Marketing

This is a series of lessons which are primarily aimed at pre-work-experience students studying marketing, either as a specialist subject, or as part of a general business studies course. However, most of the material can also be used successfully with students who are actually working in marketing.

The following six topic areas are covered:

• Market research
• Marketing strategy
• Segmentation
• Branding
• Products
• Public relations

Each of these topics will feature a lesson plan at two levels that will include:

• step-by-step teacher's notes
• a reading comprehension worksheet based on extracts from Foundations of Marketing
• a listening comprehension worksheet and audio file

There are some additional lessons and ideas for teaching marketing students in 'Essential skills'.

For each of these topics, there are four lessons provided: Worksheet A Levels 1 and 2; and Worksheet B Levels 1 and 2.

For each lesson, Worksheet A is built around a reading text, and Worksheet B around a listening text. Level 1 is aimed at Intermediate to Upper Intermediate-level students; Level 2 at Upper Intermediate to Advanced level.

Each individual lesson is designed to provide approximately two hours of classroom material. Most lessons contain options for project work and homework, both of which would require more time – either in class and/or for pre-class preparation. There is also lots of scope for teachers to add material of their own on each of the topic areas, should they wish to do so.

The material is designed so that the six topics can be studied in any order. Similarly, for each topic, Worksheet A can be used independently from Worksheet B, although there is often some deliberate partial overlap in topic coverage between the two worksheets.

Accompanying teacher's notes give suggestions for using the material on an activity-by-activity basis.

Worksheet A

The Worksheet As are all based around a reading text taken from Foundations of Marketing by Jonathan Groucutt (© Palgrave Macmillan, 2005). The reading texts in each lesson have sometimes been slightly adapted in order to fit in with the target language level and specific accompanying tasks (especially at Level 1). However, adaptation has deliberately been kept to a minimum, in order to develop students’ confidence in dealing with texts written in an academic style and with rich vocabulary input.

Students are, therefore, working with an authentic text that comes directly from a marketing textbook used by first-language and proficient speakers of English. This should be possible even at the lower of the two levels, and the realization that they are capable of working with texts of this kind should be highly motivating for learners.

Typical Worksheet A activities include:

• Some pre-teaching of difficult vocabulary. This is mainly done at Level 1; at Level 2 students are encouraged to see how much they can understand before they seek help (either from a dictionary or their teacher);
• A pre-reading question eliciting ideas and opinions from students which they can then compare with the content of the reading text;
• Comprehension-checking activities, designed to establish that students have properly understood the detailed content of the text;
• Vocabulary development activities, focusing especially on vocabulary that is specifically related to – or useful for – marketing. The accompanying Teacher’s notes highlight opportunities for students to record and then test themselves on the vocabulary input in the lessons by having a personal vocabulary notebook. They also point out opportunities for teaching dictionary skills;
• Discussion topics and project work designed to get students talking about the concepts presented in the text, to use the structures and vocabulary they have been taught, and to generally to develop their speaking skills. A number of the project work activities can also be set as writing assignments;
• (At Level 2) webquest activities designed to develop students’ skills in carrying out and making use of independent research on the internet.

Worksheet B

Worksheet B activities are based on an audio text. There is a similar range of task types to Worksheet A, except that there is a strong emphasis on the skills of listening for gist and note-taking from an aural presentation.

Full audio scripts are provided. There are suggestions about how they might be used in the teacher’s notes, but teachers are free to exploit these in whatever ways they think appropriate.