unit

4
Success
at a glance
AT A GLANCE

Classwork – Course Book Further work

Lesson 1 Starting up
Each lesson (excluding Students look at language for describing
case studies) is about 45 to successful people and organisations and talk
60 minutes. This does not about success symbols in their own culture.
include administration and
time spent going through Vocabulary: Prefixes Practice File
homework. Students look at some common prefixes. Vocabulary (page 16)
Practice exercises: Vocabulary 1&2
(DVD-ROM)
i-Glossary (DVD-ROM)

Lesson 2 Listening: Successful businesses Resource bank: Listening

The managing director of a technology company (page 191)
talks about what makes a successful business.
Practice exercises: Listening
(DVD-ROM)
Reading: Carlos Slim Text bank (pages 126–129)
Students read a profile of Carlos Slim, one of the
world’s richest men.
Lesson 3 Language review: Present and past tenses Practice File
The tenses are compared and contrasted. Language review (page 17)
Students look at how they are used in the Slim
Practice exercises: Language review 1&2
article and then use them to write about another
(DVD-ROM)
company’s history.
ML Grammar and Usage
(Units 1–3)
Skills: Negotiating Resource bank: Speaking
The language of bargaining, checking (page 179)
understanding and signalling is examined.
Practice File
Students analyse how it occurs in a negotiating
Survival Business English (page 61)
situation and use it themselves in a role play.
Practice exercises: Skills
(DVD-ROM)
Lesson 4 Case study: Kensington United Case study commentary
Each case study is about 11/2 A major English football club needs to agree a new (DVD-ROM)
to 2 hours. sponsorship deal to ensure its continuing success.
Resource bank: Writing
Students take part in the negotiations between
(page 207)
the club and a big media company.
Practice File
Writing (page 19)

For a fast route through the unit focusing mainly on speaking skills, just use the underlined sections.
For one-to-one situations, most parts of the unit lend themselves, with minimal adaptation, to use with individual
students. Where this is not the case, alternative procedures are given.

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 unit 4 •• Success

business brief
People are fascinated by success. Business commentators try to understand the success factors that
make for successful individuals, products and companies, and for economically successful countries.
People
Different types of organisation require different types of leaders. Think of start-ups with their
dynamic entrepreneurs, mature companies with their solid but hopefully inspirational CEOs,

BUSINESS BRIEF
companies in difficulty with their turnaround specialists. Each also requires managers and
employees with different personality make-ups. Think of the combination of personality types
needed in banks compared to those in advertising agencies.
Products
Successful products are notoriously hard to predict. There are subtle combinations of social,
cultural and technological circumstances that mean that something will succeed at one time but
not another. People talk rightly about a product ‘whose time has come’. The technology to meet
a particular need may exist for a long time before the product on which it is based takes off. For
example, photocopying technology was around for years before photocopiers were commercialised
on a large scale. In the beginning, cost may be a factor, but after a time a critical mass of users
develops, costs come down, and no one ‘can understand how they could have done without one’.
Companies
Success factors here include energy, vision and efficiency, but many of the companies that were
thought to possess these attributes 30 or even five years ago are not those we would think of
as having these qualities today. Management fashions are a big factor: gurus and management
books have a lot to answer for. Once something becomes a mantra, everyone starts doing it, but
objective measures of the relative efficiency of each type of company are hard to find. Different
types of activities require different approaches to deliver strong financial results, the one
measure of success that people usually agree on.
Countries
Economic success stories such as Japan, Germany and Sweden became models that everyone
wanted to imitate. In the 1970s, government experts and academics went to these places by the
planeload looking for the magic ingredients. In the 1980s and early 90s they went to the emerging
economies of the so-called ‘Asian tigers’. Now China is seen as the country to watch. At various
times, commitment to self-improvement, entrepreneurial flair, efficient access to capital, vibrant
institutions, a good education system and good infrastructure are held to be important factors
for success, but the countries mentioned above possess these to very varying degrees.
In any case, how can companies and countries imitate others? Companies have a particular
culture that is the result of their history, short or long. If managers and their consultants change
them radically, for example by downsizing them, they may be ripping out the very things that
make them tick. On the other hand, change may really be necessary, and companies with cultures
and structures that were successful under earlier conditions are very hard to change in a genuine
way, even if they go through the motions of adopting the latest management fashion.
With countries, how do you imitate social structures and habits that have evolved over centuries
elsewhere, often with an entirely different starting point? The old joke about not wanting to start
from here if you’re going there is applicable. Also, by the time the model has been identified as
one worth imitating, the world economy has moved on, and your chosen model may no longer be
the one to follow.
Ability to adapt is key. Here, the US is world leader in adapting old organisations to new conditions
– McDonald’s and IBM, for example, have had amazing turnrounds from earlier difficulties. But
radical innovation is equally important. The US is also good at generating entirely new companies
that become world leaders. Though not as dominant as it once was, the US economy seems to be
particularly good at producing these companies – witness Microsoft, Intel and Google. China, for all
its new-found economic power, has yet to produce a company in this league.

