Business English
Effective Meetings (Summary)
Effective Meetings (Summary)
1. What makes a good meeting?
Good preparation – Written agenda
Clear objectives
Good chair – Effective control
Reaching objectives
Respecting the timing of the meeting
2. Types of Meetings
Information-giving meeting
Emergency meeting
Routine meeting
Decision-making meeting
Meeting with clients or customers
3. Structure of decision-making meetings
Discuss or analyse the situation
Define the problem
Set an objective
State imperatives and desirables
Generate alternatives
Establish evaluation criteria
Evaluate alternatives
Choose among alternatives
4. Meetings Vocabulary:
The agenda
The items
The minutes
The chair
The purpose
To postpone
To summarize
To close
To move on
To report
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Business English
Effective Meetings (Summary)
5. Chairing a meeting: The Chair’s role
Open meeting and welcome participants
State objectives and introduce agenda
Introduce speakers
Introduce discussion
Prevent interruptions and keep discussion on track
Move things along
Summarize discussion and actions to be taken
Ask for participants comments
Close meeting
6. Language Focus: Opening a meeting
Right, let’s begin (let’s start)
Thank you (all) for coming…
We’ve received apologies from…
Any comments on our previous meeting?
7. Language Focus: Stating objectives and introducing agenda
We are here today to hear about plans for…
Our objective today is to discuss…
What we want to do today is…
The main purpose of this meeting is to…
On the agenda, you’ll see that there are three items to discuss
You’ve all seen the agenda…
8. Example of an agenda
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
Apologies for absence
Minutes of previous meeting
Chair’s opening address
Personnel changes
Review of Marketing performance
New products
Marketing plans
Any other business
Date of next meeting
9. Language Focus: Introducing speakers
I’d like to ask Mary to tell us about…
Can we hear from Mr. Rossi on this?
I know that John has prepared a statement on his Department’s views…
Perhaps Mrs. Conti could tell us about…
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Business English
Effective Meetings (Summary)
10. Language Focus: Asking for participants comments
What do you think?
How do you feel about this?
What are your views on that?
Any comments on this?
11. Grammar Focus: Reported Speech
Direct question:
Why did she leave her job?
Indirect questions:
Could you tell me why she left her job?
I wonder why she left her job.
I have no idea why she left her job.
I’d like to know why she left her job.
I’m not sure why she left her job.
12. Wh- questions:
Questions beginning with a question word (who, where, which, why, when, what,
how, how much...)
13. Yes/No questions:
Report Yes/No questions by using if or whether and by changing the tense of the
verb:
Direct question:
Are you planning to stay late?
Indirect question:
She asked me if I was planning to stay late.
She asked me if whether was planning to stay late.
14. Reporting verbs
There are many more verbs other than say and tell to report other people’s speech:
Warn, advise, order, encourage, remind, persuade
 these verbs are followed by an object + infinitive
He advised his staff to be very careful.
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Business English
Effective Meetings (Summary)
15. Other reporting verbs
Offer, refuse, promise
 these verbs are followed by an infinitive
She offered to help me with my report.
Admit, deny, apologize for
 these verbs are followed by the -ing form
They denied doing anything wrong.
16.Levels of agreement
There are many levels of agreement:
---------------Disagree totally
----------------------wait to be convinced
-------------- -----------------limited
agreement but
agreement
no conviction
------------------
totally committed
17. Agreeing and disagreeing
Do you agree or disagree with the following statements? How would you respond to them?
a)
b)
c)
d)
e)
Large companies are less efficient than state companies.
The flatter the structure, the better the organization.
Governments shouldn’t try to protect their own national companies.
Women make better managers than men.
Marketing is the most important function in a company.
18. Language focus : Agreeing and disagreeing
Total disagreement
I totally disagree.
I couldn’t agree less.
You must be joking!
Wait to be convinced
I can see what you’re getting at.
There are two sides to the argument.
On the one hand…on the other…
I’m not sure/convinced about…
I just think we need more time.
Limited agreement
I agree, but
I’m not against, it, but…
Yes, I’m with you.
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Business English
Effective Meetings (Summary)
19. Interruptions can have different intentions:





To
To
To
To
To
ask for clarification
add opinion
ask for more details
change the direction of the discussion
disagree
20. Language focus: Interrupting
Excuse me, may I interrupt?
