How to Talk About Achievements in English | Plus Your Good News

I'm actually the best manager, accountant,

teacher this company has ever had. Yikes.

Most of us cringe when we hear those kinds of statements. In other words,

our body language and facial expressions express the inward

feeling of embarrassment and awkwardness. Instead,

we prefer a more modest or humble approach when others talk

about their successes or achievements or we prefer nothing at all.

Talking about your achievements is uncomfortable.

You don't want to sound arrogant or boastful,

and you don't want to make others feel bad if they haven't experienced

your same level of success. However,

there's good reason to talk about your achievements.

If you're seeking a job promotion, for example,

you will need to feel comfortable highlighting your professional achievements

or if something wonderful happens in your life,

you become a grandmother for the very first time, or you get that job promotion,

you grow a healthy plant for the very first time,

or you start a conversation with your neighbor in English for the very

first time you pass a difficult certification exam or

you run your first marathon.

These are important milestones and you should be able to talk about your

achievements with others.

The people who matter in your life want to celebrate these with you.

So in this Confident English lesson today,

I want to help you learn how to talk about your achievements in English.

This means having an authentic approach so that you can talk about your

achievements with confidence, not arrogance,

and it means having the right language to help you do so.

I want you to feel great about inviting the people you love to celebrate your

successes with you,

and I want you to feel confident talking about professional achievements in

interviews and performance evaluations.

However, before we get there, if this is your first time here, welcome.

I am Annemarie, an English confidence and fluency coach.

Everything I do is designed to help you get the confidence you want for your

life and work in English.

If you'd love to get more free resources for me and years of my

Confident English lessons,

you can find them all at my Speak Confident English website. While you're there,

I recommend you download my in-depth free training called How to

Get the Confidence to Say What You Want In English. In that free training,

I share my number one fluency and confidence building strategy,

and now let's get back to the focus for today to help you talk about your

achievements in English. I have three things for you in this lesson. Number one,

I want to share five tips to have an authentic approach to

talking about your achievements.

Then I'll share with you 12 common English phrases,

English speakers use when highlighting their successes,

and then finally we'll put all of that together in six real-life,

common scenarios,

situations where you might need to highlight professional success or

tell others about something fantastic that just happened. So first,

five tips for an authentic approach to talking about your achievements.

You won't use all of these every single time you highlight a milestone

or share a successful outcome. However,

most of the time you can combine one or two.

Tip number one is acknowledge the contribution of others.

In English, we say give credit where credit is due.

What this means is to praise and recognize others for the way

they have contributed to your achievements.

This might be acknowledging your team for their work on a project or

acknowledging a mentor who helped you early in your career.

It might mean recognizing your family for their support and their

willingness to give you all the time you needed to study for an important

exam. Tip number two, express gratitude.

A focus on gratitude maintains a sense of balance and it

recognizes that your success is not just some lucky break or good fortune.

Tip number three, emphasize your effort and hard work.

Of course,

this doesn't apply to every success or fantastic milestone in your life.

However,

people respect and appreciate others when they know that they've put in the

effort. Tip number four, maintain a positive tone.

You can do this in a few ways. First,

you can stay focused on the facts of what really happened. Second,

acknowledge your role again, the hard work and effort,

and finally acknowledge the contribution or role of others as well.

Doing it in this way allows you to avoid comparing your

success to someone else's or making it some kind of

superiority competition. Instead,

you are acknowledging your achievements with confidence, not arrogance.

What exactly is the difference between those two words? Difference.

Confidence is the belief you have in your strengths and

skills. It's simply acknowledging that they exist.

Arrogance is the overestimation of your strengths

and skills.

The last tip is turn it into an opportunity for others to share

as well. If it's appropriate.

After you share your achievement or highlight something wonderful that happened,

turn it into a conversation so others can share as well.

You'll see an example of how to do this a little later in the lesson.

Now that we have those five tips in place,

I want to go over 12 common phrases or sentence starters we tend to

use when we're talking about an achievement,

acknowledging the roles of others and expressing gratitude. First,

let's focus on language that tends to be more formal or professional in tone.

For example,

I'm grateful or thankful that I'm grateful that I was selected for this

position. I worked really hard to,

I worked really hard to pass this exam.

I'm pleased to say or announce that I'm pleased to say I was

promoted to the position of marketing director.

I have some exciting news for you. For example,

I have some exciting news for you.

I'm moving into the role of marketing director. I'm fortunate.

I'm fortunate to have had the opportunity to work with this team.

I had the opportunity to,

I had the opportunity to interview for a promotion at work,

and I just found out I was selected. I'll start my new position next month.

I want to highlight,

I want to highlight the efforts of the entire team in this success,

and now I want to take a look at a few more that are more neutral and casual in

tone. For example, I did X and I'm so proud of Y.

For example,

I took the board exam and I'm so proud of my certification.

I'm so proud of, I'm so proud of passing the board exam.

After months of study,

I've been doing X and I've been training for months and I was

able to set a personal record in my last marathon.

I took a leap and did x.

I took a leap and entered my writing into a contest and finally,

guess what? Guess what?

I finally have a houseplant that has lived for more than three months.

I don't have a green thumb, so this is pretty exciting for me.

To have a green thumb is an idiom.

That means you have the ability to make a plant grow and be healthy.

Now that we have these five tips for an authentic approach and you have the

language you need to talk about achievements, express gratitude, and so on,

I want to highlight how they work together in six real life

scenarios. These are scenarios you might use in professional,

social and casual situations. As you'll see in a moment,

these scenarios range from the most professional, informal,

where we have a bit more distance in our relationships and they will move

into more casual scenarios where we have a lot of closeness,

where we're sharing our most personal successes with the people we feel most

connected to.

