Warm up. I. What do you often ask the following people for?

I. What do you often ask the following people for?

• a boss

• a bank manager

• a customer

• a colleague

• supplier

II. Talk about the last time you asked these people for these things. Did anything unusual happen?

Active Vocabulary

I. Listen to the conversation and answer the questions.

1. Who are the speakers?

2. What do they ask for?

3. Who is polite? Who makes demands? Why?

II. Look at the extracts from the conversation. Complete them with the phrases used for asking for something.

1. Hello. I ______________________________to Susan Crawley, please.

2. Would you ____________________________me a duplicate?

3. Now we'd _____________________________pay for the computers.

4. Do you _______________________________wait until next month?

5. We __________________________________pay before the end of June.

6. If we ________________________payment by then, _______________ we'll have to send someone round to pick up the computers.

III. Look at the extracts in 2 again. Mark them polite (P) or demanding (D). Then explain your decision to your teacher.

We can use these expressions in different ways to ask people for something:

would like	I'd like a cup of tea, please. I'd like to phone home, if you don't mind. We'd like you to send the cheque today.
advise, ask, expect, need, remind, tell, warn	We would ask you to pay in full by 1st May. We have warned them to pay promptly.
would you mind	Would you mind opening the window?

Speaking