Business English: How to participate in a meeting 1

 

Here are some tips:

1. For developing listening comprehension skills for participating in meetings in English ;
2. How to practice the useful expressions to be able to use them during some business meetings; 

Here is the video (from Business Result Pre-Intermediate Oxford University Press) you are going to watch and practice: Participating in Meetings 1

Tip 1. You need to develop listening comprehension skills for general understanding. (especially if you have to participate in real business meetings but you are not very experienced and therefore not confident enough)

Before watching the video read the questions below in task 1 to get ready to understand the general idea.

Remember when watching a video especially for the first time :

• Don’t listen to the familiar words, listen to get the whole picture;
• Don’t try to recall the words that sound familiar but you don’t remember their translation it distracts you from getting the whole point.
• Don’t try to understand everything, you need to catch the information to be able to answer those questions.

Task 1: Watch the video and answer the following questions:
1. What does the company Quartz Power Group do and where is it based?
2. Who are participating in the meeting, their name and positions?
3. What’s the agenda of the meeting? The main reason for the meeting to be called?
4. What have they decided ?

Note: If you can’t answer the questions above after watching the video watch it again and try to catch the info you’ve missed.

Tip 2: you need to practice listening for the details. After watch twice or three times and catching the main idea you have to watch for details and then check how well you understood them performing the task 2 below.

Task 2: Watch and complete the following statements:

1. Maja thinks that in order to meet the budget this year we have to …
2. Anna disagrees because …
3. David wants to know ….
4. Anna suggests …
5. Maja suggests …
6. Marcus asks David to look for ….

As soon as you catch the details let’s have a closer look at useful phrases they used to participate in meeting discussion.

1. What phrases did Marcus use to start the meeting  and explain the reason for the meeting? ___________________________________________________
2. What phrases did he use to encourage the participants to talk? _____________
3. How does every participant clarify, confirm, explain, etc.? ________________

Now check with the script: participating-in-meetings-1