As a non-native speaker of English, you might often find yourself in situations like this: You’re sitting in a meeting or a teleconference, and some of the participants are native English speakers. They are speaking with one another very rapidly, and they are using some idiomatic or difficult-to-understand expressions. Someone says something you don’t understand, or perhaps something that is not true or that you disagree strongly with. You should interrupt to ask what they mean, to clarify, to correct – but you just can’t bring yourself to open your mouth. How do you start? How do you interrupt?
That’s the focus of today’s business English podcast lesson. We’ll be studying useful language and expressions for interrupting and for resisting or stopping interruption.
Key Language: Meetings, Interrupting & Resisting Interruption.
Listening Questions: BEP 68 INT – Meetings: Interrupting and Resisting Interruptions
1) What does Bill mean when he says they’re facing a “bottleneck?” What is the bottleneck?
A bottleneck is the narrow part of the bottle under the mouth. Idiomatically, it refers to the part of a process which limits the speed or the point in a procedure that slows everything down. In this case, the bottleneck that Bill is facing is a lack of qualified engineers. That is, Bill urgently needs more engineers with special experience in order to meet production targets.
2) Why can’t Bill just retrain the engineers he has?
He’s going into production soon, but the case for the new product uses a completely different technology (stamped aluminum as opposed to plastic). He needs engineers who understand this material very quickly, otherwise the result is going to seem unprofessional, or, as he puts it (in slang) “half-assed.”
3) What is Mei Lin’s suggestion to speed up the recruitment process?
Mei Lin’s point is that her department is preparing for the fall recruitment drive, when the company recruits new hires from universities. So they are overworked and understaffed. Since Bill understands exactly what he needs, it would help speed up the recruitment of engineers qualified in the new technology if Bill’s team would help “drive” the process, that is, help out with the work in the recruitment effort by providing guidance and planning.
