How to Start and End a Video Call | Go Natural English

hello again it's me Gabby from gonaturalenglish.com and today we're

going to talk about something really important a lot of people have been

experiencing some big changes lately have you had to change your work to work

from home you used to have face-to-face meetings but now you need to have video

conferences from home while you're working remotely well today we're gonna

talk about how to start and end a video conferencing call in English now this

might seem simple but there are some really important details that will help

you to have a smoother beginning a more confident conversation and a really

strong close or ending to your video call many people make the huge mistake

of being really unprepared about how to begin and end a video call and so today

we're gonna learn some really quick and easy ways that you can improve your

video calls whether they're on Zoom or Skype Google Hangouts or whatever video

conferencing platform you use after watching this video you're gonna have

much better calls whether they are for work professional reasons or just casual

calls with your friends and family people nowadays are doing a lot more

video calls real quick I want to give a huge thank you to Ling goda for

partnering on this video and let you know that there is still time to join

their online language sprints which gives you 100% of your cash back when

you join the language sprints and you take an online class each day of the

sprint you can also take the online Cambridge language test for free this is

a tremendous opportunity for you to improve your spoken English skills your

confidence and fluency by practicing online with their expert native tutors

as of now over 25,000 people have participated in the Ling

Gotha language sprint and shared with me their positive feedback about how it has

impacted their lives positively so I can't wait to share the details with you

about how you can participate and benefit from the next lingo to sprint

but now let me talk about how to begin your video call I want to know from you

can you tell me how you usually start and end a video call tell me the words

or the phrases that you use leave them in the comments and you can check to see

if they're good appropriate and correct a couple quick notes for your video call

even though you're not face-to-face eye contact it is still super important so

as soon as you get your video call connected make sure that you're giving

the feeling of eye contact now it's a little strange because you're not face

to face but don't look down and don't only look at the face of the other

person or people with whom you're speaking you need to look into the

camera on your webcam or your laptop or your mobile phone whatever you're using

to give the feeling of eye contact to the other person this is still super

important even if you're just doing a video call and not in person second it's

a really good idea if you're doing this for work or professional reasons to

record the call of course always asking if that's okay with other participants

first or take notes during the call sometimes it can be a little

overwhelming when you're dealing with technology and you don't want to forget

what you actually talked about during your phone meeting right now to start

the call of course you can imagine you might say something like hello or hi or

if it's a more casual call you might say hey if you're talking with maybe your

boyfriend or your girlfriend you'd say hey babe if you're talking with someone

more professionally of course we want to keep things really more formal and not

so casual like hey babe or hey honey in a professional call you want to say

hello and then a rest the other person by name so for

example hello mr. Smith or hello mrs. Rodriguez so nice to talk with you or

you might say good morning mr. Smith or if you're on a first-name basis you

could say good morning or good afternoon John or Mary or whomever you're speaking