If I may interrupt, could you explain…
Sorry to interrupt, but…
Do you think so? My impression is that…
What? That’s impossible. We/ I think…
Just a moment….
Can I say something here?
21. Handling interruptions
Different ways of handling interruptions:





Promise to come back to a point later
Politely disagree with an interruption
Say the interruption is not relevant or that time is short
Politely accept the interruption and respond to it before continuing
Reject a suggestion.
language focus – Handling interruptions
Yes, go ahead.
Sorry, please let me finish…
If I may finish this point…
Can I come to that later?
That’s not really relevant at this stage…
Can we leave that to another discussion?
I’m afraid I can’t agree with you on that. As I was saying…
That’s out of the question.
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Business English
Effective Meetings (Summary)
22. Phrasal Verbs for meetings
Preposition/
Adverb
Phrasal
Verb
Explanation Notes
Example Sentence
On
to be on
for meetings,
appointments,
parties, etc.
Is the meeting for tomorrow on?
On
to hold on
To wait a short time
Hold on a minute! That is
completely irrelevant.
Into
To look into
something
Investigate
Jane, could you look into that
possibility for us?
Off
to be off
not valid anymore
I'm afraid the deal is off with
Smith.
Off
to call off
to cancel
She had to call off her
appointment with Jack because
she was ill.
Off
to put off
to postpone an
appointment
Can we put that meeting off
until tomorrow?
Up
To wrap
something
up
To finish, used for
meetings,
presentations, etc.
That wraps things up, so thanks
for coming everyone.
Up
To come up
To appear
That point is coming up in a
moment.
Ahead
To go ahead
To proceed
The construction of the bypass
must go ahead. We’ll lose the
client if we don’t complete it on
time.
Over
To go
through
To review
Let’s just go over the decisions
that have been made today.
* Some of these phrasal verbs have several other meanings!!!!
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Business English
Effective Meetings (Summary)
23. What are Phrasal verbs?
A phrasal verb is a verb + preposition or adverb
* Phrasal verbs are often used in conversation instead of more formal verbs
e.g. go on instead of continue.
Some phrasal verbs have a literal meaning.
e.g. Prices have gone up a lot.
Many phrasal verbs have an idiomatic (=non-literal) meaning.
e.g. Did you find out how much next year’s budget is?
24. Phrasal verbs : meanings
The same verb with a different preposition has a different meaning.
Compare :
Joan, can you look after the minutes for us?
I’ve been looking for someone to replace Carol for 3 weeks.
Some phrasal verbs have more than one meaning.
Compare:
I get on well with my colleagues.
Let’s get on the train. It’s about to leave.
25. Types of Phrasal verbs : Separable or not?
There are four kinds of phrasal verbs.
1) Phrasal verbs without an object (non-separable)
e.g. break down
The new coffee machine we bought has broken down.
2) Phrasal verbs that can be separated by an object
e.g. turn down
* If the object is a noun, it can go either after both parts of the
phrasal verb or between them.
We had to turn down their offer./We had to turn their offer down.
* If the object is a pronoun it must go between the two parts.
We turned it down.
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Business English
Effective Meetings (Summary)
26. Types of Phrasal verbs : Separable or not?
1) Phrasal verbs that can’t be separated by an object.
e.g. look for
John’s looking for potential new clients.
2) Phrasal verbs with 2 prepositions/adverbs
e.g. look forward to
I look forward to meeting you again.
27. Ending the meeting
2 general rules
1) Meetings should end on time!
2) Decision-making meetings should end with decisions!
The Chair should close the meeting with:
|
V
a restatement of the objectives
|
V
a summary of decisions taken
|
V
A summary of the action now required
|
V
Reference to any individual responsibilities.
|
V
Fix a date for a new meeting (if necessary).
|
V
Thank people for coming.
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Business English
Effective Meetings (Summary)
28. Ending the meeting : language focus
 Summarising
I think we should end there. Just to summarise…
We’ve covered everything, so I’d like to go over the decisions we’ve taken..
So, to conclude…we’ve agreed…
 Confirming action
We’ll contact…
John will…
We’ve got to…
We need to look at…
 Referring to next contact
We’ll meet again next month…
We look forward to hearing from you…
It’s been a pleasure to see you today and I look forward to our next meeting…
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