Attending a Meeting in English - Useful Phrases for Meetings - Business English

Hello, I’m Gina and welcome to Oxford Online English!

Tomorrow, you have a meeting to attend.

If the meeting is in English, will you be ready?

This lesson will help you learn useful phrases to introduce yourself, respond to suggestions

and ideas, and ask questions in a business meeting.

I want you to imagine you’re in the meeting, and the chair has asked everyone to introduce

themselves.

What are some phrases you can use?

Sometimes, you’ll be in a meeting with people you don’t know.

Other times, the chair will ask for quick introductions to break the ice.

There are three things you should do here:

- Say your name - Say your job title

- Describe your responsibilities

To say your name, you can use a formal, ‘My name is _____’ or, if the meeting is more

informal, you can say, ‘Hi, I’m_____’.

For your position title, use ‘to be’, just like for your name.

Then, decide if your position is the only one in the company, or if there are others

who have the same job title.

For example, if you are the only secretary, use ‘the’:

I’m the secretary.

If other people also have this position in the company, use ‘a’:

I’m a project manager.

If necessary, you can say which department you work in.

You can use the preposition ‘in’ plus the noun: ‘engineering’, ‘marketing’,

‘finance’, etc.

For example:

I’m in the engineering department.

Or: I work in the marketing department.

Finally, you can briefly describe your responsibilities, like this:

I manage each project from start to finish.

I’m responsible for web analytics and testing.

Or: I handle purchasing and our negotiations with suppliers.

You can see that using verbs and phrases like manage, be responsible for or handle can be

useful here.

Here is an example of a full introduction in a formal meeting with people you don’t

know, or don’t know well:

My name is Gina Mares and I’m the marketing manager here.

I handle online advertising and web analytics.

Here’s an example of a more informal introduction:

Hi, I’m Gina.

I’m in the sales department.

I manage our sales team.

How would you introduce yourself in a meeting?

You can give it a try now.

Now that you’ve introduced yourself, the meeting will begin.

During the meeting, you might need to give your opinion on the different agenda items

which you are discussing.

You might also need to react to other people’s suggestions.

How can you do this?

When making suggestions, modal verbs can be very useful.

‘Should’ ,‘ought to’ or ‘might want to’ can express something you think is a

good idea, but not an obligation:

We ought to give new clients a gift from the company.

We might want to consider looking for another engineer to help with this.

Or: I think we should make this a priority for this month.

‘Have to’ and ‘need to’ can express something that is an obligation:

We have to improve the way we collect and record sales data.

Or: We need to find a cheaper solution—our budget is very tight.

Remember, you can also use these to make negative suggestions:

We shouldn’t rush this—we need to think it through carefully.

Or: We don’t need to hire new staff at the moment.

Now, it’s your turn.

Choose a phrase and make a suggestion for something in your own company.

Next, what can you do if you want to respond to another suggestion?

Well, if you think it’s a good suggestion, you can show you agree with phrases like:

I agree with _______.

That sounds good.

Or: Let’s go with this idea.

Here, go with means you agree with this idea and think you should put it into action.

However, what if there is a suggestion you don’t agree with?

Here are some good, professional ways to disagree:

To be honest, I’m not sure about this idea.

Good suggestion, but I can see a few problems…

Or: I see your point, however…

After a phrase like this, explain your point of view.

For example:

I see your point, however, I don’t think advertising in a magazine is a good idea.

People don’t read them as often these days.

Or: To be honest, I’m not sure about this idea.

I think improving our website UI is a higher priority right now.

OK?

Now, take the suggestion which you made earlier.

Pause the video and write down two sentences: one to agree, and one to disagree.

Use the language you just learned.

Now, let’s move on to different ways to ask a question in a meeting.

As an attendee, it’s important to make sure you understand the content in the meeting.

Sometimes, the chair will ask everyone to save questions until the end.

If you’re in a meeting where you can ask questions at any time, there are a few good

phrases you can use.

For more formal meetings, you can begin with a phrase like ‘sorry’, or ‘excuse me’

to politely bring the attention to you.

Then, you can use phrases like:

I have a question.

Why is…?

How…?

Or: Does this mean…?

For example:

Excuse me, how will the new requirements affect the project deadline?

Or: Sorry to interrupt, but I have a question.

Does this mean that the new IT systems won’t be in place this year?

If there is something in the meeting that you don’t understand, you can use phrases

to ask for clarification:

I didn’t understand…

Can you elaborate on…?

Or: Can you clarify…?

When using these phrases, it’s important to explain exactly what you don’t know or

ask for clarity on something specific that they said.

Again, you can use ‘excuse me’ and ‘sorry’ in more formal meetings to begin.

For example:

Sorry, can you clarify the third step in your proposal?

I didn’t get the main idea.

Or: Excuse me, but could you elaborate on how this will fit with our existing marketing

campaigns?

Now, it’s your turn.

Practice asking a question or asking for clarification about something.

It can be from a recent meeting or something from your job in general.

Again, you can pause the video and write down your ideas, for extra practice.

OK, now you can make suggestions and respond to what other say in the meeting.

You can also ask questions if there is something you don’t understand.

Next, imagine that you’ve discussed the agenda items and come to an agreement on the

important decisions you needed to make.

You might need to show what you’re going to do about these decisions after the meeting

has finished.

Here, you can offer to do something using a few different phrases.

For something that you decide to do at that moment for the future, you can use ‘will’.

For example:

I’ll call the client tomorrow.

Or: I’ll discuss this with the rest of my team and get back to you by the end of the

week.

If you had a plan even before the meeting began, you can use ‘going to’ or ‘planning

to’:

I’m going to get a team together for this project.

Or: I’m planning to do one more round of testing, and then we can go live.

If you want to make an offer, you can use ‘can’, could or shall:

I can contact the supplier next week if we need to.

I could put together a report if you think it would help.

Or: Shall I talk to our engineering team and get a cost estimate?

On the other hand, what if you are asked to do something that you cannot do?

Well, there are some useful, polite phrases you can use:

I’m afraid I can’t…

I’m sorry, but I don’t think I can…

Unfortunately, I won’t be able to…

Think about this.

What if someone asked you to move your project deadline forward, but it wasn’t possible?

You could say:

Unfortunately, we won’t be able to complete the project any sooner because we don’t

have the supplies yet.

Or: I’m sorry, but I don’t think we can finish by the end of this month.

We need at least another six weeks.

At this point the meeting is wrapping up and hopefully you have been able to make good

suggestions and offers and take part in discussions effectively.

Will you be attending a meeting in English soon?

Hopefully some of these phrases will be useful for you!

That’s all for this lesson.

Hope you enjoyed and thank you for watching!

Please visit Oxford Online English.com for more free lessons like this.

See you next time!