Learn expressions and be prepared for your annual performance review in English.

- Performance reviews or appraisals are part of company life

in many parts of the world,

and they can make a big difference in your career.

So let's learn some expressions

that you'll need to be your confident self

in your performance review.

Hi, I'm your English Coach Christina,

and welcome to Business English with Christina,

where you become better at English and better at business.

Before we start, let me help you a little bit

with my expertise as a neuro language coach,

so that you can show your expertise in business

and in English.

Go over to christinarebuffet.com/worksheets

and get the free activities and worksheet

that I've made for you to go with this lesson.

You can test yourself on what you learned

and better remember these expressions for your real life.

Now you may have an annual appraisal

or a performance review coming up.

This is where you're going to talk about how you've done

over the past year.

And sometimes companies also hold a mid-year review

so that they can see how you're doing every six months.

Whether you have an annual appraisal or a mid-year review,

these meetings can help you with your career path,

or the place that your career is taking you.

And that means that you could get a promotion

in your company, develop in new ways,

or learn how to build your strengths

and improve on your current skills.

The nice thing about annual appraisals

is that there are certain things that you can plan

on discussing in advance.

And when you take the time

to think about what you wanna say in advance,

you feel more confident and your English is better.

And really just taking some time

to think about your performance over the past year,

is a good idea in general

no matter what language you're using.

You're gonna talk about the big accomplishments

in the year, your milestones.

And you might start by discussing your goals

with some of these expressions.

For this year,

my key objectives were to help our team transition

to working from home.

You might also wanna talk about the objectives

that you achieved.

So you might say, we reached our target

of creating a remote onboarding program

for our new employees.

Or if you're on schedule to reach your goal you might say,

we're on target to welcome all employees

remotely by September.

You also wanna be ready to talk about your strong points

for the year.

For example, you might say,

I feel good about my leadership skills.

Or I think I've demonstrated a great deal of adaptability.

In fact, you probably have a lot of strengths.

Maybe you've shown some qualities

like autonomy that's working well on your own,

problem-solving, finding solutions for problems on your own,

or communication skills, helping others understand

what you're saying or what is important in your message.

In fact, there are many possible strong points.

I'm sure you have.

So before we get into the next part of the video,

don't forget to go to christinarebuffet.com/worksheets

so that you can get an activity that's gonna help you

identify your strong points for your annual review.

And you'll also get to practice everything

that you're learning in this video,

so that you actually remember

the things that you've learned.

Now if you're like me, you like to look for ways

that you can continue to improve.

So you'll definitely want to share that

in your annual appraisal, you don't have to pretend

that you're perfect, no one's perfect, no one is.

So here are some ways that you can talk about your goals

for your future improvement with confidence.

You could say something like,

one area where I would like to improve in the next year

is my communication with the rest of the team

and maybe you can talk about how you'd like to do that.

Maybe you could say,

I plan to take a workshop in effective communication,

or I'd like to make it a priority to hold monthly meetings

with the team.

And of course, no annual appraisal is complete

without feedback where your team or your manager

will tell you how you've done and what you can do

to improve from their point of view.

Now of course, yes.

You're always hoping to meet the expectations set out

for your role in the company,

or to accomplish the goals assigned to you

or that you set for yourself.

And if you work hard and maybe with a little luck,

you might even exceed expectations.

If you learn these expressions,

you will go into your next annual appraisal

ready to focus on your strengths and your goals

and not worry or feel blocked because of English.

Now, listening to this video is a great first step,

but keep taking these small steps over and over

and you'll be able to use these expressions

in your real life.

And if you don't use it, you lose it.

So here's the next step that you can do

to use what you learned today.

In the comments, tell us one strong point that you have.

Be proud of yourself, don't be shy.

And write down one area

where you would like to improve this year.

Again, there's no shame.

Improving is a good thing

and it's great to be aware of what you can improve.

It's a perfect opportunity to practice

and make sure that you're using the correct vocabulary

for these situations.

And if you enjoyed this lesson, I would love to know.

And there are three simple ways that you can tell me,

give this lesson a thumbs up on YouTube,

and subscribe to my channel

so that you continue receiving my business English lessons.

The second thing you can do,

go over to christinarebuffet.com/worksheets

and get that worksheet to review this lesson

and prepare for your annual appraisal.

And you can go ahead and watch the next lesson

where you can be sure that you're pronouncing

10 business English words correctly,

and these are words that learners always struggle with.

Thanks so much for improving your English and yourself

with Business English with Christina,

and I'll see you next time.