This is an all ears English podcast.
Episode 35 English tip how to answer a question about your performance at work.
Welcome to the All Ears English podcast, where you'll finally get real native English conversation and fluency for business and life.
We believe in connection, not perfection when it comes to learning English.
Now here are your hosts Lindsay McMahon, the English adventurer, and Michelle Kaplan, the New York radio girl, coming to you from Boston and New York City, USA.
Hey.
When your colleagues ask you how your presentation or interview went, how can you respond?
By taking a positive angle in English.
Find out today.
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Hey, how's it going, Lindsay?
It's going great, Aubrey.
I'm happy to be here.
I have a question for you today.
Let's hear it.
All right.
So are you a pretty positive person overall, would you say?
Yes, very much so.
I do have a few people in my life that are a little more negative.
And I think that's pushed me the opposite direction.
So I'm like, oh, it's hard to have negativity in your life.
So I'm very proactively positive.
What about you?
Interesting.
Oh, yeah, totally.
On our show here at All Ears English, we are positive.
And yeah, I'm naturally a pretty positive person in general.
I see the glass is half full.
And we like to look at learning English as being all about connection.
And so when we talk about connecting in English, it matters the energy we put out in the world, right.
Yes, so true, right?
I know you guys have seen this where if you have people who have a very positive energy, you want to talk to them, you're excited to talk to them, you leave feeling great.
And you may know people that it's a little bit the opposite, where you maybe don't look forward to a phone call with that person.
You leave feeling a little down for whatever reason.
So you want to be that person who has that positive energy that people want to talk to and leave feeling great about your conversation.
Exactly.
And that's why words matter so much because you need to have you feel excited on the inside.
You feel positive, which many of you guys do.
You want to have the words to reflect that.
Right.
So we need the vocabulary in English, and then we need the energy to convey it with the right tone of voice.
Exactly.
Right.
So think about at work.
I know a lot of you work in English and they're often there's going to be times where someone had some type of performance at work.
Like maybe they gave a presentation or led a meeting and you can ask them after.
You know how did it go.
That's the key question, right, Aubrey?
Yeah.
And this is a great question because I mean, you guys can take this answer in any direction you want.
That's why it's important for us to talk about this today.
You have a choice and you need to take it in a positive direction, assuming it went pretty well.
Obviously, if the presentation didn't load on your computer...
You're not going to say it was great when it actually didn't work.
Right.
But this is when, you know, things went well.
You want to convey that to your coworker.
Yeah.
And even if it does go poorly like that, think about you know, instead of being real negative, you just be like oh man, it was kind of silly.
This happened.
But all in all, it worked out right.
You can still put a positive spin on it for sure.
Right.
Because we figure it out.
Even if something goes wrong, we figure it out.
We move on.
We make the best of it.
You know, that's giving me an episode idea for another day.
We could show our listeners how to sum things up in a positive way, even if things didn't go well all in all, or overall, or in general.
These are all things we can say, guys.
We'll do that in another episode.
So make sure you have hit, follow or subscribe, or wherever you listen, make sure you have subscribed to this show so you get more.
All Ears English.
So Aubrey, should we go into some vocab words for our listeners of how they could respond to this?
Yes, exactly.
Right.
So we want to be positive.
You can first of all, just say great, and then jump right into detail.
What was great about it?
Because if they're asking, I think they would like to hear a detail about what was great.
Yeah.
And so much of this is your tone of voice, right?
You can't just say great, right?
Great, great.
And then give more details.
That gets people excited to listen to you as well.
Yeah, that'd be confusing if you're like, great.
So it's like, wait, are you being sarcastic?
Not sure.
Right.
And then another super natural and native one is just awesome.
I use awesome all the time.
I probably overuse it, but that's okay.
That's me too.
I think people from the United States in general maybe overuse awesome.
I feel like I hear people say it all the time, but we don't even notice because we say it too.
And then the next one we probably overuse as well.
Amazing.
Amazing.
And this is something sensational or above average.
Yes, it's supposed to be right.
