How to Interrupt Someone Politely in English with Tips and Examples

Hi I'm Anne Marie with Speak Confident English and welcome to this week's

Confident English lesson. I want to answer a question that I received

recently about interrupting politely in English. In her

comments she said that she was on a telephone call yesterday with some

Americans and she wanted to tell them that she was only able to be on the

phone call for 40 minutes but she didn't know how to interrupt politely so she

wanted to know if I had any ideas. And I definitely have some ideas on this topic.

It's an important one because interrupting conversations is a little

bit delicate; we have to do it correctly. Generally it's rude or impolite to

interrupt someone but for example in this situation, it was

necessary so that she could share an important message or information with

others. In her example the message was that she needed to leave early or that

she couldn't stay on the phone call. There are two other situations where we

might need to interrupt a conversation: for example if there is a discussion

happening and you have a question about something that someone said or you're

not sure about something and you want to clarify what you've understood, then it

might be necessary to interrupt and ask a question. Or it might be that you would

like to join the conversation, you want to add your ideas or opinion before the

discussion moves on to a new topic. Again it might be necessary to interrupt

to join that conversation. So in this lesson today I want to focus on

strategies you can use to be polite when you

interrupt--to do it correctly--and look at some very useful expressions and

phrases that we have in English to do that. Let's start with some essential

tips to help you make sure that you're interrupting politely. Tip number one is

to make sure that you have a good reason to interrupt someone. Again if you need

to share an important message or you need to clarify and ask a question or

you want to make sure that your opinion is heard before the conversation moves

on to another topic, those can all be good reasons to interrupt but if you

just want to tell your story or make sure that you get the opportunity, it's

better to let others finish what they're saying before you jump into the

conversation. Tip number two is to make sure that you use polite language and

this is where those simple magic words of please and thank you, excuse me are

going to help you. Number three, pay attention to your tone of voice. Again

interrupting can be considered rude or impolite so you want to use those magic

polite words to help you and you want to make sure that your tone of voice is

soft and calm as opposed to being aggressive or angry or harsh. Tip number

four, if you can wait for the right moment wait for someone to take a breath

while they're thinking or wait for a pause in the conversation. And number

five if you can try to use body language or non spoken communication to help

indicate that you want to interrupt. What I mean by that is you could use

something like use a hand gesture to indicate that you want to contribute to

the conversation or that you have a question. We also often use eye contact.

If you look directly at the speaker and maybe raise your eyebrows or

lean forward giving them eye contact, that can be a very useful nonverbal sign

that you want to say something. And finally tip number six to make sure that

you're polite when you interrupt is to always say thank you after you've

interrupted and asked your question or made your comment. Now that you've got those

six tips to politely interrupt in English let's look at eleven ways that

you can do that. All of the examples that I'm going to share with you are perfect

for one-on-one conversations, telephone calls, meetings, and group discussions.

Let's start with a few examples for when you need to give some important

information or deliver a message such as the example earlier in the video where

someone needed to say "I'm sorry but I can't stay on the call any longer" or I

have to go in 40 minutes. Here are a few common ways that we can start those

sentences where we need to interrupt. For example, I hate to interrupt but... I hate

to interrupt but I wanted to let you know I need to get off the phone call a

little bit early today or I'm sorry to interrupt but I wanted to let you know I

have to leave a little early. You could also use a question for example, I don't

mean to be rude but may I interrupt for a moment? Or may I interrupt quickly? Most

of the time of course when we do it politely, when we use that polite

language and a polite question, it's no problem to have a quick interruption. Now

sometimes you might be in a conversation with someone--maybe it's your neighbor or

someone at work--and you really need to go. You don't have time to continue the

conversation. Maybe you have a meeting or you need to go pick up your kids and

it's a little bit difficult to interrupt someone when they're telling you a story

or talking about their day but here's a really easy way to do that: I'm so sorry

I really don't want to interrupt you but unfortunately I have to pick

up my kids in just a few minutes so I have to go but thank you so much for

chatting with me for a bit, it was really fun to catch up and I hope that you have

a great day. In that interruption I used all the strategies that we've talked

about: I started with a little hand gesture to indicate that I needed to

interrupt, I used polite and calm language, I had a

good reason to interrupt (I needed to pick up my kids from school) and then I

stayed polite and positive by telling her it was great to chat with her and

that I wished her a good day. Now there are two other situations that we talked

about where you might need to interrupt a conversation, for example, you might

need to ask a question or to clarify something and here are three great ways

to do that: Sorry, can I interrupt to ask a question quickly? Or I'm so sorry for

interrupting but I'd like to make sure I understand what you're saying. Or number

three I don't mean to be rude but can I ask a quick question? And finally when

you're participating in a conversation and you want to join in or add your

comments before the topic changes here are three more great ways to interrupt:

I'm so sorry to interrupt but before we move on I'd really like to add my

thoughts on this topic. Or excuse me, can I jump in here for a moment? And finally

may I add something quickly? In those final examples I did use a couple of

phrasal verbs and the first one I talked about moving on to a new topic. When we

move on to a new topic it means to start to discuss something new or to change

the topic. And then in the second one I said "may I jump in here" and when we

ask to jump into a conversation it simply means to join a conversation. Now

you can find all of these examples in the online lesson that I have for you.

I've written them all out so that you can review them and start using them

in your English conversations. In today's confident English lesson we focused on

what to say when you need to interrupt the conversation but in today's

challenge question I want to ask you what do you say if someone interrupts

you? What is the polite thing to say or do in English? You can share your

thoughts and ideas with me in the comment section at the bottom of the

lesson online. With that thank you so much for joining me and I look forward

to seeing you next week for your Confident English lesson.