I. Write the following verbs in Past Simple.

UNIT 1

HENRY FORD

I. Write the following verbs in Past Simple.

buy	become
give	find
write	fall
drink	cut
lose	swim
understand	build
have	forget
leave	go
grow	begin
spend	come
take	sell
read	cost
sit

 

II. Read the words.

apprentice, machine, acre, reverse, company, failure, invest, production, profit, manufacture, type, assemble, reduce, overall, rapidly

III. Complete the text with verbs from I.

 

Henry Ford, the son of a farmer, was born in Greenfield, Michigan on July 30th, 1863. He (a)______school at 15 to work on his father’s farm, but in 1879 he moved to Detroit where he (b) ______ an apprentice in a machine shop. He returned to Greenfield after his father (c) ______ him 40 acres to start his own farm. He hated farming and returned to Detroit to work as an engineer for the Edison Illuminating Company.

He (d) ______ his spare time trying to build a petrol-driven motor car. In 1896 he (e) ______ his first car in the garden. He namedthe car Thin Lizzie, and it (f) ______ no reverse gear or brakes. Ford started two companies that ended in failure. Finally, in June, 1903 he (g) ______ 12 people ready to invest $28,000 in a new company. He (h)______ production of the Model A car. The car (i) ______ well, and by 1907 the profits reached $1,100,000.

In 1909 Ford decided to manufacture only one type of car, the Model T. At first it (j)______14 hours to assemble a Model T car. Ford reduced this to 1 hour 33 minutes. This (k)______the overall cost of each car and between 1908 and 1916 the selling price of the Model T (l)______from $1,000 to $360. In the 1920s the Ford Motor Company (m)______rapidly, and in 1925 Ford produced 60 per cent of America's total output of cars. Henry Ford died on April 7th, 1947.

IV. Find the words close in their meaning.

1. return 2. reduce 3. price 4. produce 5. production

a. manufacture b. output c. cut d. come back e. cost

 

V. Find the words opposite in their meaning.

1. rapid 2. leave 3. love 4. failure

a. hate b. slow c. success d. return

 

VI. Find the words as they occur together in the text.

1. machine 2. motor 3. reverse 4. invest 5. overall 6. selling 7. total 8. end in

a. price b. cost c. car d. money e. output f. shop g. failure h. gear

 

VII. Find the English equivalents in the text.

1. вкладывать (деньги) 2. производство, изготовление 3. доход 4. достигать 5. производить, выпускать 6. собирать

7. снижать 8. общие затраты 9. отпускная (продажная) цена 10. общий объем производства

 

VIII. Use the key words to speak about H. Ford.

30.07.1863      born, Greenfield, Michigan

15                      school → work

1879                 →Detroit, apprentice; engineer, petrol-driven motor car

1896                 first car “Thin Lizzie”, no reverse gear, brakes

                          2 Coº → failure

06.1903           $ 28,000 → new Coº, Model A

1907                 only Model T

                          14 hours → 1 hour 33 min, $ 1,000 → $ 360

                          Coº grew

1925                 60% America’s total output

7.04.1947        died

 

UNIT 2

 

The Mystery Man

Read the words.

appear, lingerie, experience, essential, process, advance, anticipate, store, contact, manufacture, unique, advertising, mansion, rumours, discreet, empire, occasion, luxury, innovative, devastating, retailer

 

Read the text.

Amancio Ortega is famous in business schools around the world and is one of the richest men in the world. At the same time, the founder and boss of Zara and Inditex, is almost unknown to the general public. Every 48 hours, somewhere in the world, the Inditex group opens a new store, but its boss has never appeared on television or given a newspaper interview. Amancio Ortega was born on 28 March, 1936. He grew up in the north-west of Spain, and his family was from a working-class background. He started his business life as a sales assistant in a local clothes shop. Then, in 1963, he set up a small lingerie business with his wife. The company did well, and the experience made Ortega think that it was essential to control every stage of the process from production to sales. This idea is central to the success of Inditex. Clothes makers usually produce their collections months in advance. They have to anticipate fashion trends. However, Inditex can manufacture new designs and get them into the stores in less than two weeks.

