Learn English | Expressions to Use with Your Coworkers

want to speak real english from your first lesson sign up for your free lifetime account at englishclass101.com hi everybody my name is alicia in this lesson i'm going to talk about expressions you can use with your co-workers your co-workers are the people you work with let's get started first i want to talk about some common greetings you can use with your co-workers a very common way to greet your co-worker when you arrive at the office is morning morning so you can use good morning if you like or just morning with that clear ing sound at the end but it's also very common and very friendly to just say morning morning in that quick like kind of upbeat way to respond you just say the same thing in response morning or good morning or some people draw out the sound and they say good morning something like that you might also hear people make this good sound very short so it sounds like good morning good morning so there are a few different ways you can respond to this of course if you meet your co-worker in the afternoon you can say good afternoon or afternoon as well okay let's move on to a couple more greetings how are you today how are you today so how are you today is asking like this day specifically so if you see this person every day of the week or every weekday you want to know on this particular day on this specific day how are you so to respond you can say good or great or a little tired or i'm all right so however you're feeling you can respond with uh good great whatever whatever suits your situation how are you today good how are you today i'm all right so this is basically the same response as you would use with how are you but just how are you today another very common one is this past tense question this is a very common one uh on mondays so after the weekend how was your weekend how was your weekend at native speed it sounds like how was your weekend how was your weekend so this was gets very short it becomes like was was how was your weekend so i know it may sound a little like how is your weekend but that doesn't make any sense how is your weekend as a present tense question like how is your weekend now but if it's monday and the weekend has finished we've just finished the weekend this is definitely a past tense question how was your weekend so the weekend we just experienced how was it to answer you can use some of these uh exp or some of these responses to how are you today how was your weekend good how was your weekend great and usually you should follow up with something specific like i went to a movie or i went to a baseball game or i saw my favorite tv show or i ate a really good dish so give some information in past tense i went i saw i ate i heard whatever you could say fine nothing special it was fine i didn't do anything big so just to show that it was normal for you you could also say it was relaxing or maybe if your weekend had lots of stuff you could say it was busy so whatever just make a short expression for your response and give a little bit of detail that's kind of natural to do if you just say good you it sounds like maybe you don't want to talk about it or you're kind of like hiding something so it's generally good to share a little bit so that you can make relationships with people okay this one the next expression how was your activity how was your activity so again this is using past tense was here and this is something that we use when we know our co-worker has something planned so for example if you talk to your co-worker on tuesday afternoon and they say i have a special dinner tonight on wednesday you can say how was your dinner how was your dinner so the dinner you told me about the day before so that's why we use your here how was your dinner you can use other activities here like how was your party last weekend or how was your conference or how was your trip so depending on what kind of information your co-worker shared you can use a different noun phrase in this pattern to ask about that specific thing how was your activity so again to respond to this you can use the same kinds of answers as we've practiced here it was good it was great it was relaxing it was busy or it was okay it was not bad so just giving a little bit of information um just to share your experience or you know make like those relationships make uh having having a chance to bond with your co-worker a little bit okay so these are kind of greetings and kind of everyday like chat topics but now i want to move on to talking about some work specific expressions that you can use so these two have kind of similar grammar they both use this have you past participle expression let's look at this first one have you talked to or with person have you talked to our boss have you talked with our boss in this case there's really not a difference you can use talked to or talked with for me the difference here is just that width tends to sound a tiny tiny bit more like there are two people talking it's like it's like a two-way conversation maybe sometimes using two sounds more like a one-way conversation but this is not a rule by any means you can use either here so have you talked to our manager or have you talked to our team member this means because we have this present perfect uh pattern here have you talked it means since like you came to the office this morning until this conversation did you have the experience of talking to this person so maybe there's some important information you need to know so you might ask your co-worker have you talked to this person or have you talked to our boss today have you talked to so and so so this means like there's probably something you need to know to answer this question yes yes you could say yes i have or yes you can use a simple past tense answer in your reply too like yes i spoke to her this morning so i you spoke in my reply that's fine you can use spoke in your reply even though talked was used here or you could say talked as well they're both fine like yes i talked to her this morning yes i spoke with her this morning all great so you can say yes i have as well uh either either response is fine for a no response you can say no i haven't no i haven't spoken to her no i haven't talked with her or maybe if you expect to like you have a meeting scheduled you can say no not yet no not yet but i'm going to talk to her this afternoon so you can use a couple of these different patterns to share like when you spoke to someone if it's complete or when you're going to speak to someone if it's not complete yet so have you talked to that person yeah i have i spoke to her this morning or have you talked to her no not yet i'm going to talk to her in this morning's meeting so there are lots of different ways to answer this quick short question similarly then i mentioned that these have similar grammar structures have you heard about topic have you heard about topic so again we're using this present perfect have you heard past participle here meaning from some point in the past maybe this morning until our conversation now did you have the experience of hearing did you get this new information about this topic for example have you heard about this afternoon's meeting so maybe there's some kind of an update or have you heard about the schedule changes so this co-worker the person asking the question is using this pattern to like kind of ask their colleague to ask their co-worker did you receive this information like did you hear about this news so i've just used the expression did you hear about something you may also hear that just as a simple past tense expression you may also hear have you heard about both are fine to use and they communicate the same idea here so again to answer this kind of question we can use this pattern yes i have or no not yet or if you want to use no in this case like no i haven't what's up or no i haven't what's the information so you might ask a question in response to this if you don't have the information about the topic okay so with that