This Business English Podcast lesson is the first in an ongoing series where we’ll listen in on some typical chitchat around the office water cooler. You’ll find a water cooler in offices around the world – usually in the break room where employees gather to drink a cup of coffee or tea and take a rest from work.
And during these breaks, you might meet with a colleague and exchange words about life, your jobs, your company, sports, politics or whatever. So “water cooler chichat” has come to refer to all types of informal communication that take place at the office.
We’ll be listening in on Jan and Jen, who work in the same office of Ambient, an American telecoms company, gossiping around the water cooler. They are discussing the latest industry news: Accent, a major European player in the market, has just announced the takeover or buy out of Ambient’s main competitor,TelStar.
Listening Questions
1) Do Jan and Jen think Accent’s takeover of TelStar was a good idea?
2) Why was there a delay in the takeover?
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This topic is very great. I am very glad to find this website in internet. I am an international student who stayed in Canada more than seven years, but still I have very poor English communication skills. This website brings a dozen of real-life situations (the application areas never just restrict in business fields). I gain great improvements of my communication skills just such days after I start subscripting this website. I have to express THANK you. In future, I hope your topics would touch some of American culture background topic. For instance, what is the mainstream culture tendencies nowadays (for instance, what do you think what celebrates people would like to gossip to? What TV series would be most quickly attracting people’s attention when I start a conversation topic? )
thank for all
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