Work-life balance - take a break from intensive studies

We've finished this year course in English for International Business and you all passed your tests successfully. Congratulations! Now you can relax and forget for some time about grammer exercises vocabulary drills and so on...
However, if during your holidays you feel a desire to improve your English skills: have some practice in listening,work on your pronunciation, grammer or pick up some new words, I would recommend you to try new on-line “trainers”: "Как доучить английский" and "Academic Earth" (use the links in Supplementary meterials). From the 1st site you can get to a lot of other free educational resources, including BBC Learning English, the site of free audiobooks etc. "Academic Earth" offers thousands of video lectures of the world's top university professors.
Have a nice summer, enjoy good rest and do not forget English!

Cultural Misunderstanding

This funny video reflects very well the problems of communication between people of different nationalities speaking English. The language used in the video is a bit rude but I know that most of you have already come of age (достигли совершеннолетия) so I think it's OK if you watch it. You may write comments if you like.

Will globalisation survive?

Some economists worry that the current crisis could spell the beginning of the end of globalization. Do you agree? Why? Why not?
Listen to what The Daily Star observer tells about it and compare with your ideas.Use the link Globalisation in Supplementary Materials.

Negotiating tactics

How many negotiating tactics do you know? Check yourself looking at the list of negotiating tactics on ChangingMinds.org site (use the link Negotiation tactics in Supplementary Materials). Which tactics do you use most often if you want to persuade smb.to do smth.? Which are completely new for you?

Using body language in business

After you've watched the video do the quiz using the link body languge quiz (in Supplementary materials)and see how good you are at interpreting body language.
By the way, on YouTube you can find lots of other videos about the use of body languge in business and not only, if you are interested in the subject. It's also excellent practice in listening!

An eye on the future

If you want to know how technology will develop in the nearest future, use the link Jonathan's eye on the future in Supplementary materials. This is an interview with BT(British Telecommunications plc) futurologist which is not long and quite easy to read. However, if are interested in a broader outlook on the future try the link Futurewise and you will learn about the development of virtual worlds, androids, biomedicine, etc.
Please, don't forget that I'm very much interested in your comments about the future predictions!

Carnival in Cologne

BubbleShare: Share photos - Play some Online Games.

Carnival is a very big event in Cologne and lots of people from different German town and even from foreign countries come to see it. It takes place at the end of February just when we have Pancake week (масленица). The culmination of the holiday is Rosenmontag when the zugs (zug-поезд) go in several districts of the city. In the photos you can see the main zug moving through the center of Cologne. The view is really picturesque! Unfortunately, our students, who come to Fachhochshule (our partner university) to do a semester course, don't have the opportunity to see the carnival because it's just the time of winter vacation in Fachhochshule.

Happy Women's Day

Dear girls,
With this card I'm sending you my warmest greetings and best wishes for this special day!!!

Send this eCard !

NLP and other techniques alike

If you want to know more about NLP and other techniques for mind, body and spirit, try the link NLP in Supplementary materials. These techniques are used not only in business but may also be helpful in personal growth.

How to combine pleasure and business

If you like to combine pleasure with business(or have to stay at home)you can practice grammer, writing business letters, listening to business talks and a lot more, using Online English Teacher site. I add the link to it in the Supplementary materials.

Holiday greetings

Dear all,
I'm sending you the best wishes for tomorrow's holiday! Have a nice time, enjoy sunny weather and a lot of other pleasant things.

Больше из подборки открыток «Валентинка» на Яндекс.Открытках

Starting a new business

Unfortunately the site with tips for writing a business plan dissapeared, but I came across the blog about women entrepreneurs (see supplem. materials). You can use it as a source of ideas for setting up a new business, becides you can view it as an example of a business blog in general.
I would also be very much interested in learnung what you think about women who run their own business. Some years ago it was a very rare thing, nowadays the number of women entrepreneurs is growing all over the world. However, there are still much more men in business than women (take for example our country). Why is ti so? Is it more difficult for a woman to start up her own company than for a man? Do men have some special skills for business? Is the situation going to change radically in future?
Please, write you comments on this topic in your blogs and see what you classmates think about it.

Hello, everybody!
Thank you very much for the nice comments, I was truly moved by them.

Here are the links to some blogs of the group of Japanese students. I guess they may give you the idea of what can be written in the blogs, created also by the learners of English. Besides it may be interesting for you to learn smth. about the life of other students.
http://www.ai-studytourinmaryland.blogspot.com/
http://kanayinmaryland.blogspot.com/
http://kotomi-maryland-2007.blogspot.com/
http://massaworld.blogspot.com/
http://meg-meginamerica.blogspot.com/
etc.
If you are interested you can get more links from the blogs above.

Hello, dear students!
We are starting this semester by sharing the impressions we got during the winter holidays. I hope you had a lot of fun meeting your friends, going to the nature, skiing, skating, visiting new places and doing dozens of other interesting things, and I'm looking forward to seeing your pictures illustrating this enjoyable time.
I also had a good time in January. Together with my husband we spent a week holiday in Finland to celebrate our silver wedding. We stayed in a nice small town Nokia 16 km away from Tampere the second largest city in Finland after Helsinky (the capital).
Nokia is situated on a very big lake. Finland in general abounds in lakes, big rocks and pine trees which I personally like very much because such landscape sets me in a quiet philosophical mood.
Most people in that part of Nokia, where we stayed, live in small pleasant cottages with green lawns around them. I guess all the families have cars because there are garages near all the houses. However, many Finns ride bicycles even in winter. We saw a lot of bikes near shops and near the school and they didn't have locks or any other protective measure.
We also went to Tampere which is a big city full of tourists attractions. Just imagine, there are 23 museums, and 11 theatres there! And what I espessially liked - very beautiful parks.
This park is just in the very centre on the banks of the river which flows through the city. The ducks who live there are not afraid of people at all. They didn't pay much attention to me when I came up to look at them.
This mini-waterfall is part of the electric power station built on the river flowing through the city and actually it's part of the park with the ducks. Surprisingly, it's just the centre of the city.
One more thing which is for us is that there are no traffic jams on the roads even during the rush hours though the traffic is rather heavy, and there are no crowds in the buses which run according to the schedule without any delays. That makes travelling easy and convenient .
As you can see in all the pictures the weather is rather cloudy. That was the only unlucky thing in our trip but it didn't spoil the pleasant impressions of Finland, its very friendly people, beautiful nature, exceptionally favourable ecological conditions and very many other small things which make life comfortable and enjoyable.