Focus on grammar
ACTIVE VOICE
Task 1. Fill in with Present Simple or Present Continuous
A new generation of investors …. (bet) on America’s housing market now.
Basically, her job … (consist) of answering customer calls.
Certainly, many people … (move) to broadband now.
Coaches actually … (not make) decisions for you, but … (give) you feedback on your ideas.
Everybody … (love) a company that makes money.
For now, analysts … (say) the company … (raise) more question than (provide) answers.
He always … (take part) in different logistics projects and scientific conferences.
He … (drive) to work every day.
Her job … (consist) of answering the phone to customers.
He … (look for) a new job these days.
His boss always … (ask) to see him about 9 a.m.
I … (call) about a special price on our computers.
I … (look) at ways to get our products to customers more quickly now.
In America, women now outnumber men online; the average age of all web surfers … (increase); their level of education … (decrease); and their average spending … (grow).
More and more companies … (operate) flexible systems where staff … (choose) their own benefits.
Mr Kahn also … (worry) about market failures.
Revenues from advertising … still (fall), but those from circulation have at last started to stabilize.
She … (travel) a lot for work.
She … (work) in a bank.
The biggest question … (mark) hang over Facebook and Google.
The diagram … (summarize) the company’s main operations.
The Economist Group … (deliver) its information through a range of formats, from newspapers and magazines to conferences and electronic services.
The growth of internet shopping … (produce) a profound change in consumer behaviour.
Task. 2. Open the brackets and put the verb in the correct form (Present Simple / Present Continuous); put questions to the words in italics and write your questions down.
But now the largest opposition party, Labour, … (stick) to a platform that … (include) mainly economic and social issues.
He … (appear) to be really angry. I wonder what he … (think) about.
His English … (get) better but he … (not speak) English fluently.
I … (work) for a big computer company and we … (look) for a new supplier of sound cards. (Where?)
Jack … (be) a millionaire, he … (think) of buying a private plane. But he … (not think) his wife will approve.
Money … (not buy) happiness but she … (look) for a better job now. (What?)
My boss … (have) lunch with his wife now. He often … (take) her to lunch on Mondays. (Who?)
Over 50 financial institutions … (support) the launch of V.me (‘digital wallet’), which … (accept) non-Visa cards in its wallet, too.
The payments world … (change) fast but the card firms are not about to let rivals swipe their business.
Together with IBM, Finnair … (develop) integrated on demand solutions that … (offer) enhanced services like wireless check-in, e-ticketing and wireless ticket sales.
Task 3. Open the brackets and put the verb in the correct form (Past Simple or Past Continuous or Past Perfect); put questions to the words in italics and write your questions down.
A third of people physically … (attack) a computer, 67% experienced frustration and anger, and more than 70% swore at their machines.
After five years of deliberation, a committee of international bank regulators … (approve) Basel2, a sweeping overhaul of bank-capital requirements.
At 7 o’clock yesterday evening they … (have dinner). (When?)
Attendees at the American Geophysical Union's autumn meeting in San Francisco … (expect) to hear some big news about Mars.
Coaching … (develop) mainly in the US during the 1990s. (Where?)
Eventually venture-capital firms … (sign on), and start-up … (take) space in a Mountain View office park, which was dubbed the Googleplex.
For one thing, companies particularly … (not will) to shift through tenders from lots of suppliers they never … (deal with) before.
In a major survey earlier this year, Jupiter … (find) that fewer than 10 percent of online users … (will) to pay for online content or communications services in any of a number of categories.
In the two years to the fourth quarter of 2003 America’s real GDP … (grow) at an annual rate of 3.6%.
It was made out to Google, the new name that the founders … (choose) (‘Googol’ is the mathematical term for the number one followed by a hundred zeros).
John’s company … (promise) to deliver a product to a customer and had failed to do so. (What?)
Last month, Daimler Chrysler … (refuse) to bail out its struggling Japanese partner, Mitsubishi. (When?)
Last night I … (watch TV) when I … (hear) a strange noise. (What?)
On November 30th 2012 Wang Qishan, the Communist Party’s new anti-corruption chief, … (meet) leading experts on fighting corruption and … (tell) them that the party’s survival … (depend) on the outcome of their efforts.
Shares … (plung) 19% when the proposed merger was announced, then … (soar) 17% late last year when Hewlett … (come out) in opposition to it.
She … (talk) on her mobile phone while she … (drive) to work.
Stockmarkets … (fall) sharply worldwide as concerns … (grow) over oil prices and the prospect of higher interest rates in America.
The first of Nokia’s new generation of Windows smartphones … (become) available in America a couple of weeks ago.
The regulator … (make) several attempts to include that sum as a line of item expense in its budget, but none of them … (succeed).
The study … (find) that nearly half of all computer users … (become) angry at some time.
The year 2002 … (be) a turning-point for the telephone, invented 126 years earlier.
Task 4. Open the brackets and put the verb in the correct form (Present Perfect or Present Perfect Continuous); put questions to the words in italics and write your questions down.
A customer just … (call) to say he isn’t happy.
Cash … (pile up) on companies’ balance-sheets since before the crisis. (When?)
Globalization is not a 20th-century invention. After all, companies long … (seek) world market. (What?)
House prices … (stabilize) since their 2009 trough, and even … (make) small but steady gains in recent months.
Many papers … (raise) the price of their subscriptions and news-stand copies, which … (help) to stem losses.
On the whole the poorest people in the world … (do) better. But the fight against poverty is far from won.
Over the past six months the New York Times Company’s share price … (rise) by 37%. (When?)
The demand for change in business practice never … (be) greater than it is today.
The financial crisis … (make) firms more skittish about relying on banks or securities markets for funds.
