How to lead a successful global team (+ business idioms)

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Vocabulary - business idioms

business idioms

LESSON OVERVIEW

The business world is multinational. This means that your students work (or will work) with people of different cultural backgrounds on a daily basis. Therefore, it may be the reason your students actually want to learn Business English. While this cultural complexity enriches us, such a melting pot may be a challenge and impact how we work. That’s why cross-cultural communication is such an important topic.

B2 / Upper Intermediate60 minStandard LessonUnlimited Plan

The topic of this ESL lesson focuses on working in a global, multinational team and its various aspects. The cornerstone of this worksheet is a video by Erin Meyer, the author of The Culture Map, who is an expert in strategies of improving the effectiveness of global projects, in which she talks how people from different cultures see each other and communicate.

The worksheet consists of many various activities developing vocabulary (e.g. business  idioms) and speaking skills. As usual, it also includes a video and a listening comprehension task. In addition, it involves a lot of discussion about cultural differences and doing business with people from various cultural backgrounds. Moreover, students will have an opportunity to work on some business fixed phrases and discuss dilemmas connected with workplaces and bosses. Before watching the video, they can learn more about Erin Meyer’s book and the idea of the culture map. Then, while listening, students need to get some information how different cultures perceive each other.

EXTRA WORKSHEET – BUSINESS IDIOMS

Finally, check our extra worksheet on business idioms. It includes such tasks as filling in the gaps, matching definitions and group discussion. The extra worksheet can be done as part of the lesson – at the beginning or at the end of it.

WORKSHEETS

Comments

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  1. Sara

    Love this one, very focused, good audio, great interesting discussion topics.

    1. Justa

      Thanks for feedback!

  2. Micaela

    Great job!! Thank you so much 🙂

    1. Justa

      Thank you!

  3. rundaverun

    Great work, have used this in several classes so far.

    1. Justa

      Thanks 🙂

  4. Colombioca

    I currently teach English in a Multinational company and that lesson seems just perfect !!!

    1. Justa

      Nice to hear it! Thanks

  5. Marie Finnigan-Miyaishi

    Thanks Wendy! Stan, sorry I didn’t get back sooner – haven’t been on the site for a while – LOVE the activities throughout.

  6. Thais

    Just great, thanks a lot for this

    1. Justa

      Thanks!

  7. Paja

    Hi Justa, thanks a lot for this lesson plan. It’s one of the best ones on this website!

    1. Justa

      Thank you! I’m happy to hear that!

  8. Theresa

    Excellent lesson! I am teaching a few students who work for multi-national companies in Russia. They thoroughly enjoyed the lesson and got great value out of it. Thank you!

    1. Justa

      Awesome! We’re really happy to hear that 🙂

  9. Olzhas

    I love when lessons are designed as Problem-Based-learning which stimulates critical and reflective thinking. This lesson is just right!

    1. Justa

      Thanks for your comment! We really appreciate that!

  10. Дарья Виноградова

    Hi, how can I get the video. No permission

    1. Stan

      We had to update the video we use and change the lesson a bit. It’s back online now 🙂

  11. missbru

    Hello, I can’t open this lesson for some reason. It says “500 Internal Server Error”

    1. Justa

      Hi there! We’re sorry for inconvenience, but we had a brief server problem, but now all the worksheets should work fine. Check it out!

  12. ciarasiobhanlynch

    I really like this worksheet, there is always great discussion generated from it.
    However in exercise 2 it often confuses my students when it says “popular business phrases” , are they not more like collocations ?

    1. Justa

      Hi! I’m happy that you find the worksheet so engaging 🙂 If your students find this topic interesting, you can also check out our other lesson with the same speaker here. Regarding ex.2, yes, we could say that some of the phrases are collocations. We used ‘popular business expressions’ in the instruction to make students aware that the chosen language is commonly used in the business context.

  13. Krisitina Prohorchik

    I haven’t found EXTRA WORKSHEET – BUSINESS IDIOMS

    1. Justa

      Hi! There is a temporary glitch and the link in the lesson post doesn’t appear correctly. I’m pasting the link to the extra worksheet here. Hope that helps!

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