Its headquarters is in daily contact with its stores and knows exactly what is selling well. The group manufactures most of its own clothes. Production is in small batches. If an item doesn't sell, they stop making it. The shops never have unsold stock. Ortega has done something else unique in the fashion business. His company has sold its clothes all over the world without using any advertising at all. As the group has grown, so has interest in its boss. The Spanish press has published many stories about his art collections and his country mansions, but most of them are just rumours. It's difficult to say what is true, because the richest man in Spain is very discreet. He is not a typical businessman and for the head of a fashion empire, he doesn't seem very interested in clothes. In fact, he has worn a tie on just two occasions: his second wedding and when he met Juan Carlos, the King of Spain. This is the man who has founded what Daniel Piette, fashion director of the French luxury goods group LVMH, has called 'possibly the most innovative and devastating retailer in the world'.

IV. Correct mistakes.

bach sails fassion stok produse sucsess

asistent retiler lukshery edvertisng hedqwoters manufakcher

VI. Answer the questions.

1. Who is A. Ortega?

2. When and where was he born?

3. How did his career start?

4. Why is he successful?

5. How does Inditex work?

6. Why is the company unique?

7. Is A. Ortega a typical businessman? Why?

 

VIII. Do the crossword.

1. партия (товара) 2. отдельный предмет 3. продавец 4. реклама 5. уникальный 6. предметы роскоши 7. производить

8. розничный торговец 9. запас 10. успех 11. направление, тенденция 12. магазин, склад 13.?

 

UNIT 3

 

DREAMS

When Mike Clare left college at 18 with a basic business diploma, he started working for a furniture shop in the beds department. Eventually, he became a manager, but when he was 35 and after 12 years working for someone else, he decided it was time to start his own business. He got a small loan and sold his car to raise some money and found a small shop which was in a terrible state but was cheap. He started the Sofabed Company and within two years, he had three stores. After a while, he decided to concentrate only on beds because they take up less space and you can store more of them. He also found that beds were easier to sell because people are less concerned about the look of a bed than a sofa. He changed the name of the company to Dreams and has not looked back since.

Dreams has built its business on four main selling points: Choice, Price, Delivery and Comfort. This simple formula and Mike's enthusiasm have taken the business to over 150 superstores. Distribution has been the company's biggest challenge, and they now have a fleet of over 100 vans. They have also given a lot of special attention to customer service. When a Dreams driver delivers a bed, he puts on a special pair of slippers to avoid making a mess. 'The slippers cost us virtually nothing, but after a delivery it's all the customers can talk about,' explains Clare.

Dreams has established a reputation for quality and service and has won the Retailer of the Year prize three times. In 2005, it launched an online store and has recently opened its own bed factory. The company is still growing and it has branched out into the international market through franchising. Clare is optimistic about the future. 'It's not easy, and a lot of businesses do fail' he admits. 'But it's not as complicated as a lot of people think either.'

 

IV. Answer the questions.

1. How did Mike Clare start his career?

2. Why did he concentrate only on beds?

3. What are his main selling points?

4. What was the company’s biggest challenge? How did they solve the problem?

5. Have they established a good reputation? Prove your answer.

6. Are they doing well now? Prove your answer.

Blackcircles.com

Read the words.

financial, experience, spectacular, employee, reliable, franchise, identify, supply

Read the text.

MICHAEL WELCH left school at 16 and started work in a garage as a car-tyre fitter. He quickly learnt about the car-tyre business and decided to set up his own mail-order company. He advertised in motoring magazines and sold high-performance specialist tyres. He knew very little about running a business so he took a college course to study aspects like financial management. His next step was to get a job with the tyre company Kwikfit where he got some experience, and was able to study his future competition. After a year there and still only 20, he decided it was time to go it alone.

His company, Blackcircles.com, allows customers to order tyres on the Internet and get them fitted within a day at one of its affiliated garages. Its low-cost, speedy service has proved to be a spectacular success. Welch started in an office with a single desk which he rescued from a rubbish bin. At the beginning he needed to find reliable garages to fit the tyres and spent a lot of his time approaching and checking fitters across the country. After six months, he took on his first employee to help and the business began to grow, despite some problems with his investing partners.

