hello again it's me Gabby from gonaturalenglish.com and today we're
going to talk about something really important a lot of people have been
experiencing some big changes lately have you had to change your work to work
from home you used to have face-to-face meetings but now you need to have video
conferences from home while you're working remotely well today we're gonna
talk about how to start and end a video conferencing call in English now this
might seem simple but there are some really important details that will help
you to have a smoother beginning a more confident conversation and a really
strong close or ending to your video call many people make the huge mistake
of being really unprepared about how to begin and end a video call and so today
we're gonna learn some really quick and easy ways that you can improve your
video calls whether they're on Zoom or Skype Google Hangouts or whatever video
conferencing platform you use after watching this video you're gonna have
much better calls whether they are for work professional reasons or just casual
calls with your friends and family people nowadays are doing a lot more
video calls real quick I want to give a huge thank you to Ling goda for
partnering on this video and let you know that there is still time to join
their online language sprints which gives you 100% of your cash back when
you join the language sprints and you take an online class each day of the
sprint you can also take the online Cambridge language test for free this is
a tremendous opportunity for you to improve your spoken English skills your
confidence and fluency by practicing online with their expert native tutors
as of now over 25,000 people have participated in the Ling
Gotha language sprint and shared with me their positive feedback about how it has
impacted their lives positively so I can't wait to share the details with you
about how you can participate and benefit from the next lingo to sprint
but now let me talk about how to begin your video call I want to know from you
can you tell me how you usually start and end a video call tell me the words
or the phrases that you use leave them in the comments and you can check to see
if they're good appropriate and correct a couple quick notes for your video call
even though you're not face-to-face eye contact it is still super important so
as soon as you get your video call connected make sure that you're giving
the feeling of eye contact now it's a little strange because you're not face
to face but don't look down and don't only look at the face of the other
person or people with whom you're speaking you need to look into the
camera on your webcam or your laptop or your mobile phone whatever you're using
to give the feeling of eye contact to the other person this is still super
important even if you're just doing a video call and not in person second it's
a really good idea if you're doing this for work or professional reasons to
record the call of course always asking if that's okay with other participants
first or take notes during the call sometimes it can be a little
overwhelming when you're dealing with technology and you don't want to forget
what you actually talked about during your phone meeting right now to start
the call of course you can imagine you might say something like hello or hi or
if it's a more casual call you might say hey if you're talking with maybe your
boyfriend or your girlfriend you'd say hey babe if you're talking with someone
more professionally of course we want to keep things really more formal and not
so casual like hey babe or hey honey in a professional call you want to say
hello and then a rest the other person by name so for
example hello mr. Smith or hello mrs. Rodriguez so nice to talk with you or
you might say good morning mr. Smith or if you're on a first-name basis you
could say good morning or good afternoon John or Mary or whomever you're speaking
with if it's later in the day you could say good evening but be careful please
don't say good night this is a common mistake and native English speakers
don't say good night until it's time to go to sleep and so on a
videoconferencing call you're probably not going to sleep so you don't want to
say good night simply say good evening as a greeting now since we're on a video
call you might want to do a quick tech check I usually ask can you hear me can
you see me is the audio working is the video working just to make sure
everything is running smoothly before I start the conversation then another
greeting like how are you today how has your day been so far or how is work
going how's everything these are all really good second greetings
after hello to just start the conversation a little bit of small talk
is always a good idea so one more time how are you how is it going how is your
day so far how is work how's everything now your response to these questions
should be shorts positive and to the points the response should really be one
or two words maybe good great everything's fantastic
can't complain never better now I actually made another video on this very
topic how to respond to the question how are you fluently confidently like a
native speaker and I'm going to link to that right up there so that you can
watch that next professional calls should now talk about the purpose of the
call or go over the agenda for example you might
say I'd like to talk about XY and Z another way of saying this using a
phrasal verb is let's go over X Y & Z or I'd like to review XY and Z if you've
already talked about something before I'd like to cover X Y & Z in this phone
call or this video call so again the verbs to use are talk with you about go
over something or cover something alright so now that you've successfully
begun your video conference call you're gonna have your conversation and then at
the end you need to end it do not just say bye and then end the conversation
this is a big mistake that I see people making that might not feel very
confident in their English fluency maybe you don't have the vocabulary or the
