Let's do another episode of my key takeaways.
These are things that I've got on my list that I want to go through with you.
I've noted in sessions with my clients and all of these things I hope are going to help you build your confidence with your English communication.
So let's crack on.
Hello and welcome to Confident Business English.
If you're a senior manager who has to speak English at work but you want to build your confidence, this is absolutely the right place for you.
My name is Anna.
I'm a Neural Language Coach.
I work with professionals from all over the place.
Spain, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Germany, Poland, Central Asia.
America, South America.
I also work with a lot of people that have emigrated to the UK, Canada, the US.
But underneath it all, there's one thing in common.
And that's about freedom, really.
Freedom to do something.
The freedom to apply for whatever job you want.
The freedom to live wherever you would like to.
The freedom to take on a new role that you're really interested in.
And also freedom from I really like this way of describing it freedom from anxiety, constant comparison.
Freedom from, maybe a job that you don't find very fulfilling at the moment.
Freedom from whatever it is that you feel is holding you back.
And that underneath it all is why building your confidence is so important.
It's because it gives you that freedom.
What would you say?
It is, in your case, the freedom to do something, the freedom from something, or perhaps a little combination of the two.
So all of the things that I have on the list today are hopefully about helping you build your confidence to get you closer towards whatever freedom it is that you are looking for.
The first thing I have on my list today is a question by a client, and they said I really want to understand what is the difference when people are using can and can't, because I find it really difficult when I'm in the middle of a meeting, and this person in particular had some negotiations.
I don't know if they're saying yes or they're saying no.
It's very hard for me to distinguish between the two.
And not only that how can I make sure that I'm expressing it properly, so there's no miscommunication and people know the things that we can do and we can't do?
This is such a great question and so relevant for you as a senior manager, because we're always talking about things that we can and can't do.
And especially in high stakes conversations.
This is really important because if somebody says I can't sign the deal today and you understand that they can sign the deal today, then you're going to have a pretty odd reaction to what everybody else is understanding.
Let's break it down.
First of all, we're going to start with understanding it.
There is something we do to differentiate them.
And key point, it's not actually always the T sound.
It's more to do with the strength of the word.
Is it weak and unstressed or is it strong and stressed?
I want you to listen to two sentences side by side.
One is going to be in the affirmative and one is going to be in the negative.
And I want you to see if you can tell which one is which.
Firstly, in the affirmative.
We can sign the deal today.
We can sign the deal today.
We can sign the deal today.
Now in the negative.
We can't sign the deal today.
We can't sign the deal today.
What do you notice?
Which one is weak and unstressed and which one is strong and stressed?
If you said that can was weak and unstressed, you would be absolutely right.
It becomes almost invisible.
We can sign the deal today.
We can go to the meeting tomorrow.
We can review it next week.
Whereas we put more strength and emphasis when we're using the negative.
We can't sign the deal today.
We can't do that.
That's what you have to look out for more than the T placement.
It's the stress.
In an ideal world, of course, these sentences would be fronted by a yes, we can do it, or unfortunately, we can't do it.
So you have a little bit of context, but we don't always get that.
So we've got to work with what we've got.
Then on the flip side, if you're having to communicate the difference between can and can't, often the problem here comes that they kind of just sound the same.
So I think the key point here is if it's negative, make sure people know that.
We can't do this.
Stress the word more.
Yeah, we can do it, it's fine, we can go there, i can go to the conference tomorrow, i can speak to john, but really make sure that if it's the negative, you're emphasizing that, especially if it's a high stakes conversation, we can't sign the agreement today.
We can't go forward as things are at the moment.
We can't do this.
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Moving on, another client, another session, another day.
This person in particular has a big team.
Unfortunately, this team has been going through a very difficult period and you may be going through something like this too which is that the company, over the last few months, has been going through a process of redundancies.
People are feeling nervous.
They're concerned.
They're like, am I next?
Are there still going to be some organizational changes?
That's the kind of context that we're looking at.
My client in particular had one meeting where they were speaking to everybody and they knew they were going to get asked questions like this, like maybe you've received before as well, which is okay.
Yeah, all this update on the presentation sounds nice, but will there be any more changes?
What can you tell us?
How can you reassure us that things are going to stay the same now?
These types of questions, right, which are difficult because they put you on the spot.
My client was like you know, I don't want to give them any false hope because I can't 100 say that there aren't going to be any more changes.
But at the same time, I don't want to worry them unnecessarily because it's unlikely.
How can I communicate that?
We did some work looking at the messaging in detail, which is of course specific to them.
But some really good phrases that you can use in this type of situation are phrases like what I can say is
What I can tell you is.
What I can confirm is.
And equally, you can pair them up with the negative.
If somebody asks you one of those difficult questions like yeah, presentation looks great nice, but what does this actually mean for us?
Okay, thank you, John.
I appreciate your question.
What I can confirm at this stage is that the majority of the redundancies have been carried out.
What I can't confirm is whether there will be more redundancies in the future.
We don't have the intention at the moment, but as I said previously, it's not my decision.
For example.
I'm not saying those are the best wordings, but I'm just giving you the example of those phrases.
What I confirm is this.
