It is a good idea to point out the fact that globalisation does not concern only goods and free trade, but also culture, information and language (globish).
In Market Leader I have found an exercise which I often use to start my class with. Out of four countries (A, B, C, D) which are characterised in terms of unemployment and inflation rate or the presence or absence of unions, etc. students have to choose one in which they would like to open a jeans producing factory.
It allows to introduce vocabulary of the type: government incentives, strong/weak unions, paperwork, high/low unemployment rate, political stability, rail and road network, business tax etc.
Below you will find a text on the importance of choosing the right name for your brand and what may happen if you don't do it correctly:
Picking Brand Names in China Is a Business Itself
By MICHAEL WINES, The New York Times
BEIJING — After a hard day’s labor, your average upscale Beijinger likes nothing more than to remove his dress shoes for a pair of Enduring and Persevering, speed up his Precious Horse and head to the pub for a tall, frosty glass of Happiness Power. Or, if he’s a teetotaler, a bottle of Tasty Fun.
To Westerners, that’s Nike, BMW, Heineken and Coca-Cola, respectively. And those who wish to snicker should feel free: the companies behind these names are laughing too — all the way to the bank.More than many nations, China is a place where names are imbued with deep significance. Western companies looking to bring their products to China face a problem. Given that China’s market for consumer goods is growing by better than 13 percent annually — and luxury-goods sales by 25 percent — an off-key name could have serious financial consequences.
And so the art of picking a brand name that resonates with Chinese consumers has become a sort of science, with consultants, computer programs and linguistic analyses.
The paradigm probably is the Chinese name for Coca-Cola, Kekoukele, which not only sounds like Coke’s English name, but conveys its essence of taste and fun in a way that the original name could not hope to match.
There is also Reebok, or Rui bu, which means “quick steps.” And Colgate — Gao lu jie — which translates into “revealing superior cleanliness.” Nike (Nai ke) and BMW (Bao Ma, echoing the first two sounds of its English and German names) also have worn well on Chinese ears.
Microsoft had to think twice about bringing its Bing search engine here because in Chinese, the most common definitions of the character pronounced “bing” are “disease,” “defect” and “virus”. The revised name, Bi ying, roughly means “responds without fail.” Peugeot (Biao zhi) sounds enough like the Chinese slang for “prostitute”
For some products, having a foreign-sounding name gives an air of sophistication that a true Chinese name would lack. Many upscale brands like Cadillac (Ka di la ke), or Hilton (Xi er dun), employ phonetic translations that mean nothing in Chinese.
But on the other hand, a genuine Chinese name can say things about a product that a mere collection of homonyms never could. Take Citibank, Hua qi yinhang, which literally means “star-spangled banner bank,” or Marriott, Wan hao, or “10,000 wealthy elites.”
the underlined words are to be matched with their synonyms:
1.
Vocabulary. Match the underlines words with their synonyms:
1.
rich =
2.
upmarket =
3.
over/more than =
4.
transmit/communicate =
5.
go to =
6.
the name of the American anthem=
7.
a way of laughing =
8.
fill =
9.
about/around/ approximately =
10. wrong =
11. simple =
12. sb who doesn’t drink alcohol =
you can also ask about the problems companies face when working in China and how they solve them (3 solutions put forward in the text)
There is an old (from 1999, but gosh, everything becomes old so quickly!) book which prepares for the Cambridge Business English Cerfificate (or BEC),
I sometimes use a game from it. The game is based on the idea that you are an exporter of one of the three products to either Germany, Sweden or Spain. As you move forward on the board (no dice needed, two coins will do the trick) you earn money (somebody in the group will need to keep the books). You may land on an Internal or Market Report square, which informs you about e.g. the economic situation as a result of which you miss a turn or double your income next time, that is Market Report. Internal Report will ask you to make a decision based on which you either lose or gain money.
I have scanned the board and one page of reports to give you a taste of it....
There is an article written by Peter Gumbel for TIMES (I can no longer find it online). The article (entitled "Same but Different) contains interesting pieces of information that could be of useful in a discussion:
e.g.
on Nescafé
"In an age of rampant globalization, when consumers across the world increasingly seem to crave the same sort of products, from Coca-Cola and Harry Potter novels to Starbucks coffee and Louis Vitton handbags, you might think that a [...] company with annual sales of 80 billion dollars would be eager to join this push towards standarization and sameness. [...] Well, no. [...] There is Nescafé and Nescafé: the one you buy in Singapore is quite different from the one you'll find in Spain or Swaziland or Sao Paulo. In fact the company makes about 200 different types of Nescafé."
on KitKat
"The same goes for chocolate. A kitKat bar is the same all over the world, right? Wrong. leave aside the Japanese variant, where strawberry, banana or other fillings change seasonally [....] a Russian KitKat is slightly smaller than Bulgarian one, for example, and the chocolate isn't as sweet as in German one."
on Maggi tomato soup
"the differences already start with the cooking time, which ranges from three minutes to ten. [...]The Turkish one takes longer to prepare because Turkish flour is less refined and thus needs to be heated longer.[...] Tiny specks of green basil float conspicously in the Swiss one. The German classic master is darker, creamier red [...] Indian one is almost orange."
on Ice cream
"the very substantial difference between the vanilla ice cream Nestlé sell in Germany and the one in France. [...] the French one is yellow and beany in taste, almost like frozen crème anglaise, while German one is much whiter and more buttery...."
and a question
"How come national preferences are still relevant to taste, at a time, when people and different types of cuisine are increasingly crossing borders?"
So much for the article.
Time for a video without words, for a change. Hopefully the images will be a source of ideas.
If your students are getting fidgety right now, surprise them with a culture quiz,
you can make one yourself or use a ready made one, for example, from Inside Out- intermediate.
This particular one can be used as an introduction to modal verbs and related expressions:
have a good trip
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