Speak Better English with Harry | Episode 559

In today’s episode of Speak Better English with Harry, we’re going to talk about some essential English verbs you can use at work. These are important for anyone who wants to improve their Business English or sound more professional in meetings, presentations, and emails.

You’ll hear clear examples and practical explanations to help you use these verbs naturally in real workplace situations. Knowing how to choose the right verbs will help you describe your responsibilities, communicate clearly with colleagues, and speak English at a higher, more confident level.

By the end of this episode, you’ll be able to use professional English vocabulary more accurately and make a stronger impression at work or in your English exam.

Transcript

0:09

Hi there, this is Harry. Welcome back to Advanced English Lessons with Harry, where I try to help you to get a better understanding of the English language, to help you with your conversational skills, your business English skills, interview skills, whatever your goals are, we're here to help. And for those of you and your friends or family who want one-to-one lessons, well, you know what to do. Just get in touch, www.englishlessonviaskype.com and you can apply for a free try lesson and we'll be very happy to hear from you and very happy to help you. So in this particular podcast, again, we're going to take a look at verbs. And in this case, the verbs that we're looking at are those used when talking about job responsibilities. So I'm going to give you a list of verbs connected with job responsibilities and then also practice the pronunciation. So let me give you the verbs first of all. Coordinate, facilitate, liaise, oversee, participate, promote, seek out and track. So I'll give you a meaning of each of them and an example and then the pronunciation. So to coordinate. Well, when we want to coordinate, we want to get people together to get something organized. Okay, so we're going to coordinate the marketing plan, means we're going to get the various people involved with marketing into a room and we're going to discuss what the plan is, what about the promotions, the material that we need, the advertising space, whatever it might be. We're going to coordinate everything so it happens in a timely manner. Coordinate. And the pronunciation, coordinate, coordinate. Good. Second, to facilitate. But when we want to facilitate, we want to help. To facilitate a meeting means we're going to help with the meeting, either by providing a room or, in fact, sitting in on the meeting and acting as the facilitator, whereas two groups of people are having a discussion or an argument and you're there to facilitate means to help them to find solutions to the problems that they might have. There's no point having this meeting next week unless somebody is willing to act as the facilitator. Who can we get to facilitate at this meeting? Okay, so pronunciation, facilitate, facilitate. Good, excellent. Next, liaise or liaise, somebody, some other people pronounce it. Liaise, I hear, but I prefer liaise, liaise with. We often use the preposition with, liaise with. Okay, and the pronunciation liaise. Yeah? So when we liaise, we coordinate, we communicate, and we make contact with people. It's quite a formal word, so you often hear people using it in business English. I will liaise with you next week when I get all the documents, meaning I will make contact with you next week when I get all of the documents. Who will liaise with the legal team? So we're looking for some volunteer to contact the legal team to find out what we need to do to move this along. So somebody puts up the hand or somebody is volunteered to liaise with the legal team, to liaise with the central bank, to liaise with the auditors. Okay, so to make contact with, to communicate with liaise. To oversee something, and this is spelt double E, not EA, so O-V-E-R-S-E-E. To oversee something means to watch over. Okay, so if you're overseeing the transport operations, it means you're responsible for that. You're watching to see what happens and you're keeping an eye on everything that everything is shipped where it should be shipped and everything is sent to where it should be sent to oversee operations, to oversee the marketing plan, meaning to look over, to keep an eye on, to watch out for. Okay, so remember that's got a double E and the sound is oversee. To oversee means to look over or to watch, to oversee. Next, participate. Well, when we participate, we join in or we take part in participate, to take part in. So there's a board meeting or a marketing meeting or some scheduled meeting and your boss sends a message around with the names of the people who should participate or the names of the people that he is expecting to participate in that particular meeting. And of course, your name happens to be there. Do you really want me to participate? Do you really want me there? Yes, of course. You're the key guy from this account. You need to be there to answer the questions. I don't have the information. So I need your participation. I need you to be involved. Participate. Participate. Participate. Promote. To promote. Well, we can use the verb to promote in many different ways. We can promote somebody from a junior position to a management position, from a management position to a more senior position to promote, to give them a promotion. We can also promote our products. If we're selling our products into a supermarket, we might have a special promotion to promote the launch of a new product. So we're looking for shelf space from the supermarket owners that we can have our product on display where the shoppers will see it, the customers will see it when they come into the supermarket. So we want to promote our premium brand product, to promote. And then the pronunciation, promote, promote. And get that sound at the end. Promote. Promote. Good, excellent. Okay, seek out, to seek out. Seek out means to find, to look for, to seek out help, to seek out partners to partner with us in the promotion, production, and selling of this particular product. We will seek out investors to invest money in our plan. We need to expand our business. We need some investors. So we will seek out some angel investors or somebody who's willing to back us, who wants to get some return on their money, to seek out. And let me give you the pronunciation again. It's got two parts to it. The verb seek, meaning to look and out. The preposition to seek out. Seek. That K-sound, seek out. Excellent. And then finally, to track as a verb. To track means to follow, yeah, so or to go after something. We need to track the performance of this particular product. How does it sell? Where does it sell best? Where are the best locations? To track where the customers come from, online customers, where did they see the advertisement? How did they hear about us? We want to track, to identify where our customers are coming from, which will help us in future in terms of future promotions, future advertising. Track. That's the K sound again. Track. Track. Okay, so let me give them once more under pronunciation. Coordinate. Coordinate. Facilitate. Facilitate. Liaise. Liaise. Oversee. Oversee. Participate. Participate. Promote. Promote. Seek out. Seek out. Track. Track. Okay, well, that's these verbs connected with job responsibilities. I hope that you've understood them and you can practice the pronunciation. Again, if you want any help, well, please contact me on www.englishlessonviaskype.com. Always happy to hear from you. Always happy to try and include some suggestions that you have in any of my future podcasts. Well, thanks for listening. Join me again soon.