phrases you need to end a conversation smoothly but if you just say okay bye
it feels abrupt and rude so let me share some phrases that you can use to and
your conversation like an English pro it's always a good idea to say thank you
thank you for talking with me today or thank you for taking the time to talk
with me today thank you for taking the time to chat with me today or thank you
for making time for meeting with me today there are a few different
variations which can all convey the same meaning you can choose which one you
like to use the best if you're having a business meeting it's always a good idea
to summarize what you talked about it was great talking with you about X Y & Z
or I really enjoyed being able to cover X Y & Z with you today I appreciate your
time going over X Y & Z today it's been a pleasure talking about X Y & Z with
you and it's always a good idea to state the
next action steps for example I'll follow up with you in a couple of days
I'll touch base with you in a couple of days these two phrasal verbs follow up
and touch base are super common and you should use them when you're talking
about the next steps in your communication with someone you can
follow up or touch base by email phone or video call or even in person you
could also use the phrasal verb to get back in touch with you so use follow-up
touch base or get back in touch with you soon finally after you say thank you
summarize and talk about the next action steps you can close your call by saying
simply bye or goodbye if you're having a more casual call with friends or family
you might say buh-bye or if you have a more casual business you could say see
you later or talk to you soon so I hope these phrases and these tips
for your video conferencing calls were helpful I want you to feel more
confident and fluent in your English skills if you have any questions about
these phrases let me know in the comments now I promise I'd give you
details about the lingo de language sprint which I'm really excited about
and I hope that you take the opportunity to join when I was learning Spanish with
lingo de and their online lessons I made sure to learn some phrases to start and
end my video lesson calls with their teachers but it's not enough to just
know the phrases you really need to use them to practice them and that's how it
becomes second-nature or automatic for you to use these phrases also what I
enjoyed about learning with lingo de that you'll enjoy too is that their
lesson times are very flexible so you could schedule your online lesson after
work in the evenings or on the weekends I usually take lessons on Sundays
because Sunday's are usually less busy for me but if you have more time at home
than usual now it's a great time to get started with the lingo to language
Sprint's you get more I'm spent speaking and not just
listening to lectures with the lingo de small group classes that have an average
of three participants in each lesson also in each lesson there are structured
lesson materials so you know exactly what you're going to learn and what
you'll be able to do by the end of the lesson
now this upcoming lingo de language sprint starts on April 8th and ends on
July 6th you have two options for participation and allene go to language
sprints first of all these super sprints is
where you take 30 lessons each month for three months and when you complete all
of your lessons agreed upon you get 100 percent of your tuition money back this
is an amazing opportunity but if it feels like a little bit too much to
commit to I highly recommend the second option which is the half sprint where
you participate in 15 lessons per month for three months and you get 50% of your
tuition back this is a great opportunity if you're still working and maybe you
don't have as much time to do a daily lesson 30 days out of the month for
three months so it depends on you and your schedule but both of these are
great opportunities to improve your fluency and get a lot of practice also
it doesn't matter what your level is if you are a beginner intermediate level or
advanced speaker you can join because lingo de has the right level class for
you and you can join the sprints for English business English Spanish French
or German you could even join the sprint for more than one of these if you'd like
to improve your language skills in more than one language at once so how do you
sign up well the link to sign up is in the description and you need to sign up
by April 3rd the deadline is April 3rd but the sprint starts on April 8th so
you have to sign up in advance there is also a discount code coupon in the
description to save you 10 euros off your first month tuition to get started
you need to pay for your first month too again 100% refundable if you do the
super sprint and attend all of the agreed-upon classes if for some reason
you can't attend all of the agreed-upon classes it's not really a big deal you
just have to pay the tuition as you would for regular language classes
anyway lingotto will refund your money if you attend the agreed-upon number of
classes within each Sprint month by following the Sprint rules places in
this sprint are limited so if you want to take advantage of this offer I highly
recommend that you sign up today reserve your spot before they are full lingo de
challengers have been running for more than two years and have helped more than
25,000 language learners to improve their language skills you know they have
an Instagram account where they share their students stories and you can check
it out too to see what the experience would be like so check out their
Instagram account at Ling gota underscore official and if you have any
questions about joining the lingo to sprint you can leave them in the
comments and I'll check them out and see if I can help thank you again so much
for watching if you enjoy learning languages especially English as a Second
Language make sure to subscribe here to go natural English I hope that you
enjoyed these tips and have an amazing day thanks again and bye for now