Vocabulary for DATA TRENDS | Business English communication lesson.

If you work in an international business environment and need to discuss data, graphs, or charts in English, this episode is for you. Today I'm sharing a set of powerful, natural-sounding vocabulary words, including bounce back, fluctuate, tank, plateau, and level off, that will help you sound more confident and professional the next time you're presenting figures, discussing reports, or analysing trends with colleagues. Rather than relying on basic phrases like "it went up" or "it went down," you'll learn precise, native-level language that makes a real impression in meetings and presentations. Whether you're a non-native English speaker looking to sharpen your professional communication, or you just want to sound more fluent when talking about data, this episode gives you practical tools you can start using straight away.

If you speak English at work and want to sound more native and natural when talking to colleagues, customers, or clients, then I hope that the vocabulary, grammar, and communication tips in today's episode will be useful for you. 

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Also, if you're studying for the IELTS, TOEFL, ICAO or Cambridge English tests and exams then you might find some of the vocabulary in this episode really useful.

This podcast is all about helping you to communicate better, in English, at work. I work with international English speakers from around the world who use English, at work, as a second or third language and I hope that I can bring some of the ideas, vocabulary, and grammar, from those sessions, to you in this podcast.

Don’t forget that my full time job is helping international professionals who use English at work to improve their communication skills. So, if you need English to do your job but don’t speak it natively then maybe we can work together to help you to achieve your language goals. 

