This is the Business English Podcast, Episode 233.
Make these tweaks to your Business English vocabulary.
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Hi, Lindsay. How are you? Hey, Michelle.
I'm feeling good today. How are you? How's everything?
Yeah, I'm good. I'm good. But before we get started, do you have any changes you want to make to this episode? nothing major i'm feeling like our plan is looking good maybe after we finish we'll make a couple of tweaks but we'll see we'll see yeah lindsay do we ever make tweaks to our episodes before or after or both are you asking both both we sometimes make little tweaks we don't actually change very much in post recording believe it or not i know a lot of podcasts do a lot of editing but we don't do much of that because we want to give you guys very real native and natural english Maybe before we record, we make a few changes, change a few things, but not too much.
Yeah. Yeah. That's true, guys. Really, what you hear is pretty natural.
It's pretty natural. It's pretty natural.
Yeah. Michelle, are you someone that's afraid of change, would you say?
Am I afraid? I have. Mixed feelings, I would say.
In some ways, I crave change. I like to move.
I wish I could live everywhere. But then, of course, there are certain things that you can get stuck in a certain way and it's uncomfortable.
But overall, I don't think that if you want a yes or no, am I afraid of change?
I don't think I'm afraid of it. Yeah, that's good.
Well, that's how you grow, right? I know.
I think I like change. I think it's refreshing.
Yeah, I need change, too. I kind of I wouldn't say I crave it because sometimes when I hear it's coming, I might fear it a little bit.
But then once I'm in it and I'm going through the change, I feel refreshed. i kind of become a new person in a little sense of life right so it's good but today we actually got a listener question about this concept of change and some vocabulary around change which is perfect for the business world for our listeners yes i'm very excited about this one definitely perfect question for the business english podcast So we're going to get into that in a second.
Guys, if you are not listening to the All Ears English podcast, please head on over there, hit follow.
One you could start with is episode 2125 is how to share your faults in English for deeper connection.
So that made me think of faults and tweets, tweaks and changes.
So yeah. Okay. I love that. Good stuff. So I'm going to go ahead and read the listener question and are you ready to hear it?
Maybe we'll actually take turns. I'll read the first piece and then you could read the second part.
You ready? Okay. Sounds good. All right.
I hope you're all doing great. I'm originally from Japan, born and raised in the town next to Musashi Kosugi, where Lindsay used to live.
Yes, I lived there in 2005 and 2006 in Japan.
So good. Somehow I live in Sydney, Australia now and I work remotely for a US company.
So listening to all ears English and Aussie English is a kind of perfect combination to learn English for me.
Ooh, that is so good. Michelle, you want to read the listener's question specifically?
Sure. Here we go. I have a question related to my work.
I work as a Japanese copywriter for the company and often collaborate with designers who are based in the US.
So I need to communicate with them when I change texts on ads and explain it.
One day I realized that my colleagues used three words in English meaning to change something.
Those are change, tweak, and modify. Please clarify the nuances of each word and give me the context when I should choose one of them appropriately.
Thank you in advance, Ario. Oh my gosh, I love this question for business English.
It is so good, especially for the field that this listener is in, copywriting.
Of course, you're going to have multiple rounds of changes and tweaks and modifications, and we have to know this.
Okay, let's get into it. I can't wait. So first off, let's just start with this idea that all of these are about something starting as one thing and morphing into another.
So often this is for feedback given on a project or something else.
Overall, i believe they can be used as synonyms but we're going to dive into each one in a deeper way okay let's do it so let's go into the most obvious one to the first one that we all probably know but let's talk about it it's change change yep all right how do we use this right so change this can be a noun or a verb So to me, as Lindsay said, this feels like the most general one, the most umbrella one.
It can be used for many different things and it can be large or small or really any size, a small change, a big change, whatever.
And this is one you'll hear in poetry and music and names of songs, right?
Talking about things changing all the time everywhere.
Yes. And so like you said, it's broad, right?
So here's some examples. I need to make some changes to my second slide.
Or what else could you say, Michelle? That chance meeting changed the entire trajectory of my career.
One is like a tiny little change and one is one of those sliding doors moments we've talked about.
Sliding doors moment. Yeah, exactly. These things can happen, right?
Maybe I'll ask you this one, Michelle. What has been the biggest professional change in your life in the past five years?
