Meeting Essentials is a business English study guide to the language and skills you need to participate effectively and confidently in business meetings in English.
Meeting Essentials is free for all Premium Members and can be purchased by non-members for €17.95.
Preview the study notes, online activities and phrase-cast for the first chapter of the e-book, expressing your opinion in meetings, by clicking on the links below.
In this Business English Podcast lesson, we’ll study language you can use to assign work to people and some useful phrases to finish off a meeting. In addition, we’ll cover some advanced grammar tips for using “going to,” the present continuous, and the future continuous to state action points.
We’ll be listening in to a group of bank managers discuss how to deal with credit risk problems before a major year-end report to top management. They have already discussed and decided what to do, and now they need to finish the meeting. As you listen, pay attention to how the boss, Lisa, gives action points to her team, that is, reminds them of what they need to do, as she “wraps up” the meeting.
Listening Questions:
1) When will Lisa’s team have their next round of meetings?
2) What duties does Lisa assign during the meeting, and to whom?
This is the second in a three-part series that follows some of the internal discussions that take place in a company going through a merger.
Today’s episode focuses on casual office conversation and gossip. Office gossip is a type of informal conversation in which we tell secrets or rumors about other people or other departments. Gossip is often called water cooler chitchat, since the water cooler is where colleagues meet by chance and discuss things that are happening in the office. You might also want to review some of our previous shows on socializing for more language to use in these types of conversations.
For the listening today, we rejoin Jack at the guitar manufacturer headquarters, after his short but difficult chat with his boss Jim. Jack is in the cafeteria when a co-worker meets him there by chance.
Key Language: Informal Socializing & Reported Speech
Listening Questions: BEP 71 ADV – Mergers: Office Gossip & Reported Speech
1) What did Frances hear from Joanna?
This is the first in a three-part Business English Pod series that explores the use of many different language techniques in the context of a merger. Today’s episode focuses on vague, diplomatic language and probing questions. Vague and diplomatic language was introduced in podcasts BEP 24, BEP 51 and BEP 52, so you might wish to review those to refresh your memory. In addition, we’ll be covering probing questions, which we first looked at in BEP 64. To probe is to explore or investigate, so probing questions are used to gather more detailed and targeted information. And I should also point out that there are two speaking practices at the end of this podcast – an action packed episode indeed.
For this series, we again visit our U.S.-based guitar manufacturer, which has a production plant in Costa Rica. In this episode, we find out that the company is merging with a larger guitar manufacturer. To merge is to join together. When two companies join together, we call this a “merger.”
The new owners want to cut costs, which might mean cutting jobs. So, an important question in the mind of our old friend Jack is – who is going to be fired? We join Jack and his boss Jim, who meets Jack by chance in the hallway of the company headquarters.
Key Language: Meetings, Being Diplomatic & Vague, Probing Questions
Listening Questions: BEP 70 ADV – Mergers: Breaking Bad News
1) Who will Jack be meeting with after his chat with Jim?
2) What city might the Costa Rican plant move to?
3) Why do the new owners want to move the factory out of Costa Rica?
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?
2) Why can’t Bill just retrain the engineers he has?
3) What is Mei Lin’s suggestion to speed up the recruitment process?
