Unit 2: What to wear
Present Simple and Present Continuous
Select a unit
- 1 Nice to meet you!
- 2 What to wear
- 3 Like this, like that
- 4 The daily grind
- 5 Christmas every day
- 6 Great achievers
- 7 The Titanic
- 8 Travel
- 9 The big wedding
- 10 Sunny's job hunt
- 11 The bucket list
- 12 Moving and migration
- 13 Welcome to BBC Broadcasting House
- 14 New Year, New Project
- 15 From Handel to Hendrix
- 16 What's the weather like?
- 17 The Digital Revolution
- 18 A detective story
- 19 A place to live
- 20 The Cult of Celebrity
- 21 Welcome to your new job
- 22 Beyond the planets
- 23 Great expectations!
- 24 Eco-tourism
- 25 Moving house
- 26 It must be love
- 27 Job hunting success... and failure
- 28 Speeding into the future
- 29 Lost arts
- 30 Tales of survival
Session 4
Time to do some reading and listening to help you practise this unit's grammar and vocabulary. First, take a look at our magazine article. See how much you understand, and perhaps you can spot some of our deliberate mistakes! Then, practise your listening skills by tuning into this unit's News Report, brought to you by Sophie.
Activity 2
News Report
How fashionable is business?
For most of us, fashion is all about fun - clothes, catwalks and shopping. But for some, the fashion industry is a very serious business.
This unit's News Report looks at the business side of the fashion industry. Listen to the audio to hear some examples of this unit's grammar in action - and learn some useful vocabulary along the way.
Listen to the audio and study the vocabulary.
The fashion business is big.
In fact, it's twice the size of the UK car industry, according to the British Fashion Council.
Fashion is more than just dresses and handbags; the industry includes design, sales and manufacturing. It's the largest of the British 'creative industries'.
During London Fashion Week, buyers from across the world spend around £100m on orders. Many companies are using social media to reach this global market. Burberry puts its catwalk show on the internet so customers can watch online wherever they are.
But it's also a very competitive business, where 95% of new companies fail in their first five years, says fashion blogger Imran Amed. He says: "For some of these young designers to succeed, they're shipping to 30 or 40 or 50 countries around the world, they're sourcing their fabrics and materials from India and from Italy and from France."
It's a 'complex' business, which needs things like marketing as well as creativity and ideas.
And, if you're not a well-known brand, it's easy to go out of fashion.
Download
You can download News Report from our Unit 2 downloads page. (size 4MB)
Vocabulary
industry
all the companies and parts of one type of business, for example: the fashion industry, the health industry, tourism
manufacturing
making things in large numbers, especially in a factory
creative
making or using new ideas
global
relating to the whole world
shipping
moving things from one place to another, often in order to sell them
complex
involving a lot of different parts and processes
sourcing
(here) finding
marketing
the things companies do, for example advertising, to persuade people to buy things
brand
well-known company or group of products, for example, Gucci, Coca-Cola, the BBC
Related Story
This report is based on an original BBC News story.
End of Session 4
That's all for this session. We hope it was useful. Don't forget, you can practise more grammar and vocabulary by visiting our grammar and vocabulary reference pages.
Join us again in Session 5 where you can test what you've learnt this week in our quiz, and also hear the next episode of our weekly drama, The Race. Phil starts his 80-day adventure. How will it go?
See you later!
Session Vocabulary
industry
all the companies and parts of one type of business, for example: the fashion industry, the health industry, tourismmanufacturing
making things in large numbers, especially in a factorycreative
making or using new ideasglobal
relating to the whole worldshipping
moving things from one place to another, often in order to sell themcomplex
involving a lot of different parts and processessourcing
(here) findingmarketing
the things companies do, for example advertising, to persuade people to buy thingsbrand
well-known company or group of products, for example, Gucci, Coca-Cola, the BBC