Episode 1

 

Philip Hart, CEO of IT peripherals company WebWare, gives Sales Director Brian O'Dell some bad news.

Preparation

We suggest you do the vocabulary activity below before you watch . Then watch the video and do the first task to check your understanding. You can read the transcript at any stage if you want. Finally, have a look at Task 2, which contains some business notes.

Exercise

Task

Choose the correct answers to the questions.
 
Exercise
Read transcript

Task 2

Business notes

In this episode WebWare’s CEO Philip Hart sacks his Sales Director for underperforming. Philip uses 2 expressions to do this. The first is I’m going to have to let you go which is quite a gentle way of expressing the fact. The second is You’re fired, which is a little more direct.

There are even more ways to express this in English. Dismiss and discharge are both quite formal:

He was dismissed for turning up late on a regular basis.

The director was discharged of his duties.

Other less formal, but more colourful ways of saying the same thing are:

give someone the axe

give someone their cards

give someone the boot

Downloads
 

Comments

Jeremy Bee's picture
LearnEnglish
team

Hello Alice -
 
As you will see if you look at the older comments, the videos aren't available in China (and Iran) at the moment. We are looking for an answer to this problem, so keep checking back, and accept our apologies in the meantime.
 
If you try our new Word on the Street videos, however, we're trialling a solution - see if you can see the video below the "can't see? Click here" link.
 
Best wishes,
Jeremy Bee
The LearnEnglish Team

Kevan Cummins's picture
LearnEnglish
team

Hi Alice and Jeremy

Our regular video is streamed from a site called viddler.com. Video from this site is not available in some countries. You can now click on the Can't see video? Click here! link to see video played from our cloud file server in this section of the website.

For users in China we have a local server in China to help users access the site more easily. This is available in both English and Mandarin:

English http://learnenglish.britishcouncil.org.cn/en

Putonghua http://learnenglish.britishcouncil.org.cn/zh-hans

The video is played from our cloud file server outside China and is still very slow insid China. We are currently looking for a cloud file server in China and hope to have faster video soon.

Kevan

 

arjoe_1982's picture

how can i watch the video?Please help me!
 

Stephen Jones's picture
LearnEnglish
team

Hello arjoe_1982,
 
You should be able to watch the video by clicking the 'play' icon on the screen. If you can't see it, tell me what appears instead. 
 
Also, have you tried watching the video on another computer or internet connection? If your connection is slow, it might take a short while to appear.
 
Regards,
 
Stephen Jones
The LearnEnglish Team

szxl's picture

Anybody can help me? I can't see the video. There's no video player or 'PLAY' button on the screen.

AdamJK's picture
LearnEnglish
team

Hello,
As you will see if you look at the older comments, users in China (and Iran) are prevented from seeing our videos at the moment. We want to solve this problem and are working hard on it, so please be patient.
Best wishes,
Adam
The LearnEnglish Team

Danio501's picture

i can't see the play button and except"episode 1" show up there is nothing else.BTW,i come from China.i hope you can solve this problem ASAP.
Thank you!
Have a nice day~
Danio
 

Fatimah Ali's picture

Hello 
I am also getting  Error message box 

AdamJK's picture
LearnEnglish
team

Hello Fatimah,
As I wrote to Ashu, we know about this error. Can I contact you via the email you gave when registering to ask you some questions about it?
Best wishes,
Adam
The LearnEnglish Team

toto-sano's picture

i am a new user for this programe or site can i contact with u in order to cooperate with each other if u don't mind