Well, I don't want to... Biggest professional change, I guess the transition of figuring out my life as a mother and someone who wants to also keep my career.
So it's kind of a mix of personal and professional change, just fitting that together and my identity and finding my way in that sense.
So there's a lot of change as a mother to young kids and figuring out careers.
So that's what I would say. Yeah, that's interesting, right?
Sometimes our professional changes are actually about what's happening outside of work and making work work in that context, right?
That's interesting. Yes, that's been the story of my life for the past five years.
Story of your life. I love it. Story of my life.
So it's broad. It's about life. It's about differences.
And it's, it's kind of that umbrella term where you can't go wrong with change in many, many contexts, but we can actually get more specific and sound more high level and put more nuance into what we're trying to ask for or say.
Right. So which one should we do next? We do tweak.
Sure. Yeah. Let's do, let's do tweak. I like that.
What could we, what can we say about tweak?
Well, tweak can also be used as a noun or a verb.
Um, Lindsay, would you say tweak about something really big, like a big change?
No, this is quite small. This is what we would use when we want to emphasize that the change that we're looking for is going to be very small.
So maybe we're using it in a very smart relationship building way to emphasize things are good overall.
I like your work, but we'd like some small changes, some small tweaks.
I like that. Right. Yeah. Right. I wouldn't say, oh, I've been through a lot of tweaks in the past five years.
No, this is for smaller things. And it's also, yeah, no, and it's not even about really like big life changes, as you're saying.
It's more about a piece of work in front of me that I can kind of put on my screen or in my hands more.
Like it's good for copywriting, design work, things like that.
Code maybe, maybe. Yeah. Yeah. Code. Yep.
So I could say, I have some tweaks for you when you have a minute to go over them.
Nice. Or she tweaked my first paragraph so much that I could hardly recognize it.
So here we're actually saying there's been a big change made to a specific part of my writing.
Right. Or many little changes. So I don't know if you've ever had this experience, but I remember, this is story time, when I was applying to college.
And my brother and my sister-in-law, I gave them one of the essays I had to write.
And they made their edits, they made their tweaks.
And I got it back and I cried. Oh, no. You must have already been really stressed out just trying to get that essay done.
Right. I just felt like this isn't me. I don't identify with this at all.
But the thing is, they're both very smart.
And I felt... oh, but they're the experts, shouldn't I?
And my mom just said, change it back. Just change it back.
Change it back. Yeah, that can be devastating.
Because it kind of makes you question everything about yourself, right? and question whether you're ready for college or that kind of thing so we did say before that tweaks are about small changes but maybe in this case there were many small changes so it just created a huge change is what you right it's like a snowball effect it's you know you're okay with a few and then you think what is what is everything i'm doing wrong so yeah but that's been a joke in my family ever since um does it do you get bothered if somebody tweaks your work too much I think in that case, I would be a little bit distraught if I saw that happen to my college essay, because I would think, oh, my gosh, can I really write for college?
I don't know if I'm ready. But these days, I don't really get much of an opportunity to have that kind of feedback.
And I wish I did, actually. I wish I kind of... had an editor or something, someone maybe listening to our episodes and tweaking them because I think that would like help us kind of increase our up our game, up our level.
You know, that sounds like a job for AI one day.
I hope not. We'll see. We'll see. But yeah, so tweaks are good.
Maybe not too many of them, but this it's really about delivering this and saying this to the person.
Your work's great, but I do want to make a few small tweaks. really nice communicative and not attacking the person not making them feel like they're totally off track they're on track they just need some small changes right michelle abercrombie's viral denim sale is back and spotify listeners get an extra 15 off with code spotify af abercrombie is known for their denim with 30 to 50 off all jeans find out how denim should feel shop the viral denim sale in the abercrombie app online or in stores Valid in stores and online through August 11th, 2025 in US and Canada.
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Modify. I like this one. It sounds very professional, formal.
Yes. This one is just a verb, right? The noun form would be modification.
Sure. So modify and modification. So the dictionary defined this because I wanted to use this because it really highlights the difference here.
Make partial or minor changes to something typically so as to improve it or make it less extreme.
Hmm. Interesting. Okay. Yeah. I, I don't always think it's the less extreme part.
Yeah. I don't know what that would mean.
Right. I think I have an example basically.
Okay. You know, I mean, just to maybe to modify the rules.
