Hello, YouTube fans. It's Jill, how are you doing?
I am back and I promised you I'd be back to talk about focus words.
Last week,
we talked about the information words inside of our thought chunks
because those information words are essential. Those nouns and verbs,
adjectives, and adverbs. They deliver the message.
But then the next question becomes, well,
information words are more important than structure words,
the prepositions and articles and pronouns and auxiliary verbs.
But what's the focus word?
What's the most important word?
Now the rule generally says that when we introduce a subject,
so if we're having a conversation and we introduce the idea of,
uh, employee engagement,
or if we're talking to a friend and we're talking about our,
our next, uh, bicycle trip, .
When we introduce the subject of employee engagement,
we look for the noun that is closest
to the pause. So for example,
employee employee engagement.
When we say employee engagement, word partnership,
employee is noun. Engagement is noun.
In that word partnership, we're gonna stress the word employee,
employee engagement. So if I say, "In today's meeting,
we're going to start by talking about employee engagement." So it's
that employee engagement.
That's next to the pause and that word gets stressed.
Now, if it's a conversation and then we start saying, "Well,
you know, we don't really feel that employee engagement is going very well."
Now,
all of a sudden I'm not emphasizing employee engagement because I've already
introduced the topic. I wanna emphasize the "well", it's not going well.
Well,
what do we need to do to improve our employee engagement?
Now the word "improve" becomes important,
etc., etc. So as we,
as the conversation progresses, we look for new information to highlight.
And that's key about focus words. When we introduce the topic,
it's that noun, and that's closest to the pause.
What's that topic that we're talking about?
And then it keeps changing depending on the most
important information. Now,
this could be tricky for non-native English speakers because it's possible in
your own language, that there might be a different.
Way of emphasizing words. In English,
think about introducing the topic that
last information word closest to that noun.
That's closest to the pause.
But then to get better at knowing what to do next,
listen to interviews. Listen to people,
having conversations in the workplace.
Pay attention to what others are doing.
Cuz that's really the best way you're gonna master the American accent.
So I hope you've enjoyed today's video about focus words.
Remember to like, to share,
to subscribe to the by Jill Diamond channel.
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If you want to join a group of international professionals who are
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And if you're fluent, look for the link inside of today's video,
where you can get on the waitlist for a really important program.
There is a Sept,
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Thanks so much for being here. Bye.