Inglês Empresarial

Woops - wrong blog!

2006-04-25T12:20:00.000+01:00

I sent the last post went to the wrong blog. I've reposted it to: http://btrayner.blogspot.com

Video - presentation about brand managementt

2006-03-26T09:30:00.000+01:00

Here's a video presentation of Seth Godin talking about brand management to the people in Google. It's a great presentation:
Google/SethGodin video. What presentation techniques do you pick up from him?

First week over

2006-03-08T10:11:00.000+00:00

So a new semester begins. Suddenly I lost one of my turmas (P562) and won another (P461). It feels a bit strange just getting to know people and then to find out that you're not going to be working with them. But everything else is looking good. The general linguistic level is very much higher than previous years.

I hope some students will come and join me and Eduardo in writing this blog.

Exam text: Six steps to operational innovation

2006-02-17T15:47:00.000+00:00

The text for the Exam on February 23rd is "Six steps to operational innovation" by Michael Hammer. It comes from the Harvard Business School blog Working Knowledge.

I have also put a copy in the yahoo group files.

Videobomb

2006-02-09T11:40:00.000+00:00

I'm putting this cool link into the sidebar with the other film sites. You can submit your own video, watch or bomb other people's.

http://videobomb.com/posts

Text: Global communication ...

2006-01-15T18:54:00.000+00:00

The text for the test on Friday is a blog entry from Global PR management. The title is "Global Communication is Key to Overcoming BrandUSA Rejection".

Some important moments in this last week

2006-01-15T14:00:00.000+00:00

1. I feel very proud when I see students giving a good presentation (and when they write a good TWA) especially students who started the semester thinking they would never have the confidence or the language to be able to do it.

Although they do all the hard work I like to think I have something to do with it!

2. I also saw a really superb presentation by Eduardo. Two things that marked his presentation were:
a) He was speaking from his heart and not just from the words on a paper, written by someone else. He gave us an example of an entrepreneur he knows from his experience and he linked that experience with what has been written about entrepreneurs. This technique of combining examples and personal stories brings your presentation alive.
b) He did a lot of preparation and he practised and practised and practised.

I am going to video Eduardo doing his presentation again and will use it for future turmas when we are doing the unit on entrepreneurs.

3. I had an important e-mail dialogue with one student who felt that I didn't appreciate her work. Not only do I admire and respect her work but I also like the fact that she wrote to me.

Some good oral presentations

2006-01-08T14:13:00.000+00:00

I felt very proud to see some of the oral presentations on Friday. I didn't see anyone who couldn't give a presentation in front of a professional audience in English. I really respect those students who are not confident to speak but who who persist during the semester, who ask for help in the preparation of their presentation, and who practice so much that they are able to give a perfectly understandable, enthusiastic and informed presentation.

In fact I have noticed that students who are less confident in the language often do better than those who are very confident. That must be because they pay attention to all the details - the structure, the content and the interaction with audience. People who start by thinking they know how to speak well in English sometimes forget that speaking language without making mistakes is NOT the same as giving a good presentation. I should know! How many terrible presentations I have seen given by people whose first language is English!!

Have a good Christmas break!

2005-12-20T18:24:00.000+00:00

Thanks for all your articles. I look forward to reading them during the holidays :-)

Have a good New Year. And look out for the information in Yahoo that I put up about your oral briefings.

An Inglês Técnico blog

2005-12-14T22:39:00.000+00:00

Look, Bill Williams has now started an Inglês Técnico blog for his students in EST Bareirro. It would be nice to think he was inspired by our blog!

"apostar" ?

2005-12-13T23:14:00.000+00:00

Many students are using "to bet" for the Portuguese word "apostar". People are writing in their TWA that companies are "betting on" innovation to be successful.

In English you "bet" on the horses. You "bet" when you are gambling at the casino.

What companies do is they "invest in" innovation, the don't bet on it.

Citing websites

2005-12-07T13:15:00.000+00:00

I'm worried by the way many students still think that anything that comes from a Website is an authoritative source for their TWA. Many people even think that a commercial site selling an "innovative" service or product is a reliable source for information about innovation.

I think I will dedicate one of our next lessons to analysing Internet sources. And I'll start putting some sites in the sidebar that help you prepare for this.

A translation experiment on this blog

2005-12-05T14:04:00.000+00:00

I have set up the Google automatic translator to translate all the posts on this blog to Spanish, German, French, Italian and Portuguese. Have a look at the translations. I suppose it is possible to make some sense of the translation ... But I laughed my head off when I saw that Bill's name had been translated to "Conta" in Portuguese.

Wallet share

2005-12-04T13:08:00.000+00:00

I have discovered the word partnership and meaning of "Share of wallet". This is what it says on BuzzWhack ("dedicated to de-mystifying buzzwords"):

"wallet share, share of wallet: At some point, trying to increase market share gets expensive. So, companies go after a bigger share of your wallet. Example: Since you can only consume so many colas a day, a soft drink company will try to increase its share of your wallet by selling you peanuts or chips produced by another division of its company."

You can access the entire BuzzWhack Dictionary from their main page. It could be helpful for other expressions.

Automatic translators

2005-12-04T12:54:00.000+00:00

Some of you have been translating the text about "Brand Wars" (check it out on our Wiki).

Most of you said that the automatic translator wasn't very helpful as the translation of the text to Portuguese either didn't make sense or looked comic! Let me tell you that each semester I get some very funny translations from students who used an automatic translator for their work. Then they are suprised when I give their work a low mark!

