Скачать или смотреть Employment contract renewal |Career Development Topic |English speaking & listening skills

When our contract is about to finish, we probably want to discuss the contract renewal. This is when the contract starts again, a new contract. In today's lesson, we have Sean, he's talking with his boss Alice. And we'll see a lot of vocabulary and ways to negotiate, to talk about your salary and perks.


The English conversation lessons will focus on 1 topic to make a short dialogue and its extended conversation to explain the questions you may have.

English Speaking & Listening practice
Improve your listening and speaking skills to communicate with real people in real English language environment.

Today's Core Dialogue
A: Sean, we'd like to renew your contract for another year with a 3% raise.
B: To be perfectly honest, Alice, I believe I'm worth much more than that.
A: Could you be more specific?
B: As you know, I've taken on many additional responsibilities, and have consistently demonstrated results.
A: You certainly have.
B: And on that note. I should tell you that I've received some very generous offers from a few other firms.
A: How generous are we talking about here?
B: They are offering a better incentive structure, and a wider range of perks.
A: Frankly, I'm not sure how flexible we can be in terms of the compensation.
B: Well Alice I'm inclined to go where my impact is reflected in my salary.
A: Okay, I'll see what can be done.

Grammar:
Can be + passive
We use the passive voice when the doer of an action isn't important, but also when we want to avoid saying who the doer is.

Sometimes we do this because we want to avoid responsibility. "Mistakes were made” is a very common expression for this reason. But other times we don't want to sound like we are attacking other people. That's why a phrase like "things could be improved" sounds a lot nicer than "you need to improve things."

In our dialogue, Alice could be using "I'll see what can be done" to express that she doesn't have the power to make this decision, or to hide the fact that she actually has all the power.

Because "can" expresses possibility, it can be followed by just about any action verb in its passive form.

Here are a few more examples:
1. These types of devices cannot be brought onto an airplane.
2. All of our parks can be accessed by any local resident.
3. There is no limit to what can be accomplished if we all work together!