How to BE POLITE in English - Professional English communcation class

If you want to sound more polite and improve your relationships with your colleagues, clients, and customers, then using things like modal verbs and trying to be less direct can help. This week we look at some ways that you can be more polite when speaking English at work, some professional English vocabulary that can help you with this, and we even have a little English pronunciation lesson in here. 

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, almost certainly just like you, to improve the way that they communicate at work in English. Thank you so much for listening and for your time. I, of course, know how valuable it is. And our topic today is... How to be more Polite. In English. I feel like this is a topic I should have tackled a long time ago, but from the looks of my podcast counter, it's taken me over 70 episodes to get here.
So hopefully you find this useful. Some of you might know. That my second language is Korean. I don't speak it as well as I would like, but I did spend three years living in South Korea between 2019 and 2022, and my wife is Korean.
So I speak the language every day. Equally, my one-year-old daughter is going to grow up speaking Korean and English, so I definitely have to learn quickly. One thing that I really like about Korean is that the rules for being Polite. Are really quite clear. Mostly you need to change the endings of your verbs. If you choose a specific verb ending, then you're being more polite. Use a different verb ending and you're being even more polite. There are, of course, other things that you can do to be more polite in Korean, but changing your verb endings, depending on the situation that you're in, is one really easy tool that we can use. In English, however, this can be a bit more challenging. Today, we're going to hear some natural and native sounding examples of how to be polite in English. We'll compare different levels of politeness and we'll learn some vocabulary choices that we can make that can help us to communicate in a polite manner. Let's start with a key idea. One of the main things to remember when you're trying to be more polite in English is that you need to be less direct. The less direct you are, the more polite you are being. As a general rule. For instance, let's talk about a request. Imagine that you have a colleague called Dave. And you want Dave to email a document to you. How can we communicate this? Well? We'll start with the least polite way to do this. Dave, email me that document. Dave, email me that document. Now, here's a question for you. What kind of word is email in this sentence? Dave, email me that document. Is it a noun? The verb. Adjective or something else.
Well, in this sentence, 'email' is a verb. And if we start a sentence with a verb... Then we're usually giving an instruction.
So if you start a sentence with a verb, you're usually giving an instruction. If you're at the airport, you might hear the security agents, the security staff tell you, take your shoes off and take your laptops out of your bags. Starting those sentences with verbs makes them instructions. Those airport security staff aren't trying to make friends. They're not trying to necessarily be polite. They're just telling you what they need you to do. They just need you to do what they say. However, with our colleague Dave, we want to be more polite than this.
So, let's make this sentence less direct. How about... Dave. Would you mind emailing me that document, please? Dave, would you mind emailing me that document, please? Now, we've made a lot of progress. We've done two things. We've used please. As many English-speaking parents tell their kids, please is the magic word. We've used a modal verb. You'll find that a lot of more polite sentence structures in English include modal verbs, especially would, Code... May might, and maybe can as well. Using the phrase, would you mind, isn't even technically asking your colleague to do something. It's asking how they feel about it. It's asking if it would cause them trouble. You might say something like, "I don't want to put you out." I don't want to put you out, Dave. I don't want to put you out, but would you mind emailing me that document, please? To put someone out means to cause someone unnecessary inconvenience or Rubble. If I'm asking you for a ride to the airport, then if we're both getting on the same flight, then that probably wouldn't be putting you out too much. But if you have to wake up early, take me to the airport and then go home and get ready for your normal day, that would be putting you out. And of course, I don't want to put you out. How about this one? When you get a moment, I'd really appreciate it if you could email me that document. When you get a moment, I'd really appreciate it if you could email me that document. Okay, so here we've added two more components to make this less direct. We've taken away the urgency of the request. Now. I'm asking for this whenever the person has I'm or an opportunity to do it. What you'll often find is that people are happy to do things immediately for you. However, if you want to be as polite as possible. Then giving them the opportunity to carry out your request later. Is a great way to do this. The second is that our request isn't even really a request anymore. Which is why you don't see the word please in that sentence. Now we're talking about how we would feel and how happy we would be if your colleague, Dave, did a specific thing.
So. One of the most polite ways to make a request in English, as you heard. Is not to make a request at all. But to talk about how much you would appreciate someone doing something.
You know, whenever I try to think of a name for an example in English, I always land on Dave. If you've taken any English classes with me or communication coaching sessions with me, then you'll notice that on a lot of the materials that I have, that I've written, a lot of the class structures that I've got, you very often find someone called Dave. Maybe that's just because I've had a lot of colleagues called Dave in the past. Or maybe it's because it's a short name and it's easy to type quickly. Let's take another example. Let's say that you have something important to do after work. And you want to leave early.
Well, the most direct way to say that would be... I need to leave early. I need to leave early. But. How can you make this more light Take a moment. Think about it. Can you add any words? Or maybe use a modal verb like would, Or could. To sound more polite.
