SECRETS to Online Meeting Mastery | 36 MUST-KNOW Phrases

[Music] hi there guys this is teacher harry here and welcome back to my english lessons where we try to help you to get a better understanding of the use of the english language so what are we going to talk about today well before we get on to the topic for today let me just remind you that you can listen to my podcast lots of things to help you lots of useful information to help you with the english language and at the end of this particular lesson i'll give you my contact details so what is it about today well in today's lesson we're going to talk about online meetings and in particular must have phrases for online meetings the whole world has changed upside down as you know in the last two years and lots and lots of people are now working remotely and lessons like the lessons that i give are all remote or online so when people are having their online meetings using zoom or skype or google meets or microsoft teams whatever it is there these are all online meetings that they're having day to day week in week out and sometimes non-native speakers have difficulty not with the business language but some of the small talk or the chit chat or the introductory phrases that you should use when you want to introduce a topic or raise a topic or have a question whatever it might be so this particular lesson is going to focus on as i say the must have phrases and expressions for online meetings and we're going to break it down into different parts okay so the first part we're going to look at is the start of the meeting the beginning of the meeting so what i'm going to give you now are just specific key phrases that you can use some of them may be quite obvious some of them you might be using already but they are very simple and i always emphasize the simplicity of the language that we want to use in this way nobody can misunderstand what you want to say you'll remember it a lot easier if it's simple okay and it's easy to use so let me give them to you so the if you're in charge of the meeting well you'll just start by welcoming everyone welcome everyone today's meeting is about okay so you just tell them it's a sales meeting it's a marketing meeting it's a particular client complaint issue it's a budget whatever it might be welcome everyone welcome to today's meeting these are the issues that we want to talk about you know this is our agenda or i sent you the agenda before the meeting so you should all have a copy of what's on it if you want to say something then just interrupt as we go through this particular meeting so starts off with welcome everyone the purpose of today's meeting is to the purpose of today's meeting is to complete the budget process or to sign off on the budgets or to agree the marketing strategy for the launch of our new product okay so introduce the topic and what it's going to be about and perhaps you might even tell the people how long the meeting is going to take you might just say well today's meeting is to discuss that the marketing the launch of the new product the meeting is going to last no more than one hour so we're going to start at two i'm gonna finish at three o'clock so everybody will be out of here by three o'clock so remember to look into the camera of your particular screen so that people can see you and you're engaging with them as i'm hopefully doing with you now so welcome everyone welcome to our zoom meeting the purpose of today's meeting is to discuss the important launch of our new project which is going to start from the 1st of november the meeting today is going to last no more than an hour so hopefully i'll have you out of this meeting and offline by no later than 10 minutes after 3 o'clock okay simple easy easy to understand or you can start in another way thanks everyone for attending it's really good to talk to you it's really good to see you today's meeting is blah blah blah okay so just another way to introduce it or if you want to get straight to the point so people attend you you you log them into the meeting you accept them into the meeting so when you look around the screen it looks like you've got everybody you can just simply say okay are we good to go meaning as everybody present is everybody ready to start so are we good to go meaning are we good to get started or simply okay let's get started shall we so it's a nice way to introduce it let's get started shall we i think everybody is here anybody else is late they can join in as we go along or in a little bit more informal way okay let's get this meeting started or let's kick off the meeting with okay so let's kick off the meeting with a brief rundown of the last meeting so you might have a summary of what was agreed so that everybody knows the starting position so let's kick off the meeting now we don't hold anybody up we have to finish by three o'clock so it's good if we can get the meeting started straight away and in keeping with that sort of football type theme and let's let's kick off the meeting we can also say let's get the ball rolling with okay a ball rolling when the ball rolls it means something has started because when the football game starts one player kicks the ball to another player and that's the first movement in the game so when we talk about a meeting and we're using that sort of metaphor in relation to football let's get the ball rolling let's get the meeting started okay so let's get the meeting started or let's get the ball rolling with a rundown of today's agenda so you go down quickly the three of the four the five points you want to cover and then you go back and you start with 0.1 or we can be very very specific and say okay today we're going to get started with so you introduce the first point immediately today we're going to get started with budgets today we're going to get started with the annual report today we're going to get started with that complaint we had that we didn't really satisfy the customer last week whatever it happens to be very specific and you tell the people exactly what how and when you're going to start that particular meeting when we have online meetings we're interfacing with the customer or interfacing with our colleagues or we're interfacing with the client through our camera and online on the screen so sometimes it can be a