I know your biggest barrier isn't to simply communicate. You can make yourself understood even if it's not always perfect or very elegant. What you want is to sound better. More advanced, more natural. I'm going to share with you on key word I think would be great to add to your vocabulary that comes up quite when we are explaining our perspective business. This is another episode where you I invite you to practice out loud in an interactive exercise.
About Little Snippets: Mini episodes with to-the-point business communication tips to keep you learning and moving forward before the start of the brand new season of Confident Business English on 25th September 2024.
Anna: [00:00:00] Let's do another little snippet. I know the thing for you is that you can already communicate. It's not necessarily your biggest barrier. You can make yourself understood, but you want to use better words, more natural words today, I want to share with you one adverb that I actually find myself using all the time, but I hardly hear anybody use, and that is the word equally.
Anna: If you're a very keen listener of the podcast, you may have heard me use this quite a lot on the episodes. I was thinking the other day, like, what are some of the words that I use all the time, but I never hear other people using or my clients use. And this was one of the first things that came into my mind.
Anna: If you don't use this word already, then we're essentially starting from a clean slate. So we need to build a new pathway in your brain, essentially. It's not just a case of, oh, equally perfect. Well, I've heard it and then I'm going to use it. Your brain doesn't work like that. It needs a little bit more [00:01:00] help to help it stick in your mind.
Anna: And that's what we're going to do today. And we're going to build the foundation up. And hopefully by the end of the episode, we're going to get you practicing it yourself. The key thing I want to get across first of all, is equally does mean different things in different contexts. If you're interested in that, I'll leave a link in the show notes and you can go into more detail, but I'm interested in using equally with this specific meaning, which is to add an idea that you think is just as important as what you've said.
Anna: I think the best way to illustrate this is with an example. Let's imagine it's in the context of presentations and giving advice for presentations. I might find myself saying something like, It's really important to make sure you prepare enough, equally, It can be a really good idea to read your presentation out loud, just so that you can iron out any bits that don't work very well.[00:02:00]
Anna: Just as a side note, the phrasal verb I'm using there is iron out, which means to make something smooth, to make it work better. The best way to remember it is if you literally think about an iron, when you use an iron on your clothes, you are trying to remove the creases and make it smooth. So we essentially just transplant that and put it in a business context.
Anna: If we want to iron out things that don't work, we're trying to make them smooth so that they're better and that they work. Let's have a look at another example. Imagine we're in an online business and we're talking about customer satisfaction. I could say delivering really high quality products is really important, but equally having a fantastic delivery service also really helps.
Anna: You'll notice how I added a but before equally, which can be quite common sometimes. And I also added a little also in that [00:03:00] second sentence. Before we move on then, some very important things equally goes at the beginning of the sentence. So you have one sentence, for example, delivering high quality products is important.
Anna: Equally, having a fantastic delivery service also helps. What follows? This is the technical aspect of it. You can either have a verb in gerund, Or you can have a subject verb clause. To recap then, we're using it as an adverb to add a new point to talk about something that we feel is just as important as what we've said before.
Anna: Now over to you. I would like you to practice. And what I'm going to do is I'm going to give you two sentences and I want you to link them with equally. It's super straightforward. This is not a difficult exercise. It's just to get you practicing it and saying it out loud. If you can't say it out loud where you are, say it in your head.
Anna: But this is a really important part of the [00:04:00] process of helping this type of vocabulary to stick so that you will actually say it in real life. Here you go. I'm going to give you the two elements. Supporting your team is very important. Recognizing individual efforts is key.
Anna: The answer would be supporting your team is very important. Equally, Recognizing individual efforts is key. It's important to prepare in advance. It's a good idea to read your presentation out loud.
Anna: It's important to prepare in advance. Equally, it's a good idea to read it out loud. There you go. That's equally. If you're thinking about how you could use it, try to come up with some different sentences for your [00:05:00] job, for your industry that you could fit. Just some short sentences like I had in the example there.
Anna: All right. I hope that was useful and I'll see you in the next one.