Using English at Work：15 Attending the Morning Meeting(1)（在线收听）

Welcome to lesson three of ESLPod.com's "Using English at Work." I'm your host, Dr. Jeff McQuillan, from the Center for Educational Development.

In the second lesson of "Using English at Work," we learned vocabulary for checking mail, email, and voicemail.

In this third lesson, I'm going to talk about attending, or going to, a morning meeting.

Let's listen to the story first at a slow speed.

I arrive at the conference room right before the meeting starts, and sit down in a chair around the large conference table.

Our manager passes out a handout of the meeting agenda with some announcements and goes over some bullet points regarding old and new business.

Then, he asks each person to give a status report on his or her projects.

Each of us takes turns giving a quick rundown, while everyone else listens.

Of course not everyone is paying attention, since they're thinking about their own reports and what they plan to say.

Sometimes our manager will make some comments or give us some feedback, but usually there's very little discussion.

The meeting always ends the same way.

Our manager gives a short summary of how our department is doing and a little pep talk to get us motivated.

Now it's back to our desks to do some work!

Our story begins when I arrive, or come to, the conference room right before the meeting starts, and sit down in a chair around the large conference table.

A "conference" is a type of large meeting, usually a formal meeting.

A "conference room" is a large room in an office building that is used only for meetings; it's not an office.

A "conference table" is the large table inside the conference room.

Conference tables are usually big, round, or perhaps rectangular tables that have chairs placed around them for the meetings.

Usually the meeting leader, the person who is running the meeting, sits at one end of the conference table so everyone can see him or her.