UNIT 1

Companies and organisations

o a company profile
o departments, responsibilities
Vocabulary: company types, size-related indicators,
industries, a company’s values, jobs and responsibilities
Reading: a company profile (About us), identifying
purpose, audience
Critical thinking: persuasive language
Speaking: oral presentation in groups (Our company)

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Week 1
Company types and entrepreneurs

1. Have a look at these pictures. Are you familiar with these companies? What do they specialise in?
What kind of companies are they in terms of size? What do you think?

2. Complete.

According to their size companies can be: • SMEs =

Australian SMEs make up
___________________ 98% of all Australian
businesses, produce one
_______
third of the total GDP, and
_______ employ 4.7 million people.

__________ • Start-up =

How is a company’s size measured?

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 3. Read the following text and identify the size-related indicators.

In the UK, a company is defined as being an SME if it meets two out of three criteria: it has a
turnover of less than £25m; it has fewer than 250 employees; it has gross assets of less than
£12.5m. Very small companies are called in the UK micro-entities, which have simpler financial
reporting requirements. Such micro-enterprises must meet any two of the following criteria: a
balance sheet of £316,000 or less; turnover £632,000 or less; employees 10 or less.
Many small and medium-sized businesses form part of the UK's currently growing Mittelstand,
or Brittelstand as it is also sometimes named. These are businesses in Britain that are not only
small or medium but also have a much broader set of values and more elastic definition.
The Department for Business Innovation and Skills estimated that at the start of 2014, 99.3% of
UK private sector businesses were SMEs, with their £1.6
trillion annual turnover accounting for 47% of private Other ways of saying
sector turnover. company = _______________,
______________________
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_and_medium-sized_enterprises

4. Types of companies. Match the legal types of business with their definition.

private limited company (Ltd.) state-owned enterprise sole trader

partnership franchise public limited company (PLC)

a. a one-person business; the person may be ‘self-

employed’ or a ‘freelancer’ if s/he is a
professional who works for different clients
b. a large company whose shares are sold to the
public on stock exchanges
c. a business that is given the right to sell other
company’s goods
d. the shares of the company are privately owned; a
small or medium business with directors
UK USA
PLC, plc, Plc = Corp. Corporation
Public limited Inc. Incorporated
company

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5. Identify the type of businesses.

• A small shop

•
a. private limited company • An architecture firm, a law firm
• IVT Medical Ltd.

b. partnership • Plumbers, builders

• Marks & Spencer Group
c. state-owned enterprise • Poșta Română
• BBC (The British Broadcasting
Corporation)

d. sole trader • a small shop

• A photographer, a graphic designer,
journalists

e. public limited company

f. franchise • McDonalds P-ta Romană

6. Watch the following video about Akshay Ruparelia, owner

of an online estate agency. Say whether these sentences are T
(true) or F (false.)

The 19-year-old self-made millionaire

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HIYbK2IRntc

a. He started his own business because he thought estate agents were charging very low
commissions.
What does resilience mean? Choose
b. Akshay charges £99 to sell a property. from:

c. The real estate agency was his first business idea.  hesitation, procrastination
 strength, self-determination
d. The young entrepreneur inherited resilience from his
 proficiency
parents.
Fill in with the adjective related to
“resilience”:

7. What kind of an entrepreneur is Akshay? Akshay is a _ _____ young

entrepreneur.
Decide on 4 personality traits you have identified in the young

entrepreneur. Provide arguments.

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8. Fill in the sentences below with FREELANCE or FREELANCER.

a freelancer freelance + noun to freelance verb + freelance

to hire freelancers a freelance to freelance for a to work / go / be
to work as a freelancer photographer publishing house freelance

freelancing is suitable
for creative jobs

1. _______________ jobs are thought to be comfortable and free, but, in practice, freelancing is
rarely a harmonious and liberating form of work.
2. If you are having troubles with digital writing you can hire a ______________ writer.
3. I’m an awful artist, so I may need to hire a ___________ to help me with the poster.
4. She took on several ___________ writing jobs before landing a full-time position at
the newspaper.
5. After ten years in corporate advertising he decided to go ____________.
6. Jones continues to ____________ for the radio station despite officially retiring two years ago.
7. For our wedding we had a ______________ band that didn’t cost us a fortune.
8. She has written for a variety of publications both as a staffer and a ______________.
9. The pianist has been working for almost five decades, most of those years as a ___________.
10. What sometimes happens is management cut back on staff numbers while the number of
____________ goes through the roof.
Examples taken from the Cambridge English Corpus

*In UK English, freelance can also be used as a noun = freelancer

9. Choose the correct option.

a. My brother is a plumber. He’s autonomous / self-employed.

b. The people who own / possess a company might include the founder of the business,
family members and perhaps, a few business associates.
c. In the UK, in a public company anybody can buy the actions / shares.
d. A public / state company is listed on a stock exchange.
e. Our railways have been privatized recently. I think the service was better before,
when they were a state-owned SME / enterprise.

10. Read the text The Biggest Industries in Maine (online.ase.ro) and fill in the table with the names
of the mentioned industries in the text.

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A Agriculture M
B N
C O
D P
E Q
F R
G S
H T
I U
J V
K W
L X,Y,Z