319006 English for Students of Business and Economics (V) (SoSe 2013)

• The course aims to:
• develop your comprehension of business terms and economic concepts;
• develop listening skills in the field of business and economics;
• provide you with opportunities to gain some confidence in speaking English by talking about business concepts, by summarizing texts, giving opinions, making assumptions, critically assess.
• focus on business areas and functions, negotiations and (job) applications.
• Skills development
Students are taught to develop their skills in:
Reading which includes skimming text, guessing unknown words, recognizing arguments, main information and supporting details; summarizing and note taking.
Speaking, including agreeing and disagreeing, questioning, clarifying and negotiating.
Presentation skills, making short presentations in front of the class, including preparing and using visual aids;
Writing CVs and covering letters/letters of motivation; mind maps; writing a description of a business process; preparing graphs and talking audience through them.
• In order to gain credit points (2) students are expected to attend regularly, to prepare and present one presentation of a topic of their choice, to prepare for class topics as announced in class moodle; to participate actively in class discussions and tasks.

Bibliography

Course Topics and Themes:
1. Business Environment – Competitive Markets
2. Future uncertainty – STEEP analysis
3. Managing people – Rewarding performance
4. Fostering Creativity – Carnegie wave energy (case study)
5. Working across cultures- Vocab of reason, result and contrast
6. Change Management – DICE theory
7. Project management –Scheduling a project
8. A (Business) Movie- to be announced - discussion
9. E-Marketing – The 4 Cs vs the 4 Ps
10. Money, Accounting and Finance – Microfinance - Personal finance - scholarships
11. Corporate Social Responsibility – Business Ethics
12. Employment and CVs
Economist/Spiegel online english/Financial Times/Ted.com/Time Magazine