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Transcript

Welcome back to the breakout business English podcast. My name is Chris. I am a business English and communication coach, and I've personally worked with over 1,000 international professionals, likely just like you, to improve the way that they communicate at work in English. Thank you so much for listening and for your time as always. And today we're continuing to talk about how to describe data Graphs. And chats, which we started three weeks ago. That's right, we took a two-week break. An unplanned, unscheduled break.
So, you might have noticed that two weeks ago, there was no episode. And then last week's episode was a repeat. I chose an episode from back in 2025 that I thought was particularly good, and I released it again.
So what happened? Where did I go?
Well, As I mentioned around a month ago I was spending some time in South Korea. I have family over there and on the journey back between two flights, three airports and a bunch of trains I got a cold. In fact my whole family became sick. My wife, my daughter and myself we all became sick. That on its own was not a huge problem, but I ended up losing my voice as a result. And I could barely talk for around a week. I had just enough strength in my voice to have the coaching sessions that I had on my schedule, but I didn't really want to record anything for the podcast while I sounded like that. However, Now So. With that said, let's get on with the second part of our short series about discussing data, graphs, and charts. In all the presentations that I've helped people to prepare, and all the charts and graphs that I've helped people to discuss One thing that keeps coming up over and over again is A controversy. And this is a controversy over privacy. High charts. In fact, I recently heard the phrase, friends don't let friends use pie charts, which I thought was quite funny. What I've learned over the past few years of working with professionals across many fields and industries is that People hate pie charts. And I've seen this opinion repeated by some great communicators who I follow.
You know... I never really thought about it until I was presented with the reasons and now I think I agree.
Well, the vocabulary that we're going to talk about today can definitely be used to talk about pie chats, whether or not you like them, as well as other types of data visualizations. In the last podcast on this topic, which as I mentioned was three weeks ago, we focused on how numbers go up and numbers go down and how we can talk about this. Today, we're going to focus more on Friends? And how to describe them. We'll hear some natural and native sounding ways to describe trends in data and we'll learn some great vocabulary that we can use to make sure that we're understood when explaining figures. To begin. Let's listen to some people describing positive trends and things that are good and desirable in data. Our user numbers dipped earlier in the year, but they've fully bounced back now. Our user numbers dipped earlier in the year but they've fully bounced back now. Revenue is expected to fluctuate a little before it levels off in the second half of the year. Revenue is expected to fluctuate a little before it levels off in the second half of the year. Let's start with the phrase bounce back. In the first example, we heard "Our user numbers dipped earlier in the year, but they've fully bounced back now." They've fully bounced back now. The word bounce is maybe not one that you've seen to describe data very often. But there's a good chance that you've heard it in sports. The most common thing that we talk about bouncing is a ball. When a ball hits a hard surface, often the ground or maybe a wall, then it usually bounces. It springs back and moves quickly away from the surface that it hit. This is exactly what we mean when we apply this word to data. A good example from recent years of this is the COVID-19 pandemic. A lot of businesses saw their revenue decrease very quickly when the world shut down in 2020. Almost like it was falling towards the ground. Many businesses found, however, that when things started to return to normal, their revenue bounced back. And quickly return to normal. Almost as if it was bouncing off the ground like a ball. I think the travel industry in general is a good example of this. Airlines saw revenue drop to almost nothing in 2020. But they knew that this would not be permanent and within a couple of years they had bounced back. In fact, I often noticed this myself in January. In the work that I do, people tend to want to book my time less in the first month of the year. However, by mid-February, my business has inevitably Bounced. It's always a little worrying though. Having said that, it does give me a little more time to focus on YouTube and the podcast for a couple of weeks. The next word we're going to look at today is fluctuate. Fluctuate. That's F-L-U-C-T-U-A-T-E. In the second example we heard, revenue is expected to fluctuate a little before it levels off in the second half of the year. Revenue is expected to fluctuate a little before it levels off in the second half of the year. This is a very useful verb. To use when you are talking about numbers, prices or levels that change frequently. When something fluctuates, it doesn't stay the same. Instead, it goes up and down repeatedly. Often by small amounts. You can imagine a line on a graph that moves like a wave. Rising one moment and falling the next. In a professional setting, we often use this to describe things that are outside of our control, like the stock market. Or the cost of raw materials. If the price of fuel fluctuates, it means the price is different every time you go to buy it. In our daily work. You might hear this word used during a meeting about sales or budgets. For instance, a manager might say "Our energy costs fluctuate from month to month." or maybe customer demand for our product fluctuates throughout the year. Using fluctuate is a more professional way to express this idea of going up and down. Rather than saying it goes up and it goes down, you can say it fluctuates. It shows that you understand that these changes are a normal part of how this number works.
So the next time you see a number that won't stay still, you can say that it is fluctuating. And if you want your communication skills to stop fluctuating and instead just improve quickly and in big steps and trend upwards, then maybe we can work together. My full-time job is helping international professionals who use English at work to improve their communication skills.
So, if you need English to do your job, but you don't speak it natively, then I'd love to meet you. If you'd like to book some time to meet with me through one-to-one video calls, just you and me, then you can go to BreakoutBusinessEnglish.com. That's the title of the podcast, BreakoutBusinessEnglish.com, and find out more. Starting on our very first call, we can focus on the specific opportunities that you personally have to improve your English communication skills and the mistakes you make most often or cause the biggest problems with your communication. And if you have any specific goals like an upcoming meeting, a job interview, a presentation, anything you want to prepare for, then let me know and we can jump straight in with that. And right now, you can use the code PODCAST30, that's PODCAST30, at checkout to get a 30% discount of your first booking of 30, 45, or 60 minutes, whichever is best for you.
