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BUSINESS ENGLISH · ENGLISH IN VIDEO · UPPER-INTERMEDIATE (B2-C1)

MEETING
MISHAPS
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1 Warm up
Answer these questions about online, or virtual, meetings.

1. Have you had much experience of online meetings for work or study? Would you say these
experiences have been positive, negative, or mixed? Why?
2. There are several ways that things can go wrong in online meetings. Match each type of problem
with an example:

Problems:
a fail = a bad idea
a mishap = an accident, when something goes wrong
a technical difficulty = problems with technology
a. your Wi-Fi goes down just as the meeting begins
b. wearing pajamas to an important meeting
c. spilling your coffee on the keyboard

3. What other fails, mishaps, and technical difficulties can you think of?

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MEETING MISHAPS

2 Watch for main idea

Video Watch this news report (3:43 mins) about problems with online meetings and then match the situations
with the problems. Decide if each pair is a fail, mishap, or technical difficulty.

Situations Problems

1. in church: a. a cat sitting on someone’s lap

2. in court: b. a face on a potato

3. Lizet Ocampo’s meeting: c. alien eyes

4. Jessica Appelgren’s meeting: d. a Star Wars costume

5. Andre Hilden’s experience: e. the sound of a toilet flushing

Are any of these problems the same as the ones you talked about in the Warm-up? Which one do
you think is the funniest?

3 Vocabulary development

Read the sentences from the final part of the report (2:23 - end) and remember/predict the missing
words. The words you write will have the same or similar meaning as the words in brackets. The first
letter of the missing word has been given. Watch the report again to check.

1
Companies want m (very good or perfect) employees, too. "He climbs
over, he has actually created a meeting for me last week that was several hours
long." Andre Hilden, a data architecture consultant in Oakland, California, missed a
2
m (important message) from his company outlining videoconferencing e
3
(polite behavior) "I did not read that one."
4
After his cat, Tasha, c (attended without an invitation) one of the early
virtual business meetings, Hilden’s employer made an example out of him. "I had my cat
on my lap, actually. I was not thinking it would be a problem. And it ended up being, coming
5
across as u (not behaving correctly in a work situation). And
team members of mine saw me in the same meeting and did not like that and pointed
6
it out, and made it the topic in the next internal g (meeting -
informal) in an effort to make sure that this doesn’t happen anymore."

... And even as businesses begin to reopen, many employees are still working from
7
home and will for the f (the period of time we can make a
prediction about) future. "Remote work is going to be a growing trend." Facebook CEO
Mark Zuckerberg and Jack Dorsey of Twitter and Square announced that employees at
8
their companies will be allowed to work from home i (a period
of time with no specific end).

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MEETING MISHAPS

Read this part of the report again and explain what the three underlined phrasal verbs mean, using
the context to help:
I had my cat on my lap. ... And it ended up being, coming across as unprofessional. And team members
of mine saw me in the same meeting and did not like that and pointed it out ....
• end up =
• come across as =
• point it out =

4 Checking understanding
Decide if the information in these sentences are true or false.

1. Andre Hilden ignored a warning from his company about their policies for online meetings.
2. Andre’s coworkers were annoyed about the cat sitting on his lap.
3. Andre’s company gave information about appropriate behavior in meetings in three different ways.
4. Andre probably feels a bit embarrassed now.
5. Major companies are likely to continue with online working practices for now.

5 Vocabulary practice
Complete at least five of these sentences in a logical way.

1. From my point of view, a model partner (boyfriend/girlfriend) has to ...

2. The last memo I received was about ...
3. One rule of good online meeting etiquette is ...
4. If people crash a party, the host should ...
5. It’s definitely unprofessional when ...
6. In the foreseeable future, I think I’m going to ...
7. No one wants to end up ............
8. At work, I hope I come across as ...

6 Discussion
Answer these questions in pairs or small groups.

1. Do you think that having a pet on your lap during an online meeting is very unprofessional?
2. What can parents who are working at home do to avoid fails and prevent mishaps? Think of at
least three steps they can take.
3. Why do you think employers are so positive about continuing online working? How will they
monitor and take care of their workers?
4. How do workers feel about continuing to work at home?
5. How do you think working arrangements will change in the next few years? What about in the
next twenty years?

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