1. IMBA Business English Lesson 2
Teacher: Murray Sherk
Course Website: Use the link on

2. Pairing Up
Your partner for the rest of the day is the person whose card is on the same desk as yours.
Find your card and sit there.

3. Date is approximately 1934.
Murray’s mother-in-law is one of the little girls.
“Preventorium” to keep kids safe from tuberculosis

4. Describe what you see in this picture.
What do you think is going on?
Is it fake?
Who? Why? When?
Answer: I don’t know!

5. What do you see in this picture?
Describe it carefully.
What is a likely story explaining what is going on in the photo.
Who? Why? When? Where?

6. What more do you see now?
Does your first story still make sense?

7. Now?
Story still OK?

8. Being Convincing: Getting people to believe you
What are some good ways to convince people that things are true?
How did you try to convince people that your story was true?
How did you try to find holes in the other stories?

9. Formal Arguments
Argument = [Claim that something should be believed or done] + [Reasons supporting the claim]

10. Strategies for Arguments
“claim” + “reasons and evidence”
Is the claim clear?
Are these good reasons to accept the claim?
Is there enough evidence to accept the claim (in the time you have)?

11. Strategies for Arguments
Logic & Reason
objective facts plus logical thinking
Character & Credentials
“I’m honest – I’m telling the truth”
“I know what I’m talking about”
“They are honest and can speak with authority, and they believe this”
Partly subjective, but “expert opinion”
Emotion
fear, love, respect, loyalty, patriotism…

12. Claim: “You should practice some English [th] sounds every day.”
Emotion
“Do it or you will fail - your English will not be good enough for international management/business!”
“Do it and you’ll get a high mark in this course to make your mother proud of you.”

13. Practice [th] every day
Emotion
“Do it or you will fail”
Character & Credentials
“Native English speakers who have taught thousands of Chinese students just like you, say this practice is vital.”
“Chinese students with great English spend a lot of time practicing like this.”

14. Practice [th] every day
Emotion
“Do it or you will fail!”
Character & Credentials
“Native English speakers say…”
Logic & Reason
[th] sounds are not part of many languages
Your face muscles and tongue may not be used to doing the right thing for “th”
muscles learn by repetition over time

15. Sometimes the strategies overlap
C&C can be stronger combined with L&R
“He saw a tiger on East Campus” but one person is easily wrong, crazy, or lying
“200 students saw a tiger on East Campus” is much more convincing.
The witness of many people logically gives stronger evidence than just one such person
L&R is usually weakened by inserting opinion (C&C).
“This fact proves this claim”
is much better than
“I believe this fact proves this claim”

16. Arguments: Scientific vs. Business
Use L&R for 90% or more of evidence
C&C and Emotion can be used to motivate, but are considered very weak
Business: Depends on the context but…
L&R still best (How will this lead to the “bottom line”?)
C&C (e.g. reputation of company) can be strong
Emotion can be used to get attention

17. Argument Strategy Exercise
Working with your partner, figure out how to use all 3 strategies to argue that the following claim is true:
Claim: “Intelligent beings from outer space have visited Earth.”
(Please use only English in your discussion)

19. Some Possible L&R Arguments
“Mysteries like how ancient people build huge things like Egyptian pyramids – easy to solve if helped by advanced aliens.”
“So many planets in Universe implies so many aliens that it’s likely one visited.”
Bad math actually
“It’s easy to get a girlfriend at USTC because there are 3,000 girls here”
ignores 12,000 boys competing for the girls and compatibility issues.

20. Some Possible C&C Arguments
“Governments of many major nations have seriously investigated UFO sightings and cannot explain them all as false.”
“In the past 100 years thousands of people around the world have reported seeing UFOs or aliens.”

21. Some Possible Emotion Arguments
“Aliens advanced enough for space flight must be scientifically ahead of us. We must prepare to defend ourselves! (i.e. at least behave like we believe they exist)”
“If they’ve visited, then they’re technologically superior and have not destroyed us. Maybe they’re helping us develop like parents guiding children.”

23. Pronunciation Why? Needs to be “good enough”
Be aware of common problems for those with your native language

24. think, thank, method, path
Pronunciation Work
Where is your tongue?
Unvoiced
Voiced
All of tongue is inside mouth s
sink, sank, sister, pass z
zoo, zen,
cousin, buzz
Tip of tongue is stuck out between teeth (~1 cm)
th (symbol:θ)
think, thank, method, path
th (symbol:ð)
then, mother, breathe

25. Pronunciation [ f ] – same as in Chinese [ v ] = voiced [ f ]
[ w ] = “ooo” (not [ v ] !!)
[ hw ] = unimportant variation on “wh” (normally pronounced [ w ])

26. fairy vary wary
fine vine wine
fail vale whale

27. vest
west
vine
wine

29. Homework from last week
“Write out 10 sentences that use baseball idioms and also what each one means (in plain English). Bring to class on paper next week.”
Take those out now.

30. Baseball Idiom Sentences
As partners, look over your 20 sentences.
Do you agree on the meaning of each?
Test each other on the meanings.

31. Baseball Idiom Sentences
Each person, hand in your sheet of sentences.
Make sure your name and student# are at the top of the page.

32. Discuss with partner
What significant thing is there about your home country’s culture (or home city’s culture) that your partner does not know?
Some sport? Food? Habit? Taboo?
Explain it!
Be ready to talk about what you learned from your partner.
Together you need to give a 3-minute presentation. (1.5 minutes each)

33. 3-minute Presentations (1.5 minutes for each partner)
My partner is <name> from <country, city>.
Talking with him/her, I learned today that…
(Explain something about your partner’s culture, hometown, …)

35. Class Discussion:
Is there anything in particular you’d like to talk about today?
Culture issue?
Current news event?

36. Class Discussion: Is Donald Trump… …crazy? …incompetent?
…really smart and just playing a role to fool people?

37. Homework (optional)
Think up some good topics for future class discussions
Can be about culture, business, current news,…
If you think of a good topic, to me with your suggestions.
I may or may not use your suggestion