Shadowing Practice: 334. Business English Native Speakers Use (Explained Simply) - Learn English Speaking with Video
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As a senior manager, have you ever been in a business meeting with native speakers and thought, I don't know what they're talking about?
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In this episode today, I hope to help you feel more confident by breaking down some difficult business expressions
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so you can finally understand what they mean.
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Let's crack on.
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Hello and welcome to Confident Business English.
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If you're a senior manager and you already use English but you really want to build your confidence, you are in exactly the right place.
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My name is Anna, I'm a Neural Language Coach
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and I've been working with professionals for over eight years on their English communication.
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This podcast then I'd like you to think about as a
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weekly training program where I touch on some of the most challenging parts
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that you tell me you face on a day-to-day basis with English.
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Each episode, which is its own little unit, I hope helps move you a little bit closer towards your overall goal, which is to build more confidence.
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And at the end of the day, really a lot of the time, more confidence in your English communication is more freedom.
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Freedom from the things that are holding you back, the stress, the anxiety, the mental energy with English, and also the freedom to do whatever you want.
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So let's dive in and look at the problem we're tackling today.
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And this is something I hear all the time from clients, and I bet that you experience something similar too.
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Anna, I can follow more or less in the meetings, and then a native speaker comes along and suddenly I've lost everything.
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Isn't it ironic that actually sometimes native speakers can be the worst communicators?
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Not because they're trying to make life difficult for you.
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Often it's just simply a lack of awareness, a lack of understanding that actually, you know, communicating in another language is quite challenging.
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I do want to challenge you here though on something that I've seen can really knock professionals' confidence.
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Often what I find with clients is it's almost as
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if they give native speakers a level of authority or superiority just because they're a native speaker.
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If this is a belief that you feel you have, I'd really encourage you to try to look at it differently.
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You're both in the same room.
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You're both trying to solve the same problem.
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You both have a role to play.
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Having said that, even if you can't necessarily control how they speak, and unless you want to bring it up with them and talk about perhaps how you could communicate better,
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which I know could be a little bit awkward in some situations,
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what is within your control is to learn some of the most common business phrases so that you don't have,
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or at least you increase the likelihood of having that really horrible feeling where you can't really follow what's being said.
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maybe you get that kind of fight or flight situation.
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You're just trying to catch up your survival mode, let's say.
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The challenge for you as well as a senior manager is
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you're often not in a meeting in a passive role just to listen and take notes.
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That would be great.
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You're there to add value, influence the discussion, ask questions, make decisions.
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So of course, if you're not following what's being said, that's an issue.
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And I totally understand that that could leave you feeling very anxious and frustrated.
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But let's try and take some practical steps to address that today.
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I've cherry-picked my list of difficult business phrases and for each one I'm going to explain what it means, the simple version, the origin,
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if that's interesting and relevant, and any tricks about how to remember it and nuances when you use it.
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And stick around for the last one because it's a little bit of a funny one, might be a little bit rude, but I think you'll find it quite entertaining.
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Here we go.
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First one, we're in the world of implementation.
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Have you ever heard somebody say something like,
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we need to roll out our new software across all the regions. To roll out.
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This is literally just a fancy way of saying introduce gradually.
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You could imagine it like rolling out a carpet.
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Or when you drop a rock in water and there's a ripple and the ripple gradually goes out.
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The change doesn't happen everywhere at once it gradually spreads.
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Moving on to talk about preparation.
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Imagine somebody in the room is talking about the final two quarters of the year and they say,
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you know, we're really gearing up for a busy final two quarters.
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Gearing up for, G-E-A-R, up and for, three-part phrasal verb.
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This is just a fancy way of saying, get ready for.
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As this is a weird phrasal verb that basically makes no sense, the origin here is important.
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And it actually comes from putting on your gear before doing something difficult.
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Now here, automatically, I go to the military, your gear, your trousers, your jacket, your equipment, your protective clothing.
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We call that gear.
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If you go hiking and go to the mountain, you may be familiar with that term, right?
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You need the right gear.
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You need the boots.
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You need the jacket.
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You need the waterproof.
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Imagine soldiers putting on all their equipment before heading into battle to gear up for something, to get ready for something.
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The nuance here is that it needs to be something larger scale.
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For example, if I was going to say, I'm just gearing up for the meeting, it would sound a little bit out of context because it's not large scale, right?
