Speak Better English with Harry | Episode 539

Learn 10 advanced business English collocations to help you speak more naturally and professionally at work. This lesson will show you how to manage meetings, give feedback, shift topics, and express concerns using the kind of language fluent speakers use in real business settings. These are practical phrases that help you avoid common mistakes and sound more confident in discussions, presentations, and workplace communication.

Ideal for intermediate and advanced learners who want to improve their business English for meetings, job interviews, or English exams.

Transcript

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Hi there, this is Harry. Welcome back to Advanced English Lessons with Harry. And in this particular lesson, we're going to focus on more formal English, formal business English, and we're going to look at communication co-locations or co-locations dealing with communication. Okay, the first is to back up an argument. So when we back up an argument, it's about support. Okay, so back up in this situation means to support. So if you've got an argument or a proposal, a proposition or something you wish to put forward or you have put forward at a management meeting, what you might be asked is to back up your argument with facts. Well, can you back up that argument with facts? When did this happen? How did it happen? Who was involved? So you can't just make a statement without having something to back up your argument. So if you're suggesting that the campaign should be run in a different way, then you need to back up that suggestion with facts and figures as to how you believe your idea is better than the idea that's been put forward by one or other of your colleagues to back up an argument. To illustrate the concept, well, we illustrate with examples. Okay, so if there's a concept that you're putting forward, a new way of doing things, well, they want examples. So could you please illustrate that with a few examples? What do you mean? Like, how will it look? Or how will we get access to these extra clients you're talking about? Or what will it look like? Or how long will it take? What will it cost? So you have to illustrate the concept, whatever that idea is. A concept is an idea, whatever the idea is, you have to illustrate. You mean you have to give more details using examples. And for those of you and your friends or family who want one-to-one lessons, well, you know what to do. Just get in touch, www.englishlessonviaskype.com and you can apply for a free trial lesson and we'd be very happy to hear from you and very happy to help you. To demonstrate one's understanding, well that means demonstrate your or their or my understanding. So to demonstrate your understanding means to give an example which clearly outlines that you actually understand what they're talking about. Please demonstrate your understanding by giving me an example. I often ask it in English when I have a one-to-one lesson with somebody to make sure that they understand what I've spoken about. I ask them to demonstrate their understanding by giving me a sentence or something that will show the particular use of that word. And if it's very clear, well then it's easy to see that they do understand what we've been talking about. If not, then perhaps I need to explain it in a slightly different way. So we demonstrate their or my understanding of the situation. Go into far too much detail. Well, this is a real problem in business when people go on and on and on. So they give far too much detail. Often at business meetings, marketing meetings, whatever the meeting happens to be, particularly the boss and the senior executives, they don't want all the detail. They want the key information. They want the summary. Okay, so they don't need you to go into every little detail. They don't need to know every little cost. They don't need to know every little problem that you've had with the procedure. What they want to know is, is it on time? When are we going to launch? What is it going to cost? Who is it aimed at? They want the big picture. Yeah. Okay. So they want to avoid time wasting. So they don't want you to go into so much or far too much detail. So somebody might come to you after the presentation and say, oh, really, really good presentation, that Harry, really, really good. But don't you think you went into far too much detail? They don't really need to know that. So for the next presentation, why don't you just reduce the number of slides, focus on the key points. The presentation will be shorter and you're bound to get more questions than you got asked today. So don't go into it in so much detail, far too much detail. To go into the finer points, well, this will be the opposite. If somebody wants to know the finer points, they really want to get down, get their hands dirty. They want to really understand how you put this together, how it works, what will it mean for us, what will it mean for the customer. So they want the finer points. So perhaps it's the first time you've done a multimedia, social media campaign. So they want to know the finer points. How and when do you use these influences? How and can you calculate the number of people that are interested? How can you measure the success? So you have to go into the finer points, the finer detail to explain to your management exactly how this campaign is going to work. After all, it's a new campaign using social media. So to go into the finer points. To make comments under your breath. Well, this is when we whisper something, hoping that somebody else will not hear it. Somebody's making a presentation and they're going on and on and you whisper, oh God, when is this going to end? So you make a comment under your breath, hoping that somebody or other people don't hear it. But you have to be very careful because sometimes we might whisper it a little too loudly and somebody does hear it and they might get a little bit upset. So, you know, to make comments under your breath. And then the next one is something similar, a throwaway remark. Well, a throwaway remark can be something offhand, off the cuff, something that you've said spontaneously, but you didn't mean to say it. So you're in the middle of a meeting and they're presenting something and they're asking for questions and you just say something, ah, it'll never work. And so he said, what? What do you mean? It'll never work. Ah, look, don't worry. It's just a throwaway remark. I didn't really mean it. I hope it does work, but I'm just a little bit unsure. So when you make a throwaway remark, you have to be really, really careful who the audience is and who's listening and exactly what it is you're trying to say, because somebody can pick up on it. So