Arranging meetings

So many offices, so many meetings Neil's been listening to the news this week. There are so many important people getting together discussing important things - and it's got him thinking about the skill of setting up meetings effectively.

In this 6 Minute English business edition, Neil and Feifei practise the language of setting up meetings with the help of our BBC Learning English Business Language expert.

Join them as they role-play a business conversation - and pick up a few useful phrases to take away with you!

Have a look at the script as well  so you can memorize the key phrases when arranging meetings. How about practicing this situation with a partner on the phone?

Consider your career

FREEZE: Consider Your Career from Bruce Kasanoff

Language tip of the week: increase | Macmillan

This week’s language tip brings you some useful advice on other ways of saying increase:

Be/go up: to increase; used for talking about prices or levels House prices went up a further 12 percent last year. 

Push up: to make something increase; used for talking about prices or levels It is feared that the new taxes will push up fuel prices. 

Rise: to increase The number of complaints rose to record levels. 

Soar: to increase quickly and to a very high level; used mainly in journalism Stock prices have soared to an all-time high. 

Rocket or skyrocket: (informal) to increase quickly and suddenly; used mainly in journalism Bad weather means fresh fruit prices are set to skyrocket. 

Mount: to increase steadily The CEO is under mounting pressure to resign. 

Be on the increase: to be increasing steadily New cases of breast cancer seem to be on the increase. 

Double: to increase to twice the original amount or level Oil prices have more than doubled since last year. 

Triple: to increase to three times the original amount or level The last six months have seen the company’s value triple.

Going where the work is

In this week's 6 Minute English, Rob and Jennifer talk about why people move around the world to find work. These people are known as global migrants.

Some 214 million people are international migrants, living in a different country from the one in which they were born. There are plenty with high-level skills who end up working for at least part of their careers outside their home country.

Some take work they are overqualified for, because it still pays better than what is available at home. This has led to a brain drain from some developing countries.

Find out what this means as well as some other vocabulary associated with migration.

This week's question:
According to figures from the United Nations, which one of these countries has the largest number of immigrants as a percentage of its national population? Is it:
    a) United States of America
    b) Qatar
    c) Turkey
Listen to the programme to find out the answer.
Text

NI2 Reading Comprehension

Dear NI2 students,

Find some reading practice in these links. I hope you find them useful:

1. Wole Soyinka (Cloze)
2. Reality TV (Multiple choice)
3. Pirahnas (Cloze)
4. The fastest Dinosours (Cloze)
5. Liverpool (T/F/DS)
6. When you have a sore throat (Multiple Choice)
7. Sale-Rabat Tramway (text exploitation)
8. Black English (Text exploitation)

NI1 Reading Comprehension

Hi!
As some people are interested in practicing reading comprehension for September exam, I'm showing some nice links for you to go through. 
I hope you are having a great summer and enjoying your free time  :-)

1. The first computer programmer
2. Airbus Crisis Over
3. Visit Angkor Wat
4. Biofuels and the Environment
5. Bully for you
6. Child labour
7. Papua New Guinea Reconciliation
8. The Digital Divide 
9. Arthur Conan Doyle
10. Adolescents in Britain
11. The Librerian

Texts, and what to do with them

 
In the last few decades the quantity of text available has increased exponentially, and current technology enables any kind of text to be located and accessed almost instantly. Whether you want to read about tips for home brewing, recent developments in quantum physics or the history of railways in India, it will only take you a few seconds to find something suitable.
 
You generally read in your first language (L1) for information or entertainment, or a combination of both, and you can  – and should! – do the same in English, provided you have sufficient knowledge of the language. But as a language learner, you can also approach English-language texts from a different perspective: you can regard them as raw material for learning, and take an interest not only in their subject matter but also in their language content. As well as reading a text, finding out what you want from it and enjoying it, there are plenty of other things you can do with it. Here are a few examples.

1 Take a short text and translate it into your L1. A couple of days later, take your translation and translate it back into English. Compare the result with the original.
 
2 Read an international news item in your L1. Locate the key words and expressions and predict what their English equivalents will be. Then read the same news in English.
 
3 Make a note of the key vocabulary in a text and then try to reconstruct the complete text.
 
4 In a text you’ve read, find a sentence which is particularly interesting for you, perhaps because you can only understand it with some difficulty. Copy each of the words of the sentence onto separate slips of paper. Jumble these slips and spread them out on a table. Try to reassemble them in the right order. Try again a few days later.
 
5 Look through a text and find all the words containing a particular sound, e.g. /u:/. Check your results in your dictionary.
 
6 Look through a text and find all the words containing a particular spelling, e.g. ‘ea’. Sort them into categories according to pronunciation, e.g. /e/, /i:/, /eə/ etc.
 
7 Look through a text and find all the two-syllable words with stress on the second syllable.
 
8 Take a text with, let’s say, 60 words. Reduce it to 59 words while keeping the meaning intact; you could do this by changing the vocabulary or grammar, or by simply removing a non-essential word. Then reduce the length to 58 words, then 57, and so on.
Returning to the same text a number of times, and doing exercises such as these, you can deepen your understanding of the language in the text as well as appreciating the content. Perhaps you use other such exercises? If so, let us know!
Source: Macmillan 
Posted by Jonathan Marks on July 29, 2013 

NI1 Summer reads

Hi!

These are some readers you might want to read these days. I hope it's not too late, is it?
    The Enchanted April by Elizabeth von Armin

    When Rain Clouds Gather by Bessie Head
    Bridget Jones’s Diary by Helen Fielding
    One Day by David Nicholls

Tensions Flare Over Rock Of Gibraltar

by Lauren Frayer

August 07, 2013 5:12 AM

Source: Npr.org

Once again, Spain and Britain are at odds over a tiny limestone peninsula at Europe's southern tip — Gibraltar. It's physically attached to Spain but has been a British territory for 300 years. Now some Spaniards want it back.

