Intermediate

  Pre-reading questions: What kind of activities do you enjoy doing with your friends? What comes to your mind when you hear “team building”?   Team building activities such as grinding in a seminar about effectivity at work or spending time doing potentially embarrassing activities are the usual ways to run through company away days. However, a new type of team building activity emerged in Europe. London-based Food@Work and Brussels-based Waffle Workshop offer team building cooking classes. SIG, a hardware company, was a client of Food@Work. SIG staff say that the cooking class was fun because of the different atmosphere from work. Meanwhile, attendees at Waffle Workshop say that they…
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  Pre-reading questions: Do you prefer living in a city or in the countryside? Please explain your answer. Do you think your hometown is overpopulated? Please explain your answer. What do you like most about your city?   World Bank data states that nations such as Cambodia, Mongolia, Myanmar, and the Philippines have a high number of informal settlers in key cities. Cities such as Manila and Jakarta offer illegal housing for migrants. A World Bank senior specialist said that the rise of migrants is an indicator of a growing economy. However, governments are unable to provide quality housing to increasing settlers. World Bank offers two solutions for improvement. One…
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Pre-reading questions: When you were a child, did you dream of having your own business? What do you think makes business exciting or interesting? Do you think it is difficult to be a bank manager? Discuss. Three international banks were fined by European Union officials for maneuvering the price of financial products. The banks were said to have been involved in a cartel from 2005 to 2008. Authorities found that the banks used various instant messaging services to share information on their trading and pricing strategies. E.U. penalized the banks totaling to $520 million, with JPMorgan Chase worth 337 million euros, France’s Credit Agricole with 114 million euros and London-based HSBC…
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Pre-reading questions: What do you think CEOs or corporate leaders do? How frequent do you see your boss at work? Have you experience doubting your corporate leader? Edelman, a PR Firm from the US, reveals a survey about the public’s trust in corporate leaders. Among the 28 countries covered, Japan ranked last, revealing only 18% in the Trust Barometer survey. People in industrialized countries are more doubtful with their CEOs since greater economy usually leads to manpower reduction. Edelman Japan noted that the Japanese society are in doubt because they usually have low chances of seeing what a corporate leader thinks or does. CEOs like Carlos Ghosn of Nissan Motor…
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