What I can't confirm is that.
What I can tell you is X. What I can't tell you is Y.
Really great phrases for managing those types of difficult questions where you don't want to say anything that is going to rock the boat unnecessarily and you still want to maintain openness and transparency.
Finally, different clients, different topic.
I have several clients who communicate really well, very clearly.
They're able to manage all of the exercises we do well.
But there are some things they find difficult, one of them being articulation.
Particularly, I've noticed over the last weeks the W at the beginning of words and also the V and B sounds.
This does tend to depend on whatever your native language is.
But I'd like to focus on that today and give you a couple of little tricks that you can practice at home, if this is one point that's more difficult for you.
It goes without saying, of course, that articulation in a business context is so important, because we want people to be able to understand what you're saying first time.
We want to try and reduce the risk of any miscommunication as much as possible.
It's also just going to help you feel more confident if you know that you're doing things right.
It's just going to make you feel a lot more secure.
The key point with this is it's all about muscle memory and training your mouth position.
Even if you're saying it in your head.
I know that you know it's a W, but you're not showing me with your mouth position.
Let's start with the W and we're going to use some famous people to help us remember these tricks.
And the first famous person we're going to have a look at for the sound W is William Wallace.
If you don't know who that is, I'm not really sure what to do.
Maybe I'll have to give you a popular film reference, which is he's the warrior guy in Braveheart.
He's a famous man in Scottish history.
In fact, if you do ever go to Scotland, I highly highly recommend.
If you want to see an example of a Scottish castle, I highly recommend going to Stirling Castle.
It's much better than Edinburgh Castle, just a little bit.
Top tip.
Anyway, I digress.
William Wallace is an excellent way to practice the articulation of the W.
I want you to imagine that you're blowing something to get the start mouth position.
I can't whistle actually.
I'm one of those people that can't whistle.
Like I can't do it.
But anyway, if I could whistle, I want you to bring your lips forward like you were whistling.
William Wallace.
Bring them forward, lips forward as if you're going to blow or whistle and then release them back.
William Wallace.
Wallace, not Fuliam Follis.
That's what sometimes happens is that W isn't sharp enough.
So your listener has to do a little bit of work.
Hopefully they get it from the context, but they might not.
And that might become a bit confusing.
And that's what we want to avoid.
Let's do a couple of William Wallace's.
William Wallace.
William Wallace.
Next on the list, we've got the wonderful Victoria Beckham.
If you're not sure who Victoria Beckham is, we need to have a serious conversation.
I'm not talking about the fashion empire that she has gone on to build.
I'm talking about being a founding member of the one and only girl group that I will care about, which is the Spice Girls, of course.
I'm afraid it's not negotiable or up for debate about the Spice Girls being the best girl group of all time on the planet.
However, she did of course go on to marry English footballer David Beckham, which really helps us out in this pronunciation exercise, which is to distinguish clearly between the V and the B sound.
V, which is a voiced.
Teeth, gently.
Lips, vibrate.
Victoria, Victoria.
A couple of common mistakes is making it sound a little bit like an F.
This is if you don't do the voiced part.
The voiced part is there's a vibration in your throat.
So if you're saying fic, Victoria, it sounds like an F, not Victoria.
There's got to be a vibration.
If you're finding it difficult, try just doing the first sound.
Victoria teeth gently on the lips okay, we're not like biting down or anything like that.
It's very subtle articulation.
Let's practice a couple of times victoria victoria, victoria.
Then let's have a look at Beckham.
Beckham.
This is a plosive.
It's voiced.
It's a different mouth position.
Lips are together.
Air behind.
Release.
Like an explosion.
A mini, subtle explosion.
It's not like Beckham.
I'm not like sort of, you know, hitting anybody with that sound.
But Beckham.
Beckham.
That sound is normally easier for people to do, but there has to be a distinction between the V and the B.
Victoria Beckham.
Let's try that a couple of times all together.
Victoria Beckham.
Victoria Beckham.
Last but not least, another consonant sound that people have difficulty with is the M, And we're going to take our inspiration from Marilyn Monroe.
What's the common mistake here?
It's that your lips aren't touching.
So it sounds like Marilyn Monroe.
Marilyn.
There has to be a closure.
There's no gap.
Marilyn Monroe.
Marilyn Monroe.
What also happens sometimes is people say things like, rather than sometimes.
Again, the lips have to touch fully.
I'm not clenching down on them or anything.
I'm not like Marilyn.
But again, subtle articulation.
Marilyn Monroe.
There you go.
Then there's a little exercise that you can do.
William Wallace, Victoria Beckham, Marilyn Monroe.
William Wallace, Victoria Beckham, Marilyn Monroe.
You might want to think about where you practice that.
I mean, if you're in the middle of the street, it might seem a little bit odd.
Maybe if at work, in the cafeteria, you might want to find a quiet space for that.
Otherwise, people might wonder what on earth you're doing.
But very useful for practicing that muscle memory.
All right, let's wrap it up there then.
I hope there's something that you can take away to help you feel more confident.
Thank you as always for squeezing in some training on Confident Business English with me this week.
I will see you same time, same place next week.
Bye-bye.
