Welcome to English as a Second Language podcast number 948, Listening to Motivational Speakers.
This is English as a Second Language podcast episode 948.
I am your host, Dr Jeff McQuillan, coming to you from the Center for Educational Development in beautiful Los Angeles, California.
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Like listening to motivational speakers.
Let's get started.
I really dread these annual management meetings.
We usually have to sit through the most boring motivational speakers giving us pep talks.
Oh no, not another one.
Oh no, not another one.
She was a fighter pilot who has apparently survived some very difficult missions.
What does a fighter pilot know about business?
I can't believe our company is shelling out thousands of dollars on speaking fees for someone like her to tell us how to do our jobs better.
I think that the idea is to understand how other organizations and professions handle crises, which may shed some light on how we can do things better.
Don't you think she can teach us anything?
Sure.
In fact, our speaker has inspired me to try to get on the lecture circuit myself.
What would you speak about?
Avoiding corporate waste.
Jamal begins our dialogue.
By saying to Cindy, I really dread these annual management meetings.
To dread, D-R-E-A-D, means to not be excited about something.
It's the opposite of looking forward to something.
To dread something is not to look forward to it.
Management meetings are meetings that are attended by or that have as their participants people who are managers executives, bosses in a company.
The management of a company refers to the people who run the company, the bosses and executives.
Jamal says we usually have to sit through the most boring motivational speakers giving us pep talks.
To sit through something is a phrasal verb meaning to go somewhere where you have to stay, but it isn't very pleasant.
We might also use the verb here to endure, E-N-D-U-R-E.
To endure or to sit through something is to go somewhere and have to listen to things that you perhaps are not very interested in.
You might have to sit through a really bad movie if your husband or wife wants you to go and you really don't want to go.
But you say, OK, I'll go.
And then you have to sit through this terrible movie about people dying.
And well, that's just an example, not something from my own life.
Pep Talks P-E-P-T-A-L-K-S two words are informal speeches that are given to people to make them happier, to make them more motivated to want to do something.
The people who often come to these large meetings of managers are and try to help people get motivated are called motivational speakers.
Motivational comes from the verb to motivate which, as I've mentioned, means to get you to do something that you perhaps don't otherwise want to do.
Motivational speakers became very popular in the middle part of the 20th century, at least in the United States, especially for these sorts of large business meetings where bosses were coming together to try to plan the future of the company.
Cindy is not as negative as Jamal is.
She's saying that he'll be surprised by the person the company hired or paid to come and kick off our meeting.
To kick off something means to start or to begin something, especially a long project or a large task that has to be accomplished.
Cindy says she's supposed to be a guru on crisis management.
A guru, G-U-R-U, is someone who knows a lot about a certain topic, who is considered an expert.
A guru is also a wise spiritual person in certain religious traditions, such as Hinduism and Buddhism.
But here it just means an expert, someone who knows a lot about a certain topic.
This motivational speaker knows a lot about crisis management.
A crisis.
C-R-I-S-I-S is a serious situation, maybe even a dangerous situation, that requires some immediate attention or immediate action.
The word management in the term.
Crisis management doesn't refer to the people who run a company, but rather to the process of taking care of and solving whatever problem is causing, in this case, a crisis.
Jamal says, oh, no, not another one.
He still isn't very happy about this motivational speaker.
Cindy says this one, this speaker, has a lot of real-world experience.
The term real...
W-O-R-L-D refers to things that people actually do, that people do in real life, we might say.
The term is used to contrast with learning or experience that comes from reading, or comes from not actually participating in a certain activity, but perhaps from simply observing it.
You can learn things from books and you can learn things from real life experiences or real world experiences, things that you actually have experienced or participated in yourself.
Cindy says that the motivational speaker was a fighter pilot who has apparently survived some very difficult missions.
A pilot, P-I-L-O-T, is a person who flies a plane.
A fighter pilot would be someone in the military who flies planes that shoot bullets or drop bombs in some sort of military activity, a war, for example.
This motivational speaker was a fighter pilot. apparently survived some very difficult missions.
A mission M-I-S-S-I-O-N, when referring to military activities, is a task that has to be accomplished.
For a fighter pilot, a mission might involve flying 100 miles and dropping a bomb and then coming back to the ship or the place where the plane took off from.
