Name: Business English - 925 English Lesson 23: How to Clarify Understanding in English | Business ESL
Uploaded: 2026-01-13T17:21:06.000Z
Duration: 8 min 19 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...

Present continuous

You're learning with nine to five English Business English for the workplace.

Hi, Tim here with another 9 to 5 English lesson.

Past simple

In today's lesson, we're going to learn how to clarify something you didn't hear properly.

If you don't hear what someone says, the easiest thing to do is just let it go, move on, let them keep talking.

But that can be a very dangerous strategy.

I mean, what if they asked you to do something important?

Or what if they told you some important information?

So rather than letting it go, it's easy to just ask the person to repeat what they said to do that politely.

We might say, could you repeat that, please?

Or you can use the expression I beg your pardon?

Then the person knows you haven't heard them and they'll repeat it for you.

Why don't we try some of these expressions for clarifying what you heard?

Listen to each example, then repeat it for yourself.

You might notice that we often say we're sorry.

This is just a way of introducing a request for clarification.

And that might include simply saying you didn't understand or catch what the person said.

Of course, in regular conversation, we don't always have to use these longer polite expressions.

I mean, if you're talking with a close colleague or friend, you might use shorter expressions, such as excuse me.

Let's give these more informal expressions a try.

Remember to repeat the examples after you hear them.

Once again, we practiced saying we're sorry, but

this time we said we're sorry, but made it sound like a question.

If you didn't hear someone and you just say I'm sorry, they won't think you're asking for repetition.

But if you say I'm sorry, then they will understand you didn't hear them.

These expressions are great when you really don't know what someone said.

But sometimes you think you might have heard correctly, but you're not sure.

In this case, you want to confirm what you heard.

In other words, you say what you think you heard and ask the person if it's right.

For example, I might ask, you said you can help me tomorrow, right?

Or instead of that question tag, write, we can use Is that correct?

Another way to ask for confirmation is with a direct question like did you say tomorrow?

Once again, repeat the examples you hear.

Did you notice the statement that sounded like a question?

That's a really simple way to confirm what someone said.

Just use question intonation on the end of a statement.

Alright, we've practiced some useful expressions.

Now let's hear how this sounds in a conversation.

Let's listen to a short dialogue between Paul and Laura.

Paul is talking about the timing of a delivery and Laura has trouble hearing.

We will need this by three at the latest.

The delivery needs to be at our office by 3pm Just to be sure.

Laura uses a couple of different ways of clarifying.

We'll repeat the dialogue, but this time we're going to beep out the second speaker's words.

You will have to say those parts yourself.

Remember to say that you didn't quite catch what Paul said.

Then confirm that he meant 3pm Here we go.

The delivery needs to be at our office by 3pm.

For this lesson, we've learned some great ways to clarify what you've heard.

Tune in next time when we'll learn how to clarify when you've heard someone but you don't understand what they've said until then.