Speaking 9

Business Meetings
Describing a picture
While describing the picture, please pay
attention to the following details:
 How the participants take part in the meeting
 The style of the meeting
 How successful the meeting is

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Note 1 - Vocabulary
 Nouns:
 attire (~ clothes)
 dress code
 facial expressions

 Verbs: shake hands, close a deal successfully

 Adjectives:
 cooperative (có tinh thần hợp tác)
 attentive (có chú tâm) >< distracted (lơ đãng)

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Pronunciation
Making meetings effective

*The reason for having a meeting is to make a decision. Information may be given in a presentation
followed by questions or discussion, but it is to get consensus (sự đồng thuận) that that a meeting
has been arranged in the first place. Achieving this in the most time- and cost-effective manner
possible is a goal that everyone attending (the meeting) must share. (…) There are four essential
elements (yếu tố) in decision making: awareness, understanding, empathy (sự đồng cảm) and
perception (~ viewpoint - cách nhìn nhận).

*An extract from The Handbook of Communication Skills (London: Kogan Page, 1991)

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Note 2 – Suffix “-ed”
 Words ending with “t” or “d”  “-ed”  “id”
 Eg.: collected

 Words ending with “s”, “ss”, “f”, “p”, “k”  “-ed”  “t”
 Eg: chased, laughed

 Words ending with other letters  “-ed”  “d”

 played, allowed, followed

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Answering short questions
What makes a good meeting?
Hints: agenda, objectives, meeting facility, etc.

Notes:
Notes:
- To avoid network interruptions during a virtual/online meeting, we can prepare
a stable (Internet) connection before the meeting.
- Virtual meeting >< face-to-face/onsite meeting
- To keep meeting minutes  minutes of meeting

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Topic for discussion

“A meeting is an event at which

the minutes are kept and the
hours are lost.”

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