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We're gearing up for the final two quarters.
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Ah, now we're talking.
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Next, let's move on to problem solving.
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You're sitting around the table, you're in a meeting and somebody says, you know, we're just ironing out a few operational issues.
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Ironing out.
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This is just a fancy way of saying resolving or fixing.
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The key word here is iron.
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And if you're familiar with that, I-R-O-N, this is the appliance that you use to remove the creases from your clothes.
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That horrible linen shirt that no matter how many times you seem to iron it, the creases never come out.
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You're making something that's creased smooth.
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Problems resolved.
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iron out.
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Next, let's move into the world of developing ideas.
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Imagine you're writing a proposal or a tender and somebody in the room says, we need to flesh this out a bit more.
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We need to flesh it out.
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And you're like, okay, great.
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Would you mind just, you know, just giving me a bit of background?
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What does that actually mean?
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well it is just a fancy way of saying to add more substance
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or detail flesh is on your body it's your muscles imagine
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your report is just a skeleton that's the basic structure
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when you flesh it out you're putting the muscles the skin the detail the things
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that bring it to life so to flesh something out is to add more substance.
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Definitely in the world of reports, documents, that's where you're going to hear this type of thing, or maybe a presentation that you're preparing for a client, for example.
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Staying with reports this time.
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Imagine another colleague in the room says, yeah, I think we should definitely flesh out this section, but let's not add too much.
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Otherwise, I think it's going to be a little bit of overkill.
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It's going to be a little bit of overkill noun.
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This is just a more complex way of saying more than necessary.
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The origin here is it used to be referred also in a military context to using more force than necessary
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and it just kind of evolved and now it means doing much more than is needed.
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Just too much.
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Definitely in the context of writing and also maybe perhaps
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if you're presenting something as well like
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if you're going to go into too much detail
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and somebody might be like oh I just think a bit of overkill to be honest.
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Next, let's move to budgets.
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You're talking about the budget next year and one of your native colleagues from London, let's say, says, you know,
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I really think we need to earmark some of these funds for next year's expansion.
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And in your head you're like, okay, ear, great, got that, something on the head.
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So yeah, I'm not quite putting two and two together there?
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Well, it is just a fancy way of saying to assign for a specific purpose.
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The origin here is really important because it explains it and it makes perfect sense.
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Historically, farmers used to mark animals by cutting a very small notch in their ears to show ownership.
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As time has gone on, what it means is just marking and assigning something for a specific purpose, in this case, to earmark money for something.
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We need to earmark some money for the Christmas party, or we need to earmark these funds for training next year.
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Assign money.
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Here's a quick one.
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New context, task management.
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One of your colleagues say, how should we divvy up the tasks?
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Well, it's actually much more straightforward.
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It just means divide.
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Divvy up.
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It's definitely informal.
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It's definitely casual, but you might hear somebody say that.
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How should we divvy up the tasks here?
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Just means to divide.
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Next, let's move on and have a look at expression.
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Very common in business when we want to talk about understanding, which is to gauge.
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G-A-U-G-E.
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A difficult one, right?
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If you don't know what it means.
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Let's imagine a situation where you as a business
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or a company are deciding what changes you need to make to improve the culture at the office, for example.
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One of your HR colleagues might say, well, you know, before we make any changes, we really need to gauge how people are feeling.
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This just very simply means we need to understand how people are feeling.
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But there is a little bit of a nuance here.
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A gauge is an instrument we use to measure something.
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Probably one of the most common gauges that you will see on a daily basis is in your car.
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In fact, maybe right now you are listening to this driving to
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or from work and you're going to see
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that gauge telling you how much fuel you have or battery left in your car.
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That is a gauge.
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In which case then, gauge means when we're trying to understand the level of something.
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employee engagement, customer satisfaction, market interest, to gauge how the team is feeling.
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It's not simply we need to understand the problem.
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Does that make sense?
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So yes, it's understand, but with the nuance of understanding the level of something.
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Next, let's think about difficult conversations.
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You might hear somebody in a meeting say, I don't really know how to broach this with the client.
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B-R-O-A-C-H.
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Broach this.
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This is essentially just a fancy way of saying bring up or raise.
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I don't know how to raise this sensitive topic.
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The origin here is really interesting because it comes from a French word, an old French word, which is for a sharp tool that pierces something.
