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You might have noticed a change to this website's appearance. That's because Weebly did something that broke the navigation sub-menus, and they told me that I had to change the site's theme to make sub-menus work again.
So just remember the menu is now at the top (in the desktop version of the site) and if you notice some problems (like odd colours, or instructions related to the old theme), please be patient until I have time to fix them all.
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Cambridge have a useful online dictionary of English specifically for business, and I have often given links to it in my classes and articles. But they recently changed the way their site works. It is now impossible to link directly to a word's definition and example sentences in the business dictionary. Instead it is only possible to link to a page that shows the ordinary English definition and example sentences, and which has a tab you must click on to see the Business English definition and examples.  Cambridge Dictionary - ordinary English with tabs Just click on the tab marked "Business" and you can see the relevant definitions and examples.  Cambridge Dictionary - Business English I have many links to the old dictionary that don't work any more, in my class notes in my articles here. I will, over time, update them or replace them with links to other dictionaries. In the meantime, when I give a link to Cambridge in class, remember to click on the Business tab to see definitions and examples that are specifically for business.
Image from www.celalteber.com
Today I've done quite a bit of work on my ESL Links > Telephone English page.
I got rid of some dead links, reorganized others, and added some new ones, like the British Council page on conference calls, Business English Pod (including lessons on taking and leaving messages), BBC Business Language to Go and TalkEnglish page on business phone calls.
After the great Bing English-Chinese online dictionary disaster, there are still some broken Bing links in articles on my website. Today I have eliminated Bing links from several articles and replaced them with working links to other online dictionaries and encyclopedias.
I hope these articles, now with working links, prove useful to students of English.
After a lot of time and difficulty, I have finally got back access to my Tencent Weibo microblog. Previous posts on this issue: I communicated with several Tencent employees, using e-mail addresses I found via Google search, as there were no useful/working links or e-mail addresses to be found on (the English language version of) Tencent Weibo itself. Again they recommended the "Lost password" process even though I told them several times and in several ways that I had not lost my password. Eventually they gave me back access to my account without having to go through the standard (and deeply flawed) account recovery process. After that, I was also finally able to set up security questions for my account, which has been a big problem throughout this, because answering these questions is crucial to getting back access to a Tencent account, even though the whole idea of security questions was not in the English version of setting up a Tencent account when I created my account.  Cartoon from XKCD about security questions. Based on my latest experience, it seems that Tencent have translated a few more pages to English since I first created my account and since I first lost access to it. But there are still a lot of things missing from the English version of Tencent Weibo (like a help page!). And I have still never received a useful explanation about why I was denied access to my account. But I will give Tencent Weibo another try. So here's my Tencent Weibo: I've finished and published an article about a famous business case study: BMW's acquisition of Rover (which is now part SAIC Motor 上汽 under the name Roewe 荣威).
 I've explained the background (the economic and political situation in Britain), the basic facts of the case, and the consequences. I've also given links to:
I hope you find it interesting / useful. If you have any comments, please write below. Summary: As someone who is not fluent in Chinese, I cannot rely on Tencent 腾讯/QQ for microblogging (or indeed anything). So I'm not using Tencent and now I'm trying LinkedIn instead. Update 2013-11-15: Once again, Tencent Weibo is denying me access to my account without explanation and without a way to resolve the problem in English. I used to use a Tencent Weibo microblog to give my Chinese students useful or interesting links related to English, China, business etc. But back in June, I had a major problem with it: I could no longer access it at all. I wrote about that in my blog post here.  Any attempt by me to fix the problem would lead to lots of untranslated pages in Chinese. So I e-mailed their international support. The only response I had from Tencent was a link to instructions about what to do when you lose your password. There were several problems with this:
I continued to try to resolve this problem communicating in English with Tencent / QQ International, via e-mail and via their blog (which is what you get taken to when you click on "Help"). No luck for me with Tencent I never had another reply from Tencent International's e-mail, despite me writing twice more.
I updated links in my article "Sales: Some movies to watch and learn", so all links are working... for now ;) Mostly it was fixing dictionary links for the vocabulary in the article, thanks to the Bing disaster. But a link to thread on "best sales movie ever" on jobs site Monster.com was also broken, as they've reorganized their site. I found and added 2 other lists of great movies about sales. By the way, Monster now has a section dedicated to sales called "SalesHQ". It's got a lot of useful stuff for people interested in sales, on things like résumés, interviews, salaries, commissions and professional development. It's also got sub-sections dedicated to certain fields of sales: I know some of my students work in pharmaceuticals & IT sales (as well as other areas of sales), so I hope this SalesHQ link proves useful for you.
I've added the audio series "English at Work" (from BBC Learning English) to the Business English > "Business Audio" section of ESL Links. It's a story of people working in an SME (small or medium-sized enterprise) and they talk about a lot of typical business problems and use typical business English vocabulary. It deals with topics like getting customers, disagreements between coworkers, pleasing the boss, business ethics, competing for promotion, holding meetings, making phone calls, and idioms often used in business. Each episode is quite short (usually just a couple of minutes). And you can download the MP3 files (so that you can listen to them on your phone or media player) and PDF files with the script of the episode, so that you can also read what they say. I've also linked to the version for China, which gives extra commentary, vocabulary & explanation in Chinese. I feel it's a great way to get some practice listening to business English in a way that's interesting and funny (because it's series of stories with actors, not just someone reading business news). It also provides some insight into British business culture.
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G.A.L.E.S.L. / joe3
Some tips and links on learning English. 
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