How to Succeed in Work Meetings (Even if English isn’t your first language!)

Video Description

In this lesson, you’ll learn how to feel more confident in any meeting, online or in person, when English is not your first language. You will learn to: • Remind yourself that mistakes are okay (“English is not my first language”). • Ask politely if people understand you (“Excuse me, did that make sense?”). • Focus on sharing your ideas—you were hired for a reason! • Ignore distracting people or nervous thoughts and keep going. • Practice reading your own body language and eye contact by recording yourself. These simple steps will help you speak up, join discussions, and show your ideas clearly in work or staff meetings. You can do it! https://www.engvid.com/how-to-succeed-in-work-meetings Sign up for private lessons, buy my teaching book, and more at https://EnglishWithRonnie.com More videos like this: Glow-Up Your English: Improve Fluency and Confidence https://youtu.be/G0JsFFi8vxg Body Language: How to tell if someone is bored or interested! https://youtu.be/3tntO3hZTQY TRANSCRIPT: Hi there. I'm Ronnie, and today we're going to talk about something that's kind of boring. Oh, no, don't say that. Important. Yes. Meetings. Yay. So, you can have business meetings, you can have staff meetings, you can have meetings with your... With your friends and... No. That isn't a meeting. That's fun time. So, whether you're doing business or staff or work meetings online or in person, I'm here to help you build your confidence while doing these scary meetings in English. Now, I know it's difficult. Why? Because English maybe is not your first language. So, through all this, I want you to remind yourself. And this is... If you take anything from this video, take this. English is not my first language, so any mistakes that I make in the meeting, that's cool. It doesn't matter. I don't care. And if people at the meeting are kind of putting you down or dissing you because you don't speak as a natural English speaker, you can quite simply say to them, "Well, excuse me. How many other languages do you speak other than English?" None. Okay. Well, just to let everyone know, again, English is not my first language, and I'm doing this bilingually, so let's go. Let's build this confidence up. In person, online, doesn't matter. You all have the same anxiety. Maybe some more in person, some more online. I don't know. Everyone's different. Everyone's different. And this idea came to me because I was in a store, and I saw a person that worked in the store, and I said very clearly in English, native speaker to native speaker, "Excuse me. Where's the pet section?" The staff member looked dumbfounded or drew a blank, was like... And it was seriously that long of a pause. And she said, "What?" And I thought, "Okay, Ronnie, relax, relax, relax. This person, maybe they were... I don't know." Again, perfect English, short question, native speaker to native speaker, okay? "Excuse me. Where's the pet section?" She's like, "Oh, it's over there." And I thought to myself, "Dude, the thing that I told you was a very well put together, grammatically sound sentence." I didn't mumble, "My pet section", I made eye contact, I was direct, I was friendly, I had a smile on my face, and she still couldn't respond. She didn't get it. And I thought, "Imagine if I was in the native speaker and I asked someone in a store, 'Excuse me. Where's the pet section?'" And their response was... I would feel like I'm not communicating well. But guess what? Mm-mm, mm-mm, mm-mm, it's not you. You probably speak English really, really well. Okay? But you lack some confidence. So maybe you're at the meeting or you're online and you see the other people, the other people out there in human land, and maybe their facial expressions are like... Or whatever people do during a meeting. Their body language is telling you, like, "Well, hey, this is kind of shit. I don't know what's going on." Or they're not making eye contact with you as a presenter. So you're up there, you're doing your best, you've got your nice shirt on, you've done your hair, taking a bath, taking a shower, and your audience are just kind of zombies, not responding. You think it's you, don't you? You think, "Oh my god, this presentation's terrible. What did... I can't do it. No, I'm going to... No." Okay. But guess what? It's not you. It's not you. Maybe these people are just, like, I don't know, they're doing other things, their minds are other places. They're like, "Oh shit. What do I need to pick up for dinner tonight? What did I eat for lunch? How many points do I have on my card?" Don't worry about the other people. Worry about yourself. And if you think that people don't understand you, ask them. Don't ever think, "Oh my god, no one understands my English, it's terrible." You come straight up to those people and say, "Hello, are you live?" Yeah. Okay. "Do you need me to explain this more? Did you not understand what I said to you?" In perfect English, by the way, thank you. […]