Practical English Listening: Tips for Arranging Video Calls and Face-to-Face Meetings

In this lesson, we're going to focus on making arrangements to meet someone. This could be suggesting or requesting a meeting on the phone, but could also be in person. Plans to meet often begin with a request or an offer and usually involve making suggestions to decide on a place and time. I guess we should get together to work out the details for a presentation. Good idea. What's a good day? How about Friday? Oh, no. That won't work. I'm not in the office on Friday. Could you meet earlier, say on Wednesday? Oh, yeah. I think that's fine. Let me check my calendar and get back to you. I'll text you. Okay. Sounds good.

Hello, Mary Russell. Yes, hello. This is Wilson Power. I met you last week in Seattle. Oh, right. Wilson, I remember. And your Maria's friend. Right. Yes. So, Mary, I'm going to be in Toronto this week. And I was wondering if we could meet to talk about a possible project with RDX. Well, sure. Do you want to come to my office or should we meet somewhere else? Oh, your office would be fine. I'm going to meet Maria for lunch on Thursday right near your office. Okay. So, let's say 11 o'clock on Thursday. Perfect. Would you be able to meet with me at the convention next week? Yes, of course. I'd be happy to. When did you have in mind? Are you free on Friday at 9.30? Let me check. Oh, no. I'm not free then. How about 10.30? Yes, that would be fine. Okay. So, where should we meet? Well, our company has a conference room reserved in the hotel that we could use. In the Hilton? Yes, it's the ambassador room on the third floor. Okay. Let me just put that in my calendar. Friday, 10.30, the ambassador room. Oh, okay. Great. I look forward to seeing you then. See you then.

I'm calling to see if I could stop by your office to show you our new product line. Well, yes. That would be all right. Would 3.30 this afternoon work? Tomorrow morning would be better. That's fine. What time is convenient for you? How about 10.30? Okay. That sounds good. In Module 2, you learned about using appropriate degrees of formality or informality in writing. Do you remember this line? The same guidelines apply here when you're making arrangements to meet someone. As long as you choose somewhere approximately along the line that's appropriate for the situation, you should be okay. The important question is this one. Who am I talking with? And is having a meeting normal and expected? Or is asking for something special?

Think about these next situations. You'd like to meet someone you've never met. Would you be more formal or informal or just neutral? More formal. It's probably better to use a little more formal language in this situation. You're talking to a colleague about getting together on a project you're working on. More informal. A meeting like this is normal and expected, and a colleague would expect informal language. Your peers are equals, so you don't have to worry about being formal. You've been working with this team member for six months on a project. More informal. The meeting is a normal, every day event. If you've been working with these team members for six months, you probably know them fairly well. You want to have an information interview with someone who might be able to help you get a job at his or her company. You hope this person will meet with you, but you're not sure. It's important to make a good impression so you would be more formal. You're calling a potential client, hoping to set up a meeting to show him or her a new product line. You don't know this person, and you want to make a good impression. More formal language would be more professional and respectful.

You want to talk with your supervisor in private. Neutral. This depends a lot on your relationship with your supervisor, but neutral is probably the best choice here. You don't want to be formal because it might seem strange to your supervisor. On the other hand, you don't want to be too informal because it might seem unprofessional. You are setting up a meeting with a colleague from an international subsidiary of your company. Neutral is again the best choice. The meeting is normal, but you don't want to be too formal because it might seem unfriendly. On the other hand, you don't want to be too informal because it might seem unprofessional, especially to someone you don't know well. Now, you'll watch the videos from the beginning of this lesson again. As you listen, think about these questions. What is their relationship? Are they colleagues at work? Do they know each other well?

When a meeting is routine and not something special, you can make a suggestion instead of a request. Suggestions often need we as the subject. Say these sentences with me. How about getting together next week? Why don't we meet again tomorrow? Maybe we should get together next week. When you don't know someone or when you're not sure they'll help you out by meeting with you, you make a request like these. Requests are a bit longer and more indirect. Say these sentences with me. I was wondering if you could meet with me. Would you be able to meet? I'm calling to find out if I could stop by. Would it be alright if I stopped by your office? They give someone more distance and don't assume that the other person will say yes. We often say get together instead of meet. So a bit less formal than meet. If we want to pay a short visit to someone's office or home, we say stop by. For example, meet with someone. Get together with someone. Stop by your office.

Figuring out a time and place to meet usually involves some back-and-forth discussion. Here are some common ways we negotiate time and place. When are you free? When's a good time? What's a good day? What time is good for you? So where should we meet? Are you free on Tuesday morning? How about Friday at two? Notice the use of would to soften questions. This makes the question a bit more indirect. Is Friday okay? Would Friday be okay? Does Friday work for you? Would Friday work for you? When would be a good day? Would Tuesday morning be convenient for you? There are also a lot of options when you respond to a suggestion for meeting or a time or place. First, you could accept. That sounds fine. That sounds good. That works for me. Yes, that would be fine. Or you could say no. When we say no to an invitation, we usually always have some kind of explanation to avoid sounding rude. Oh, I'm sorry. That's not a good day for me. Sorry. That won't work for me. Sorry, I can't. I have another meeting. Tomorrow would be better. Could you meet earlier? Could we meet somewhere closer? Sometimes we can't answer right away. Here are some expressions we use for that. Let me check. Let me get back to you. I'll get back to you. I need to check my calendar. When we make plans to meet, we sometimes use the word schedule. It's both a noun and a verb. How does your schedule look? Let me check my schedule and get back to you. Could we schedule something next week? Let's schedule it later in the month.