Using English at Work

Episode 3 - Attending the Morning Meeting

COMPLETE TRANSCRIPT

Welcome to lesson three of ESLPod.com's "Using English at Work." I'm your host, Dr. Jeff McQuillan, from the Center for Educational Development.

In the second lesson of "Using English at Work," we learned vocabulary for checking mail, email, and voicemail. In this third lesson, I'm going to talk about attending, or going to, a morning meeting.

Let's listen to the story first at a slow speed.

[start of script]

I arrive at the conference room right before the meeting starts, and sit down in a chair around the large conference table. Our manager passes out a handout of the meeting agenda with some announcements and goes over some bullet points regarding old and new business.

Then, he asks each person to give a status report on his or her projects. Each of us takes turns giving a quick rundown, while everyone else listens. Of course not everyone is paying attention, since they're thinking about their own reports and what they plan to say. Sometimes our manager will make some comments or give us some feedback, but usually there's very little discussion.

The meeting always ends the same way. Our manager gives a short summary of how our department is doing and a little pep talk to get us motivated.

Now it's back to our desks to do some work!

[end of script]

The story begins when I arrive, or come to, the conference room right before the meeting starts, and sit down in a chair around the large conference table. A "conference" is a type of large meeting, usually a formal meeting. A "conference room" is a large room in an office building that is used only for meetings; it's not an office. A "conference table" is the large table inside the conference room. Conference tables are usually big, round, or perhaps rectangular tables that have chairs placed around them for the meetings. Usually the meeting leader, the person who is running the meeting, sits at one end of the conference table so everyone can see him or her.

21

Using English at Work

Episode 3 - Attending the Morning Meeting

After I sat down, the manager passes out a handout of the meeting agenda. A "manager" is a person who is in charge of, or responsible for, a department or a team at work. At a large company, for example, a salesperson begins working as a sales representative and, if he or she does well, might become a sales manager in a few years. If he or she continues to do well, perhaps they will later become Vice President of Sales.

At this meeting, my manager passes out a handout of the meeting agenda. A "handout" is a piece of paper that has information about the things that will be talked about during a meeting or a presentation. At the university, in the classes, the professors will often have handouts, things that they will give the students to look at that are related to their lecture or presentation. Each person at the meeting or presentation gets a copy of the handout. A presenter might give out handouts that have his or her contact information, for example, or handouts could have detailed financial information about a project. In this case, the handout is of the meeting agenda itself. An "agenda" is a plan for a meeting, showing what needs to be done, what needs to be discussed, in what order those things will be discussed. My manager's handout of the meeting agenda is a piece of paper with a list of all the things that will be discussed during today's meeting.

The handout has some announcements on it. An "announcement" is something that is written or said to let other people know about something. Your company president may make an announcement, saying that everyone can take Friday off - have Friday as a vacation day. That would never actually happen; that's just an example!

My manager goes over some bullet points on the handout. "To go over something" means to talk about something, usually a document or report. You might also go over your notes a few minutes before an exam to help yourself remember the most important things that you've studied - or that you didn't study! My manager is going over some bullet points. "Bullet points" are lines of text in a document where each line begins with a small circle; sometimes it's a diamond or an arrow. We call those "bullets." The text usually isn't a complete sentence, but just a short phrase. Bullet points are often easier and faster to read than long sentences because each idea is on a separate line. They're essentially a list of something. My manager's bullet points are about old and new business. Everything you talk about at a meeting is either old business or new business. "Old business" is everything that you talk about that was already discussed at a previous meeting - makes sense! "New business" is everything that you are going to talk about that has not yet been discussed before. Most business meetings begin with old business and end with new business. Then, of

22