Business English- Financial Trends Mini-Presentations

Financial trends mini-presentations

The language of trends and financial collocations practice

Choose one of the things below and explain the past, present and future trends of that thing, making up any information which you don’t know. You can talk about one group of people, your company, your sector, this country, this region, the world more generally, etc. Your teacher will tell you if you should make it part of a presentation (with introduction, etc) or just explain the trends. When you finish, your partner will ask for more details, then try to guess which information was from your imagination.

• Balance of trade (= trade surplus or trade deficit)
• Bankruptcies
• Birth rate
• Blue-chip stocks
• Bond prices
• (Annual/ Xmas/ performance-related) bonuses
• Budget deficit
• Commodity prices (gold prices, oil prices, food prices, etc)
• (Business/ Consumer/ Market) confidence
• Construction
• Construction sector
• Consumer spending
• (Consumer/ Corporate/ Credit card/ Government/ Household) debt
• Dividends
• Economic growth
• Employment rate
• Exchange rates
• Exports (of…/ to…)
• Financial services sector
• Fraud (insider trading etc)
• Free trade accords
• Fuel prices
• (Hedge/ Index-linked/ Sovereign capital) funds
• GDP per head
• Giving to charities
• Government borrowing costs
• (Average) house prices/ (Commercial/ Residential) property prices
• Household finances
• Household savings
• (Bank/ Base/ Credit card) interest rates
• IPOs
• Imports (of…/ to…)
• Industrial action (strikes etc)
• Industrial output
• Inflation (e.g. CPI, RPI)
• Insurance premiums
• Investment
• Lending to SMEs
• Life expectancy
• Living standards
• (Business/ Home) loans
• M&A
• Market share
• (National) minimum wage
• NEETs
• Oil output
• Oil reserves
• Population
• Productivity (output per hour worked, output per worker, etc)
• (Pre-tax/ Net) profits
• Profit margins
• Public debt
• Public spending
• Recovery from the post-2007 recession
• (Commercial/ Residential) rents
• (Retail) sales
• Self-employment
• Services sector
• Share prices (= Stock prices)
• Start-ups
• Stock market indices
• Stock market volatility
• (Capital gains/ Corporate/ Income/ Sales) tax
• Tax receipts
• Temporary jobs
• Trading volumes
• Turnover
• (Long term) unemployment
• Wages
• Welfare payments (unemployment benefits etc)
• Workforce

Ask about any topics above you don’t understand, don’t know any trends for, etc, working together to describe related trends each time.

Financial collocations

Without looking above for now, write as many collocations with these words you can. Some words below can also go together, but all have at least one other possible collocation.

confidence

 

 

debt

 

 

fund

 

 

growth

 

 

household

 

 

industrial

 

 

insurance

 

 

price(s)

 

 

profit

 

 

rate

 

 

rent

 

 

share

 

 

stock

 

 

trade

 

 

 

Use the extra words below to help with the task above. Note that many more collocations are possible.

action (strikes etc)

balance of

blue-chip

business

capital gains

commercial

commodity

consumer

corporate

credit card

deficit

economic

food

gold

government

hedge

income

index-linked

indices

insider

interest

margins

market

net

oil

pre-

premiums

property

residential

sales

savings

sovereign capital

surplus

volatility

volumes

Check with the first worksheet. Note that many other collocations are possible, so if you have different answers please check with your teacher.

Brainstorm language for describing different kinds of trends (up, down rapidly, down and then up, etc).