International Negotiations

International Negotiations Trainer’s Notes © Cambridge University Press 2012

www.cambridge.org/elt/internationalnegotiations

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Professional English

International 

Negotiations

Trainer’s Notes

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Suggested answers

1  Don’t indicate why you’ve asked each probing question; don’t interrupt; don’t give 

away your reactions to the information you are given; don’t be embarrassed about 

asking a question with a seemingly obvious answer or asking the same question twice; 

don’t draw any conclusions until you are sure you’ve heard the whole answer and fully 

understood it.

2  By indicating by your body language that you might be about to interrupt. Possible 

examples include nodding quickly, opening your mouth as if to speak, taking a sharp 

intake of breath, holding up your hand to indicate ‘stop’, etc.

3  Saying something positive to balance the negative thing that has been said. For 

example, the speaker says that her company is absolutely unable to offer maintenance, 

but that they are prepared to cover the costs of maintenance conducted by a third 

party.

4  Keep fairly steady eye contact with the speaker; repeat the key points in your head; 

take brief notes. Some other well-known active listening techniques may not be 

suitable for negotiations: making ‘agreeing noises (‘OK, uh-huh’), nodding, repeating 

key phrases and asking checking questions. In each case, there is a danger of 

interrupting the speaker or indicating agreement.

2 

Go through the instructions with the class. You may need to elicit some useful phrases for 

asking for clarification, asking follow-up questions and summarising (these functions are 

covered in Modules 4B exercise 6, 5A and 5B exercise 8). See Extension activity below for 

some examples. Trainees then work in pairs to practise their listening skills.

If you have an odd number of trainees, the activity will work just as well in groups of three, 

where there are two listeners for each speaker. As the aim here is to practise the skill of 

listening effectively, trainees will actually get more practice in a group of three.