You'll also see that as we shift from more formal to more informal,

the amount of detail or personal information that we share

will start to expand because when we're talking to the people that we're closest

to, we feel comfortable sharing more of those details.

Let's start with our focus on professional situations,

and I have two scenarios to highlight how we will use this authentic

approach with the right language. Without a doubt,

professional success comes from hard work and the

contribution or mentoring of others. As a result,

anytime you share your professional achievements,

it's an ideal opportunity to emphasize your efforts and

acknowledge the contribution of others. For this first scenario,

I want you to imagine you've just been promoted to a managerial role at work,

and when you share this with your team members, you might say,

before we end our meeting today, I'd like to share some news.

I'm pleased to say that I'm taking on the role of the marketing director after

10 years in the marketing world and I look forward to

contributing my skills and working with the team in this new way.

What makes this example work is the professional tone in its language choice.

The announcement is brief.

It emphasizes hard work with the focus of 10 years in the marketing

world, and it ends with a positive note.

Looking forward to continued work with the team.

Let's take a look at one more professional example. For this scenario,

I want you to imagine you recently presented an idea to upper management

and they agreed to move forward with your proposal.

Preparing for this particular presentation took a lot of time and a lot

of effort from your team to share this successful outcome,

this achievement with your team. Here's what you might say.

I want to highlight the hard work and effort that led to the success of

this presentation.

Each of you played a crucial role and I'm grateful for everything that you did.

Similar to our previous example,

this example maintains a professional tone and there's a strong shift

in focus.

It is focused on the team and the work contributed by everyone.

There's also a clear expression of gratitude,

and now I want to take a look at two scenarios that are common in social or

semi-formal situations.

These are conversations you might have with coworkers outside of work,

acquaintances and friends.

Although these might not be people that you feel the closest to,

you still feel comfortable with them and in more social contexts,

we tend to use a more casual tone in our language,

and because it's a bit more personal, we also share a few more details.

One really easy way to add those additional details is with one

simple word, the word,

because adding the word because requires you to give broader

context to say why something happened or the reason behind it,

and in doing so,

you're giving others a better picture of that particular success or

milestone. It helps them celebrate the accomplishment with you. For example,

in this next scenario,

I want you to imagine that you are highlighting the pride you feel in

your son or daughter graduating from university,

particularly after a rough start. In that conversation,

you might say,

I'm so proud of my daughter because she graduated with a high GPA

despite a difficult first year in university. Earlier in this lesson,

I highlighted the importance of maintaining a positive tone when talking about

milestones and achievements.

This included staying focused on the facts of what happened,

your role or the role of others and avoiding any sort of

comparison. When we make it all about comparisons,

it brings in a sense of negativity. We'll see that in the next scenario.

Let's say you recently hosted a workshop in English for the very first time and

it was well received. In highlighting this accomplishment, you could say,

I recently took on the challenge of hosting a workshop in English and

it had more energy than other workshops. Do you notice?

The second part of that statement is comparing your workshop to

others, and as a result, there's a sense of negativity to it.

We can shift to a more positive tone by staying focused on the simple

facts. For example,

I recently took on the challenge of hosting a workshop in English and I was

thrilled with the energy I got from everyone.

Not only does that example eliminate comparison and any sense of

competition,

but it also emphasizes the hard work that was put in and the

contribution of participants. And now for category number three,

let's focus on some casual situations.

These will be conversations when you're talking to the people you are closest

to, the people who truly want to celebrate milestones with you,

the people who already know what you're working toward.

As a result of all of that,

your language will be more informal and you're likely to share additional

detail. For this first scenario,

I want you to imagine that you son's wife just had a baby and you

became a grandmother for the very first time to share this news with friends,

you might say, oh my goodness, I have some exciting news. It happened.

I'm a grandmother. Now my heart is melting over this little girl.

Is this how you felt too? Do you notice?

I just turned this into a conversation. Of course,

it assumes that I'm sharing this exciting news with a friend who is already a

grandmother,

but I'm giving her the opportunity to share this feeling with me and

to remember how she felt when she became a grandmother for the first

time as well.

I'm giving others the opportunity to share and celebrate with me.

This particular scenario is also a great opportunity to use. Guess what?

For example, guess what?

My son's baby was born last night and I'm finally a grandmother.

I wanted to be the first to tell you, and now for our final scenario,

I want you to imagine you've reached a significant milestone by

exhibiting your artwork at a local art gallery. Of course,

your closest friends and family will probably know that this is something you've

been working toward, so when you reach this milestone,

they will be excited to celebrate it with you. To share this news with others,

you might say,

I finally took a leap and I'm going to share my artwork in the gallery next

month.

I've been working so long to refine my skills and curate the pieces that

I want to showcase. I'm full of nervous and excited energy.

In this example,

your achievement is grounded in the effort and time you've put in

to reach this milestone. Before I give you the opportunity to practice,

I want to share that talking about achievements and milestones may be

cultural.

It's different in every language and culture and what we feel comfortable

sharing with others can be different.

What you've learned here today is a very common approach and the

language that English speakers use.

So when you're in conversation with other English speakers,

this is an ideal way to share the milestones, successes,

and achievements in your life. So now using what you've learned in this lesson,

I want you to share with me an achievement you've recently experienced in your

life. Keep in mind that achievements can be large and small.

It can be anything from learning a new recipe to leading a new project at

work. I want you to consider this your invitation,

your permission to talk about something you feel really excited about

or particularly proud of right now.

The best place you can share with me is in the comments below.

If you found today's lesson helpful to you,

I would love to know and you can tell me in a few ways.

You can give this lesson a thumbs up here on YouTube.

You can also subscribe to my Speak Confident English Channel,

so you never miss one of my Confident English lessons. And lastly,

you can share a comment down below.

Thank you so much for watching and I look forward to seeing you next time.