Read on
James C. Collins, Jerry I. Porras: Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies, Random
House, 2005
Michael Hoyle, Peter Newman: Simply a Great Manager: The 15 fundamentals of being a
successful manager, Marshall Cavendish, 2008

Michael E. Porter: Competitive Advantage of Nations, Free Press, 1998

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 unit 4 •• Success

lesson notes
Warmer C
• Ask the students to name the most successful
business person/people in their own country/ • Get the students to work on the success indicators
in pairs. Ask them also to name the particular cars,
countries. (In a multi-nationality group, this is a
jewellery, holiday destinations, leisure activities,
good chance for students to learn about each other’s
etc. that successful people choose at the moment.
business heroes.)
LESSON NOTES

Invite comments and encourage discussion with the

whole group. Of course, where there are different
Overview nationalities in the class, treat the status symbols of
each culture tactfully.
• Tell the students that they will be looking at success
in business people and in organisations.
D
• Ask the students to look at the Overview section
• Get the students to work again in pairs, this time
at the beginning of the unit. Tell them a little about
changing partners. Ask them to complete the
the things on the list, using the table on page 36 of
statements with the words in the box. Check answers
this book as a guide. Tell them the points you will be
with the whole class.
covering in the current lesson and in later lessons.
Note:
Quotation
Orientated is used in BrE only; oriented is used in both
• Get the students to talk about the quotation. BrE and AmE. It doesn’t matter which the students (or
Ask them if they think it’s true.
you) use as long as they are consistent.
• This is not to encourage their cynicism, but you could
mention another Vidal quote: ‘Whenever a friend 1  profits  2  leader  3  innovation  4  workforce
succeeds, a little something in me dies.’ 5  customer  6  brand  7  shares  8  headquarters
9  subsidiaries  10  people
• Invite some quick comments, but don’t anticipate the
content of the rest of the unit too much. If you have time, get pairs to think of a successful
company that they admire, and ask which statements
in the exercise apply to this company. (In the case of
Starting up successful recent start-ups, it may be that not many
In this section, the students look at the vocabulary for of the points apply.) Round up the discussion with the
describing successful people and organisations and talk whole group.
about success symbols.

A Vocabulary: Prefixes
Students look at some common prefixes.
• Get the students to discuss the words in pairs. Tell
them that they can add vocabulary that came up
A – B
during the warmer session to their lists if they want to.
Circulate, monitor and assist, for example, by explaining • Ask the students to find prefixes in the article.
charisma, nepotism and ruthlessness, helping with
pronunciation and suggesting words where necessary
• Get the students to complete Exercise A in pairs.
Circulate, monitor and assist.
to describe particular character traits.
• Check the answers with the whole class.
• Ask individual pairs to give their five most
important characteristics and ask them why • Ask the students what other words they know that
they have chosen them. use these prefixes or get them to use dictionaries
to find some (e.g. reapply, overreaction, outdo,
• Invite comments and encourage discussion. The co-author, underdeveloped, ultra-efficient,
students may say, for example, that the characteristics misaddressed, ex-teacher, decommissioned).
depend on the type of person. The characteristics of a
successful novelist overlap with, but are not identical • Then do Exercise B as a quick-fire whole-class activity.
to, those for a successful chief executive. (Drive and
discipline might be common to both.) Exercise A
renamed, overconfidence, outperform, co-founder,
B underestimated, ultramodern, misinformed,
ex-business, devalued
• Ask the students, in pairs, to talk about individuals
they know, perhaps in relation to the five words Exercise B
they chose in Exercise A, and report their findings 1  over-  2  out-  3  mis-  4  ultra-  5  ex-  6  de- 
to the whole class. Say that they can relate the 7  co-  8  under-  9  re-
characteristics to the people that they mentioned in
the Warmer activity if they want to.

