Business English Lesson on Meetings

Lesson 6～Lesson 9

Business English Lesson on Meetings

Lesson 6: Before the meeting

There are many questions to ask before a meeting. If you are curious about what the meeting will cover, you will need to ask the organizer of the meeting. You can also ask things like how long the meeting will take, and who is coming to the meeting. Let's try a couple of these sentences.
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"Hi Jack. Do you know who is coming to your meeting at 2:00?"
"Who all did you invite to the triage meeting?"

"Hi Jack. How long do you think the meeting will be?"
"I have to schedule another appointment at 4:00 but I don't want it to overlap with yours. How long is the meeting going to be?"
"Is the meeting going to be more than an hour?"
"What time was the meeting again?"
"When are you going to make that presentation? I thought it was today?"

Here are common statements people use when they can't attend a meeting.
"I have another appointment that conflicts with your meeting. I will not be able to make it."
"I have another meeting that I cannot miss. I won't be able to make yours."
"I won't be able to go to the 3:00 meeting. I have another appointment at the same time."
"I can't go to the meeting at 4:00. I have a doctor's appointment. Can you take notes for me?"
"I'm going to be out of town tomorrow, so I won't be able to attend the quarterly meeting. Can you send me a mail on the topics that were discussed?"

Lesson 7: Canceling a Meeting

If you are the meeting organizer, then there are times when you have to cancel a meeting. Here are some sentences you can use for this situation.
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"There are four people who will not be able to attend the meeting tomorrow. I am going to reschedule the meeting to a more convenient time."
"The director asked that we postpone the finance meeting until the quarterly report comes out. So I'll send an update with the new date and time later this week."

Some meetings are weekly meetings that occur at the same time. It is common that these meetings are canceled when there is nothing to talk about.
"There is nothing new to discuss this week, so we are going to cancel this week's agenda meeting."

"I am running late this morning. Let's postpone the meeting until the afternoon."
"I can't make it in tomorrow, so let's cancel this week's meeting. I'll email everyone if something new comes up."

Lesson 8: During the Meeting

If you have to talk in a meeting, there are three general reasons. You might have to ask a question, state your opinion, or you will have to ask for clarity on something you didn't understand. Let's see some of these sentences.
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Raising a Question

Depending on the type of meeting, you might have to wait for the meeting to end before asking a question, you might have to raise your hand to ask a question, or you can simply ask a question any time. I'll give an example on each of these.

If you are in a type of meeting where you can ask a question at any time, then you can say this.
"I have a question. Why is marketing not handling the portion on end user analysis? They usually did this work in the past."
"How will the new addition to our project affect the deadline that we have?"
"Are we making sure to incorporate user feedback on the changes we are making?"

Stating your Opinion

Basically, you can ask any questions, there is no specific way to do it. This is the same when you are talking about your opinion. Someone might ask what you think about the idea or situation. You will simply speak your answer.

"I agree with Mark. The correct approach is to send out the tools to our partners before making it public to everyone."
"In my opinion, I think we should introduce our new line of printers in August. Many companies get more funding at this time, and students are school shopping. Our target market will be more responsive to our ads during this time period."
"I think we can go either way. I believe both solutions will take care of it."

Asking for clarity

Asking for clarity is similar to asking a question. The only difference is that they already answered it and you don't understand. So you should state exactly what you don't know, or ask for clarity on a specific part of the question.
"I didn't understand why we are going to be late. I thought we had everything planned out early. What were the reasons again?"

"Can you elaborate on how this process can help the sales department?"
"Can you clarify the second step in your solution proposal? I don't understand why it is necessary."

Lesson 9: After the Meeting

It is common to talk about meetings afterwards. Sometimes it is to say how useless it was, or that you were bored, but there are times when someone might ask you for feedback. Other times, you might want feedback if you were the person holding the meeting. Let's cover these here.
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