How to Sound Smarter at Work

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Hello naturals, welcome back to go natural English, it's me Gabby your favorite American English teacher today

I match my plants and today I'm gonna help you to speak more professional

powerful English in the workplace you might feel

Frustrated with being limited to really basic English vocabulary, but you don't know where to start

You don't know where to begin to improve your vocabulary

So we are gonna work on that today with 12 words that you should know

To make your English more professional and more powerful

This will help you if you're in a job interview at the workplace in a meeting or in academic

Situations like at your University now

I don't know if you knew this

But I have been an English professor at universities in the United States and in Japan

and I've also been a business English trainer at

multinational corporations both

Abroad and in the US so I am here to help you with your professional English

Now we're gonna take a look at twelve words

Now the number one thing that you want at work or in any of these situations is to sound professional

so using these words at least some of them will help gain you the respect that you

Want and deserve. This is an easy way to sound more impressive in English

and these small changes will make a big impact when you speak stay tuned until the end because the last word is a

Replacement for the most unprofessional sounding word that you definitely want to avoid number one

certainly, you can use this instead of saying yes, or

Okay, which are fine, but very basic boring words. So to sound more professional

Say certainly, for example, if your boss asks, you could you come to the meeting today?

You can say certainly instead of okay, or sure

Would you mind making some extra?

Photocopies for everyone certainly certainly I can do that. Certainly. That's no problem. Certainly

certainly

We can also use the word

certainly to mean definitely for example

This is certainly a wonderful English lesson

Next many people are afraid of change

And they really don't like when they already did some work and then they have to change it

so instead of using the word change, let's

use a more powerful more professional vocabulary word

modify to

modify

Now we're going to have to modify this

Project timeline because we're a bit delayed after some

unforeseen

circumstances

Unforeseen circumstances is a bonus phrase

That sounds very smart which basically means some things happen that you didn't expect

unforeseen

circumstances we need to

modify the schedule because the last speaker ran late so modify is usually used for schedules or

Timelines you can also modify a report or an email to in our professional lives

We all should have goals. But instead of using this very common basic word goals

Let's use a more professional version

objectives objectives

Another option would be

aspiration

aspiration but the difference is objective can be used really for anything a

project your career or

anything that you would like to achieve an

Aspiration is really more about your personal dreams. So for example if you're in an interview

Your interviewer might ask you. Well, what are your goals for your

Professional life and you could say my aspiration is to someday become department manager. For example

But you can also say objective my objective is to become

department manager you could say the objective of the project is to reach

1,000 people instead of saying guess which in and of its self can sound a bit weak. We should say

imagine if you feel like you're not sure about something or you want to share a guess say I

Imagine that's correct. I

Imagine this would have good results. I

Imagine that our boss would agree with this

I imagine this project will take about one week where guests might make you sound a bit unsure

Imagine makes you sound like a visionary

Instead of the basic word think let's use consider

Consider let's consider the possibilities. Will you consider?

Modifying the format now if you're meeting with someone and they're being a bit confusing instead of saying what do you mean?

Which can sound quite direct and not very professional. Ask the person to

Elaborate to explain more to tell you more information or give you examples. Could you?

Elaborate on that last point should I elaborate or is this clear now? Don't say

happen say arise

Arise we've had some unforeseen

complications arise

Surprisingly no problems have arisen

Should any questions arise please don't hesitate to ask

Instead of saying result which is already a good professional English vocabulary word

Let's step it up a level and sake

Ramification now ramification is more specific than a result a

ramification is a result or a consequence but

ramification

usually has a

Negative connotation. So be aware of that. For example, if we modify the timeline the

ramifications could be

severe if you just want to say some positive results you could say consequence or

Results result is just fine - but if you want to sound really smart and there's something negative

That would be the result use ramification. Don't ask for opinions ask for

perspectives or

Prerogatives. What's your perspective on this issue? What's your prerogative?

On this point, I love these words. Let's practice saying them because they're a bit tricky to pronounce

Perspective pay attention to that stress perspective and

Prerogative

Prerogative when I hear this word I do

Always remember the Bobby Brown song or also a Britney Spears songs

So you could listen to those to practice your pronunciation

Now perspective or prerogative are for asking an individual's opinion

But if you want to ask a group of people

you'll sound really smart if you ask what is the

consensus now consensus means what do we generally agree on so you're not asking

for each individual person's opinion

You're actually asking what is the general agreement here everyone? It seems the consensus is okay

Let's see if we can reach a general consensus. Don't say easy. Say straight forward

straightforward means simple uncomplicated or easy but it sounds a lot better when you say

Straightforward than easy. It sounds more professional

More powerful and more academic and smarter. So this project should be pretty straightforward

I don't foresee any

complications now many people consider the overuse of the word like to be very

Unprofessional so especially if you are in an interview or a professional situation

avoid using the word like

Especially more than twice in one sentence

Of course we can use the word like it can mean many things

but if you're using as a filler like

to like

say

Like when you don't know like what else to say? It's like really unprofessional

So avoid using it as a filler and another meaning of like is to say for example

If you'd like to learn all the ways that native English speakers use

The word like you can click up there to watch a really great video where I explain

every way we use it and how you should and shouldn't use it now in a professional situation if you want to say for

Example avoid using like because it's so basic and so overused and instead say for instance

For example or such at we should modify this designs colors

For instance more green and blue. I would like this campaign to have more diversity

For instance. The model should be different ages next week. We are going to be talking about how to ace any

interview how to answer the most difficult interview questions using

professional English, of course

so make sure that you subscribe and turn the

Notification bell on because these days it's not enough to subscribe you won't get notified

You have to actually turn the notifications on so that you don't miss out last week

We talked about phrases that you can use and your business email writing and that video is right over here

So I'll see you there. Thanks so much

I hope you enjoyed this video and I'll see you there and then I'll see you in next week for our

Interview video lesson. Bye for now