Enquiring for a course

Receptionist: Good morning. Can I help you?

Student: Yes please. I would want to have some information about the

... erm... the courses at Swan School.

Receptionist: Is that a summer course you’re interested in?

Student: Yes. Yes, please.

Receptionist: Yes. Fine. OK. Well, we have... erm... short intensive full-time courses during the summer.

Student: Mm-mm. I would want to know the length of one course.

Receptionist: Yes. Each course lasts for three weeks.

Student: How many hours per week, please?

Receptionist: Well, it’s about twenty-three hours a week. Usually four and a half days each week.

Student: You must have a lot of students in the class, haven’t you?

Receptionist: We have a lot of students in the school but in the classes only about between twelve and fourteen students.

Student: Twelve and fourteen. Could you please give me the dates of the first and the second course?

Receptionist: Yes, certainly. The first course begins on 3 July and lasts until 20 July and the second course is from 24 July until 10 August.

Student: What about the fees per course?

Receptionist: Yes, each... each course costs £150 plus VAT, which is 15 per cent and a £5 registration fee.

Student: And deposit, please?

Receptionist: Yes, for each course we need a deposit of £20 and the £5 registration fee.

Student: Oh, thank you. Do we have to find our... our own accommodation?

Receptionist: No, we can do that for you. We have a lady who arranges the accommodation for you with Oxford families.

Student: How much does it cost?

Receptionist: Well, you can choose to have bed and breakfast only which is £20 a week, or bed, breakfast and dinner which is about £27 a

week.

Student: £27. Thank you very much.

Receptionist: You’re welcome.

(from Task Listening by L.Blundell, J.Stokes. Unit 11)

UNIT 2

Lesson A

It’s a long story, really

It’s a long story, really. When I was at school, my ambition was to be a pilot in the Air Force, but my eyesight wasn’t good enough, so I had to give up that idea. I went to university and studied physics. I wanted to stay on there and do research but my father died about that time so I thought I had better get a job and earn my living. I started working in an engineering firm.

I expected to stay in that job for a long time, but then they appointed a new managing director. I didn’t get on with him, so I resigned and applied for a job with another engineering company. I would certainly have accepted the job if they had offered it to me, but on the way to the interview I met a friend who was working for a travel agency. He offered me a job in Spain and I’ve always liked Spain, so I took it.

I worked in the travel agency for two years and then they wanted to send me to South America but I had just got married, so I decided to stay here. Then we had a baby and I wasn’t earning enough to keep the family, so I started giving English lessons at a school in the evenings.

I liked English teaching more than working for the travel agency and then the owner of the school offered me a full-time job as a teacher, so I resigned from the agency. Two years later, the owner of the school wanted to retire, so he asked me to take over as the director. And here I am!

(from Synthesis by W.Fowler, J.Pidcock. Unit 12.3)

UNIT 2

Lesson B

I’d like to boss people around!

I’ve got one more year at university and soon I will have to start thinking about what to do with my life when I’ve finished that. It’s very difficult to decide exactly what I want to do. I want to use my languages, because I speak French and German, but I don’t exactly know how. I don’t want to become an interpreter or translator as I feel that it would be quite boring. However, I do want to use my languages and travel as much as possible. I’m the type of person who could not stay at home, so, therefore, I have to have a job. At the same time I don’t think that I could stand having a normal 9 to 5 job, as I would be totally bored by it after about half a year. So, therefore, I need to have a job that’ll keep me interested and it will vary, that is, be totally different the whole time.

I think that the best type of job I’d most prefer would be something in business in which I could use my languages, travel around a lot and have quite a lot of responsibility. I don’t think I would enjoy having a menial job when I’m just taking orders from everyone else. I would prefer to have a job with responsibility of my own where I can make decisions for myself and even boss people around.

But I don’t exactly know what I‘m going to do. Maybe I’ll do something in advertizing or in management or in banking. These are my plans, although I don’t exactly know how they’re going to come out.