These rules are too strict. We should modify them.
Something like that. I believe I saw an example like that, but I know that's not where my head goes when I hear this word, but I wanted to throw it out there.
Hmm. Yeah, that's interesting. Make something less extreme.
I think it would just depend on what exactly you're talking about.
Right. So this is also kind of minor changes, I would say.
It just sounds more formal when you choose this word over tweaks. right right exactly and this one also might be more about over time it it might be i'm going to make some modifications to your work right now but it might just be something more it might take a little longer um depending on the context here i'll give you an example many mod many companies modified their work from home policy during the pandemic Yeah.
So you're saying it first, it changed in one way and then it maybe changed back halfway to what it was before.
Yeah. A slight change. So modifications over time.
Right. Right. And then the next one, could you read for us?
It's time to make some modifications to our employee handbook.
Sure, I like it. It's just another tool in your toolbox, listeners, right?
For something you can say about change. I love that.
Lindsay, have we made any modifications at All Ears English in the past couple of years?
Yeah, we've identified what is our core value?
What is our queen bee role? What is the most important thing we do here?
And how does it show up on our podcast and our community of students and our courses?
That's a big... that is not, we haven't made massive changes to what that thing is.
We've identified it and put a name to it.
So I guess that's a modification. Yeah. And I think, you know, just also, you know, maybe with some of the episodes, the plans or we have, yeah, we're always, we're always thinking, how can we make it better for the listeners?
And so, yeah, lots of things. I also just wanted to throw in one last word, which is edits.
Um, yes. Right. So that's to make an edit or to edit something.
That sounds very much pen to paper to me or a computer.
Right. Yeah. That is not about the larger things.
I edited my life. No. And moved to Denver.
No. No. That would not happen. All right.
Let's see how these come into play in a role play.
I think today's role play is going to be super useful.
So let's get into it. Okay. Okay. Well, we are coworkers going over paper that we wrote before we turn it in.
Okay, here we go. Okay. So do you think we need to make any changes here?
I have a few tweaks. I went through it last night.
Oh, great. Let's go through them. Also, did the team ever modify those guidelines?
Oh yes. I have the new copy. Great. I think we all need to change the way things are done.
Yes. We are in agreement. All right, good.
All right. So here I said, so do you think we need to make any changes?
And this is good because you're approaching the idea of change to the piece of work broadly.
Changes. And that's as a noun, right? And then I said, I have a few tweaks.
I went through it last night. So now we're imagining we're just going to go and I'll say, oh, just move this here, do that there, small changes.
And then you said also, did the team ever modify those guidelines?
Did they make any small changes to those rules or guidelines?
Yep. And then I said, I think we all need to change the way things are done.
So this is a change as a, uh, this is change as a verb.
And this sounds more like a big picture change where the larger change.
Yeah, Michelle, you know what we should do?
We should do a follow-up episode and talk about big changes.
The word that comes to mind as a little hint for the next episode is overhaul.
I actually like that word. We completely overhauled our episode format and we've changed everything.
And there are other ways to say the other end of the spectrum.
We're making big changes. And I think our listeners would love to hear that piece too, right?
Because sometimes you rewrite your business plan entirely, right?
Yeah, yeah. Exactly. So here, this is more about small changes for the most part.
And yeah, we can talk about the larger changes and how to talk about those.
So that's a great idea. Guys, hit follow and you will hear that episode soon.
I love that idea. Any takeaway for today?
Yeah, guys, we have to think about how we react to tweaks and changes and things like that.
We got to go with the flow. But also, if you're the person giving the changes, think, Does this really need to be changed or you just kind of like giving the changes?
Is there a little ego in there? That's interesting.
Yeah. And I would add to that. That's a good point, Michelle.
I would also say if changes are necessary, how are you presenting it?
That's what this episode is about, right?
What is the key language you're going to use to come back to that writer or that designer to ask for those changes?
The words that you choose, something strategic like tweaks, is going to show the person they're on the right track.
And people need these signals, right? They need these signals.
They're doing a good job. Things are mostly okay.
But we need these tiny changes. Use the word tweak. right use the word modify instead of i need changes yeah it's all about how we present this all right yes it's very important okay well this was a great question lots of fun glad we talked about this and guys have a good day all right michelle talk soon bye Thank you for listening to Business English, a podcast just for you, the high achieving global professional.
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