40 English Phrases You Need for Online Meetings

in this video we're going to look at

some key words and phrases that you

absolutely need to know if you're having

online meetings in English so that you

can participate like a pro let's get

straight into it

let's start with small talk I think we

all know that feeling when you sign into

a meeting a couple minutes early and

it's just you and one other person there

it can be a little awkward so to break

the ice and make some polite

conversation you can have some good

open-ended questions like how's

everything in New York what's keeping

you busy these days

do you have any interesting projects on

the horizon have you been following the

and then name maybe a global event or

something important going on in your

industry for example

if you're the one leading the meeting

you need to say something to signal to

the group that it's time to begin and we

usually start this with words like okay

all right followed by things like it

looks like everybody's here so let's

kick off

Shall We Begin it's two o'clock so let's

get started

now a frustrating part of online

meetings is the tendency for people to

talk over each other even if they don't

necessarily mean to interrupt so when

that happens you can say something like

my apologies for interrupting go ahead

Teresa now if you want to interrupt

someone in face-to-face communication

you can do it more subtly with gestures

or facial expressions but in an online

setting you have to be a little more

direct it's always best to use the

person's first name to get their

attention in a polite way for example uh

Martina if I may Kevin can I jump in

here for a second

sorry to interrupt but now if someone

interrupts you you can say just let me

finish my point here

I'm not quite finished

or you can allow them to interrupt you

by saying go ahead

all right guys if you're finding this

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right now if you're leading a meeting or

presenting during a meeting and you need

to pause to do something like to get a

file or to share your screen communicate

to the group what you're doing don't

just go silent for example you can say

things like I'm gonna share my screen

now

bear with me while I pull up the

document

give me a second I'm going to check my

Wi-Fi connection

now what would an online meeting be

without some technical issues if you run

into a problem you can say apologies I'm

having some technical difficulties

there seems to be a problem with the

connection on my end

when your video doesn't move due to a

bad connection we use the Expression to

be frozen so we say for example the

screen is frozen or John you're Frozen

of course during online meetings we

often have audio issues which make it

hard for people to hear each other or

even understand what others are saying

so when that happens and you need to ask

someone to repeat themselves you can say

things like

I didn't catch that can you say that

again can you speak up a little

we can't hear you can you come closer to

the microphone if there's a lot of noise

where you are you can say excuse the

background noise if someone's microphone

is off you can say you're on mute

or sorry I was on mute and when you can

only hear parts of what someone is

saying because the connection is

interrupted we use the Expression to

break up so you could say to them you're

breaking up

now if someone's unexpectedly

disconnected from the meeting we say

that we've lost that person

did we lose Andrew you can also ask if

the person is still there are you there

Carla if everything's back to normal

then you can say oh Andrew's back

yes we can hear you now

if the meeting is taking longer than

planned and you need to leave before

it's finished you can say sorry I have a

hard stop at two o'clock I need to go or

more informally you can say sorry guys I

gotta jump or I gotta drop

now when the meeting is ending before

you sign off it's good business

etiquette to thank everyone and say

goodbye don't just sign off without

saying anything so you can say thank you

everyone bye have a nice weekend thanks

all have a good one cheers

all right guys I hope you found this

video helpful and I hope that you put

these words and phrases into use in your

very next online meeting so these were

all some of the right things to say but

what about some of the wrong things to

say in business English well check out

this video right here for seven of the

most common English mistakes that I see

in the workplace thanks so much for

watching and I'll see you there next