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 unit 4 •• Success

C Suggested answer
Do the first one as an example with the whole class and Natural Motion was set up in 2002 and its workforce
demonstrate that the odd one out in each group is the has passion, vision and clarity. It has gone on to be a
word that cannot take the prefix in bold at the beginning very successful software animation company, whose
of the line. Ask the students to complete the exercise in software tools are used in the film industry and in
pairs. Circulate, monitor and assist. the computer game industry, to help make software
characters look more realistic in those formats.
2  boss  3  decide  4  lose  5  look  6  win  Those involved have worked together from their early

LESSON NOTES
7  big  8  staff  9  grow vision for what this company might be and have seen
that being delivered with passion and enthusiasm.
D There have been some challenges along the way,
• Get the students to work either individually or in but the team have taken forward their vision with
pairs to complete the sentences. impressive clarity.

• Check answers with the whole class. • Get two or three students to quickly read out what
they have written and compare the different versions.
2  co-authors  3  relaunch  4  overestimated 
5  mismanaged  6  outbid  7  ultramodern  C CD1.28
8  ex-boss  9  deregulated
• Play the recording and elicit answers from the whole
class, explaining any difficulties.
E
• Get students to discuss the statements in pairs. 1 e
 nvironmental technologies, low-carbon
Circulate and monitor the language being used, technologies and alternative-energy technologies
especially prefixes. 2 a
 smart-metering technology company, a project
for tidal energy, a project for wind energy, a
• Bring the class to order. Get representatives of
each pair to report their conclusions. Encourage project for lightweight electric motors
discussion with the whole class.
•  sk students if they have heard about these
A
• Praise good language points and work on three or four technologies and applications in other contexts,
points that need it, especially in relation to prefixes. and if so, where.
i-Glossary  tudents can watch the interview with Tom
S
Hockaday on the DVD-ROM.
Resource bank: Listening (page 191)
Listening: Successful businesses
The managing director of a technology development
company talks about what makes for a successful business.
Reading: Carlos Slim
A CD1.26
Students read about one of the world’s richest men,
• Get students to read the text to anticipate the words Carlos Slim.
that might go in the gaps.
A
• Play the recording once or twice and ask the students
for the missing words. • Explain the task and get students to look through the
summary before they read the article.
• Then play the recording again, stopping after any
words that have caused difficulty. • Students read the article individually or in pairs.

1  successful  2  manufacture  3  sell  • Go round the class and assist where necessary.
4  product  5  service  6  sell  7  cost  • When most students have finished, bring the class to
8  produce  9  technology  10  increasing  value order and get students to say what the errors are.
11  venture  capital
Carlos Slim is probably the richest man you have
B CD1.27 never heard of. The major influences on his life
were his father, Julián, who was born in Lebanon,
• Explain the task. Play the recording, stopping at
and Jean Paul Getty. He studied civil engineering at
convenient points, and get students to write a
university in Mexico City and on graduating set up as
summary of what Tom Hockaday says.
a stockbroker. He made a lot of money in the Mexican
recession of 1982, buying his assets in the middle
of the crisis. In 1990 Slim gained control of Telmex,
which owns 90% of Mexican telephone lines and is
one of the largest parts of Slim’s empire. Slim is also
involved in charity through his Carso Foundation.

