Read the remaining parts of the book and dwell on the following issues

1. How does Becky behave during press conferences? Can you call her behaviour business-like? Give your reasons. What is she planning to change in the future?

2. Does Becky manage to produce a favourable impression on high-powered people and top-notch specialists? What makes people laugh at her in some situations?

3. Comment on the incident with the Websters. Is Becky qualified enough to give recommendations to Martin and Janice as regards their financial matters? Is Becky to blame? Could she have seen it coming? Think what you would have said to the Websters if you were in Becky’s shoes.

4. Why doesn’t Eric Foreman fit Becky’s idea of a high-powered journalist? What are Becky’s assumptions about him based upon? Who does Eric Foreman call “fat cats” and why? Does he attend conferences just to stir up a bit of trouble?

5. What tips on writing an article did Eric Foreman give to Becky? Did Becky act professionally when collecting information for the article? Can adding some “human interest” to the article be called a lie? Or is it only an exaggeration?

6. How did Becky start her TV career? Was she well-prepared for her first interview? What made people take Becky as a financial expert during the show? Did Becky’s participating in the show boost her career? What was the aftermath of the TV show for Brandon Communications?

4. Becky is in the habit of itemizing clothes (her own and other people’s). How does she describe/speak about clothes? Compile “Becky’s clothes and fashion vocabulary”.

5. Dwell on the notion of ‘dumbing-down effect’. What does it mean? What TV programmes follow this principle and what does it depend on? Make use of the following words and expressions: attention span, frustrated, the more dumbed down the better, tricky questions, to let the figures sink into the audience’s mind.

6. Compare Luke’s and Becky’s behaviour during the high-powered debate and the arguments each of them provides. Whose persuasive strategy and tactics are more effective and why?

7. Dwell on the role of non-verbal means of communication in the last episode where Becky is having a business meeting with Luke Brandon. Do you believe she “overdid” it? Give your reasons.

8. During the TV programme Becky meets several celebrities. Each of them is peculiar in their own way. Do they behave the way celebrities normally do? Find evidence in the text to support your point. Prove that celebrities are only human after all.

9. Compare Becky’s manner of communicating with different people: Luke and Alicia, Suze, the Websters, Eric Foreman, the hosts and guests of the TV show. How can you characterize Becky as a communicant? What tips would you give Becky in order to improve her communicative skills?

10. One of Becky’s communicative failures was that she couldn’t persuade the Websters she did not fancy Tom. “Life would be a lot easier if conversations were rewindable and erasable, like videos,” says Becky. How should she have behaved in order to produce a different impression on Martin, Janice and Tom himself if their conversations had been “rewound and erased”?