Talking about meetings 🗓️🤝👔 Real Easy English

0:00 Hello and welcome to Real Easy English In this podcast,

0:04 we have real conversations in easy English to help you learn.

0:08 I'm Georgie.

0:09 And I'm Beth.

0:11 You can find a video of this podcast

0:14 and a worksheet to help you learn on our website, bbclearningenglish.com.

0:25 Hi Beth.

0:26 How are you today?

0:27 I'm good, thank you.

0:28 I am very busy.

0:29 I have a lot of meetings.

0:31 How are you?

0:32 I'm OK, thank you, Beth, I don't have many meetings today.

0:36 But today we are talking about meetings– in particular work meetings,

0:41 where you talk to colleagues and discuss ideas or make decisions.

0:46 That's right.

0:47 OK.

0:47 Shall we get started?

0:49 Yes.

0:49 So, Beth, you have a lot of meetings today.

0:52 Do you generally have a lot of meetings at work?

0:57 It really depends on what I'm working on.

1:02 So, if I have a project where I need to meet a lot of people,

1:08 then I might have quite a few meetings.

1:11 And that's why I'm busy now.

1:14 But generally, we have a lot of...

1:17 a few meetings together as a team, but I don't think we have loads of meetings.

1:25 Compared to other jobs, I don't think we have many meetings.

1:29 Most of our work is producing things and editing and writing.

1:35 But you're right.

1:36 When there are lots of big projects that we

1:39 need to talk to other people on the project, we have more meetings.

1:44 But yeah, like you, it really depends.

1:46 So, when do you think meetings are useful?

1:50 I think when you need to brainstorm.

1:56 So, a brainstorm is when you have lots of new

2:00 ideas and you need to talk about them together.

2:03 I think then meetings are really useful because you hear lots of new ideas,

2:09 and when you're in a room with other people, if, for example,

2:14 I have an idea and you say, that's good,

2:17 and we can also do this and we can all work together,

2:22 and I think those kind of meetings are really useful.

2:26 Yeah, I think that way of doing it is also more efficient.

2:31 So, sometimes it's better to just have one hour,

2:35 come up with ideas and decide on the ideas.

2:39 Yeah, definitely.

2:40 Do you tend to speak up in meetings?

2:44 So, that means do you ask questions and feel confident to speak?

2:50 I think, if the meeting has lots of people,

2:55 I find it a bit more stressful to speak up because I

3:00 get a bit nervous to speak in front of lots of people.

3:04 But if it's a meeting with just our team,

3:07 for example, you guys I like and trust, I...

3:12 I don't mind speaking up that much.

3:15 And sometimes we have meetings in person.

3:20 Sometimes you have meetings on a call.

3:23 So a video call.

3:25 Do you prefer meeting in person or having calls?

3:30 I think I prefer meetings in person because you can...

3:34 you can kind of see the facial

3:37 expressions and body language more easily, I think.

3:41 And it's easier to know when a person wants to speak– these kinds of things.

3:48 Yeah.

3:48 No, I agree with what you're saying.

3:51 A lot of the meetings that I have had recently

3:54 have been with people in different time zones in different countries.

4:00 So, definitely then a call is better because it's the best

4:07 way to speak without having to go to different countries.

4:12 But I agree, I think it's nice to be

4:17 able to see body language better in a face-to-face meeting,

4:22 but meetings on calls now are so normal that there's not loads of difference.

4:30 It is also really nice to be able to take calls in your own house.

4:35 So, working from home can be really nice

4:38 because you can have your snacks and drinks nearby.

4:42 So, yeah, they both have their pros and cons.

4:45 That's true.

4:53 OK.

4:53 Let's recap the language we heard during the conversation,

4:57 starting with 'brainstorm',

4:59 which is when you get together with a group of people to come up with ideas.

5:04 If you 'speak up' in a meeting, you express your opinion using your voice.

5:11 In an 'in-person' meeting, everyone is in the same physical place.

5:15 We can also call this a 'face-to-face' meeting.

5:19 And we also talked about 'having a call'.

5:22 This could be a phone call or a video call.

5:26 And we can also describe this as a 'remote' meeting.

5:30 That's it for this episode of Real Easy English.

5:33 Why not test what you've learned using the worksheet on our website,

5:37 bbclearningenglish.com.

5:39 And we'll be back next week with another conversation in easy English.

5:43 See you then.

5:44 Goodbye!