to face competion : Susan, another manager, would present her own on the same topic. Their boss would choose only one winner between the two of them. Patrick secretely knew that Susan could easily outperform him as she was much for creative. Still, she tended to neglect cost analysis. As Patrick wanted so badly to win, he hoped that her projects would overrun the budget so much that his boss just wouldn’t consider them feasible. Patrick’s legs were shaking with expectation. He decided to use the last hours before the meeting to go over all the presentation one more time. He could never be prepared enough…

Do you think that Patrick will land the project? You’ll find out in the next post.

Now let’s review this vocabulary. It will come back regularly so that you can feel that you are really memorizing it. Click here to practice:


Please feel free to share your comments, ideas or suggestions: they will be noticed and read!
You can of course express criticism, but please do it using polite language. Inappropriate and disrespectful comments will not be published.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *