Unit 13 Presenting a Company

Exercise 1.

Which of these suggestions do you agree with?

To make an effective presentation, you should:

1. find out as much as possible about your audience.

2. introduce yourself (name, position, company)

3. start with a joke.

4. outline the structure of your talk.

5. vary the intonation of your voice

6. refer to your notes as often as possible.

7. use clear visual aids.

8. summarise your main points.

Listening

(CD)Task 1.

Listen to a presentation about Tara Fashions. Complete the chart.

Tara Fashions.

1. Where is the head office?	Cordoba, Spain
2. What does it sell?
3. Who are its customers?
4. Annual turnover?
5. Annual net profits?
6. Number of stores: in Spain? in other European cities?
7.Strenghs?
8.Future plans?

(CD)Task 2.

Listen again. Which of the suggestions in Exercise 1 does the speaker follow?

Task 3.

Think about your company, or any other company you know. Study the Useful language below, and use the headings in Task 1 to help you prepare a presentation about it. Then work in pairs. Make a presentation about the company. Ask questions after your partner’s presentation.

Useful Language

Outlining the presentation:

First, I’ll give you some basic information.

Secondly, I’ll talk about our stores in other countries.

Next, I’ll talk about career opportunities.

Last of all, I want to look at our future plans.

Introducing new information

Here’s some basic information.

Let me add a few figures.

Let’s have a look at some statistics.

What are the strengths?

Ending the presentation

To conclude, I want to tell you about our future plans.

Finally, a few words about our new project.

Thanks very much for listening to my talk.

Thanks for coming to my presentation.

Unit 14 Factory Location

Exercise 1.

Match the words in the box with the definitions below.

components	facility	infrastructure
layout	lead time	retailers
subcontractors	utilities	wholesalers

1. …= a factory or plant in which production is carried out

2. …= companies providing goods or services for another organization

3. … = shops and stores which sell to the final customer or end-user

4. …= roads, railways, airports, telecommunications, and so on

5. … = services supplied to houses, factories and public buildings, such as electricity, gas, water and sewage, and telephone lines

6. … = intermediaries between producers and retailers, who stock goods, and deliver them

7. … = the pieces or parts that make up a manufactured product

8. …= the placement of departments, workstations, machines and so on in a factory

9. … = the time needed to manufacture or deliver a product

Exercise 2.

Read the text and complete it using the words in the box above.

The decision to make a new product usually involves changing equipment and altering the (1) …of an existing factory, or constructing a new production (2) … When deciding where to locate a plant or factory, a company has to take into consideration a number of factors, including the efficiency of the region’s (3) …, including telecommunications, and road and rail transport: its (4) … - the supply of energy and so on: the cost of land and construction ; and local tax rates. Land usually becomes cheaper the further you go from a city centre, but a company must make sure that it will be able to find appropriate labour skills at a suitable price. It also needs to determine the availability and cot of raw materials, (5) … and supplies, and the (6) … to acquire them. The company must also take into account the cost of transporting raw materials and components from suppliers and (7) … and shipping or distributing products to (8) …warehouses, (9) …, or other plants in the network. Transport costs and time constraints make it logical to produce close to the customer.

Exercise 3.

Match up these words to make collocations from the text.

1. production	a. transport
2.rail	b. facility
3.tax	c. skills
4.labour	d. constraints
5.lead	e. time
6.transport	f. rates
7. time	g. costs

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