Welcome to English as a Second Language podcast number 1116.
Reading and Processing Emails.
This is English as a Second Language podcast episode 1116.
I'm your host, Dr Jeff McQuillan, coming to you from the Center for Educational Development in beautiful Los Angeles, California.
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On this episode, we're going to talk about reading and processing emails.
Let's get started.
Every day I feel more and more overwhelmed by email.
Once I turn on my computer and look at my inbox, I get sucked into reading and responding to emails.
I have a personal email account and an email account for work.
With my work email, I try to take an organized approach.
I scan each email, looking at the sender and subject line, and delete the ones I don't need or want.
With the remaining ones, I archive some file, others for future reading and write replies to the rest.
I've set up templates for the routine emails, but spend a lot of time drafting personalized responses to the rest.
That takes up a large part of my workday.
When reading my personal email, I take my time.
Yes, I get the usual junk that slips through the spam filters and get newsletters I keep meaning to unsubscribe from.
But people who have my personal email address are mainly friends and family.
When I'm done and I look at the clock, I'm often surprised at how much time I've spent processing email.
That's time I could have been spending working on my Celine Dion impression.
Near far wherever you are I believe that the heart does go on.
I begin my story by saying every day I feel more and more overwhelmed by email.
To be overwhelmed, O-V-E-R-W-H-E-L-M-E-D, is to not be able to deal with something or to make decisions about something because the situation is very difficult. challenging, very difficult, very demanding.
When you are overwhelmed with something, you have too much of it.
You have too much pressure, too much stress perhaps because of the situation.
If you get a lot of email, we might say that you are overwhelmed with email.
The email is too much for you, too much to handle.
I then say once I turn on my computer and look at my inbox, I get sucked into reading and responding to emails.
Your inbox is the main folder in an email account, the place where all your new emails show up on your computer or on your mobile device, such as a phone or a tablet.
That's your inbox.
The word inbox I-N-B-O-X was originally used, and still is or could be, to describe a physical box that you have in an office say, where people put things for you to look at or do.
When you're done with things or you want to send them to someone else within an office, you put them in your outbox.
Well, we've taken those terms from the business world and imported them, we might say, into our modern vocabulary about technology.
I say that once I turn on or start up my computer and look at my inbox, I get sucked into reading and responding to emails.
The expression to get sucked S-U-C-K-E-D into something means to be forced to do something, or to be persuaded to to do something, even though you don't really want to do it.
It might actually be something that you enjoy, but you don't have time to do.
If you are at work and you like to watch cat videos on youtube, You might watch one of them and get sucked into watching 10 of them.
It's almost like you are addicted to that particular activity.
So you keep doing it even though you know you shouldn't be doing that.
You can also get sucked into a negative situation, a situation that you don't want to be a part of.
That's really what I mean in saying that I get sucked into reading and responding to emails.
Email, of course, is short for electronic mail, and you probably know what that is if you're listening to this podcast.
I should explain, in the title of this episode, I say reading and processing emails.
The verb to process means means here to take care of.
For some reason, that's a word that we use in English when we're talking about looking at your email and deciding what you want to do with the emails.
You might delete it, you might get rid of it, you might answer it, or you might put it aside or do what a lot of people do simply leave it in your inbox for several days and until you finally decide to delete it.
Some people have hundreds of inbox emails that they say they're going to get back to but never do.
To process your emails then, means to look at them and to make a decision about what you're going to do about them.
I continue.
I have a personal email account and an email account for work.
With my work email, I try to take an organized approach.
An approach is the way that you do something, how you handle something.
I continue.
I scan each email looking at the sender and subject lines.
To scan, S-C-A-N, here means to read something very quickly, looking for some specific information.
It might be a word, it might be a name, something that you are looking for that will help you, in this case decide perhaps, what to do with the email.
In my case, I scan each email looking at the sender, S-E-N-D-E-R.
The sender is the person who, of course, sent me the email.
The other word we would use for the person receiving the email is recipient.
If you're looking at your own inbox, you are the recipient of all of the emails.
So you're looking at the senders, people who sent you emails.
I also look at the subject line.
The subject line is what we call that brief description of the topic of the email.
Some emails don't have a subject line.
They're just blank, so you have to open it to see what exactly is inside of it.
Then I say that I delete the emails I don't want or need.
To delete, D-E-L-E-T-E, means to permanently remove, to get rid of something.
Usually, when you delete an email, it goes into your trash.
The word trash outside of the context of email refers to garbage junk, things that you don't want anymore.
In an email program, however, trash means the place where your deleted emails go.
Sometimes email programs allow you to put messages in the trash and then later empty the trash.
Get rid of all those messages permanently.
I then say with the remaining ones, that is, with the remaining emails, the ones I didn't delete, I archive some file, others for future reading and write replies to the rest.
To archive A-R-C-H-I-V-E an email means to place it in a general archive folder.