You might as well want to participate on the comments to this newsitem. 

Language tip of the week: sure | Macmillan

This week’s language tip helps with ways in which you can express that you feel sure about something:

I’m sure: the most usual way of saying that you are sure about something

I’m positive/I’m certain/I know for a fact (that): a stronger, more emphatic way of expressing certainty

I know: used for expressing certainty that something will happen, based on a strong feeling rather than on facts

I bet: used informally to show that you are confident about the truth of what you are saying no doubt: a more formal way of expressing certainty about what someone is thinking or feeling, often used by people in authority

I am satisfied: a way of expressing certainty about the facts of a situation, often used in official situations

 Examples:

I’m sure she won’t forget – she’s very reliable.
I’m positive I had the keys with me when I left.

We’re certain we made the right decision.

I know for a fact that he lied to me about the party.
You’re going to enjoy the show – I just know you are.
I bet they’ve gone without us!

I bet he’s not as good a cook as you.
You will no doubt be relieved to hear that the management has agreed to your request.
Having examined the evidence, we are satisfied that safety regulations were not broken.

Modern Love

In the first installment of a monthly animated video series based on the Modern Love column, Steven Petrow explains how a cowboy inspired him to hire a matchmaker.

 
Related• Article: A Dollar a Day, for Only 20 Years

10 questions for Carla Bruni

Caxirola (count noun)

A percussion instrument used by football fans which makes a rattling sound when shaken. 
'Thought you'd heard the last of monotonous drones blasting out from the terraces? Think again … Following the international sensation of questionable musical value that was the vuvuzela … the caxirola has been unveiled as the aural stimulant of choice at next year's tournament in Brazil.'

The Independent 25th April 2013 

In the digital era, one indication that a word has firmly made its mark in the public consciousness is when it appears as an option in predictive texting, and whilst recently fumbling my way through a message on a smartphone touchpad, I was interested to come across the word vuvuzela. Four years ago nobody would have had a clue what a vuvuzela was, but its high profile and rather controversial image in the 2010 World Cup seems to have secured it a more enduring place in the language. Three years on, and as attentions turn to the next tournament in Brazil next year, it transpires that the Brazilians have responded to the South Africans by producing an instrument uniquely their own – the caxirola. 

Source: Macmillan Buzz Word

High-speed train derails in Spain

10 questions for Alicia Keys

Selfie

A photograph of you taken by yourself, usually for use in social media (noun [countable] informal):

'If cinema was the great art form of the 20th century, the selfie (a self-portrait uploaded to social media sites) will stand as the pinnacle of creative expression in the 21st.'
New York Daily News 10th April 2013

'He's noticed that when he doesn't post a selfie, his followers go down by fifty a day. A lot of people are following him because of the selfies.'
Courier Mail [Australia] 15th April 2013
 

Background – selfie

The term selfie, sometimes though less commonly spelt selfy, first emerged in 2004 as a catchy Internet abbreviation of the word self-portrait. It was initially used as a hashtag on photo-sharing sites to indicate that the subject of a photo was the person who had uploaded it, but gradually began to take on a life of its own as a general reference to a self-taken digital photo.

Selfie/selfy is a recent example of the use of suffix -ie/-y to form diminutive nouns and pet names (compare, e.g. kid > kiddie, television > telly, Bill > Billy, etc). The same process also features in lappy, a newly coined reference to laptop, though this has so far been slower to catch on. In British English, use of -ie/-y generally has affectionate overtones, and its adoption in selfie could perhaps have been inspired by observing that it often features in 'guilty pleasures' or indulgences, as in e.g. choccy, biccy, drinkies, etc.
Source: MacMillan Dictionary Buzzword

Suspended Coffee

Dear NI1 students,

Can you go without a coffee? What about if you couldn't afford one? You could ask for a suspended coffee instead. What is a suspended coffee?

In this programme from six-minute English, Neil and Jen discuss the new idea of suspended coffees - a scheme where you pay for a coffee for someone who can't afford one.

This week's question:
Civet coffee is one of the most expensive coffees in the world. How much does it cost per kilogram?
       a) $5
       b) $50
       c) $550
Listen to the programme to find out the answer.

NI2C Oral Exam on Sept 9th

Hi,

This is the schedule for the speaking exam in September. If you consider something should be changed, just say so. 
 
16h: 
Cristina R/Ana P
Isabel R/ Carlos B
Lidia M/ Cristina M 

17:30h: 

Eduardo G/ Susana A
Miriam R/ David S
Lorena C/Cristina G/M.ª Jesús G

Sept 5th, NI1 groups' Oral Exam

Hi! 

As we haven't decided yet how to organize the oral exam in September, I'd like you to check this schedule so that you can tell me if there is any problem. 
Have a good day! 

NI1 C GROUP. Mondays & Wed 16H – 18:30		TIME
M.ª Carmen M	Manoli P	16h
Aurora F	Ana F
Paula R/ Pilar P	Sara E
NI1 E GROUP. Tuesdays & Thursdays 16H – 18:30
Irene P	Manuel V	17:00h
Emiliano A	Shirley M
Ana R	Gonzalo L
Noelia V	Alejandro A	18:00
Ricardo G	Inma T
Yolanda A	Luis L
Evelyn M	Jorge C
Gonzalo M
NI1 G GROUP. Tuesdays & Thursdays 18:30 – 21h
Esther S/ Vanesa U	Mariola S	19:30h
Isabel M	Cristina I. G
Marta G/ Gema V	Gema F
Lydia M	M.ª Teresa P