Practice Listening Business English Exercises for A2 – Performance

1

1   workplace diversity

2   safety record

3   performing well

4   environmental performance

5   managing costs

2

1 disappointing   2 encouraged   3 excellent

4 poor   5 satisfactory, average

Audioscript

1

It’s not how they described it to me. At the interview they said that their target was to have 45% of management positions filled by women. But five years later, I’m still here in the same office and two men who arrived at the same time as me have been promoted above me. It’s very disappointing – I really thought I had a big future here.

2

We’ve reduced the number of accidents in the plants by 20%. We haven’t achieved our target of less than 100 accidents per year, but we’re getting there. And we were encouraged by the big fall in serious injuries last year.

3

We’ve had a really excellent year, much better than we expected. We’re the darlings of the stock market at the moment. If you want to buy shares in the company, I think you should do it now, before the price goes up too much.

4

The last three years haven’t been very good. First there was that pollution incident in our biggest factory. Then there was all that media criticism for not using electric vehicles. It’s been a very poor performance – things can only get better!

5

Well, it hasn’t been easy in the last 12 months. The new CEO told us to reduce our costs by 10%. In the end, we only managed a 5% reduction. But then our sales increased by 2%. I think we’ve had a satisfactory year, but our CEO says our performance has been very average.

1

1   They both work in Dubai.

2   Lionel arrived in 2012; Raul arrived three years ago.

2

1   opened (past simple)

2   had (past simple)

3   has increased (present perfect)

4   ’ve been (present perfect)

5   moved (past simple)

Audioscript

Raul   When did you start selling here in Dubai, Lionel?

Lionel   Well, we opened our first sales office in 2012. That’s when I moved here.

Raul   And how long did it take to get your foot in the market?

Lionel   Well, we had disappointing results for the first two years. But since 2014, our business has increased by nearly 20%. The economy’s really booming here.

Raul   That’s great.

Lionel   What about you, Raul? How long have you worked here?

Raul   I’ve been in Dubai for three years now.

Lionel   Do you have a family here?

Raul   Yes, my wife and children moved here last year. What about you?

1

one point three nine per cent

nought point oh three three

one hundred and two

seven thousand four hundred and sixty-seven

nine hundred and six thousand five hundred and seventy

2

Nikkei: + 0.63% = up nought point six three per cent

FTSE 100: – 58.74 points, = down fifty-eight point seven four points

DAX: – 0.17% = down nought point one seven per cent

Dow Jones: – 343.13 points = down three hundred and forty-three point one three points

Nasdaq: 4,958.47 = four thousand nine hundred and fifty-eight point four seven

Audioscript

It’s 5.55 p.m., and here’s the world stock market summary. In Tokyo this morning, the Nikkei closed at 20,235.73, that’s 0.63% up on yesterday’s closing figure. At first, the European markets responded well to the good news from Asia, but then fell again in response to the latest economic figures from the USA. At the end of the day, the FTSE 100 was 58.74 points down, at 6,561.21. The DAX also finished the day down, at 10,968.05. That’s a fall of 0.17%.

At midday New York time, the Dow Jones was down by 343.13 points, to 17,596.35. And the Nasdaq was also down by 122.04 points to 4,958.47 – that’s a fall of 2.4% since the start of trading.

1

1 China   2 USA   3 Japan   4 Germany

2

Upward: rise, grow, increase

Downward: decrease, drop, fall, decline

No change: remain stable

Audioscript

Hello, everybody. We’re going to look at the figures for vehicle production in the last 20-25 years.

Have a look at this graph. It shows the number of motor vehicles produced by the big four – the USA, Japan, Germany and, of course, China.

Let’s start with Japan. As you can see, Japan is no longer the world leader in vehicle manufacturing. But production remained stable at about ten million throughout the nineties, and then rose in the first five years of this century. But between 2005 and 2010 it fell from 10.8 to 9.6 million. Since then, the Japanese market has started to grow again, and recovered to 9.8 million in 2015.

If we compare this with the USA, you’ll notice that production rose at the end of the nineties. But at the beginning of the century, the number of vehicles decreased. Production dropped by about one million in the next five years. Then it declined dramatically to 7.7 million in 2010, dropping into third position behind China and Japan. But since 2010, US carmakers have made big improvements and the results have been very encouraging. The performance of German carmakers has been more consistent than the USA or Japan. Production increased from 4.7 to 5.9 million in the period 1995 to 2015. And this strong performance has continued, thanks to Germany’s reputation for high-quality vehicles.

So let’s turn to China. In the year 1995, the country produced only 1.4 million vehicles. Ten years later, it was already 5.7 million, but the biggest growth was in the next five years. Between 2005 and 2010, it rose by two and a half million vehicles per year. Growth has been a little slower since then, but reached 23.7 million in 2015 and China will continue to dominate the world market.