7 Simple ways to Improve Oral communication in Business English

“A lack of communication breeds assumptions of what the other is thinking or feeling; and assumptions are, more often than not, incorrect.”

There is no denying the fact that having a good grasp of business information, strong level of job knowledge and the terminologies in the English Language is of great value and importance nowadays, as it leads the employees to the desired success. So, improving business English skills for work is one of the most important things to do. If you ever think how you can enhance your oral communication in business English, you may find this article helpful with that. Here are seven ways to improve oral communication in Business English.

1-As you know that before we proceed any further, we generally want to use some sort of sentences to capture the attention of listeners or to let them adjust their hearing about what we are going to tell. If we know specific sentences, we can make use of them effectively. The following are the introductory phrases that you may use to draw the attention of your listeners.

As a matter of fact, this ideology is no more required.
I would like to mention that
Obviously
It’s obvious that
It appears that
It seems that
It sounds as if he were unaware of the fact
According to what I know
According to what I understand

2-Quite often or sometimes, you need to change the topic. In such times, the following sentences are helpful as they help you switch one topic to another one.

It’s the right time to invest
By the way, let’s now discuss about that issue.
An alternative point to consider this is that
While we are discussing this, we may also consider …..
Before I forget, I would like to tell you that
Changing this subject……

3-Before I write any further about another way of carrying out conversation, I would like to mention that interrupting others when they are speaking is not a good practice. Interrupting means to halt the flow of a speaker or a speaker’s utterance with a question mark or remark. It’s regarded as a sign of impoliteness or considering the speaker as unimportant. However, there are times when you need to interrupt others in a graceful manner and politely. Following are the words or phrases you may use to do so.

Sorry
Excuse me
May I interrupt please?
Could I say something?
Can I make a comment on this?
Please listen to me.
I am sorry, that’s not right/correct
Would you allow me to give an opinion?
Will you shut up for a moment, please?
Could you let me speak?

4-Effective oral communication occurs only when the receiver understands clearly. It entails maintaining the flow of information and ideas. If you want to regulate the flow of communication, you need to understand well the use of various conjunction words. Conjunctions are the words that join words, phrases and the clauses. They not only enable you to maintain the flow of your thoughts, but they may also help you greatly in creating more sentences spontaneously.

If I knew that you were sick, I would not let you attend the office today.
As soon as we developed this software module, we started testing it.
Once you know how to use this function in Excel, you can do it yourself.

5-How long you would like to use the words, such as, Uh, Um, Ah, mm etc during your conversation. It’s obvious that you don’t want to stay quiet for a long time or to make that utterance which is regarded as using filler sounds. Instead of this, you want to make the conversation more interesting by using some specific words. Here comes the importance of filler words that help us replace the filler sounds. The following are the filler words that may assist you in making the oral communication more fascinating.

Really
Undoubtedly
Well
Surely
Certainly
Fine
Ok
Clearly

6-Using question tags is also a great way to make conversation better. It helps you to improve your oral communication skills as well. Below are mentioned some question tags. You may create many more on your own by using the related helping verb or auxiliary verb before the subject considering the positive and negative kinds of sentences.

It’s interesting, Isn’t it?
He attends the office regularly, doesn’t he?
Sam did not call us yesterday, Did he?
We have already completed our tasks, haven’t we?
I think he is not coming today, Is he?

7- If you need to request someone for some information, the following phrases are useful.

Would you mind?
I wonder if you could
I missed it, could you please repeat/explain it once more?

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Written by:
K. A. Fareed (Fareed Siddiqui)
Writer, Trainer, Author, Blogger, Software Developer
BBA, MBA-Finance, MPhil-Financial Management, (MSc-Software Engineering)
(PhD-Management)
MA-English, MPhil-English
Post Graduate Diploma in Computer Applications and Programming
Certificate course in English language proficiency
Level 1 – Leadership and Management ILM – UK
Pursuing CMA-USA
Individual Member of Institute of Management Consultants of India