About The Billionaire Elections (TBE)

TBE is DVBE’s third online listening exercise. Learners listen to short instructional audio clips to put the correct numbers in the correct place on a worksheet. At the end of each of the 39 exercise segments, learners compare their answers both the audio clips and online ledgers.

TBE is appropriate for pre-intermediate learners to practice their numbers and arithmetic English, but even advanced speakers will be challenged as this exercise does require a fair amount of listening concentration.

TBE prepares learners for the DVBE’s classroom module called the The Billionaires. By going through TBE before doing the classroom exercise, the learners quickly understand that The Billionaires is about a series of run-off elections to determine the chair of fictitious corporations. With the TBE experience, learners are better prepared for the classroom challenge and move into this fun activity rather quickly.

After the learners gain some experience with the classroom activity, they can return to TBE to get some reinforcement for language that they could have or should have been using. This reinforcement of specific language skills is what blended learning is all about.

About The Billionaires

The Billionaires is an ELT exercise that involves reading and resolving a set complicated instructions.

The setting for this DVBE module is the global power play as to the billionaire who really controls all the world affairs. This conspiracy theory is explained in DVBE’s first online exercise: The Billionaires Online . Here learners listen to the stories of the 13 corporations that control the world—and the eight billionaires who want to run our lives!

The classroom exercise has learners reading and interpreting two pages of complicated, yet well written, instructions to determine how the shareholder votes are to be cast in each corporate election. Learners take the roles of election tellers, applying the election rules to determine the successful billionaire in each election. The suspense of which billionaire eventually controls the world helps keep learners engaged in the exercise.

The Billionaires is suitable for intermediate or higher level business English learners. The business components are not difficult, so this module could also be used in an upper intermediate regular ELT classroom for learners who work with lots of numbers in their professions.

About Dave Volek’s Business English

“Business English with Business Simulations” is the mantra behind Dave Volek’s Business English (DVBE). DVBE places learners into interesting business scenarios which have them into using whatever conversation they have to resolve various business challenges. The primary goal of DVBE is to give learners confidence and communication skills with their less-than-perfect English conversation.

DVBE is adding online components to each classroom module to make the learning more relevant and fun. Come back to the DVBE website every six months to find out what is new.

About Dave Volek

Engineer, businessman, math instructor, EFL & ESL instructor, out-of-the-box thinker! Dave’s experience, creativity, and risk-taking nature provide a new kind of business English training not offered by established ELT publishers. All Dave can say is: “You cannot know how DVBE will work in your classroom until you try it out!”

And one module is free to try out. Visit www.dvbe.bz to download Risk & Reward. Try out this business game in your classroom. See how well the classroom and online components work together.

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