Listening week five

Identifying key ideas in lectures

Adapted from Campbell, C. and Smith, J. (2012) English for Academic Study: Listening – Course Book. Reading: Garnet Education

Live session preparation

What do you know about the term franchising?
Which famous businesses are run as franchises?
Which, if any, franchises are prolific in your country?

Begin listening activities

For copyright reasons, access to the materials from Campbell and Smith can only be made available for limited windows of time. Please email phil.martin@york.ac.uk.

Live session discussion - task review on note-taking

Review your notes from page 3 of the preparation materials:

What may you need in order to develop a small or medium-sized enterprise?
What example of such a business is given?
What risks are there for a business owner in expanding his or her business?
Which of these is the key point made in this section? Why?
- Expanding your business can be very risky.
- Franchising your business can minimise the risks involved in its expansion.
- Franchising your business can be very profitable.

Transcript from section 2

In addition – and this is fairly obvious – you will need a fairly wide margin between cost and income. Remember that the gross margin needs to provide a return on the investment to both the franchisor and the franchisee. So you will need to keep costs low and prices as high as the market will bear. One advantage of a franchise operation is that supplies can be bought in bulk across the whole franchise, which will help to keep costs down. But you can see that franchising would be unsuitable in a market where the margin between cost and income is very narrow.

Review your notes from page 6 of the preparation materials:

What were the key points made by the lecturer? Compare your notes with a partner. Have you identified the same main points?

Section 1

The lecturer makes the point that a relatively stable, long-term market is needed for a successful franchise operation. To support this point, the lecturer gives two reasons and two examples. What are they?
Do the examples help make his point clearer? If so, how?

Section 2

What point does he make about buying supplies in bulk?
How is this point related to the main point in this section?
Which words did you identify from the transcript (see left) as being where he repeats the highlighted idea?

Section 3

What does the franchisor need to provide to the franchisee?
When are these required?
What point is made about franchisees in the restaurant industry?
What do you think is the key point in this section?

Review your notes from page 11 of the preparation materials:

Written agreement should specify...
Initital training - to ensure staff...
Regular visits - to ensure...
Ongoing training - to deal with...
Protecting the brand is in the interests of...

Live session - critical discussion

Now that you've learnt about the basics of franchising, would you ever be a franchisee yourself?
What would be the advantages over starting your own business?
What well-known businesses do you know of that are run as franchises?
When you visit an international franchise like McDonald's, you know exactly what to expect wherever you are in the world. Do you like this kind of business model? Are there any disadvantages?
What business opportunities are there for successful trade names in your home country to start franchises in the UK? Or vice versa?

Teacher's notes

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