However, IF you are smart and use the translator strategically, at the same time as your brain, your imagination, the dictionary and your language knowledge, then it can be one more tool to help you to make sense of a text.

Here are two translaters from Altavista's Babelfish and from Google's language tools. I'll put these links in the sidebar.

False friends

2005-12-04T12:19:00.000+00:00

Some people were using false friends in their TWA plan. False friends are those words in Portuguese and English that sound the same but mean something different.

"Actual" in Portuguese does NOT mean "actual" in English. And "actualmente" is NOT the same as "actually".
"Pretender" in Portuguese does NOT mean "pretend" in English.
"Assistir" in Portuguese does NOT mean "assist" in English.

If you don't know what they mean you can check out these lists of false friends. There is a list of Portuguese/English false friends on "Marco's English Grammar and Testing Page". There is also an excercise to test your knowledge of false friends. If you are interested, this list from Wikipedia has common false friends between all languages and English.

I'll also put these links in the sidebar.

What do these expressions mean?

2005-12-03T21:29:00.000+00:00

Someone on the Wiki has asked what these expressions mean:

* Share of Wallet
* Efficient consumer response
* Most Growable Consumer
* Consumer's behaviour
* Cross-selling technologies

I am also curious to know what they mean as I haven't heard most of them. Remind me - is "share of wallet" a direct translation of something like "quota de carteiro"? I'm trying to think of what the equivalent word partnership could be in English.

It's great to have something to look forward to

2005-11-27T21:18:00.000+00:00

Today I started looking at the reformulated TWA plans. I was happy to see that I will have some interesting articles to read during Christmas! Each semester I am always pleasantly suprised by the creativity and good work of some of my students. I think that this semester will be no exception.

This is the first time I have evaluated students plans and I am sure it will lead to a better final work. I look forward to seeing if it does. At the moment it certainly looks as though the articles will be more analytical and more stimulating and I anticipate that I will be learning a few new things about international business issues in the Portuguese context.

I just hope that there are not too many students who directly copy or translate other articles. Those articles are usually the most boring and difficult to read. They are even more difficult to read than an article that has language mistakes but where you can see that the person has really internalised and analysed the topic in their own way.

No more exercises

2005-11-12T14:34:00.000+00:00

I think I've learned an important lesson. I see a vocabulary exercise as a first step in helping students to identify patterns in the language. Once they identify the patterns, then they can transfer this knowledge of patterns to help them understand or write other texts. In the exercise I don't care if they get the "correct" answer, I care only that they are able to work out the pattern.

But now I realise that if I set an exercise, then the objective is to finish the exercise and put in the correct answer (even if it's copied from the answers or a colleague). That leads to superficial learning - so I must stop with exercises as a way of helping students to see the patterns in language.

Reminder about our Wiki password

2005-11-09T17:10:00.000+00:00

There seems to be a misunderstanding about our Wiki password.

1. We all share the same password (to be found in the Yahoo Group messages, if you have forgotten it).
2. You cannot change the password - only I can!

To get into the Inglês Empresarial Wiki you need to enter your name and email address (the same ones as when you registered). And you need to put in the password.

If you haven't yet registered in the Wiki, the process is simple. But you need the password which is in the Yahoo Group.

Invitation to participate in the blog

2005-11-07T14:11:00.000+00:00

I have invited Eduardo Gaspar to participate in posting messages to this blog - but the invitation is open to anyone who is currently doing Inglês Empresarial or to any past or future students.

A blog keeps people informed about what's happening and provides links or insights into what we are doing in Inglês Empresarial. It also has posts which make people want to come back to read the blog, so it can have links to things which are fun or interesting in the international world. It can also have commentaries ... about the international world in general, about the international aspects of ESCE, of our classes etc.

Although the postings need to be in English, you don't have to write in perfect English.

If you are interested, then let me know. And well done Eduardo for being ready to experiment!

Entrepreneur - André Ribeirinho

2005-11-05T00:53:00.000+00:00

Someone preparing their TWA about Portuguese entrepreneurs might be interested to write a case study about André Ribeirinho, an entreprenuer working at Sapo. You can find out about him on his blog "Delaranja". I'll also put his link in the sidebar.

Marketgloss - an English-Portuguese glossary

2005-11-03T19:18:00.000+00:00

Bruno Cruz discovered a Glossário of Marketing terms in Portuguese and English that was produced and published by António Queiroz and João Rodrigues, two students at Escola Superior de Educação de Viseu. They invite people who use it to help keep it up-to-date with new and changing words and meanings. I will add this glossary to our blog links and also suggest that we keep a record of any new words that we could add to help keep the glossary updated. I can already see some expressions in your TWiki that are not in the glossary.

"A intenção deste artigo é promover o trabalho realizado por dois alunos da Escola Superior de Educação de Viseu, orientados pelo seu professor de Inglês, John McKenny. O projecto/dicionário de expressões inglesas que entraram no português por empréstimo ou 'calque', estará em permanente actualização, graças à colaboração dos leitores."

Links to short films

2005-11-01T22:28:00.000+00:00

Here is a link to a short film sent in by Eduardo Gaspar:
http://72.4.161.243/doubleedgefilms.com/spin/player/player.html

He says: It may take some time to downlowd it, but is really good. No words, just image and music. Is about non verbal impact, and it has some filosophy in it (I think...).

I'll start some links in the side-bar for online films.

TWA deadline postponed

2005-10-31T11:00:00.000+00:00

The date for handing in your plan for the TWA is now Friday, 11th November so we have time to work on it in class.