Sometimes my calendar gets a little busy, so if you have trouble finding a time that works for you, then you can always send me a message through the contact page on the website and ask if I have any time to fit you in. I've worked with over 1,000 non-native English-speaking professionals, from new graduates up to CEOs and government leaders, to help them to achieve their goals, and I look forward to meeting you. Now. Let's see. We can describe some trends in data that are not Good. Here are some examples of natural and native sounding ways that you can describe these not so positive data trends. New user growth seems to have plateaued over the past few months. New user growth seems to have plateaued over the past few months. The negative press that we've been getting has completely tanked our sales. The negative press that we've been getting has completely tanked. Our sales Let's take a closer look at the verb 'to tank'. That's T-A-N-K. In the second example, we heard: "The negative press that we've been getting has completely tanked our sales." It has tanked our sales. To tank is an informal and very strong way to say that a number has declined very quickly. And that this is a bad thing. It's something that generally remains low for a long period of time, not something that's going to bounce back. You can use this in an intransitive way. For instance, "Sales have tanked." which means that sales have decreased significantly, or in a transitive way. For instance, the negative press has tanked our sales. Which means that the negative news coverage caused and directly resulted in the decline in sales. We often see this word talking about money. Figures and statistics. For instance, in politics, a politician's popularity might tank after they make an unpopular decision. Or we might say something like "their unpopular decision" tanked their popularity.
So a tank as a noun is one of those big heavy vehicles used in war. The ones with the Big gun on the front that can spin around and can drive in a lot of different terrains. However. As a verb, it's not quite certain where this meaning actually came from. One of the first people to use it in this way, with the meaning of failure or loss, was the famous tennis player, Billie Jean King. Specifically in an interview she gave in Life magazine. All the way back in September. Of 1967. Billie Jean King said, "When our men don't feel like trying, they tank." I never tanked a match in my life. And I never saw a girl do it. The men do it all the time in minor tournaments when they don't feel like hustling. You have to be horribly competitive to win in big time tennis.
Though she said, when men don't feel like trying, they tank. So where did this come from?
Well, maybe we should ask Billie Jean King where she heard it. Let's focus now on the verb to... Plateau. To plateau. That's P-L-A-T-E-A-U. And if that spelling feels a little strange, maybe a little un-English, that is because plateau is a French word. And one of the many French words that we use in English. In the first example, we heard new user growth seems to have plateaued over the last few months. New user growth seems to have plateaued. Now, regular listeners to this podcast will know that I really like it when we can connect a picture to a word. When we can find an image that really clearly illustrates how a word is used. And this is definitely one of those words.
So. I have an image for you. And I have a question for you. If I do an image search, Fall. "Plateau", a Google image search for "Plateau". What do you think I'm going to find?
Well, we won't immediately find graphs and charts. In fact, we'll get pictures of landscapes and geography.
So, in your mind, I want you to imagine a mountain. And we're going to go halfway up that mountain and we're going to cut the top off. We're going to cut the top half of the mountain completely off. What you're left with is a raised piece of land that is completely flat on the top. This is a plateau.
So when we take this idea from geography, and we apply it to data and statistics. We get this same image. Except this time it's on a chart. You can imagine a number increasing and then suddenly stopping and not declining but holding steady and remaining in one place. And since most companies are aiming for constant and consistent growth, it's usually considered a bad thing to plateau.
So one thing that could pato is user numbers for instance. Maybe your monthly active users, your MAU number has been increasing and then after a while it stops. And you remain steady at, I don't know, let's say 20,000 monthly active users. No one is leaving the site. But equally, no one is coming to and joining the site for the first time.
So you're left with the same amount of users using your website or maybe your app then. Your numbers have plateaued. Your users have plateaued. A really useful verb to describe a very specific friend in your data. And let's talk about that phrasal verb to level off. This is a really useful phrasal verb when giving presentations or maybe talking about reports. And we use it when we need to describe a situation wear a line, stops going up or down and starts to stay the same very similar to plateau really Imagine you're looking at a line on a graph that has been climbing higher and higher for months. When it finally stops increasing and moves straight across horizontally, We say that the numbers have leveled off.
So this means that a period of change has ended and things have become stable or constant. The difference between level off and plateau is that Very often, leveling off is something that we want. Maybe users were decreasing their users were leaving your platform. But that has now leveled off. That exodus, that leaving has now stopped. Or maybe the price of your resources or raw materials for your product has been increasing, and it has now stopped increasing. It has leveled off. A plateau, by contrast, often happens when we want something to keep increasing.
So sales could plateau there. Now, we can use the two interchangeably. I could say that sales have leveled off when we would prefer them to keep increasing. But when we're talking about things that are bad, that are negative there, well, we would probably say that they have leveled off rather than they have plateaued. We might see this in a sentence like, we saw a lot of volatility in our expenses early in the quarter, but thankfully they have leveled off recently. Thankfully, they have leveled off recently, which helps your colleagues to understand that the situation is now calm and predictable. Using LevelOff makes your descriptions of data sound more native during Updates in a professional context. Don't forget that if you would like to discuss any of the ideas, vocabulary, or grammar, etc. In today's episode, or indeed work on your ability to describe data and figures and graphs and charts, or maybe just talk to me about pie charts and tell me that I'm wrong and tell me that in fact they're a great way to communicate data, then... You can book a session with me to work on your English communication skills by going to www.breakoutbusinessenglish.com. That's breakoutbusinessenglish.com. Or you can click on the link in the show notes. And as I mentioned earlier, use the code PODCAST30 at checkout to get a 30% discount off your first booking. I've worked with over 1,000 non-native English-speaking professionals, from new graduates up to CEOs and government leaders, to help them achieve their communications goals, and I look forward to meeting you. Between episodes of the podcast, you can get videos every couple of days on Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube. Just search for Breakout Business English. If there's a topic that you'd like to hear me talk about on the podcast, then I'd be excited to hear your ideas. The best way to do that is to leave a message or a comment on one of my YouTube videos, and I look forward to hearing from you. If you're on Apple Podcasts, then I invite you to leave a review. Every review really helps me out and helps to push the podcast to new listeners and to grow the show.
So if you found this podcast useful and you think that there are some valuable things in here, then feel free to leave a quick review and I thank you in advance. That's a great place to request a topic for a future podcast. That's it for today. Thank you so much for listening. And as always, for your time, I know how valuable it is. And I really appreciate and respect your choice to spend some of it with this podcast. I hope you have a great week ahead and I'll talk to you next time. On the Breakout Business English podcast.