(from “A Native Speaker’s Recording“)

UNIT 3

Lesson A

Interview

In Britain, people tend to make jokes about some jobs or professions or to hold stereotyped views of them. For example, bank managers are supposed to have a rather stuffy and bourgeois image, university professors are often seen as absent-minded or forgetful. Other jobs may be well-paid or very responsible, but the general public thinks they are funny or rather boring.

Part I

Interviewer: Well, we heard some people just now who seem to feel that other people have a wrong idea about the work they do. Do you think this sort of things is very widespread?

Sociologist: Oh, absolutely. Most jobs or professions seem to have an image or a stereotype to them, often much to the irritation of the job-holders. But there is a serious point to all this, too, that maybe people actually choose their career under the influence of these false images. And certainly, there is evidence that they may even avoid certain careers because they have a negative image. Well, on a large scale, as you can imagine, this could cause problems for whole sectors of the economy.

Interviewer: Er, you say there’s evidence?

Sociologist: Oh, most definitely. There was a survey recently into children’s attitude to different professions.

Interviewer: Well, exactly. What the investigator wanted to get at was their impressions and their prejudices. They used a very simple technique. They gave the children twelve pairs of statements. In each pair one statement was positive, the other was its opposite.

Interviewers: For example?

Sociologist: Well, for example, “such and such a person is likely to be boring or interesting company”.

Interviewer: I see. What professions did they ask about?

Sociologist: Do you want the whole list?

Interviewer: Well, why not?

Sociologist: OK. Here goes. They looked at: physicists, lawyers, economists, accountants, sales representatives, estate agents, biologists, and three types of engineers - mechanical engineers, electrical and civil. The children were asked to say which of the statements was ‘most true’ about each profession.

Part 2

Interviewer: And the results?

Sociologist: Well, they were rather striking concerning one profession in particular, the poor old engineer. Of all the jobs mentioned, he came out really much worse than you might expect. The vast majority of children (90% in the case of the mechanical engineer), thought that engineering was a ‘dirty job’. They also thought the job was of ‘low status’ and ‘subordinate’; that is, the engineer is more likely to take orders than to give them. Oh, and insecure too. The only other person they thought more likely to actually lose his job was the sales representative. But, I must say there were good points too. Engineering was seen to be ‘interesting well paid’ work.

Interviewer: Hmm, not such a rosy picture, really.

Sociologist: No... but it got better when the children were asked about how they imagined the engineer as a person. The majority of the children chose positive comments, except that they thought the engineer was likely to be rather poorly than well dressed.

Part 3

Interviewer: Well, what about the other professions, then? Erm... what came out favourite, for example?

Sociologist: Oh, the lawyer without a doubt. He collected by far the greatest number of positive opinions. The sales representative and then the estate agent were right at the bottom.

Interviewer: Oh, so the engineers weren’t right down there?

Sociologist: Oh, no! The children’s ratings put them just above the poor old sales representatives all bunched together. Probably the children don’t have that much of an idea of their real work. I think they went by the titles, really, since civil engineer came out top, perhaps the suggestion of the name?

Interviewer: Oh, I see.. You mean that he was a more civilised sort of chap than the others?

Sociologist: Yes, right. Reasonable sounding, isn’t it?

Interviewer: Yes, quite sensible, I suppose. And I imagine the mechanical engineer came out bottom?

Sociologist: Absolutely right. In fact, 90% of the children associated him with dirty work, as against 76% for the electrical engineer and 68% for the civil engineer.

Interviewer: And the other professions?

Sociologist: Well, after the lawyer came the accountant; then the scientists, the physicists first. The economist came just above the engineer. Funnily enough, he was the only one that the majority of children felt would be gloomy rather than cheerful.

Interviewer: A real sign of the times, that.

Sociologist: Yes, but I still think the most serious implication of the results of the survey was the children’s apparent ignorance of the importance of the engineer’s role in society.

Interviewer: After all, in most other European countries to be an engineer is to be somebody. And I imagine that this means that many bright children who might really enjoy the profession and do well in it, probably never consider it, which is a great pity for the country as a whole. We do need good engineers after all.

(from Listening. Upper-Intermediate by Sh.Rixton. Part II, Unit 11)

UNIT 3

Lesson B

Do you enjoy your work?

