Sales Activity: Selling a Mobile Phone as a Sales Rep

In today's sales sketch, you are going to sell 10 mobile phones to a company that wants to equip its sales team with new mobile phones. You know that the company doesn't want to spend a lot of money on this equipment.

1. Go to the Best Buy Cell Phone page.

2. In the middle of the page, you will see the "Best-selling" phones. Study the phone descriptions and choose the one you would like to sell to the company.

3. Work individually to prepare your sales argumentation. Remember you are selling as a rep in an appointment situation, not in a shop.

4. Do the sketches with a partner. (2 different sketches.)

5. If time allows, we will listen to a few of the sketches.

Listening/News Activity for the New Year

In today's listening activity, we're going to look at some issues that a selection of people around the world are concerned about.

After that, you will be able to choose one of 2009's news stories, watch and listen to a video about it, and present the information and your reaction to the class.

To do this activity, you will need the paper Web Worksheet and to go to this link:

VOA NEWS: Looking ahead to 2010 and back at 2009

Listening class December 15 2009

The holidays are coming, and I had thought about showing a film today, but with the unusual class set-up (coming in to teach only the second half,) I was a bit worried about technical difficulties...so that activity will have to wait until the New Year. I have my film chosen and everything, though.

TODAY'S ACTIVITY:

1. Work in 10 groups of two (or alone if there are absences.) Watch the video or listen to the podcast corresponding to the letter you have been assigned.

A. Black Friday 2009: If you don't know what Black Friday is before you start watching, ask me. This is quite a long video (10 minutes,) so you will probably just want to take notes for the general idea.

B. My Top 10 Christmas Films (6:45) There are several similar lists on the same page; if you have time you could compare this one to another one.

C. Holiday Christmas TV Commercials: These are shorter, so you get a few more to watch:

- Top Four Christmas Commercials (from the 80s and 90s)

- Coke Christmas Commercial from 2009

- Target Christmas Commercial from 2009 Target is an American-based superstore chain, but this ad is for the Australian chain and features an Australian accent.

D.  Christmas Shopping in New York The title says it all.

E. Non-traditional Christmas shopping: A news report from a local American TV station.

2. Unless you are mathematically challenged, you have probably figured out that one other group has your video or audio file. Back in class, compare notes, and prepare a presentation of what you saw or heard for the class.

3. Of course, during the holidays, you can come back to the site and listen to the other files!

HAPPY HOLIDAYS TO EVERYONE IN THE CLASS!

TOEIC Listening Class December 8 2009

1. Listen to the following podcast about a pet peeve (something someone really hates.) Take notes and compare what you understood, then explain your ideas to me:

Anne's pet peeve

2. And now for something totally different! Find some text on the Web. It can be anything: song lyrics, a news story, or something totally random. Make a "word cloud" with it using Wordle:

Wordle

Make sure to show it to me when you're finished and explain what you can see about the text from the word cloud.

3. Here is the best part. Find an audio or video extract in English that you think is relevant to what we're doing on this course. Leave the link for me as a comment, explaining why you feel it could be of interest for a future session...and we may work on it in January!

3rd Year Business School Students -- Welcome to my site!

As I said in TOEIC prep class today, this site is still just a baby. But babies grow, as I have learned from my own children and, in a more digital sense, from my personal blog about life in Aveyron.

For the moment, you can find a few interesting resources that could help with your TOEIC preparation under the tab "Links for students." You can also find some audio material under" My Files."

Also feel free to look at anything under "My Links" -- this is more my personal CMS (Content Management System), a place where I can store resources that I have used or would like to use in class. My Files is kind of a mess for the moment since it contains files for students and files for me -- that's a problem I'm going to have to get on.

I will be adding links and resources as the year continues, so please stop by again!