These days, Blackcircles.com is a thriving business and the company has built up a network of 970 franchise outlets. The company has set up a central call centre which phones every single customer to get feedback on the service. This way Welch can see how garages are performing and identify problems. 'We've spent time on the basics, making sure customers are getting the right service,' he says. Growth has been slower as a result, but he thinks this is a secret of his success. As it says on the company website, 'We have supplied and fitted tyres for thousands of satisfied customers, many of whom have bought tyres from Blackcircles.com again and again.' Recently the company has launched a specific web-based service for customers with fleets of cars and has added motorbike tyres to its range of over 20,000 tyres.

 

UNIT 4

 

NINTENDO

IV. Answer the questions.

1. When and how did the history of the company Nintendo start?

2. What was their first product?

3. What happened in 1963?

4. Why did Nintendo form a partnership with Mitsubishi?

5. When did Nintendo launch the first console that you could carry in you pocket?

6. Why and when did the company’s sales suffer badly?

7. What did Nintendo concentrate on in 2004?

8. What saved the company from disaster?

9. Was Wii successful? Why?

10. How did the executives explain low adoption of Wii U?

11. Which is the most successful product of the company? Why do you think so?

VI. Discussion points.

1. What do you think about computer games? Is it a good or a bad invention?

2. Why do people play computer games?

3. Why do they create computer games?

4. What can people do to save themselves from computer games addiction?

UNIT 5

YOUTUBE

 

Jawed Karim was a college student with a difference. For a start, he was not worried about the $100,000 cost of his master’s program at Stanford University because he was already a millionaire. He first hit the Internet jackpot when eBay bought the online payment company he was working for. Then he got lucky again when Google agreed to buy YouTube for $1.65 billion.

When the deal was signed everybody was talking about two of YouTube's co-founders – Chad Hurley and Steve Chen. After all, they were the public face of YouTube. Most people didn't know that there was also a third co-founder of YouTube, Jawed Karim. In fact, he was the person who actually first proposed the idea.

Karim grew up in West Germany, but has lived in the USA since his family emigrated there when Karim started high school. His Bangladeshi father is a chemist at 3M, and his German mother is a professor at the University of Minnesota. Karim obtained his degree in computer science and engineering at the University of Illinois.

Hurley, Chen and Karim have known each other since they met as employees at PayPal, the payment service. When eBay bought PayPal for $1.5 billion, they all received substantial payments. Now rich, the three men often met late at night for brainstorming sessions at Max's Opera Cafe near Stanford, and discussed possible ventures. Karim said he originally pitched the concept of a video-sharing website to his friends because at the time it was difficult to download videos off the net.

The three agreed to divide up the work based on their different skills. Hurley designed the site’s interface and logo while Chen and Karim shared responsibility for technical aspects. At a later stage, when it was necessary to take on management roles, Hurley became CEO and Chen the chief technology officer. However, Karim really wanted to return to his computer studies, so he chose not to be part of the management team. As a result he agreed to take a smaller stake than the other two founders, and not to take a salary or even a formal title because in his own words, he was "focused on school." Although, since then, he has continued in an informal advisory role, he admits it was the other two who actually turned the basic idea into reality.

Jawed Karim is not the first entrepreneur to lose his place in history. Popular wisdom, for example, says that Bill Gates started Microsoft and Sam Walton founded Wal-Mart on their own, but they too had co-founders. In any case, it is not likely that Karim has too many regrets. While his former colleagues continue to run YouTube, his dream is to teach and become a university professor. Whatever he does, money is not likely to be a problem.

 

V. Answer the questions.

1. Why isn’t Karim worried about money?

2. When did he get substantial payments?

3. Who are the co-founders of YouTube?

4. Where is Karim from? Who are his parents?

5. How did the co-founders of YouTube meet?

6. What was Karim’s new concept?

7. Why did it become so popular?

8. How did Hurley, Chen and Karim divide the work?

9. How did Karim’s studies influence his work?

10. What do Bill Gates, Sam Walton and Jawed Karim have in common?

11. What is Karim’s dream?

UNIT 1

HENRY FORD

I. Write the following verbs in Past Simple.

buy	become
give	find
write	fall
drink	cut
lose	swim
understand	build
have	forget
leave	go
grow	begin
spend	come
take	sell
read	cost
sit

 

II. Read the words.

apprentice, machine, acre, reverse, company, failure, invest, production, profit, manufacture, type, assemble, reduce, overall, rapidly