Well, one thing that you might have heard people suggest is to use may or might. As in, may I leave early today, please? Or might I leave early today, please? Although these are correct, and both sound very polite, they're incredibly formal. And you risk sounding a little bit like a king or a queen from a couple of hundred years ago. Especially with might. Might I leave early today makes you sound like a member of the royal family. At least that's how it sounds to my native speaker ears. How about, would it be possible for me to leave early today, please? Would it be possible for me to leave early today, please? Or using could I leave early today, please? Could I leave early today, please? I'd really appreciate it. And again, for me, I personally prefer Would It Be Possible. That's a phrase I use quite a lot, especially when I'm in a situation in maybe a hotel or a restaurant and I'm asking a member of staff to do something for me. For instance, I know I can't check in for another couple of hours, but would it be possible for me to leave my luggage here so I can... Blow the city a little. Would it be possible for me to leave my luggage here? And if you want to know if it would be possible for you to improve your communication skills, then I think the answer is yes. And 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 would 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 and communication skills and the mistakes that you make most often or cause the biggest problems with your communication. Everything we do is tailored around you. And right now you can use the code PODCAST30, that's PODCAST30, at checkout to get a 30% discount off 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 well over 1,000 non-native English-speaking professionals, from new graduates up to CEOs and government leaders, to help them achieve their communication goals, and I look forward to meeting you. Okay. Let's talk now about saying no. One of the times in our professional lives when we really want to be the most polite is when we have to decline a request from someone. And just like earlier in the podcast, we're going to try to be less direct here. Let's listen now. To some really polite, natural and native ways to decline a request. I'm not sure I'll have time to do that today.
Sorry about that. I'm not sure I'll have time to do that today.
Sorry about that. I doubt the company will be able to do that for you. I doubt the company will be able to do that for you. I probably won't be available for the meeting today. My apologies. I probably won't be available for the meeting today. My apologies.
So, what you'll hopefully notice about these sentences: is that none of them really communicated certainty. None of them said that it would be impossible. Or used the word 'can't' - 'cannot'. This might be interesting to you if you've heard that the UK and US are what we call low-context societies. The US, the United States, especially, is a very low-context professional culture. These are countries where you need to give lots of information in order to communicate in the most effective and clear way. In fact, the more information that you give, the more native your communication style likely is.
So. In the US. It's not necessarily enough to tell someone that a meeting is important. You should really say that the meeting is important, You need to come to the meeting. And I need you to bring the following information. You need to give all of that detail. Whereas in many other professional cultures, especially those in East Asia, such as Japan, China, and Korea. It's more likely that this information is simply implied. I can tell you that a meeting is important and from that you would understand that you need to attend and you need to be ready with certain information. These are what we call high context cultures. By the way, if you're interested in learning more about how people communicate in different professional cultures and across professional cultures around the world, then I can recommend the book The Culture Map by Erin Mayer. That's E-R-I-N, Erin Mayer, M-E-Y-E-R. It's a fantastic book that summarizes a lot of research and it's a resource that I refer to often in the communication coaching classes that I deliver for professionals all over the world every day. In summary. Being polite is one time when you will find that English as a language is different from the general professional cultures of the countries that use English as a first language.
So English gets very indirect, maybe very shy. When it is used to say no or decline requests. Okay, here is a pronunciation quiz for you. In the second example, I used a word that is spelled D-O-U-B-E. One more time, this word is spelled D- O U B T. This means that you're not certain or sure about something. This word is used to communicate that lack of conviction, that lack of certainty. How would you say this word? One more time, d-o-u-b-t. How do we pronounce this word? This word is pronounced 'doubt'. Doubt. It almost sounds like it has a W. In the middle.
So that is a silent letter B. The B in doubt is silent. This extra letter, interestingly, appeared around 500 years ago when academics and scholars decided that they wanted to make English sound and look on the page a little more like Latin. The ancient Latin form of this word does in fact include a letter B. However, English borrowed this word from French, not from Latin. And in French, this word does not have a letter B in it.
So. This B has never been pronounced. It's not something that we pronounced a long time ago in the past and then changed. This has always been silent. In fact, if you go far enough back in the English language, over 500 years ago, to the 15th century, This word did not have a B in it. We find a similar situation with the letter B in debt. That's D-E-B-T. Debt. As in to owe someone money is to have a debt. And that's the same story.
Some people wanted this word to look a little more like Latin when it was written down, so they added the letter B. That this word does have in Latin. However, we took the word debt from French where it does not have a B in it. As any French speakers listening can tell you, this word exists today. We use it, but it doesn't have a B in it.
So again, that B has always been silent. So one more time, those words are doubt and debt. For instance, "I'm so sorry, I doubt if I will be able to pay that debt today." I doubt if I will be able to pay that debt today. My sincere apologies for keeping you waiting. If you want a more detailed and in-depth discussion on how to say no to your colleagues and decline requests, then I recorded an episode of the podcast all about that. The episode was called How to Say No to Your Colleagues and Protect Your Time at Work. It was episode 18 of the podcast. And was released all the way back on December 5th in 2024, which feels like a lifetime ago.
So if that sounds interesting to you, then feel free to take a listen to the full episode. In the episode, I talk about a list of ways that you can make saying no not only more polite, but easier and maybe keep your colleague happy at the same time. Don't forget that if you would like to discuss any of the ideas, vocabulary or grammar, etc. In today's episode, or work on your ability to be polite, work on your politeness for your career and your job, then you can book a session with me by going to www.breakoutbusinessenglish.com. That's breakoutbusinessenglish.com. Or you can click on the link in the show notes. And use the code PODCAST30. That's 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, from some companies and almost certainly some governments that you've heard of, to help them to achieve their English and communication 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. Leave a message or a comment on one of my YouTube videos and I look forward to hearing from you. If you're listening on Apple Podcasts, then I invite you to leave a review. Every review really helps me out and helps to grow the podcast and help it to reach new listeners, which helps me to... Keep this show going and make a new episode every week.
So if you found this podcast useful and you think that there are some valuable things in here, then feel free to leave a review. You don't even need to write anything. Just choose three or four or maybe even five stars. And I thank you for that in advance. That is a great place to request a topic for a future podcast. That is it for today. Thank you so much for listening and for your time as always. I really do appreciate and respect your choice to spend some of your time with this podcast. I hope you have a great rest of your week and I'll talk to you again next time on the Breakout Business English podcast. Thanks a lot everyone. Talk to you soon.