Now, to understand this concept, we really have to define the next term here, which is to file an email.
To file F-I-L-E here means to put a message in a particular folder for some specific reason.
Purpose
Most email programs allow you to create special places where you can store or keep old emails, where you can place them after you take them out of your inbox.
You don't want to delete these emails.
You want to keep them for later.
But you want to separate them into different groups.
You may have a folder for emails from your family.
You may have a folder for emails from your wife.
You may have a folder for emails from your girlfriend who's not your wife.
I'm hoping you don't have both of those folders.
But you could.
That would keep them separate.
That's what we mean by the verb to file in the context of an email.
It's to put an email message in a particular folder.
Most email programs have a I guess we could call general folder, where you can put stuff even if you're not putting it in a particular folder, and that would be I guess we could call it an archive folder.
So the verb to archive means to move your message out of your inbox into this more general folder that is created by the email program itself.
So I can archive emails, I can file emails, or I can write replies to emails.
I can answer the emails, we would say.
I've set up templates for the routine emails.
I continue but spend a lot of time drafting personalized responses for the rest.
To set up is a two-word phrasal verb meaning to establish, to create something.
I've created or set up templates, T-E-M-P-L-A-T-E-S.
A template is an electronic document that has writing in it, text in it that you can use to send to different people.
Usually businesses have templates ready for when someone writes them an email about a specific question.
If a lot of people ask that question, the company will just send them the template for that question that has the answer in it.
So you don't have to write a new email every time.
We use templates here at ESL Podcast to respond to some of your messages.
Routine, R-O-U-T-I-N-E, emails are emails that are common, normal, everyday.
Emails that aren't unusual or different in any way.
I also say that I spend a lot of time meaning I take a lot of time drafting personalized responses to draft emails.
D-R-A-F-T means to write something, usually with the idea that you will go back later and edit it and make it better.
To draft something means to write something that you're going to work on in the future.
You're going to save it and then work on it later, make it better, and then send it.
I say that drafting personal emails takes up a large part of my workday.
That's just another way of saying it takes up a lot of time during the time that I'm working.
When reading my personal email, I take my time.
The expression to take your time means to go slowly, not to rush, not to hurry.
Yes, I say I get the usual junk that slips through the spam filters and get emails.
I keep meaning to unsubscribe from junk.
J-U-N-K email is email that is sent to you that you don't want.
We sometimes call that type of email spam, S-P-A-M.
A spam filter.
F-I-L-T-E-R is a function in your email program or your email service that stops those unwanted emails from getting into your inbox.
Usually they go into a special folder called a spam folder.
Sometimes there are emails that you actually want that the spam filter puts in the spam folder.
Sometimes.
You need therefore, to check your spam folder to make sure it's not putting things you want in into the spam folder instead of your inbox.
But usually nowadays, the email programs are pretty good about identifying which emails are spam and which are ones that you would want.
I also talk about unsubscribing to newsletters.
To unsubscribe U-N-S-U-B-S-C-R-I-B-E is to remove your name and email address from a company's or organization's email list.
The opposite of unsubscribe is subscribe, which is to sign up or to give your information to an organization or company online, allowing that organization or company to send you emails about its activities.
To unsubscribe is the opposite.
It means to get off of those lists, essentially.
I finish by saying that when I'm done, when I'm finished and I look at the clock, I'm often surprised at how much time I've spent processing email.
That's time I could have been spending working on my Celine Dion impression.
An impression is an imitation when someone tries to sound like another person, usually a famous person.
I then sing a few lines from a famous song by Celine Dion, in what is almost certainly the worst impression of Ms.
Dion in the world.
Now let's listen to the story, this time at a normal speed.
Every day I feel more and more overwhelmed by email.
Once I turn on my computer and look at my inbox, I get sucked into reading and responding to emails.
I have a personal email account and an email account for work.
With my work email, I try to take an organized approach.
I scan each email looking at the sender and subject line and delete the ones I don't need or want.
With the remaining ones, I archive some file, others for future reading and write replies to the rest.
I've set up templates for the routine emails, but spend a lot of time drafting personalized responses to the rest.
That takes up a large part of my workday.
When reading my personal email, I take my time.
Yes, I get the usual junk that slips through the spam filters and get newsletters I keep meaning to unsubscribe from, but people who have my personal email address are mainly friends and family.
When I'm done and I look at the clock, I'm often surprised at how much time I've spent processing email.
That's time I could have been spending working on my Celine Dion impression.
Near, far, wherever you are, I believe that the heart does go on.
There's nothing routine about the dialogues and stories written by our wonderful scriptwriter, Dr Lucy Say.
So thank you, Lucy.
From Los Angeles, California, I'm Jeff McQuillan.
Thank you for listening.
Come back and listen to us again right here on ESL Podcasts.
English as a Second Language podcast is written and produced by Dr Lucy Say, hosted by Dr Jeff McQuillan.
Copyright 2015 by the Center for Educational Development.
