Name: How to Succeed in Work Meetings (Even if English isn’t your first language!)
Uploaded: 2025-06-17T16:20:07.000Z
Duration: 11 min 44 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

To-infinitive

I'm Ronnie, and today we're going to talk about something that's kind of boring.

So, you can have business meetings, you can have staff meetings, you can have meetings with your...

So, whether you're doing business or staff or work meetings online or in person, I'm here to help you build your confidence while doing these scary meetings in English.

Because English maybe is not your first language.

So, through all this, I want you to remind yourself, and this is...

If you take anything from this video, take this.

English is not my first language, so any mistakes that I make in the meeting, that's cool.

And if people at the meeting are kind of putting you down or dissing you because you don't speak as a natural English speaker, you can quite simply say to them, Well, excuse me, how many other languages do you speak other than English?

Well, just to let everyone know, again, English is not my first language, and I'm doing this bilingually, so let's go.

You all have the same anxiety, maybe some more in person, some more online.

And this idea came to me because I was in a store, and I saw a person that worked in the store, and I said very clearly in English, native speaker to native speaker, excuse me, where's the pet section?

And the staff member looked dumbfounded or drew a blank, was like...

And it was seriously that long of a pause.

And I thought, okay, Ronnie, relax, relax, relax.

Again, perfect English, short question, native speaker to native speaker, okay?

And I thought to myself, dude, the thing that I told you was a very well put together, grammatically sound sentence.

I didn't mumble, I made eye contact, I was direct, I was friendly, I had a smile on my face, and she still couldn't respond.

And I thought, imagine if I was in the native speaker and I asked someone in a store, excuse me, where's the pet section?

I would feel like I'm not communicating well.

You probably speak English really, really well, okay?

So, maybe you're at the meeting or you're online and you see the other people, the other people out there in human land, and maybe their facial expressions are like...

Their body language is telling you, like, whoa, hey, this is kind of shit, I don't know what's going on.

Or they're not making eye contact with you as a presenter.

So, you're up there, you're doing your best, you've got your nice shirt on, you've done your hair, taken a bath, taken a shower, and your audience are just kind of zombies, not responding.

You think, oh my god, this presentation's terrible, I can't do it, no, I'm going to...

Maybe these people are just, like, I don't know, they're doing other things, their minds are other places.

It's like, oh shit, what do I need to pick up for dinner tonight, and what did I eat for lunch?

Don't worry about the other people, worry about yourself.

And if you think that people don't understand you, ask them.

Don't ever say, oh my god, no one understands, my English is terrible.

You come straight up to those people and say, hello, are you live?

Did you not understand what I said to you?

In perfect English, by the way, thank you.

And you'll probably discover that people understood you, your English is amazing, your presentation was great, and they're just bored.

Because business meetings are pretty boring, like, can you just not send this in an email as I look in my invisible watch?

I want you to be confident, and I want you to know you're doing your best, you're doing a great job, and you're going to kick ass at this meeting.

Your English is not native speaker level, your English isn't high advanced, intermediate, but share your ideas.

You are important in this business, in this company.

They didn't hire you because you're not good at your job, they hired you because you're good at your job, you're good at giving ideas.

You're in this position because you earned it.

Again, if you think they don't understand you, you ask them.

Say, hmm, hey, hey, hey, hey, Larry, yeah, yeah, yeah, eye contact, good.

And Larry's like, oh yeah, great, great, right as rain, Ronnie, okay, perfect.

So, when you ask people questions, you get them involved.

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How to Succeed in Work Meetings (Even if English isn’t your first language!)

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