Interviewer: What do you do?

Peter: I’m described as an area sales manager. Um... that would normally imply that one has somebody to manage. In my case, it’s just a glorified sales rep. I go round visiting shops, maybe five or six per day when I’m travelling. The rest of the time I spend in the office, answering queries from customers about sales and planning the next trip. My trips usually last about two or three weeks and I go mostly to Germany, Austria and Switzerland.

Interviewer: What do you find rewarding about the work?

Peter: Well, the travel as much as anything else. Um... the job is fairly badly paid, but the fact that I get free trips to the foreign countries more or less of my choice for most of the year does in some measure recompense for that.

Interviewer: What do you find frustrating or annoying about it?

Peter: Well, I’ve already mentioned the pay. Um... obviously frustrating is also customers that leave one waiting... um.... I have been known to get my own back on customers who leave me waiting for half an hour or so simply by selling them twice as much as I know they need. Um... it’s not a trick that I would recommend using all that often... um... but on the whole the frustrations of the job are minimal.

Sharon: I’m the manager of the department called the Banking and Portfolio Department for a large multi-national corporation. The responsibility of that department is to handle all the banking matters... er... relationship, credit issues, opening and closing accounts. We also manage the...er... investment of the company’s excess funds. The best thing about working in the department th..., that we have is that you get to take decisions at a relatively low management level in the company - you get to watch the decisions come, follow through and you get to see the effect on the bottom-line profit of the company. We are one of the few areas within a world... er... within a headquarters-type atmosphere where there is a profit centre, bottom line. One of the things I find the most frustrating is that... er... the company is still very bureaucratic. We tend to produce a lot of paperwork and reports that don’t seem to have any fit with... today’s company business. And they’ve been generated for years and we continue to generate them... er... because management has asked for them. We are attempting to change that but it continues to be a source of frustration for myself and my staff.

Banker: I’m a commercial lender at the First National Bank of Lake Forest, which is a commercial bank in a suburb of Chicago with assets of about $400 million. It has recently been purchased by the... er... er... Northern Trust Bank in the city of Chicago, which has assets of about $7.7 billion.We are very much a community-oriented bank and my lending will be diverse... er... working with individuals, making mortgages and home construction loans as well as making personal loans and business and industrial loans. So very much of a general-purpose broad area of... er... lending. What is enjoyable about what I do is the opportunity to work with the owners of companies in the area and with professional people that reside in the community. Er... I’m working with owners of steel companies, with popcorn producers, with individuals that make washers for many purposes. And it allows me the variety of work that working at a large multi-billion bank does not have to offer as you’ll be working in narrow job description handling one type of lending. Some of the frustrations with the job are restrictions as to what you can do or not to do for a customer, as many of the requests that we receive are either too small or too large for us to handle and at that point we don’t really have the product to sell them, we have to defer them to our competition.

Receptionist: I’m Receptionist and I deal with incoming mail and people, which are the most important part of my job, dealing with people and I think possibly the most enjoyable part of it. I also send telexes and faxes.

Interviewer: And what is the most enjoyable part about your job?

Receptionist: I think meeting people... um... there are people from all over the country, all over the world, all walks of life, which is the most interesting part of my job. OK, people can be very irritating but they can be very nice as well, and I think the... the nice ones outnumber the irritating ones really. It’s a very people-orientated job, it’s... it’s communication, whether it be with telex or fax and that can all be fun as well if you’re having problems getting through and finding out why... er... the same way that sometimes you’re trying to send a fax to someone and you get some poor soul in the Middle East speaking Arabic or something that... um... you unfortunately have got a wrong number but it’s all part of the job and it... it’s fun. You don’t very often get annoying people face to face. You get more annoying people over the telephone, because people feel that they can say things to you over the phone that they perhaps wouldn’t say to you to your face. The same way that we perhaps say things to people over the phone that we wouldn’t say to their face. So, no, I don’t find people too frustrating face to face... er... because I think you can communicate far easier than over the phone.

(from International Business English by L.Jones, R.Alexandre R. Unit 1.3)

UNIT 4

Lesson A

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