Speak English confidently on the phone! 📞

Hi English learners! 👋 

Welcome back to the The English Workout by ChatBubble. The weekly newsletter that helps intermediate and advanced learners, like you, achieve English fluency 💌 

Let’s play

I’ve noticed most of you open my emails in the morning, so I understand that I’m probably interrupting your morning coffee 😉 

If you’re still waking up, here’s a quick word game before we get into today’s main topic.

HOW TO PLAY: Find all the words in each category to move on to the next level. Can you see 7 items of clothing in the grid below?

How to avoid misunderstandings in English

If you’re practising English conversation in the real world, which I hope you are, you've probably experienced, at least once, a moment when there's some confusion and it leads to a breakdown in communication. Face to face conversation is difficult enough, but what about when you have to speak on the phone or over video call?

No need to panic. Today you’re going to learn what you need to say to clear up any confusion and get to the end of the call. Does that sound good? 

Let’s look at some common situations that cause confusion and risk leading to a breakdown in communication.

1. You don’t understand a word or phrase the other person uses.  

2. The person is speaking too quickly or too quietly. 

3. You need to know the spelling of a word. This is quite common with surnames or company names you’re not familiar with.

4. You need someone to stop speaking for a second while you do something, like find a pen or get your phone charger. We’ll see how to manage that politely.

5. You might need to ask for confirmation. Did they say 13 or 30, for example?

Listen to this business phone call about a fantastic product, the umbrella hat, and see if you can identify the phrases they use to manage the situations we’ve just spoken about.

Quiz time!

Were you listening carefully? Practice your understanding with the worksheet below. Go on, give it a click ↖️ 

(😮‍💨 psst! The answers are on the last page!)

Leave a comment or hit reply to say “hi” if you enjoyed this edition of The English Workout.

See you next time 😀 

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