That might be a mission.
The word mission can also mean more generally the purpose for doing something, your reason for doing something.
Jamal says I can't believe our company is shelling out thousands of dollars on speaking fees for someone like her to tell us how to do our jobs better.
Jamal is not happy.
He says he can't believe that the company is shelling out thousands of dollars.
To shell, S-H-E-L-L, out money means to pay a lot of money for something.
This is a two-word phrasal verb that is often used when you think the money is being wasted, when you think the price is too high.
I don't want to shell out $50,000 for a new car.
That's too much money.
Speaking fees refer to the money that you have to pay someone to come in and give a talk or a speech to your group.
So Jamal is not happy the company is spending or shelling out thousands of dollars on speaking fees.
Cindy says.
I think that the idea is to understand how other organizations and professions handle crises, and which may shed some light on how we can do things better.
Cindy is saying that, although this woman may not know anything about business, she understands how to handle or manage a crisis.
And crises happen in many different situations and in many different organizations.
Cindy says that the fighter pilot's experience might shed some light on how they do things in their company.
To shed S-H-E-D light on something or to shed some light on something means to provide insight on a topic, to help someone understand something better, to see it in a different way.
Jamal says, well, I don't have high hopes.
High hopes are high expectations when you think something is going to be really great.
Jamal does not have high hopes.
Cindy says, don't you think she can teach us anything?
Jamal says, sure.
In fact, our speaker has inspired me to try to get on the lecture circuit myself.
Jamal is saying that this woman is inspiring him or giving him the idea and, I guess, the motivation to try to get on the lecture circuit himself.
The term lecture L-E-C-T-U-R-E refers to a speech when you go out and educate someone or give a speech to a group of people to try to provide new information to them.
We also use this word at the university when a professor gives information to the students.
We call that giving a lecture. or we can use it as a verb, to lecture.
The lecture circuit C-I-R-C-U-I-T refers to a typical schedule that you would have for a person who goes and gives lectures or presentations at many different places in many different organizations.
In education, for example, there are people who go around and give presentations to teachers in different cities.
Now, they don't all go to the same cities or to the same schools, but we could refer to this activity of going around and giving presentations and talks to different groups of people in different parts of the country as being a lecture circuit.
I was on the lecture circuit for a couple of years.
I would go around and give speeches and give presentations to English teachers all around the United States.
I did that for about three years.
I would fly to different cities and give presentations, sometimes 30 or 40 cities in a year.
So I did a lot of traveling when I was younger.
I'm glad I don't have to do that anymore.
I travel now just via the internet.
To finish our dialogue, Cindy says, what would you speak about?
She's asking Jamal what he would go and present on if he were to be on the lecture circuit.
Jamal says, avoiding corporate waste.
Corporate, C-O-R-P-O-R-A-T-E, refers to a large company.
Waste.
W-A-S-T-E refers to money that is not spent well, money that is lost on things that are not very productive or useful.
Corporate waste would refer to money that a company spends that doesn't really give them very much benefit.
Jamal thinks motivational speakers are a waste of money, so he's going to go around to other companies as a motivational speaker to tell them how much money they're wasting on motivational speakers.
Now let's listen to the dialogue, this time at a normal speed.
I think you'll be surprised by the person they've hired to kick off our meeting.
She's supposed to be a guru on crisis management.
Oh no, not another one.
This one has a lot of real-world experience.
She was a fighter pilot who has apparently survived some very difficult missions.
I can't believe our company is shelling out thousands of dollars on speaking fees for someone like her to tell us how to do our jobs better.
I think that the idea is to understand how other organizations and professions handle crises, which may shed some light on how we can do things better.
Well, I don't have high hopes.
Don't you think she can teach us anything?
Sure.
In fact, our speaker has inspired me to try to get on the lecture circuit myself.
What would you speak about?
Avoiding corporate waste.
Our scriptwriter uses her real-world experience to give you the very best scripts possible to help you improve your English.
I thank you, as we all thank you, Dr. Lucy Say.
From Los Angeles, California, I'm Jeff McQuillan.
Thank you for listening.
Come back and listen to us again right here on ESL Podcast.
English as a Second Language podcast is written and produced by Dr Lucy Say, hosted by Dr Jeff McQuillan.
Copyright 2013 by the Center for Educational Development.
