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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.

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Contemporary business vocabulary

Learning contemporary business vocabulary, as highlighted in the PDF, is crucial in today’s rapidly evolving digital culture for several reasons:

  1. 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.”
  2. 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.”
  3. 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.”
  4. 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.

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Discussing a new project

This lesson focuses on essential vocabulary used for discussing new project. It’s been updated with audio and video files.

(download PDF)

(see the video on YouTube)

Adjectives for a businessman

This vocabulary in this activity includes commonly used adjectives to describe personality and a business person’s personality in particular.

(download PDF)

Elements of office work

Elements of office work includes vocabulary and common expressions  with vocabulary-picture matching and relatable questions for business English students.

Elements of office work (PDF)

Elements of office work

  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)

Common Business English phrases/expressions 1

(video and audio mp4)

(video and audio mp4  YouTube)

 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)

Business collocations

(video and audio mp4)

(video and audio mp4 YouTube)

   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)

Elements of workplace activities

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.

Logistics vocabulary  (PDF)

Logistics

(video and audio mp4 YouTube)

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)

Common Business English phrases/expressions 2

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)

(YouTube video)

Working in a factory

Working from home vocabulary and  comprehension exercises

Online shopping assistant reading comprehension

ESL Listening Activities Guide

4 Worksheets Expanding Business English Vocabulary and Speaking Skills

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Business English Home

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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.

Elements of business (PDF)

Elements of  Business English

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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)

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