good idea just to tell the person what you're doing so when i'm starting a lesson i often say to the student okay can i share my screen with you so i might say that because i've got a book or some exercises or some work that i want to share with you the student so i just simply say okay i'm going to share my screen with you now is that okay so you get the permission to do it so if you've got a bigger meeting with six or seven or ten people then you're going to tell them right you're you're you're going to see my screen and on the screen you're going to see the agenda or the minutes of the meeting whatever it might be so you give them advanced notice of what's going to appear on the screen and then you ask them can you see my screen can you see it clearly can you see what i'm showing you do you want me to make it bigger yeah so you might have to enlarge it because the print size might be a little bit small for some people to to read if they're not accessing it through a laptop or a big screen i'm going to put up my presentation now okay so that's the next step you so they can see your screen and when you click on the next thing they'll see is the presentation so it might be a it might be a pdf document it might be a powerpoint presentation it might be some other way that you have to to put the presentation together or it might simply just be a word document so whatever it is you're just going to give them advanced notice as to what they're going to see on the screen so by doing that they know what to expect so in case they cannot see it they can say well sorry i don't see it or i don't see it yet or there's something wrong or the screen is blank or whatever yeah so the screen is frozen for example so they can come back to you and tell you their experiences from their side of the screen so can you see my screen and when doing that you say i'm going to share my screen with you now i'm going to share my document with you now i'm going to put up the presentation i'm going to share the powerpoint presentation if you've got any comments you can put them in the chat line wherever or whatever way you have of dealing with q a's questions and answers okay so let's move on to the next part often when we have online presentations or meetings there can be more than one or two people there so if there are quite a number of people you've really got to control it quite well and in some cases people might want to ask questions in other cases you might want people to speak up a little bit or you want them to be more emphatic so you've got to give certain signals so these next expressions and phrases will be for those particular situations could you speak more slowly please so if somebody's and i often get requested by people to slow down a little bit so could you speak more slowly so that everybody can understand because if it's a international call and you've got some colleagues that are sitting in india or italy or poland or portugal no matter where they are they may be all using english but they may have different levels of english and therefore it's better if you can speak more slowly so that everybody gets an opportunity to understand exactly what you're saying okay so could you speak more slowly please a nice polite request could you explain that again or could you go through that again because i didn't quite understand it could you repeat the last bit meaning the last few sentences or the last slide could you repeat that last bit again i wasn't quite sure perhaps you could give me another example could you speak up please i didn't quite hear it so if you've got a question to ask or comment to make or some observation sorry could you just speak up a little bit please yeah okay i got that yeah great thanks let me take that let me answer that i didn't quite get that could you repeat it i didn't quite get it i didn't understand quite what you meant perhaps you could go through that again okay so just polite ways to ask people to repeat something to speak up to speak more slowly to explain it in more detail to go through some final points or the last bit that you covered so that everybody could understand okay or somebody might say well my my picture froze for a minute i just missed the last bit you said could you repeat it please i'm sorry to have to ask so you repeat the the point again and of course when we're doing online meetings there's always the potential or opportunity or desire for somebody to interrupt we might want to interrupt what somebody is saying they might want to interrupt us with a question an observation so there are certain expressions and phrases that you should use and you must have when you want to make those interruptions so let me go through those simple one is sorry would you mind if i asked a question and of course the person hosting the meeting can say well could you leave it to the end or why sure just put it into the chat line or yeah give me a question now and perhaps it's a question that other people want to ask as well so there's a different way to deal with it or if you want some clarification or just to clarify what you're saying is this what you meant so you repeat in your words what you thought the point was and the person hosting the meeting would either agree or disagree or give a further explanation so you can say just to clarify what you're saying is yeah so you you ask it in that way or could i interrupt you for a minute so you want the opportunity to make a point to ask a question to clarify something could i interrupt you for a minute or could i interrupt you for a minute please or would you mind if i interrupted you for a minute so either those will be absolutely acceptable so another more informal way would be would you mind if i jumped in here because i've got something to say i've got a point to make or would you mind if i bought it in this is more american english so jump in and put in mean exactly the same as would you mind if i interrupt so would you mind if i interrupted much more formal would you mind if i jumped in here or put it in here much more informal so you know i've got a something to say could i butt in please or if i could jump in there because you know this point is very relevant it's very important it cuts across something that i'm doing so you you lay out the reasons why you feel it necessary