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 unit 4 •• Success

• If you have Latin American students in your class, it

1  Present perfect: announcing news
might be a good idea to point out that Carlos Slim is
not well-known in the English-speaking world, hence 2  Past simple: completed action in the past
‘the richest man you have never heard of’, even if he 3  Present simple: situation which is generally true
is very famous in Latin America – an example of the 4  Past perfect: action completed before a time in
Anglocentricity of the English-speaking world! the past
5  Present continuous: describing current situation
B
• Get students to match the pairs before reading the
LESSON NOTES

B
article again.
• Get students to do this task in pairs in class to
1  b  2  g  3  e  4  f  5  d  6  a  7  c practise the grammar before doing Exercise C for
homework. Circulate and assist where necessary.
• Get students to read the article again and find where
and how the pairs are used. C

C
• Students do this exercise for homework. Make sure
that they hand it in in the next lesson or e-mail it to
• Get students to work on this individually or in pairs. you to correct.

1  buying spree  2  annual sales 

3  turning point  4  economic crisis  Skills: Negotiating
5  global recession  6  retail outlets  The language of bargaining, checking understanding
7  business acumen and signalling is covered. Students analyse how it
occurs in a negotiating situation and use it themselves
• Go through the expressions with the whole class to role-play a situation.
working on any remaining stress/pronunciation
problems, e.g. ‘business ACumen’. A

D • Go through the three points in A and the expressions

in the Useful language box with the whole class.
• Get students to work on this individually or in pairs. Get individual students to read the expressions,
Go round the class and assist where necessary. working on intonation.
• With the whole class, elicit some of the ideas that they
• Explain briefly the role and importance of these
came up with. Insist on correct pronunciation of I’d. expressions in structuring negotiations.
Text bank (pages 126–129)
B – C CD1.29
Language review: Present and past tenses • Prepare students for the situation by looking at the
questions in B, play the recording and get students
The tenses are compared and contrasted. Students look at to answer the questions.
how they are used, then use them to write about Apple.
1  a)  150 rugs b) 10%
• Go through the rules with the whole class,
elaborating on them where necessary. This is a tricky 2  She wants the goods by the end of the month; it is
area, even for students at this level. not certain that she will get what she wants.

1  present simple  2  past simple • Get students to look at the sentences with gaps in C
3  present continuous  4  present perfect  and anticipate what might go in them.
5  past perfect • Play the recording again, stopping at convenient
points and get students to say what is in the gaps,
• Point out the grammar reference section at the back
working on any difficulties.
of the Course Book if the students have not already
seen it. They can look at the material on these verb
1  discount  2  standard; in mind 
tenses for homework.
3  double; willing; reasonable  4  asking a lot 
5  proposal; prepared  6  a deal; the list price
A
• Do as a whole-class activity, re-explaining rules D
where necessary.
• Get students to look at the script on page 157 of the
Course Book in pairs, identifying the expressions in
each category.

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 unit 4 •• Success

Checking language: Are you saying you don’t have

that quantity in stock?
Signalling language: I’d like to ask a question now …
or I’d like to make a proposal.

E
• Explain the situation.

LESSON NOTES
• Put the students into pairs and appoint the Sales
Managers and Chief Buyers. Make sure that everyone
knows who they are.

• Ask the Sales Managers to turn to page 133 and the

Chief Buyers to turn to page 142.

• Get the students to study their information carefully.

• Tell the students they should:

• start the negotiation with some small talk
• get into the negotiation itself, trying to use
the expressions for bargaining, checking
understanding, and signalling
• write down what they agree.
• Answer any questions the students may have, then
tell them to do the negotiation in pairs.

• Circulate, monitor and assist. Note language points

for praise and correction, especially in relation to the
expressions for signalling, checking understanding
and summarising.

• When the pairs have finished their negotiation, ask

the different pairs what they decided. Summarise the
results on the board, so that students can see the
range of results.

• Ask one or two pairs to summarise the stages of their

negotiations, the tactics each partner was using,
particular difficulties and sticking points.

• Do a round-up of language points for praise

and those that need correction. Focus on five or
six language points, for example, in relation to
expressions for signalling, checking understanding
and summarising, and get individual students to use
the correct forms.