It's supposed to be like, oh, it was really amazing.
So then when we hear we often will use it just to mean good.
Yeah, that's the thing.
Because we do exaggerate a lot in American English, everything gets kind of notched up a little bit.
Exactly.
But again the intonation, like you said, because if you say oh, it was amazing, then with your intonation you're making it clear that it was actually really great.
Yes, that's so true.
This is all about intonation.
They need to hear it in your voice, guys.
And then, if we want to tone it down a little bit right and be a little more measured, we could say it went so well.
Right?
We're just coming a little bit down from awesome and amazing.
Wouldn't you say, Aubrey? you know, just it went so well.
Think about just a little bit more intonation to say it went so well, right?
Emphasize so a little bit.
It's a lot more native.
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There's so much in the tone of voice, guys.
I mean, this is going to be on the show.
We talk a lot about connection, a lot about building relationships.
And you can see here that just the tone of your voice is going to help you build that relationship more than grammar.
You know, don't worry if you're making mistakes, but worry about how you convey your words.
What's the energy behind your words?
Okay.
Yes, exactly.
All right.
The next one, this would be if it wasn't perfect, right?
We're going to where if it's not exactly how you would have loved.
But you know we still put a little bit of a positive spin on it, but you could say it was all right.
So it still doesn't sound that bad, right?
So you're sort of trying to find the positive and it was all right, right?
So there's definitely a rhythm to my voice where I'm looking at the positive part of that when I say that it was all right.
And then I think the key is what you say next, right?
Because you could go on and on about everything that was terrible.
Or you can say, it was all right, let them know what wasn't perfect.
But then, you know, what did go well?
Yeah, I mean, so much of life is how we choose to look at it.
We're not denying that, you know, things happen in life, right?
Things break, presentation projectors could break, maybe your audience just doesn't get it.
But we choose to see what we want to see.
Okay, and choose to emphasize.
Yeah.
So what else, Aubrey?
Let's keep going.
And let's imagine that So this one's very similar to, it was all right to just say, not bad.
You know, that means not great, but not bad.
Not bad.
Yeah, very succinct and clear and native and natural.
And then... okay, it was okay, right?
You know, so it went okay.
You're not ever going to use this if it was a fantastic, right?
And we're like, it went okay.
That's just average.
Yeah.
And then maybe we have a couple more, maybe two more for our listeners here.
This is an interesting way to respond.
If I say, hey, how'd it go?
How'd your presentation go, Aubrey?
What would you say?
More or less.
This is very idiomatic, right?
You might hear that and be like, I don't know what that means.
It's just a way of saying like, yeah, it was okay.
Not bad.
It could have been better.
More or less.
And I think I know in Spanish they use this.
I've studied Spanish, maybe in French.
I don't know.
Aubrey, do they use this chunk in French?
Plus ou moins.
Right.
And más o menos in Spanish.
Totally.
Same meaning.
For sure.
So in certain languages, you guys know this, you know what it means.
So go for it if you want to.
And then you could also say, I'm sure next time will be better.
So here I'm still putting the positive spin on it.
By looking ahead, I'm going to improve.
I'm going to find what I did wrong.
I'm going to get better at it.
Yes, exactly.
I love that.
I love a person who, even if things don't go positive, you know perfectly they're gonna be honest, they're gonna be real about it.
But then say, you know what, next time will be better.
I'm looking forward.
I'm gonna do what it takes to improve for next time.
You got it, Aubrey.
All right.
I think that's it for today.
I feel like we've given our listeners a lot of great expressions.
And now I hope you guys wrote those down.
Right, Aubrey?
Yes, exactly.
Yeah, cool.
So guys, in the next episode, we're going to do some cool stuff.
We're going to talk about how you can spice up your English with some humor, and you're going to learn a joke.
Aubrey, a joke is a great way to add to a positive spin on life.
Yes, for sure.
I tell jokes all the time.
This is going to be a fun one, guys.
All right.
We'll see you there.
Have a good one, Aubrey.
You too.
Bye.
Bye.
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