let's continue on to this part of the lesson this is used i made these three sections or these three examples to help you with request patterns so when you need to ask your co-worker for something for help you need them to send something whatever how do you do that in a polite way but that's also kind of friendly because you're close a bit close so what i like to do and what many people i have worked with like to do is we begin our requests with something like this sorry to bother you but sorry to bother you but or you might see some people just say sorry to bother you and then they make their request so sorry to bother you means like i'm really sorry to interrupt your work or i know you're busy and so i'm really sorry to contact you but i need some help or i need something so sorry to bother you but could you please send me item so this item could be anything and this is usually used for email like please send me something digitally but of course we can use this for physical items as well like to send something in the mail some examples here could you please send me the report could you please send me our data could you please send me those files could you please send me any updates so there are many different ways we can use this we can use the indefinite article the definite article no article it really depends on what you're asking for so for example here please send me those files so those files the speaker would use those files in this case if the listener if the person reading or hearing this message already knows which files the speaker means so for example you're in a meeting and you're discussing some important files the speaker might say could you please send me those files like in an email later so could you please send me those files another request pattern you can use is could you please help me task or could you please help me with task so i have with here because there are a couple of different ways that we can use this please help me verb as part of the task but sometimes we don't have a specific verb we just want help uh with a noun phrase so let's look at some examples could you please help me prepare the meeting room prepare the meeting room so here prepare is my verb i don't need to use with here because we use with before a known phrase could you please help me prepare the meeting room so this one is okay without width this is my task here my whole task is included in this expression this one however uses with could you please help me with this month's data analysis with this month's data analysis so with before a noun phrase in this case this month's data analysis so why would we use this pattern in this case perhaps the speaker or the person writing this email doesn't have a specific task that they want the listener or the reader to do they just want to get some general support for something could you please help me with this task so you don't have a specific direction you don't have like a specific guide just yet but you want to get someone's support you can use this another example with a verb then could you please help me review the contract review the contract so you can see this example and this example these are very specific things that we are requesting if you just kind of want to make a more general request you can use with plus a noun phrase okay one more example pattern for asking for help is could i ask for your advice about topic could i ask for your advice about topic so this is used when you want to get someone's feedback about something or you have a question about something you're not sure how to do it or how to approach it but you think your co-worker does have some information or they have some knowledge some special skills that can help you with something so for example could i ask for your advice about this letter i'm writing so you're writing a letter and maybe you need someone to check it for grammar or you need someone to give you some feedback about the content of your letter you could use this pattern could i ask for your advice about this letter i'm writing another example could i ask for your advice about the design of this graphic so maybe you don't have great design skills but your co-worker does like could i ask for your help or could i ask for your advice about the design of this graphic so you can use a lot of different things here and using this pattern sounds kind of like you really would appreciate their expertise their specialization here so we can connect all of these patterns to this one i talked about before sorry to bother you but could you please send me that thing or sorry to bother you but could you please help me with this task or sorry to bother you but could i ask for your advice about this topic and then i like to end my requests with this whenever you have a moment whenever you have a moment so this means at any time at any point in which you have a free moment or a free minute whenever you have a moment so of course we have many moments but this expression means whenever at any time that you are free it's kind of a soft way to say like i know you're busy again but if you have a moment if you have just a minute i would really appreciate your help so can i ask for your advice about this topic whenever you have a moment so that just sounds like it's no rush like i just want to ask for your help if you have time so this is how i like to use these expressions to make soft but kind of friendly requests okay the last expression i want to talk about is one that you can use when you just want to share information let's look at the example i just wanted to send a long information i just wanted to send along information here i'm using past tense wanted wanted you could use present tense like i just want to send along some information but we often use like past tense in these kinds of expressions to soften our statement i just wanted to send along some information so again there's not a request here you're just providing some information that you think would be useful for the other person or maybe it's important for your work somehow for example i just wanted to send along some recent news related to our work so some recent news related to our work this could be an article you read or some news about a competitor like a competitor means another company or another organization doing the same or similar work as your company so this can be anything that's related to your job to your company whatever so i wanted to send along some recent news related to our work another example i just wanted to send along an update about our project's progress so this is a very common one you're providing an update maybe there's no need to like share feedback or there's no like request but you just want to share an update about your progress you can use this pattern to do it finally i just wanted to send along a few photos from the company trip so maybe this is a situation you have in your company or your organization just sharing some photos or sharing some kind of friendly social information from time to time too so this is a great pattern to use if there's not a request but you just want to provide some information okay so these are some expressions that you can use with your co-workers i hope that you found a few things that were useful for you of course if you have any other expression want to speed up your language learning take your very first lesson with us you'll start speaking in minutes and master real conversations sign up for your free lifetime account just click the link in the description

Channel: Learn English with EnglishClass101.com

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Keywords: English Language (Interest), learn english, Language (Quotation Subject), Teacher (Profession), american culture, english culture, EnglishClass101, how to, speak, write, read, english, native speaker, english grammar, grammar lesson, basic english grammar, spelling tips, english spelling, painless tips

Id: 4AEF6zJNqu8

Length: 18min 16sec (1096 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 21 2022