Researching a company

What's in the lesson

1. 1Warm-up
2. 2In this lesson
3. 3Guess the words (1)Vocabulary exercise
4. 4Guess the words (2)Vocabulary exercise
5. 5Check the wordsVocabulary
6. 6Useful phrases: researching a companyVocabulary
7. 7Check your understandingReading comprehension
8. 8Listen: Zainab's homeworkListening comprehension
9. 9Use the new wordsVocabulary exercise
10. 10What does it mean?Grammar exercise
11. 11An "About us" pageGrammar exercise
12. 12The passive: present and pastGrammar rule
13. 13Active or passive?Grammar exercise
14. 14A company profileGrammar exercise
15. 15Questions about a companyGrammar exercise
16. 16Say it naturallySpeaking practice
17. 17What do you know about us?Speaking practice
18. 18Let's discussDiscussion
19. 19Wrap-up

Homework

1. 1Homework: closest meaningVocabulary exercise
2. 2Homework: your sentencesVocabulary exercise
3. 3Homework: find the mistakeGrammar exercise
4. 4Homework: an "About us" pageDiscussion

Words

• headquarters/ˈhedkwɔːrtərz/

  the main office of a company or an organization (it can take a singular or a plural verb)

• founder/ˈfaʊndər/

  a person who starts a company or an organization (found, founded: the verb)

• brand/brænd/

  the name that a company gives to a product or a group of products, so that people know who made it

• competitor/kəmˈpetɪtər/

  a company or a person trying to win the same customers, or the same prize, as another

• rivalry/ˈraɪvlri/

  a long competition between two people, teams or companies (a rival: one of them)

• slogan/ˈsloʊɡən/

  a short phrase that is easy to remember, used in ads or by a company

• launch/lɔːntʃ/

  to start selling a new product, or to start a new service or plan (also a noun: a launch)

• acquire/əˈkwaɪər/

  to buy or get something, especially a company or part of a company (acquisition: the noun)

• market share/ˌmɑːrkɪt ˈʃer/

  the part of all the sales in a market that one company or product has, often given as a percentage

• mission statement/ˈmɪʃn steɪtmənt/

  a short text that says what a company wants to do and what it believes in

Two slides from the lesson

Warm-up

Let's talk about the companies you know.

1. Before your last job interview, or your first day in a new job, what did you know about the company?
2. Which companies does your company, or a company you know well, compete with?
3. Where do you look first when you want to find out about a company?

Grammar rule

The passive: present and past

The passive is be + past participle. The tense is in be.

	Active	Passive
Present	A local firm prints our boxes.	Our boxes are printed by a local firm.
Past	A Swiss group bought the hotel in 2019.	The hotel was bought by a Swiss group in 2019.
Negative		The order wasn't sent. The price isn't included.
Questions		Is parking included? Why was the flight delayed? Who was the report written by?

When do we use it?

When the thing is more important than who did it: in company profiles, reports and the news (The office is cleaned every evening). And when we don't know who did it, or it is obvious (My bag was stolen. The meeting was canceled).

With by, or without?

Add by + the doer only when it is important or new: The logo was designed by a student. Leave it out when it adds nothing: not The emails are checked by someone.

Watch out: found (to start a company) is a regular verb: found → founded (The bank was founded in 1867). Don't mix it up with find → found (The keys were found under a desk). Only verbs with an object can be passive: Prices rose last year (not were risen). Common irregular participles: make → made, sell → sold, build → built, buy → bought, give → given, write → written, run → run.