Business English Premier Lessons
November 2024
Level: B2
Starting up
• Think about various jobs and professions in your country or one you know well. How usual is it for
people to continue to work into their seventies and eighties?
• Read through the whole article. Then do the exercise below.
Reading 1
Read the article again to find:
a) a social media website
b) someone who works in a university
c) someone who works in theatre
d) someone who works in medical research
e) someone who works for a non-profit organisation
f) the number of people over 65 working full-time in the UK last year
g) the number of people over 80 working full-time in the UK last year
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Business English Premier Lessons
November 2024
Level: B2
What, me? Retire? Just because I’m 80?
1
LinkedIn, normally a relatively peaceful social media site, lit up the other week when one of its users posted a
chart showing the different stages of working life that had appeared in the career advice section of the
Indeed.com job listing site. The chart claimed that, from the age of 21 to 25, you were in the “exploration”
stage. By 45 to 55 you were “late career”. And once you reached the 55 to 65 mark you had hit “decline”.
2
Readers were predictably gobsmacked. “Just appalling” and “shocking”, they wrote, as Indeed scrambled to
take down the item and insist it should never have been published or even written. “We deeply apologise for
content that wrongly negated the important role workers play at every stage of their career,” the job site told
me last week. “Older workers in particular are vital and highly valued leaders, mentors and contributors to the
workplace.” This, alas, is rubbish. Ageism is rife in the workplace, assuming older employees can hang on to a
job at all.
3
I have been encouraged by the number of octogenarians I’ve come across recently who are not only working
but insist they have no plans to retire. “I do it because I like it,” the 85-year-old financial economist Eugene
Fama told one of my colleagues who asked him why he kept at it when they met in Fama’s University of
Chicago office. Actor Sir Ian McKellen is also 85 and equally unpersuaded about the merits of chucking it in.
“I shall just keep at it as long as the legs and the lungs and the mind keep working,” he told an interviewer a
few weeks ago.
4
Others are lining up to join them. “While I love it I’ll keep doing it, definitely,” the 66-year-old co-founder of
the Zoe personalised nutrition programme, Professor Tim Spector, recently told a writer who had asked if he
would keep working another 20 years. As the 82-year-old chair of the Rosetrees health research charity,
Richard Ross, told me last week, working keeps your brain active, allows you to stay in touch with interesting
people and stops you being dull. “I don’t think I would still be alive if I had retired at 65,” he said. But other
older employees stick at work for the same reason that people of all ages do: they need the money.
5
Either way, it’s best to get used to them because their presence has been steadily growing. In 2023, there were
527,600 people aged 65 and over working full-time in the UK. That is 4.3 per cent of all people in that age
group, which is up from 2.7 per cent in 2010. Still, if you are in your twenties and reading this thinking you are
never going to have a career if all these ageing job-hoggers hang around into their eighties, fear not. Only
13,700 people aged 80 or older were estimated to be in full-time work in the UK last year. That is a piffling
0.06 per cent of all full-time workers — even if it is up from the 0.04 per cent a decade earlier. And the more
important point is this: any older worker who saw a chart describing a 55-year-old as being in decline would
have stepped in and saved their bosses from the idiocy of publishing it.
© The Financial Times Limited. All Rights Reserved.
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Business English Premier Lessons
November 2024
Level: B2
Vocabulary 1 – True or false
Are these statements about words and expressions as they are used in the article true (T) or false (F)?
Correct the false ones.
Paragraph 1
1 If discussion on a social media website lights up, it remains calm.
2 If you claim something, you say that it is true.
3 If you reach a particular mark, you reach a particular age, stage, etc.
4 Decline is a period of increased activity, success, etc.
Paragraph 2
5 If someone is predictably gobsmacked, they are unexpectedly surprised and shocked.
6 Something that is appalling is acceptable.
7 If you scramble to do something, you hurry to do it.
8 If you negate the importance of something, you deny it.
9 A mentor is someone who advises younger colleagues.
10 If something is rife, it is unusual.
Paragraph 3
11 An octogenarian is someone in their seventies.
12 If you come across someone or something, you find them, perhaps by chance.
13 If you keep at something, you stop doing it.
14 The merits of doing something are its disadvantages.
15 If you chuck something in, you stop doing it.
Vocabulary 2 – Identifying vocabulary
Find words, expressions, etc. with these meanings.
Paragraph 4
1 a phrasal verb meaning ‘to want to do something’ (give the infinitive)
2 a prefix meaning ‘together with’
3 a noun that can refer to an object, but that here refers to a person
4 an adjective meaning ‘boring’
5 a verb meaning ‘stop working’ (give the infinitive)
6 a phrasal verb meaning ‘keep doing something’
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Business English Premier Lessons
November 2024
Level: B2
Paragraph 5
7 a noun that means the opposite of ‘absence’
8 an adverb that has a change of spelling compared to its related adjective
9 a compound noun referring to someone staying in a job when they should retire (give the singular)
10 a phrasal verb meaning ‘stay’, usually in an unwanted way
11 an expression, with an unusual structure, meaning ‘Don’t worry’
12 a noun meaning ‘stupidity’
Grammar – Linking words for reason and purpose
Add the appropriate word or expression in the correct place in each item to make grammatical and
meaningful sentences. (The other words stay the same. The number of possible sentences is shown
in brackets.
because
in order not to
because of
so as to
as
so as not to
since
in order that
in order to
so that
1 It’s best to get used to them their presence has been steadily growing. (3)
It’s best to get used to them because their presence has been steadily growing.
It’s best to get used to them as their presence has been steadily growing.
It’s best to get used to them since their presence has been steadily growing.
2 People refuse to retire avoid becoming dull. (2)
3 Some younger employees get angry job-hoggers staying in jobs that they would like to do. (1)
4 The number of octogenarians still working full-time is not a problem for younger people there are
so few of them. (3)
5 Indeed.com removed its post make people any angrier. (2)
6 Employees should keep retraining they can carry out more specialised roles. (2)
7 Mentors should set realistic goals frighten those they are mentoring. (2)
8 She decided to retire this year her health has been declining. (3)
9 Sadly, some people can never retire money problems. (1)
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Business English Premier Lessons
November 2024
Level: B2
Reading 2
Answer the questions.
1 What was the issue that caused LinkedIn users to react strongly to a post from Indeed.com?
2 What did Indeed.com do after the negative reactions to the chart?
3 Why does Eugene Fama continue to work according to the article?
4 What benefits does Richard Ross mention about continuing to work?
5 What percentage of people aged 80 or older were working full-time in the UK in 2023?
Further discussion / Group work
1 “Older workers in particular are vital and highly valued leaders, mentors and contributors to the
workplace.” Think about your job, or one you would like to have. Is this statement true in that
situation? Why/why not?
2 Will traditional retirement, as we know it today, still exist 50 years from now? Give your predictions
and reasoning.
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Business English Premier Lessons
November 2024
Level: B2
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