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The idea being that you're kind of carefully opening or piercing a difficult topic.
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So to broach, think about it like you're just gently kind of opening the door to the difficult conversation or issue.
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I don't know how to broach it with the client.
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I don't know how to bring it up.
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Last but not least, I want to talk about something that native speakers might say when everything goes wrong.
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Heads up.
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The next expression does contain a swear word, and I'm mentioning it purely for educational purposes.
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You may hear it in the workplace.
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These things happen.
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Sometimes people talk like that, especially when they're in casual, colloquial conversations, which is why I want to share it with you,
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because these sorts of things are also important so you can really get the nuance of what people are trying to say.
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So imagine it's Friday afternoon.
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Your client has cancelled the contract.
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Great.
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Your supplier has also gone bankrupt.
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Perfect.
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And the CEO wants to have an emergency meeting.
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Wonderful.
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What else could you want on a Friday afternoon before the weekend?
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Your colleague might say, my goodness, shit has really hit the fan.
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Shit has really hit the fan.
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What does this mean?
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Well, you can probably tell if you've got that visual in your mind, everything has suddenly gone very badly wrong.
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I think this is quite memorable,
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actually, because imagine throwing some type of excrement into spinning blades and watching it then spread out all over a space.
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You know, that would be kind of a bad situation.
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So I think it's pretty easy to remember that one.
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Now, you would hear this, of course, in a very colloquial, casual conversation between trusted colleagues.
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This is not something that you're going to blurt out in the middle of a meeting, but there you go.
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I just thought you might like that one.
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All right, that brings us to the end of the episode today.
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I hope that there was something that you could take away.
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Perhaps it's a phrase that you've heard before and you're like, ah, okay, right.
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I get it now.
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Often it's a case of just, these are some of the fancy ways of saying it that you might hear from a native speaker, but the concept really isn't that challenging once you break it down.
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Once you build up a repertoire of these phrases, meetings become easier to follow,
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conversations become a little bit less stressful and you start to feel more confident when you're going into that.
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As an action for you this week, remember that the podcast is a great first step, but if you really want to learn this and take it forward,
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I'd encourage you to see if you can go out there, observe, see if you can listen out for some of these phrases, notice when somebody uses them.
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And you never know if the opportunity comes up, you could have a go at using it yourself.
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small little improvements like
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that repeated consistently over time this is what is going to
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build up your confidence in the long term thank you
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so much as always for squeezing in some time in your
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busy schedule to get your confident business english in this week
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if you found that episode really useful don't forget to subscribe like
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and follow wherever you get your podcasts and i will see you same time same place next week bye
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Vocabulario y notas de pronunciación para esta lección
Esta lección de conversación de nivel B2 se basa en el vídeo “334. Business English Native Speakers Use”. Este vídeo tiene 200 frases y 2496 palabras para practicar shadowing. La parte hablada dura 15:22. El hablante habla a un ritmo natural de unas 162 palabras por minuto, cercano a una conversación cotidiana. El 85 % de las palabras está entre las 3.000 más comunes del inglés; conviene repasar el resto antes de empezar.
Vocabulario clave de este vídeo
Las 15 palabras más avanzadas del vídeo, con su pronunciación y significado:
| Palabra | Pronunciación | Significado |
|---|---|---|
| gauge sustantivo | /ˈɡeɪd͡ʒ/ | medida, patrón |
| colleague sustantivo | /ˈkɒliːɡ/ | colega, compañero |
| flesh sustantivo | /flɛʃ/ | carne |
| nuance sustantivo | /ˈnjuː.ɑːns/ | matiz, prestancia |
| brooch sustantivo | /bɹoʊt͡ʃ/ | broche |
| earmark verbo | /ˈɪ(ə)ɹˌmɑɹk/ | apartar, asignar |
| crease sustantivo | /kɹiːs/ | arruga, pliegue |
| overkill sustantivo | /ˈoʊ.vɚˌkɪl/ | excesivo, matar moscas a cañonazos |
| assign verbo | /əˈsaɪn/ | asignar |
| podcast sustantivo | /ˈpɑdˌkæst/ | podcast, pódcast |
| colloquial adjetivo | /kəˈloʊ.kwi.əl/ | coloquial, familiar |
| ripple sustantivo | /ˈɹɪp(ə)l/ | ondulación |
| verb sustantivo | /vɝb/ | verbo |
| pierce verbo | /pɪɹs/ | atravesar, traspasar |
| divide verbo | /dɪˈvaɪd/ | desunir, dividir |
Phrasal verbs que vas a escuchar
| Palabra | Pronunciación | Significado |
|---|---|---|
| roll out verbo | desplegar, distribuir | |
| go out verbo | salir | |
| break down verbo | descomponerse, averiarse | |
| bring up verbo | levantar, alzar | |
| catch up verbo | enredar | |
| come along verbo | avanzar, marchar | |
| come out verbo | /ˌkʌm ˈaʊt/ | revelarse, salir a la luz |
| come up verbo | salir a relucir |
Frases que vale la pena repetir
Frases cortas y completas del vídeo que puedes reutilizar en la conversación diaria:
- You're both in the same room.