with if it's later in the day you could say good evening but be careful please

don't say good night this is a common mistake and native English speakers

don't say good night until it's time to go to sleep and so on a

videoconferencing call you're probably not going to sleep so you don't want to

say good night simply say good evening as a greeting now since we're on a video

call you might want to do a quick tech check I usually ask can you hear me can

you see me is the audio working is the video working just to make sure

everything is running smoothly before I start the conversation then another

greeting like how are you today how has your day been so far or how is work

going how's everything these are all really good second greetings

after hello to just start the conversation a little bit of small talk

is always a good idea so one more time how are you how is it going how is your

day so far how is work how's everything now your response to these questions

should be shorts positive and to the points the response should really be one

or two words maybe good great everything's fantastic

can't complain never better now I actually made another video on this very

topic how to respond to the question how are you fluently confidently like a

native speaker and I'm going to link to that right up there so that you can

watch that next professional calls should now talk about the purpose of the

call or go over the agenda for example you might

say I'd like to talk about XY and Z another way of saying this using a

phrasal verb is let's go over X Y & Z or I'd like to review XY and Z if you've

already talked about something before I'd like to cover X Y & Z in this phone

call or this video call so again the verbs to use are talk with you about go

over something or cover something alright so now that you've successfully

begun your video conference call you're gonna have your conversation and then at

the end you need to end it do not just say bye and then end the conversation

this is a big mistake that I see people making that might not feel very

confident in their English fluency maybe you don't have the vocabulary or the

phrases you need to end a conversation smoothly but if you just say okay bye

it feels abrupt and rude so let me share some phrases that you can use to and

your conversation like an English pro it's always a good idea to say thank you

thank you for talking with me today or thank you for taking the time to talk

with me today thank you for taking the time to chat with me today or thank you

for making time for meeting with me today there are a few different

variations which can all convey the same meaning you can choose which one you

like to use the best if you're having a business meeting it's always a good idea

to summarize what you talked about it was great talking with you about X Y & Z

or I really enjoyed being able to cover X Y & Z with you today I appreciate your

time going over X Y & Z today it's been a pleasure talking about X Y & Z with

you and it's always a good idea to state the

next action steps for example I'll follow up with you in a couple of days

I'll touch base with you in a couple of days these two phrasal verbs follow up

and touch base are super common and you should use them when you're talking

about the next steps in your communication with someone you can

follow up or touch base by email phone or video call or even in person you

could also use the phrasal verb to get back in touch with you so use follow-up

touch base or get back in touch with you soon finally after you say thank you

summarize and talk about the next action steps you can close your call by saying

simply bye or goodbye if you're having a more casual call with friends or family

you might say buh-bye or if you have a more casual business you could say see

you later or talk to you soon so I hope these phrases and these tips

for your video conferencing calls were helpful I want you to feel more

confident and fluent in your English skills if you have any questions about

these phrases let me know in the comments now I promise I'd give you

details about the lingo de language sprint which I'm really excited about

and I hope that you take the opportunity to join when I was learning Spanish with

lingo de and their online lessons I made sure to learn some phrases to start and

end my video lesson calls with their teachers but it's not enough to just

know the phrases you really need to use them to practice them and that's how it

becomes second-nature or automatic for you to use these phrases also what I

enjoyed about learning with lingo de that you'll enjoy too is that their

lesson times are very flexible so you could schedule your online lesson after

work in the evenings or on the weekends I usually take lessons on Sundays

because Sunday's are usually less busy for me but if you have more time at home

than usual now it's a great time to get started with the lingo to language

Sprint's you get more I'm spent speaking and not just

listening to lectures with the lingo de small group classes that have an average

of three participants in each lesson also in each lesson there are structured

lesson materials so you know exactly what you're going to learn and what

you'll be able to do by the end of the lesson

now this upcoming lingo de language sprint starts on April 8th and ends on

July 6th you have two options for participation and allene go to language

sprints first of all these super sprints is

where you take 30 lessons each month for three months and when you complete all

of your lessons agreed upon you get 100 percent of your tuition money back this

is an amazing opportunity but if it feels like a little bit too much to

commit to I highly recommend the second option which is the half sprint where

you participate in 15 lessons per month for three months and you get 50% of your

tuition back this is a great opportunity if you're still working and maybe you

don't have as much time to do a daily lesson 30 days out of the month for

three months so it depends on you and your schedule but both of these are

great opportunities to improve your fluency and get a lot of practice also

it doesn't matter what your level is if you are a beginner intermediate level or

advanced speaker you can join because lingo de has the right level class for

you and you can join the sprints for English business English Spanish French

or German you could even join the sprint for more than one of these if you'd like

to improve your language skills in more than one language at once so how do you

sign up well the link to sign up is in the description and you need to sign up

by April 3rd the deadline is April 3rd but the sprint starts on April 8th so

you have to sign up in advance there is also a discount code coupon in the

description to save you 10 euros off your first month tuition to get started

you need to pay for your first month too again 100% refundable if you do the

super sprint and attend all of the agreed-upon classes if for some reason

you can't attend all of the agreed-upon classes it's not really a big deal you

just have to pay the tuition as you would for regular language classes

anyway lingotto will refund your money if you attend the agreed-upon number of

classes within each Sprint month by following the Sprint rules places in

this sprint are limited so if you want to take advantage of this offer I highly

recommend that you sign up today reserve your spot before they are full lingo de

challengers have been running for more than two years and have helped more than

25,000 language learners to improve their language skills you know they have

an Instagram account where they share their students stories and you can check

it out too to see what the experience would be like so check out their

Instagram account at Ling gota underscore official and if you have any

questions about joining the lingo to sprint you can leave them in the

comments and I'll check them out and see if I can help thank you again so much

for watching if you enjoy learning languages especially English as a Second

Language make sure to subscribe here to go natural English I hope that you

enjoyed these tips and have an amazing day thanks again and bye for now