Accents (2): English as an international language

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 1257.

1.1. Crystal on global Englishes

the future of Englishes(1).pdf

the future of Englishes(2).pdf

David Crystal on global English:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tLYk4vKBdUo&list=PL6303D94B68C71D1D

1.2. You will hear speakers with international accents of English from six different countries. Where do you think they are from? Listen and write the name of the country.

Speaker 1 audiofile: Track02_Danish.mp3

Speaker 2 audiofile: Track07_Spanish.mp3

Speaker 3 audiofile: Track10_Japanese.mp3

Speaker 4 audiofile: Track13_Indian.mp3

Speaker 5 audiofile: Track26_German.mp3

Speaker 6 audiofile: Track19_Chinese.mp3

1.3. Listen to Bo Grasborg who is Danish but lives in Germany where he works for a multinational retailer of electronic goods (audiofile: Track02_Danish.mp3 and audiofile: Track03_Danish.mp3 ).Answer the following questions:

1. What does Bo define as ‘the key point about understanding culture'?

2. What causes ‘big misunderstanding in communication' in his company? Do you diasgree with any of Bo's opinions? Why?

3. What does Bo describe as the ‘simple solution' to dealing with the cultural differences?

4. Do you agree with Bo's solution to working with different cultures? What else do you think is important to work effectively across cultures?

1.4. Read the description of a company's culture and complete the sentences with the phrases:

project-driven

we value

generally, we try to take care

we see ourselves as

the focus is on

the leadership style

trusting people

a lot of time is given to

We're a small consulting company and the culture and (1) is relatively informal in general. (2)............................... flexible, not too over-structured. (3) satisfying customers........................................................................... so we tend

to adapt to what they need. (4) creativity so people have a lot of freedom to innovate

and come up with new ideas. Relationships are really important here and so (5) talking to

customers who visit the company. (6) of people inside the organisation and we have weekly team meetings where people can talk about problems and get support. We're quite a (7).................................................. organisation but there's a fairly relaxed attitude to time and schedules and decision making: for us, people come first. It's seldom that people are put under a lot of pressure with strict deadlines. (8) ……………………………to get the job done is better than monitoring them all the time. And we definitely don't have an email culture. We communicate just by picking up the phone!

1.5. Look at these words and phrases which we can use to describe organisational culture.

1 Match up the opposites. Can you think of any more?

2 Which of these adjectives does Bo use to describe his organisation?

top-down task-oriented

people-oriented individualistic

risk-focused cost-driven

quality-focused action-oriented

team-oriented bottom-up