Foscari - Dipartimento di Scienze Ambientali, Informatica e Statistica

Unemployment has been rising
If the change is complete we use a perfect tense.
The Government has privatised the rail network.
Draw a graph or symbol to describe or give an example of the following words:
Decline gain drop increase rocket plummet double
Fall halve level off triple recover decrease fluctuate
improve peak rise
Which of the above verbs also have noun forms? What are they?
For example, to increase an increase.
Peter Bingham, President of a clothing company, is in a meeting with his Sales Director John
Amidon, and his Financial Director, Kate Simmons. Complete their conversation with
appropriate forms of the verbs in brackets. Sometimes more than one tense is possible.
Peter I'm glad you managed to make it today. I'd like to start by taking a look at the year's sales
and profit figures. First of all John, could you summarise the sales figures?
John Well, we had a good January - 5.2 million. January's a difficult month because sales
always……….. (drop) after Christmas. In February we launched the new children's line and
it went very well. Total sales…….. (rise) to almost 8 million, which was nice. Unfortunately
they then……….. (plummet) after the Fire in the main factory. But by the end of April
we……….(recover), 10.2 million was the figure – and since then sales…………(go up)
steadily month by month. The December figures aren't in yet, but it looks like
we…………(probably reach) 15 million this month.
Peter Good. I've got a couple of questions, but I’ll save them for later. Kate, sales have increased,
but has that meant higher profits?
Kate Yes, it has. We're waiting for the final figures, but we already know that overall in the first
three quarters of the year, profits …………(rise) by 15% compared to last year, from
960,000 to 1.1 million. In fact since April, profits………….(increase) every single month
and they……….(still go up).
Peter What about next year?
Kate Well, as you know, next year we're going to centralise distribution, so costs
…………(decrease). Even if sales ……………… (level off), profits………….(improve).
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