Introduction

Welcome to the English course belonging to the Administration studies. The present material includes syntactical and lexical contents, reading texts, glossaries of specific terms and functional language. A good knowledge of English will have a positive influence on your personal success, your career training, your chances of promotion and possibly on a successful job search. These reasons alone would justify the inclusion of English in the official curriculums of the vocational studies, but a good knowledge of the language will also be very useful in many aspects of your daily life.

The present course has been designed for students and professionals working in the fields of business administration who have a certain knowledge of English and need to improve their skills. In order to follow this course appropriately, we recommend students to have at least a lower-intermediate level of the language (level B1 of the Common European Reference Framework for Languages). However, there are some extra resources in the course website which are specially destined to students with a low level of the language or even students with no level at all.

The course book will give you the theoretical knowledge (grammar and vocabulary) that you need to communicate in English effectively. The contents are divided into four units, and each unit is divided into three sections, which together cover different aspects of the English language. The total amount of work is of approximately 132 hours of work, 33h per unit. All the units have the same structure. The texts at the beginning of each section will offer you a good opportunity of checking and practising your reading comprehension and picking up some specific words referring to your professional field. Many of these words are collected in a glossary of terms and some of them are also explained in the languages notes which accompany the reading texts. Each section also includes a subsection devoted to a specific lexical aspect and one devoted to specific communication skills.

All the theoretical knowledge presented throughout the four units can be practised in the web material, which has the same structure as the written material. In the web material, you will find a variety of activities and interactive exercises (with answers) based on the four skills of the language: reading, writing, listening and speaking.

The four units and their corresponding sections have a title that reflect the tematic core of each one.

The unit called ‘Organizations’ deals with different aspects of business organizations, which, in this context, we should understand as a group of people that come together with the purpose of obtaining some benefits. In this sense, we can also speak about ‘companies’, ‘enterprises’ or ‘businesses’. The sections within each unit reflect different aspects of the topics of the corresponding unit. Each topic is introduced through a reading text. The text called ‘A SWOT analysis’ describes the basic tool in the design of the business strategy of a company. As the title suggests,the text called ‘Markets’ deals with that space where business transcactions takecommonly place; a market may refer to a geographical space, like a country, or to a specific group of people, like middle-aged women, for example. The text ‘Sales and orders’ is about two important activities in any commercial relationship: one person sells a product or service and another person buys that product or service; these activities must follow some procedures which are described in the text.

The unit called ‘Arrangements’ is about different examples of business events. The reading text in the section which is precisely called ‘Events’ speaks about two important activities in a business: trade fairs and presentations. The text in the section ‘Travel’ is about the business trips and especifically about traveling by plane and booking rooms in a hotel. Finally, the section called ‘A business meal’ describes another type of event which may eventually take place in the course of our working life: a formal business meal.

The unit called ‘People’ phocuses on different aspects of the relationships between the people within an organization. The section ‘Communication’ deals with the non-verbal communication, which is a communicative process in which we transmit our message through the use of gestures, facial expressions, etc, what we usually call ‘body language’. The section called ‘International relationships’ is about the cultural differences, an important aspect that we sometimes overlook, but which is very important when we deal with people from other countries. Finally, the text in the section called ‘conflict resolution’ deals with the best way of dealing with the conflicts that inevitably arise between the members of an organization.

The unit called ‘Work’ deals with the topic described in the titles. The section ‘Looking for a job’ is devoted to explaining the important process of looking for a job, with a look at the elements that compose that process, like the curriculum vitae, the cover letter and the interview. The section ‘Job recruitment’ looks at the topic from the opposite point of view; it describes the process and the methods of finding the right employees for a company. The section called ‘Working abroad’ gives some ideas in case you want or you need to look for a job in another country, a difficult process that requires a lot of patience and the appropriate knowledge to go through the long procedure.

When you start the study of a unit, the first thing that you should do is to look at the contents page in the course book to see what you will have to study in that unit. The book is not actually designed as a study book, but as a manual where you can check only what is required for a specific activity. You won’t probably need to read the majority of the sections, but they are available for you in case you want to study a specific topic. For the sake of organization, we shall follow the units in correlative order, but you may need to look for information in any unit.

Use a dictionary or an automatic translator if you have problems with the language. A translator is very useful to find the meaning of a word, a sentence or a whole text, but it is totally inappropriate for producing written texts in English. To do so, use a traditional bilingual dictionary for looking up the meaning of words, and apply the syntactical rules that are described in the course. You should be aware that this course is designed at the B1 level, so there are some basic grammar topics, like the use of auxiliary verbs or the forms of the personal pronouns, that are not treated in the four units of this course book. In case you need to find out anything about these topics, you may check the websites listed in the link ‘Recursos’, which you will find in your course website.

To check your knowledge of the topics in this course or to get some further practise, you can go to the web material and do the activities and exercises that you will find there. When you do your activities, go back to the book frequently to look up the information that you need. In case of doubt with the contents of this course, check the complementary resources that you will find in the class website or ask your teacher or your classmates.

The course book, the web material, the ‘Material complementari’ and the links to interesting websites in ‘Recursos’ will offer you a variety of learning materials which we hope will facilitate your study of the English language. Good luck!