The notion of public disclosure of assets by officials … (become) an increasingly popular topic of discussion in recent months.
The number of American newspapers with some sort of paywall at least … (double) this year.
The spread of mobile phones in developing countries in the past decade … (deliver) enormous social and economic benefits.
These companies already … (identify) that coaching is the management style of transformed culture.
Those of Gannett and McClatchy, two other big publishers, … (climb) by 34% and 24% respectively.
To increase its expertise in this sector, Seattle-based Expedia … (buy) companies that specialize in managing business travel.
Tour operators … (pack) their trips this way for decades. (What?)
Task 5. Open the brackets and put the verb in the correct form (Future Simple or Conditional 1).
Although mobile devices and users soon … (be) more numerous, for the time being they … (account) for a smaller volume of traffic and fewer minutes of overall use than PC-based browsing.
Even so, 2013 … (not be) an easy year for Mrs Merkel. With Mr Hollande now in the anti-austerity camp, she … increasingly (be isolated) at euro-zone summits.
I … (accept) the invitation if you … (invite) me to the party.
Ideally, the company … (generate) ever more revenue by offering services like downloading music singles for 99 cents each.
If America … (move) towards a rentership society, they … (rake) it in.
If old coaching methods … (remain) unchanged, however, the coach frequently … (be) unintentionally negating the psychologist’s efforts.
In the World in 2013 we … (predict) that the internet … (become) a mostly mobile medium.
Latin Americans … (cast) an anxious eye at China, for many now their biggest single trading partner.
Managers … (have to) design new timetables in order to keep their staff.
Next year employers … (offer) better conditions.
She … (email) you a report on Tuesday.
That … (not mean) that mobile devices … (displace) PCs altogether.
The members … (look) to him for acceptance and guidance if there … (be) a designated group leader.
The new scheme … (save) the company a lot of money.
You certainly … (have) a greater ability to achieve success through their success if you … (have) responsibility for others.
Task 6. Open the brackets and put the verb in the correct form (Conditional 1 or Conditional 2).
As life in the twenty first century … (get) more complex, people … (have) more complex problems.
But even then, it (not matter) if people … (leave) a really productive place for somewhere less dynamic?
I never … (write) to a problem page if I … (need) advice.
If Britain … (fall) out of the EU, it … (find) itself completely outside the single market.
If Britain … (be) to join the Norwegian club, though, it … (remain) bound by virtually all EU regulations, including the working-time directive and almost everything dreamed up in Brussels in future.
If I … (be) to ask any of your people what is the goal for the day, they … (be) able to tell me?
If these forecasts … (prove) accurate, they … (lead) to huge changes in the travel business.
If your results … (be) in foreign languages, Google … (translate) for you.
In the future, most young people … (prefer) to talk to strangers online about their problems rather than ... (have) face-to-face conversations with family or friends.
It … (be) nice if we … (have) more statistics.
What you … (do) if you … (need) to think creatively but … (not have) any ideas?
PASSIVE VOICE
Task 7. Open the brackets and put the verb in the correct form Present Simple Passive or Present Continuous Passive).
Behavioral coaching mostly … (apply) in a business context.
Goods-sector GDP … (estimate) indirectly by adding together final sales of goods, changes in inventories and net export.
Google’s uses … (limit) only by the imaginations of those who punch in 150 million searches a day.
He … (involve) in developing new software.
Little … (do), new report from the Conference Board, a research group, shows.
Older workers also … (push) out.
The coaching of a team to perform a task is based on the same principles as coaching individuals.
The new rules … (intend) to bring about a closer match between the capital held by banks around the world and their risks.
The potential of e-commerce … (bind) to be even greater than in the past few years.
Their price closely … (correlate) to that of the houses which underpin their value.
This is a global trend: newspapers in Brazil, Germany and elsewhere … (feed up) with giving away their articles for nothing on the internet.
Yet Mrs Merkel’s stubborn protectiveness of the German taxpayer strongly … (support) at home.
Task 8. Open the brackets and put the verb in the correct form (Past Simple Passive or Present Perfect Passive).
About half of all Web searches in the world … (perform) with Google, which … (translate) into 86 languages.
Bidders concerned about the reliability of a seller can see how he … (rate) by other buyers, and read comments left by people who have done business with him before.
But Orbitz, which … (found) by a group of big airlines, and its rivals have to make it better still.
Last year some $6.7 trillion … (channel) through credit cards managed by the networks, according to the Nilson Report, an industry newsletter.
Last year, losses of some $200m … (report) to America’s Federal Trade Commission.
Last year, revenues fell, R&D spending … (cut) and employees … (lay out).
Many creative people … (involve) in starting and spreading coaching.
New Yorkers … (give) a stark vision of a possible future.
No shoe leather … (expend).
Once a bid … (win), the two sides contact each other, the buyer pays and the seller ships the goods.
Once the underlying cause of the problem … (identify), the process may be re-engineered to eliminate the problem permanently.
Re-regulation … (talk) about for years.
Russia has benefited from high oil price, and Latin American economies … (give) a fillip by rising commodity prices.
So much … (write) about the importance and the process of goal setting that there is certainly no need for me to repeat it all in a book of coaching.
Some smaller companies already … (snap up).
The American administration … (assume) to be apprised and approving of such statements.
The firm, which … (found) in 2010 and was bought last year by RR Donnelley, a big printing and marketing firm licenses the technology for newspapers to erect a pay system in return for a cut of digital revenues.
The managers all … (train) in the principles and have bought-in to the concepts.
Their system became a cult favorite among Stanfordites, and more computer power … (require).
While many techniques … (develop) to help with caused analysis, most situations call for the application of very few of them.