you might have to apologize for throwaway remarks. Often throw away remarks of something that hasn't been thought out too carefully. It might be something on your mind and you really should have kept it to yourself and there was probably no need to say it to other people. But once you've said it, well, then you have to justify it. So you might just have to apologize and say, ah, look, it was just a throwaway remark. Forget I said anything. My apologies. Okay, a throwaway remark. To voice concerns about something. Well, when we voice concerns about something, unlike a throwaway remark, it's something that we've thought about in a lot of detail. So you've looked at the plan, you've had time to study it, you've seen the report, you've looked at the presentation, you've read the document, and you've got some serious concerns. So you want to voice those concerns. So you ask for another meeting. So when the meeting comes around, you've got it well prepared. You hand out a paper which will voice your concerns in writing. It'll show them the concerns you have. Perhaps you go through a PowerPoint presentation and you'll explain to people why you believe there are some fundamental flaws in the plan. So it's well thought out, well presented, and as we say, it's voicing your concerns about something. And in this case, about the plan or about the launch. So to voice concerns needs to be thought out, well structured, and then well presented to voice your concerns, to voice your concerns, to speak in a formal way, in an authoritative way, and also in a way which suggests that something needs to be reconsidered. And then to move on to a new or different topic. When we want to move on to a new or different topic, it's usually around some agenda. Okay, so if you have a meeting, if it's a monthly meeting you have and somebody circulates, sends around an agenda, then it's listed in items one, three, four, five, up to whatever number they are, and you go through them one by one. So when you're in the middle of the meeting, whoever's the chair of the meeting, the director or the manager, will say, okay, it's time to move on to the next topic. It's time to move on to a new topic. It's time to move on to a different topic. So they don't want to take up the whole meeting talking about item two and we've only got half an hour left. So they want to get through the agenda before lunchtime, make sure we've covered everything. So whoever's controlling, and this is one of their roles as the chairman of the meeting, whoever's controlling the meeting will tell people, okay, look, there's enough about that. If we need to talk about it anymore, you can bring it up at the next meeting. But now I want to move on to a new topic. I want to move on to a different topic. And then finally, to summarize the key ideas. Well, if you're having a thinking or you're having a think tank or a brainstorming event, then people might be asked, okay, I want two fresh new ideas from everybody. Okay, so you've got 40 minutes. Let's see how many ideas we can come up with. No matter how mad they are, how crazy they are, put them down on a bit of paper and we'll decide and we'll discuss and we'll see what's a possibility and what's not. Okay, so at the end of this particular brainstorming session, whoever's in charge of the meeting says, okay, now what we want to do is just to get or to summarize the key ideas. So I'm going to go around the table from left to right and give me your two key ideas. Don't worry about all the detail. We'll come back to you about those, but I want to summarize the key ideas. And then what I'm going to do, I'm going to send this summary to everybody. And then you'll be asked to back up your particular idea with some facts. Okay, so summarize the key ideas. Jot down or write down the key points made by each individual person, no matter how crazy they are. So it's a summarize. And if you're making a presentation, perhaps you're making a presentation to customers or clients or staff, whoever it might be, usually at the end of the presentation, you'll have a summary because you'll tell them at the beginning what you want to cover in the presentation. Then in the main body of your presentation, you'll go through each of those points. And the good thing to do at the end is then, okay, I'm going to summarize the key ideas. And these are the key points that I made today so that you leave people with those key points so that they have a summary and it covers all the information that you wanted to pass on. Okay, good. So as I said, these are business co-locations, all about communication. Okay, so it's all about communicating with your colleagues, with your friends, but from a business perspective. Okay, so let me run down through them one more time. Back up an argument. So how do you communicate that? How do you back up an argument with facts? To illustrate the concept, how you illustrate concept with examples, communicate those to your colleagues. Demonstrate your understanding. Communicate to your colleagues that you understand what they're talking about. To go into far too much detail. Well, this is when people don't want to hear as much as you want to tell them. They just want an overview. So you go into it in far too much detail. You want to go into, or they ask you to go into the finer points, the really key points, the critical aspects, the finer points. To make comments under your breath, it's not a nice way to communicate, but it is a way of communicating. To whisper something under your breath, normally it's derogatory. To make a throwaway remark might be a sort of a smart joke type comment, but you have to be really, really careful about the audience that they understand whether it's a joke or whether it was serious. So to make a throwaway remark. Then more formally, to voice concerns about something where you communicate to your colleagues and your workmates what concerns you have about this particular project. So it's well thought out, well presented and understood. Then during a meeting to move on to a new or a different topic so that we don't get stuck on topic number two. We have to get through the itemized agenda. And then finally summarize those key ideas, communicate them clearly, distinctly to your audience so that they understand exactly what you're trying to communicate. Okay, so business English communication co-locations, they're really advanced, but important for you to go through them. Pick out one or two, see can you use them, see can you introduce them, tie them into your particular work. And if you need any more examples, come back to me and I'll help you with those. As always, I really appreciate you watching. Until the next time, join me again for the next lesson. This is Harry saying goodbye.