LESSON OVERVIEW

In this lesson, students learn and practise Business English phrases and discuss successful companies. They also watch a video about business strategies and choose one for their start-up. 

BUSINESS ENGLISH PHRASES

The lesson starts with a short discussion of companies (Samsung, Airbnb, Zoom, Uber) and reasons for their success. After that, students move on to working with vocabulary. At first, they need to complete the collocations with the words ‘market’, ‘competition’, and ‘boundaries’ (e.g. beyond boundaries, fierce competition, capture market). To practise the words, students take turns to create questions about the companies they discussed before and ask each other. Then, they need to match the halves to create more Business English phrases (e.g. make a trade-off between, strive to outperform rivals, reap benefits) in preparation for watching the video. To reinforce the vocabulary learning process, students do one more activity and try to rewrite sentences using new words and phrases. 

VIDEO AND DISCUSSION

In this part of the lesson, students first discuss some of the Business English phrases they learned earlier in the lesson in relation to business strategies. Then, they proceed to watch the video about red and blue ocean strategies. Students are given a checklist, and after they watch the video for the first time, they have to say which strategy the checklist is about. Next, they watch the video again, make notes and create a similar checklist about the other strategy. After students discuss the strategies and  the video, they look at the list of well-known companies and try to figure out what their market strategies are. As a wrap-up activity, they have to work in groups and brainstorm their business strategy for the type of business they choose. Students are guided by a scheme and encouraged to use the Business English phrases from the lesson.