to jump in why you feel it necessary to butt in or interrupt with some particular point or can i stop you there quickly for just a minute yeah so again you're asking the speaker if he could just halt while you make a point or if he could just stop while you add something or ask a question or enlarge on something that he has already said so can i stop you there quickly can i stop you for a minute yeah so again it's very polite and it's very acceptable or hold on a minute please just for a minute we don't seem to have discussed that in in much detail could we go back over it because i'm i've got some questions i'm sure other people have some questions as well and in that way you involve the other people in the meeting who might agree with you who want this explained in a different way so different ways in which you can interrupt and the expressions the phrases the must-have words that you should use for your online meetings of course as we're online then we've got the problems that everybody has with either sound picture interruption of connection freezing lagging all of these sort of problems so there are certain words expressions that you need to have when this happens i'm having problems hearing you so you don't get the sound or somebody hasn't unmuted themselves or they haven't switched on their video do you would you mind switching on your video would you mind uh on meeting would you you know speak up or there seems to be something with your headsets all of those can be problems visual or with the listening and hearing finally that might be sometimes an echo yeah a little bit of a you get the sound coming back to you you hear yourself so that might be something to do with somebody's headset or headphones or whatever way it may be so you're trying to just explain to somebody the different type of interruptions you get so just be very clear what they are so your pictures frozen there's an echo i can't see the picture i don't hear you so clearly or my my connection has broken all of those type of things okay so let's move on then so if we want to actually talk about moving on in the meeting so we can say well let's move on to the next point so you want the people clearly on the screens to know that you've finished with point one or point two and you're moving on so somebody's had a question somebody's asked something somebody's added something else so you say okay let's move on or it's time to move on so let's move on to the next item or moving on let's talk about this so let's talk about that so use those again those exact words moving on right or sometimes you say moving on swiftly okay guys there's a bit of a time issue here so i think we should move on and you've got any other points about this come back to me later or come back to me offline let's pencil in another meeting for next wednesday so you might run out of time so you won't say okay let's pencil in mean let's write into a diaries or make a diary entry or somebody will send around an invitation electronically that will have another meeting to pick up on these points next wednesday same time okay so when we want to summarize because often when we have a lengthy meeting there are lots of points that have been made and it's no harm from time to time during the meeting to summarize what have we done so far what have we covered so far or at the very end of the meeting you really want to summarize the key points that have been made the action points that you have and more importantly who's going to take responsibility for each of those individual action points so here's some of the phrases that you might need in summary we're going to do this or let me summarize by saying this this is what i think we've agreed on i think we can leave it here for today i think we've we've done enough i think this is a good place to stop or to end we can pick up again the next day we've covered most of the key points that we wanted to cover thank you very much we can pick up this again tomorrow and i've made a note i'll send you an email and we will start again same time and go through the remaining points so all very clear very specific so people know exactly what you've done you've got your agenda so okay we've finished point three we'll pick up from point four from tomorrow or we finished the agenda if anybody's got anything else to add you can either ask it now we've got a few minutes left or get to me offline through email and make sure you include or cc everybody else so everybody's kept up to date okay so ways in which we can summarize okay so it's really important when we're talking about online meetings that we do summarize it's important that everybody knows where they are particularly if you've got a lot of people that are participating if they're coming from many different countries it's really important they know where you started where you ended what happened is it the end of the meeting is it going to continue another time particularly if they've got a job to do what are you asking them to do what has been agreed so that everybody knows what will happen next okay so online meetings online expressions really good to know the language that you can use so hopefully you've enjoyed that as i said before if you want to contact me then you can do so on www.englishlessonviaskype.com i'm really happy to hear from you anytime with some suggestions that you might have these words that we use today i'm sure they'll be of use to you particularly in the modern world when lots and lots of meetings have moved online to zoom and every everything else and of course if you want lessons on a one-to-one basis or for family members or friends or colleagues it won't always be me that would be giving the lessons but we'd be delighted to hear from you

Channel: Learn English with Harry

Views: 609,321

Keywords: speak better english with harry, speak better english, professional English vocabulary, Must have English phrases for online meetings, english for work, Business English Vocabulary, online meetings in English, business english, learn english, learn english with harry, English with Harry, improve your english phrases for your online meeting, must have phrases for online meeting, online meeting phrases

Id: QOUOsneeB-w

Length: 19min 51sec (1191 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 10 2021