When participating in meetings, I know that my clients, who are speakers of English as a 2nd+ language, want to sound clear, natural and professional in the way they express their views.
This helps with sounding confident in English, even when speaking spontaneously, and will make sure your views are listened to and come across impactfully.
The key is mastering a variety of phrases to structure and frame your thoughts from introducing your views, considering different angles, as well as coming to a conclusion.
You probably over-rely on one or two opinion phrases in English at the moment, so I would encourage you to increase the variety of phrases you have to hand.
Here are some specific, practical ways you can use these new English opinion phrases in your meetings:
- If it is an online meeting, write down a couple of the key phrases from the list you would like to try out (maximum 3) on a sticky note, and place this next to the camera (off-screen), so you can glance at it and remind yourself of them during the meeting.
- If it is a face-to-face meeting, then write down the phrases in the corner of your notebook as a prompt.
- Try out the phrases in the meeting and also make a note of any interesting opinion structuring phrases that other people use and are effective.
- Make a quick note after the meeting:
- Which phrases worked well and helped your views sound clear, natural and confident.
- Which phrases did not work for you and you want to put to the side.
- Any new English opinion phrases you heard and would like to try next time.
- Which new opinion phrases would you like to try next time.
Below is the list of English opinion structuring phrases I recommend:
Expressing your opinion
In my view …
From my perspective ….
In my opinion……
It seems to me that….
It’s clear that….
There’s no doubt in my mind….
To be honest I think…..
What I really think is….
I feel that….
My gut instinct on this is……
Weighing up options
On the one hand… on the other…..
From another point of view….
If we consider it from this perspective…
However, saying that….
But contrastingly…..
Finalising your opinion
On balance I think…..
All in all, ……
Overall I think I prefer …..
If you have any questions about how to use these opinion structuring phrases, have further ideas to add to the list, or feedback about works for you, then I would love to know!
Email me to share your experiences, or get my further support about how to sound clear, natural and professional in expressing your views in English.
