Marketing Italy Podcasts

Today's Picture: Ship at Viaduct Harbour, Auckland When you?re neutral in an argument, you stay in the middle, not giving an opinion and not saying or doing anything to support either side. And in general, when something is neutral, it has no special features, colours etc, so no one pays any attention to it. The chairperson should always remain neutral during discussions of policy. Switzerland has always tried hard to defend its neutrality in international relations. For more examples and links to exercises see: http://www.academicenglishgenerator.com/in_the_middle.htm Interesting news article of the day: Sliding into work at Google HQ http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7292600.stm Vocabulary from the news article: perks / come up with an idea / Comprehension Questions: Here are ten sentences about Google's new engineering office in Zurich, Switzerland. Only five of them are true. Read them before you watch the programme and guess which ones are true. Then watch the video and check your answers. I'll read out the correct answers in the podcast! The basic design principle was to allow for individual creativity. One of the relaxation areas is the library. The library also has a kitchen which prepares breakfast, lunch and dinner for employees. No one at Google is allowed to be more than 100 metres away from food. All of the hard work is outsourced to programmers in other countries. Meal times are closely controlled so that everyone has a particular 'window of opportunity' within which to have lunch. Each of the floors in the building is connected by a slide. One of the main design features of the building is its consistency of environment. You're allowed to slide down a pole from one floor to another carrying coffee. One area in the building has an aquarium and massage chairs.

Today's Picture: Sunflowers in front of a villa ?Moreover? is a linking word meaning ?also?. It normally begins or goes near the beginning of a new sentence and is often followed by a comma to give it extra emphasis. It?s often used to give the third and main point about something. So, in the example, the first sentence gives two advantages of the i-Pod. Then the second sentence begins with ?Moreover?, which makes it clear that this is the main advantage. This can be a good way of developing an argument in a paragraph ? whether you?re talking about good or bad points about something. The expressions ?Furthermore? and ?In addition? mean the same as ?Moreover?, so you can use them for variety. If you want to be less formal, you can use ?What?s more?. The iPod is better-designed and more user-friendly than its competitors. Moreover, it?s by far the best-known brand. For more examples and links to exercises see: http://www.academicenglishgenerator.com/also.htm Essay Completion Exercise Here is an example of the kind of short essay you might answer in an examination. Remember that, even if it's a timed essay in an exam, you need to have a logical structure, with a short introduction and conclusion - and one, two or three paragraphs in the body of the essay. In this example, I've missed out various academic words from Unit 11 of the Academic English Generator. I'm sending you examples of many of these words this week and next week, so this is a chance to see how confident you are in using them in your academic writing. See if you can complete the missing letters in all the words below - and go to one of the links below to check your answers: Evaluate the contribution of ONE entrepreneur to the development of the aviation industry Ryanair is one of aviation?s outstanding success stories over the last 20 years and, as such, has att ______ the sta ____of a model for dozens of other budget airlines around the world. Mor ____, its CEO, Michael O?Leary, has become one of the best-known managers, both through his success and his individual style. It could be argued that Ryanair?s success derives largely from being in the right place at the right time. The economic growth and increasing mobility of its domestic population, together with European expansion and der ______created ideal conditions for the growth of a budget airline. However, the fact that other budget airlines have failed shows this line of argument to be seriously fla ____. It?s generally agreed that the pri ____ reason for Ryanair?s success has been O?Leary?s ability to focus on the essentials ? driving down costs by eli ____ unnecessary services, including a business class and by using low-cost airports. O?Leary realised that as for short-haul flights, as long as comfort levels were suf ____, customers would easily for____'extras' ? such as food, window shades, seat-back pockets ? if this meant they could att ---their main goal - air travel at an affordable price. From an operational per ____, this focus on the essentials led to substantial standardisation ? focusing, for instance, on a single model of aircraft for the entire fleet. O?Leary has imp _____ his vision of a low-cost airline with admirable consistency over the last 15 years. By any obj _____standards, his success has been extraordinary. This is con _____by regular growth figures of 25 % in passenger numbers over the last decade. In fact, within Europe, Ryanair?s passenger numbers exc _____those of more traditional airlines such as British Airways. Generally speaking, other low-cost airlines have learnt a good deal from O?Reilly?s success in focusing on the basics. However, it is possible to take a more neu _____ or even critical position on other aspects of Ryanair?s operations. Ryanair?s policy of keeping all its marketing activities in-house has not become a model for other airlines, for instance, who believe that advertising agencies have sup _____expertise in this area. Fur ____, Ryanair?s practice of receiving subsidies from regional airports has been ruled illegal by the European Commission and the bad publicity and heavy fines which have resulted may have neg _______any benefits which Ryanair received from the arrangements. To sum up, O?Leary, to a large degree, invented the modern concept of the low-cost airline in Europe. Every other airline has been affected by his innovations. However, if there is one thing which prevents other airlines from imp ________the ?Ryanair? model, it is this: they don?t have O?Leary.