BEP 68 INT (Transcript and Exercises) – Meetings: Interrupting and Resisting Interruption

As a non-native speaker of English, you might often find yourself in situations like this: You’re sitting in a meeting or a teleconference, and some of the participants are native English speakers. They are speaking with one another very rapidly, and they are using some idiomatic or difficult-to-understand expressions. Someone says something you don’t understand, or perhaps something that is not true or that you disagree strongly with. You should interrupt to ask what they mean, to clarify, to correct – but you just can’t bring yourself to open your mouth. How do you start? How do you interrupt?

That’s the focus of today’s business English podcast lesson. We’ll be studying useful language and expressions for interrupting and for resisting or stopping interruption.

Key Language: Meetings, Interrupting & Resisting Interruption.

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Study Notes

Phrases & Practice
BEP 68 INT – Interrupting – Quiz

BEP 68 INT – Interrupting – Gap-fill

BEP 68 INT – Interrupting – Dialog & Vocabulary

BEP 68 INT – Interrupting – Language 1

BEP 68 INT – Interrupting – Language 2

BEP 68 INT – Interrupting – Flashcards


Listening Questions: BEP 68 INT – Meetings: Interrupting and Resisting Interruptions

1) What does Bill mean when he says they’re facing a “bottleneck?” What is the bottleneck?

2) Why can’t Bill just retrain the engineers he has?

3) What is Mei Lin’s suggestion to speed up the recruitment process?