- You're both trying to solve the same problem.
- First one, we're in the world of implementation.
- We're gearing up for the final two quarters.
- How should we divvy up the tasks here?
Gramática en este vídeo
Las estructuras que más usa el hablante, con las palabras exactas del vídeo:
| Estructura | En el vídeo |
|---|---|
| “Used to” used to + verbo — un hábito o estado pasado que ya no es cierto | used to be · used to mark |
| Present perfect have/has + participio pasado — una acción pasada que sigue importando ahora | I've lost · I've seen · Have you ever heard |
| Voz pasiva be + participio pasado — importa lo que ocurre, no quién lo hace | being said · be referred · is needed |
| Oraciones de relativo who / which + oración — información extra sobre una persona o cosa | episode, which is · understanding, which is · word, which is |
Pronunciación a tener en cuenta
El hablante usa 65 contracciones y formas reducidas, como you're, don't, we're. Dilas en su forma corta, tal como las oyes.
- Los sonidos de “sh” y “zh”: flesh /flɛʃ/, anxious /ˈæŋkʃəs/, satisfaction /sætɪsˈfækʃən/
- Palabras largas — cuida el acento: colloquial /kəˈloʊ.kwi.əl/, communicator /kəˈmjuːnɪkeɪtə/, superiority /sʊˌpɪə(ɹ).iˈɒ.ɹɪ.ti/, historically /hɪˈstɔɹɪkli/, satisfaction /sætɪsˈfækʃən/
Sonidos difíciles para hispanohablantes:
- s + consonante al inicio — sin añadir una “e” delante: skeleton /ˈskɛlətən/, straightforward /ˌstɹeɪtˈfɔː(ɹ)wə(ɹ)d/, stressful /ˈstɹɛsfəl/, squeeze /skwiːz/
- /v/ — no es /b/: los dientes tocan el labio inferior: overkill /ˈoʊ.vɚˌkɪl/, verb /vɝb/, divide /dɪˈvaɪd/, resolve /ɹɪˈzɑlv/, evolve /ɪˈvɑlv/
- /z/ — sonora, no /s/: phrasal /ˈfɹeɪzəl/, resolve /ɹɪˈzɑlv/, trousers /ˈtɹaʊzɚz/, squeeze /skwiːz/, observe /əbˈzɜːv/
Cómo practicar con este vídeo
- Escucha el vídeo entero una vez sin hablar y anota las palabras que no conoces.
- Empieza a velocidad 0,75×, haz shadowing frase por frase y vuelve a la velocidad normal cuando te resulte fácil.
- Grábate y compara con el original, prestando atención a palabras como gauge, colleague, flesh.
¿Qué es la Técnica de Shadowing?
Shadowing es una técnica de aprendizaje de idiomas respaldada por la ciencia, desarrollada originalmente para la formación de intérpretes profesionales y popularizada por el políglota Dr. Alexander Arguelles. El método es simple pero poderoso: escuchas audio en inglés nativo y lo repites en voz alta de inmediato, como una sombra que sigue al hablante con solo 1-2 segundos de retraso. A diferencia de la escucha pasiva o los ejercicios de gramática, el shadowing obliga a tu cerebro y músculos de la boca a procesar y reproducir simultáneamente patrones de habla reales. Las investigaciones muestran que mejora significativamente la precisión de la pronunciación, la entonación, el ritmo, el habla conectada, la comprensión auditiva y la fluidez al hablar, convirtiéndola en una de las metodologías más efectivas para la preparación del IELTS Speaking y la comunicación en inglés en el mundo real.