New International Business English Overview

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Reading Paper Part 4

Retail buys hit record last year
(Text source: www.telegraph.co.uk - with permission)

Read this article about the retail business in Britain.

Last year was a record year for retail acquisitions. The value of deals rose 43% to £8.6 billion, 1. __________ to sector analysts, Retail Intelligence. It's annual 2. ________ of the sector also shows Tesco taking the top spot in the rankings of most 3. _________ retailer, with operating profits 4. __________ 5 percent to £919 million. Marks & Spencer, number one last year, 5. ____________ to fourth place with operating profits halving to £454 million. Second and third positions were 6. _________ by J Sainsbury and Boots. The report 7.__________ that M&S's problems are a symptom of fundamental change in the marketplace. 8. ______________ Clive Vaughan said: "There are many more products and 9. _________ competing for consumer spending. It 10. _________ that just because you are at the 11. ___, doesn't mean you are a success and some businesses like Sainsbury's and Marks & Spencer have been guilty of complacency." The report claims that mergers are not always 12. ___________. It says that of the top 10 acquisitions by size since 1982, only one - the Argyll Group's 13. _________ of Safeway - could be 14. _________ a success. It describes others as 15. _____________ between 'failure and disaster'.

Choose the correct word from the choices below to fill in each gap.

Example

	value, cost, worth, price

1.	due, reporting, according, quoting	2.	research, survey report, view
	(Hint: the correct word is used with to; it gives the source of the information in the first sentence)		(Hint: of can only be used after two of the words and only one of these results in statistics)
3.	wealthy, selling, rich, profitable	4.	rising, lifting, adding, expanding
			(Hint: prices and profits can ______ or fall)
5.	slumped, jumped, collapsed, decreased	6.	taken, made, done, used
	(Hint: how dramatic was the fall in position?)		(which verb is often used with place?)
7.	calculates, tells, describes, argues	8.	announcer, spokesman, speaker, reporter
	(Hint: typical ways to use these verbs: tell a story, describe a place or person, calculate an amount, argue a point of view)		(Hint: all speak to the public but which one presents the view of an organisation or group?)
9.	services, goods, activities, items	10.	looks, seems, means, ensures
	(Hint: in economics, a car is a product and a taxi ride is a ________)		(Hint: three words can be used with that but only one of these describes the author's conclusion)
11.	high, top, best, peak	12.	excellent, suitable, expected, advisable
	(Hint: only one of these words sounds right with at )		(Hint: this is a difficult one. Which one do you think fits the formal style of the article and the meaning best?)
13.	diversification, expansion, takeover, buyout	14.	graded, measured, marked, judged
	(Hint: this word is a synonym for acquisition)		(Hint: a collocation 'to be ____________ a success')
15.	varying, changing, depending, moving
	(Hint: some were failures and some were disasters but they didn't change from one to the other)

Glossary

retail - (relating to) the activity of selling goods to the public, usually in small quantities

TIPS - Preparing for the Part 4 cloze with NIBE

If you review as many of the Prepositions and Prepositional Phrases exercises in the Workbook as possible, it will help you to eliminate wrong answers and recognise common phrases.
Sometimes it's just a question of knowing the word which fits both the meaning and style, so review business vocabulary. For example, in the Workbook, Think marketing 10.5 and Financial terms 7.2 would help you work with company and market reports.