The Sentence That Sells the Idea
Grammar: Inversion
A Business English English lesson exploring business.
What's in this lesson
A Business English ESL lesson on business, practising inversion. The worksheet has a reading, target vocabulary, a grammar reference with practice and discussion questions.
From the reading: The Sentence That Sells the Idea
In a 2023 Grammarly and Harris Poll survey of 251 business leaders across the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia, 72 percent reported that poor written communication had caused a missed business opportunity in the past twelve months. Not a misread slide deck. Not a stumbled Q&A. A written document — an email, a report, a proposal — that failed to foreground the right information at the right moment. What the data reveals is not a vocabulary deficit but a structural one: professionals who cannot steer a reader's attention through cohesion and emphasis lose credibility before the meeting has even begun.
Vocabulary
- 72 percent
- 34 percent
- 41 percent
Grammar: Inversion
- Wh-cleft (focus on
- What the data shows is a structural problem. — highlights outcome or action
- It-cleft (isolate one
- It is the timeline, not the budget, that needs attention. — singles out for contrast
Discussion questions
- Is written communication more powerful than spoken communication in professional life today?
- Should professionals ever use deliberately complex sentence structures to sound more authoritative?
- Do you think most business emails are well-written, or are they mostly unclear?
The Sentence That Sells the Idea
Grammar: Inversion
What's in this lesson:
Full lesson plan with reading, grammar, vocabulary, and discussion.
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