One-to-one
This role play can be done between teacher and
student. Don’t forget to note language points for
praise and correction afterwards. Discuss with the
student their negotiating plan and the tactics they
were using.

Resource bank: Speaking (page 179)

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 unit 4 •• Success

case study
Kensington United Current situation
Students study information about Kensington United Current sponsorship Insurance company (about
football club and take part in the negotiations between deal with to end)
the club and a big media company about a new
Possible new Universal Communications
sponsorship deal.
broadcasting/ (UC)
CASE STUDY

Background/Current situation sponsorship deal

• Divide the whole class into two halves, A and B. Key factors in Big audiences in UK and
• Get As to read the section on Kensington United’s negotiations between Asia
background and get Bs to read the section on KU and UC Universal communications
Kensington United’s current situation.
wants to boost sales of its
• Circulate and answer any queries. mobile phones in Asia

• When students are ready, put them into pairs, with • Check that the situation is clear to all the students by
one A and one B in each. Students summarise their asking a few quick questions.
information for their partners.
• Once you are satisfied that the situation is clear,
• While students are doing this, put the points in the move on to Stage 2.
left hand columns of the two tables below on the
Task
board. Students work in their pairs to complete as
much information as they can. • Divide the class into groups of four to six. Within each
group, half the students will represent KU and the
• Elicit answers and add them to the board. There will other half, UC (two to three students on each side).
be some information missing.
• Ask the whole class to look at the agenda for the
CD1.30 negotiations and elaborate briefly on each point.

• Play the recording once or twice and get students to • Before the students read their role cards, make it clear
make notes of the missing information. that each side will have to work out its objectives,
priorities, strategy and tactics, and think carefully
• Round up the answers on the board with the whole class.
about what concessions they are willing to make.
Kensington United (KU)
• KU negotiators turn to page 133 and read their role cards.
Recent Very successful in UK and mainland • UC negotiators turn to page 141 and read their role cards.
performance Europe
• Get each team to work together to develop an
Recent Commercially very successful effective strategy for the negotiations. Circulate,
business monitor and assist.
performance
• Make sure that each side has a chief negotiator who
Footballing Marco Conti, its Italian manager will be the first to speak. The chief UC negotiator will
success due to outline the purpose of the negotiations and the chief
KU negotiator will reply. The chief negotiators should
Commercial Ingrid Tauber, Commercial Director, and make sure that the discussions move on smartly, so
success due to her work on diversifying into: that participants do not spend too long on each point.
• club travel agency
• The negotiations can begin, in parallel where there is
• hospitality facilities more than one group.
• joint venture with insurance company • Circulate and monitor, noting strong points and
those that need correction. Do not intervene in
• training courses on leadership
the negotiations themselves unless the teams are
• football boot manufacturing completely stuck.
company.
CD1.31
Problems Spectator (teach this word if necessary)
behaviour • Just before the negotiations seem to be coming to a
conclusion, stop the class and tell them that a news
report has just come on the radio. Play recording
1.31. Then ask the students to continue their
negotiation.

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 unit 4 •• Success

• When time is up, ask the students on different sides

what happened in their particular negotiations:
what their objectives were, what tactics they used,
whether they achieved their objectives, etc. Ask
them what effect the news report had on their
negotiations.

• Praise strong language points and correct ones

that need correcting, getting individual students to

CASE STUDY
rephrase what they said earlier, incorporating the
corrections.

One-to-one
This negotiation can be done one-to-one. Ask the
student which side they would prefer to represent.
You represent the other side. Don’t forget to note
language points for praise and correction later.
Afterwards, discuss with the student their negotiating
plan and the tactics they were using. Praise and
correct your student’s use of language as appropriate,
and highlight some of the language you chose to use
as well.

 tudents can watch the case study commentary on

S
the DVD-ROM.
Writing
• This writing exercise can be done as pair work in
class or for homework.

• Make sure that each student knows which type

of writing they are going to produce: a press
release from the point of view of the company
they represented, or a letter, if the negotiation was
unsuccessful.
Writing file, pages 126 and 128
Resource bank: Writing (page 207)

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