Essential Business English Vocabulary Exercises and Worksheets
1st August 2024
The goal of this page is to help non-native English speakers improve their vocabulary skills and fluency in the language of business. With a variety of audio and video files, these activities provide an engaging experience to help enhance speaking and listening abilities.
Digital Business Skills
Theses exercises include brainstorming, matching activities and sentence completion tasks that help learners understand and apply various digital business concepts. Digital business skills have become increasingly crucial for job seekers in the 2020s. As businesses across all sectors continue to digitize their operations, employees who possess a strong grasp of digital technologies and strategies are in high demand. These skills not only make candidates more competitive in the job market but also enable them to contribute more effectively to their organizations’ digital transformation efforts.
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Idioms for Running a Business
Understanding idioms is crucial for business English learners. The exercises provided, along with listening practice and video content, offer a comprehensive approach to learning these idioms. This multi-modal learning strategy helps reinforce understanding, improve retention, and provide context for proper usage.
Contemporary business vocabulary
Learning contemporary business vocabulary, as highlighted in the PDF, is crucial in today’s rapidly evolving digital culture for several reasons:
- Effective communication: Terms like “pivot” enable professionals to quickly convey the idea of changing strategy in response to market shifts. For example, a startup might say, “We need to pivot our business model to focus more on e-commerce.”
- Adaptability: Understanding phrases like “headwinds and tailwinds” helps professionals discuss and adapt to rapidly changing market conditions. A manager might explain, “We’re facing headwinds due to supply chain disruptions, but the increased demand for remote work solutions is a significant tailwind for our software division.”
- Digital transformation: Vocabulary such as “drill down” reflects the increasing focus on data analysis in digital-first businesses. An analyst might suggest, “Let’s drill down into the user engagement metrics to understand why our app retention rates are declining.”
- Remote work culture: Phrases like “touch base” have become essential in managing remote teams and maintaining communication in virtual workplaces. A team leader might say, “Let’s touch base via video call next week to discuss project progress.”
By mastering this contemporary vocabulary, professionals can navigate the digital transition more effectively, collaborate better in modern work environments, and stay relevant in an ever-changing business landscape.
Discussing a new project
This lesson focuses on essential vocabulary used for discussing new project. It’s been updated with audio and video files.
Adjectives for a businessman
This vocabulary in this activity includes commonly used adjectives to describe personality and a business person’s personality in particular.
Elements of office work
Elements of office work includes vocabulary and common expressions with vocabulary-picture matching and relatable questions for business English students.
Common Business English phrases/expressions 1 (with answers and audio)
This is an ESL listening/speaking exercise for practicing common business English expressions by matching expressions and phrases to pictures and writing sentences. First, the students match the expressions to the pictures. Then they can listen and try to write sentences using the expressions. Finally, they can ask/answer the questions.
Common Business English phrases 1 (PDF)
Business collocations worksheet (with audio and answers)
This is a business English ESL exercise introducing and exploring business collocations. Students begin by writing the words and phrases in the appropriate columns. Then they write sentences using the collocations. Then they can listen to the audio and check if they have all the collocations.
Common business collocations(PDF)
Elements of workplace activities (with answers)
A lesson exploring language and expressions that describe workplace activities. It includes a short speaking activity that gives students the opportunity to use the language to express their own ideas.
Elements of workplace activities (PDF)
(see the video version on YouTube)
Logistics (and shipping) vocabulary worksheet (with audio and answers)
This business English ESL vocabulary and listening exercise aims to help students understand logistics and shipping vocabulary. Students match the vocabulary to the pictures and then listening to the audio and write short sentences at the bottom of the page.
Common Business English phrases/expressions 2 (with audio and answers)
This is another elementary ESL exercise for practicing common business English expressions by matching expressions and phrases to pictures and writing sentences.
Common Business English phrases 2 (PDF)
Working in a factory vocabulary worksheet (with answers)
This is an ESL exercise for teaching English expressions for working in a factory Students match the expressions to the pictures.
Working in a factory vocabulary (PDF)
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Elements of Business English vocabulary (with answers)
This is an ESL exercise for introducing or reviewing common business English expressions by matching expressions and phrases to pictures. Students use their language and critical thinking skills to match the common business English expressions and phrases to the pictures. As a follow-up the teacher might ask the students to create full sentences describing the activities taking place in the pictures.
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Expanding business English vocabulary 1 (with answers)
Expanding business English vocabulary is an intermediate worksheet with vocabulary-picture matching and questions aimed at improving students’ language skills with enjoyable and relatable tasks. It is a bit more advanced and challenging than the exercises above.
Expanding business English vocabulary (PDF)
Expanding business English vocabulary 2 (with answers)
Another intermediate worksheet with vocabulary-picture matching and questions aimed at testing students’ language skills with enjoyable and relatable tasks. It is a bit more advanced and challenging than the exercises above.
Expanding business English vocabulary 2(PDF)
