- Do you wanna sound more natural,
more fluent and more advanced
when you're speaking Business English?
Well, you might be surprised to find out
that you're making this common mistake
which is definitely not helping you
and my cat is not helping me with this video,
but that's okay.
Anyway, today I'll help you learn how to sound more natural,
and actually friendlier.
And the good surprise is,
it actually helps you speak simpler English.
Hi, I'm your English Coach Christina.
And welcome to Business English with Christina,
where you become better at business and better at English.
First, lemme ask you a question.
Do you feel like your English
is sometimes too like complicated or complex?
Like in your head, you're thinking,
you're trying to formulate your sentence,
you're thinking about the verb tenses,
the sentence structure, and your sentence just comes out
as this big complicated, unclear mess.
And then people don't quite react the way that you hoped.
Like you see on their face, they're like.
(upbeat music)
Well, if that sounds like you,
first of all, you're not alone, you can feel reassured.
I've seen a lot of my clients they make this mistake.
Basically, you're trying to sound more advanced,
to sound more intelligent, that's great.
But in the end,
your English comes out as just complicated
and you feel, you know that something is not right.
And for us native speakers, when we hear that,
it sounds like you're being too formal,
like you're trying to put a lot of distance between us,
you're maybe trying to show how smart you are,
and that's just not what you wanna do in a lot.
Okay, there are some situations
maybe you do want to do that, but not most of the time.
And the truth is, we native speakers
and advanced speakers also,
we just tend to use simpler language.
So, are you ready to make yourself sound more natural,
sound friendlier and actually use easier English?
Well, I've got three rules for you and plenty of examples.
And if you want to make some notes of the examples
from this lesson so that you remember them,
go over to christinarebuffet.com.
I'll put the link down below,
but I've got a worksheet for you that goes with this video
so that you can actually remember the things
that we're gonna look at today.
Rule number one, in conversation, just skip the word.
Skip I mean like, don't use.
Don't use those words
that we only use in writing in English.
Maybe you know which ones I mean
and maybe you're guilty of this, I know some of you are.
But that's okay, we all make mistakes.
Things like therefore, nevertheless,
moreover, notwithstanding, whereas.
Now, I'm not saying
we never use those in spoken English,
but in most everyday conversations,
including business conversations at work,
we just don't use those.
And a lot of times I'll hear my clients
using these words in their conversations
because they wanna sound better or more correct.
But in fact, it just makes them sound, I don't know,
overly formal, overly complicated, not very natural in fact.
But like I said, it's okay, we make mistakes.
You're watching this video
so you can correct those mistakes.
So lemme show you some examples,
concrete examples of what I mean.
The first one you'll hear, it's gonna be a little awkward,
too formal, too complex.
And the second one, it's more natural.
Normally, we require 24 hours to complete this work.
Nevertheless, I will attempt to meet your request.
Normally we need 24 hours to finish this work,
but let me see what I can do.
I'm working from home today,
therefore I'll attend the meeting on zoom.
I'm working from home today,
so I'll join the meeting on zoom.
Are you feeling like you wish you had thing
to like take notes on all of this?
Hey, good news. I've got something for you.
It's that worksheet that goes with this video
that you can go and get over at christinarebuffet.com.
Pause the video, link is in the comments,
and then come back and let's see some more examples.
All right.
Rule number two, avoid being overly, overly formal,
and possibly annoying other people.
So there are some expressions
that you may have learned back in school, for example,
that are not actually the way that we speak English
in everyday life.
And you'll see that when you're speaking more simply,
you actually create a better rapport with the other person
because you're not creating distance
with overly formal language.
Check out these examples.
One can sensibly advocate
that we should experiment with a new prototype next year.
What if we tried a new prototype next year?
And you know, in that first example there,
like I can totally imagine in my head
like some very stuffy, un-fun grammar teacher
telling their students
that they have to use the most sophisticated words
in the English language.
No, no, no. You don't have to do that.
In fact, it's better if you don't.
And rule number three,
and all of you who have difficulties conjugating your verbs,
you're gonna love this one.
Use the simplest verb form possible.
I know that English has a lot of verb tenses,
and I even made an entire video
on all of the verb tenses in English.
But the good news is that most of the time,
we only use a few of them.
And so when you're not sure, choose the simplest option.
So, when do you think you will have completed the report?
So, when do you think you'll finish the report?
Has everyone received the agenda?
Did everyone receive the agenda?
I will not be able to come to the meeting
because of the inability to join
when I will be working from home.
I can't be at the meeting because I'm working from home.
So you see, when you keep your Business English simple,
you actually sound more natural,
more advanced and friendly or just nicer.
And you'll make maybe the native speakers in your entourage,
if we can say that, you'll make them feel more comfortable
because you're speaking in a way that is more casual,
it's more relaxed, and you won't sound too cold
or distant or formal, and you'll feel much more confident
because you're using those simple structures
that you feel more comfortable with,
and if you don't use it, you lose it.
So what you can do to actually use everything
that you learned in this video today,
go over to my web site and get the worksheet
if you haven't already done it.
You can come back, watch this video again, make some notes.
And I promise that repetition
is going to lead to remembering.
And if you found this lesson helpful for you,
there are three things that I would love for you to do,
and that would really help me.
The first thing is give this video
a little thumbs up on YouTube,
and subscribe to my channel so I can continue
sharing these Business English lessons with you.
Like I said, go and get that worksheet
so that you can remember what you've learned today,
and go back and watch that lesson
on all of those different verb tenses
and you'll see that yes, there are some complex verb tenses,
but you don't need all of them.
Good news there. Yeah, all right.
Thank you so much for improving your English
with Business English with Christina,
and I'll see you next time.