Giving and receiving feedback is quite common in the business world. But choosing the correct English words makes it a lot easier. In this Business English lesson, you will learn some essential Business English vocabulary for giving feedback that would sound more constructive. If you learn to use the right English vocabulary, your feedback conversation could lead to outstanding performance. Of course if you practice these English words in your small talks for feedback you are sure to get it right. Learn how you can give feedback constructively and effectively.
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Complete Video Transcript :-
Hey, my name is Emmelda, thanks for stopping by. You know a lot of people once you’ve done a job, a lot of people will come up to you and tell you what you did right and what you did wrong, am I correct to say that? Yes but in today’s lesson I’m not going to tell you how to say it, I’m going to talk about all the nouns related to that activity. What’s that activity called? The activity of giving your opinion to someone after they have done the job. That activity is called giving a feedback. Okay, the other word or other names for feedback is review or critic. Okay, so people give feedback or they give review or critic when some action has been done. For example,, maybe an actor has done a movie and he’s done really well, so his critics will give a critique or a review of the movie, right. Now we are going to learn new words about the same word of feedback.
Let’s take a look at the first one criticize, spoiler alert I’m gonna start from being very negative to extremely positive until it becomes fake. Okay so negative to positive, so I’m gonna start with criticize. What is criticize? When somebody criticizes, criticizing you or criticizes you, it means he’s bringing out only and only negative aspects okay. So criticize means talking about all the negative factors or all the negative things that have gone wrong, negative okay.
Cynic, who are cynic? Cynic are by the way people okay. Cynic are people who always feel that everybody else around them is insincere. Okay, for example maybe you’re carrying a heavy bag and there’s a guy who helps you but your friend says, hey that guy just wants your number, you know that’s why he’s helping you. Now your friend is being a cynic because she’s trying to see some dark meaning even out of a good action. So they’re called cynic.
Okay moving on to a third type of people, again this is a people, this is a type of people. We move to a third type of people. Have you noticed you’ve done something or you’re doing something and there’s always someone next to you who would say you know, you could have done this better or you could do this better? They always, always keep giving you advice on how things could have been done or how they would have done it. Okay, they are called backseat drivers. Now this phrase has actually come up or was adopted by the concept where you’re driving a car and someone sitting behind you would always say you may want to go left, you may want, you may want to you know speed up your car, watch out for the driver, watch out for the truck, watch out for the car in the head of you. They just keep talking continuously telling you what you can do right. They’re called backseat drivers, why? Because they are not the ones who are doing the action, they are just telling you what to do and it’s very irritating like dude either you drive or just let me drive peacefully. Either you do this, either you finish my work or let me just finish it peacefully. They’re called backseat drivers. What do backseat drivers do? They nag okay you would have used even seen this term quite often in movies. You know you have an old aunt and she constantly rumbles nag-nag-nag-nag. I don’t like that you don’t do it, she’s nagging okay but that’s what usually backseat drivers do.
Then moving on from such negative people or negative aspects, I’m going to give you something nice, being constructive. Now I’m not talking about buildings or machines. I’m talking about constructive feedback. Your managers or your supervisors aim to give you a constructive feedback. What do they do? When they’re giving you a feedback, when they’re telling you how you performed last summer, they will bring out all the good things first you know. The first thing they’re gonna do is, they’ll talk about all that was good. You did a great presentation or you know you prepared the project really well and slowly and steadily they’ll start bringing the negative aspects. You did a great presentation but I think you don’t look at the people whom you’re doing the presentations for. Okay, you start, you talk about, you look every everywhere else, you’re looking at the wall, you’re looking at the floor but you’re not maintaining eye contact. Here he’s telling you that you’ve done a good job but you have room for improvement. So that’s a constructive feedback. It’s not personal, people when giving constructive feedback will avoid making personal remarks, constructive feedback.
Moving on to a better one praise or compliment, that means someone is telling you, hey you did a good job, hey that shot was awesome or hey your dress looks nice. They are praising you or they’re giving you praise or they’re giving you a compliment. What else? What other words we can use? Sometimes people use the word congratulate okay. They’ll say you did a good job. I congratulate you for that. That’s another way of giving praise okay.
Lastly, I’ll not say lastly but the next word which is very similar to praise is appreciate. What is appreciate? According to the dictionary, appreciate or to appreciate means to recognize the full worth of something or somebody okay. So when you recognize the full worth of something or somebody, you appreciate. So you will have this sentence like, I don’t think so he appreciates my gesture that means he does not know what exactly I did and he does not like it. Probably I give him a tissue while he was crying but he does not appreciate it. He found it very awkward. So that is called appreciate. Word of caution, a lot of people, especially in Australia, use this word to replace thank you. For example, maybe you’re in a restaurant and there’s a waiter, you’re at a restaurant, there is a waiter you know she gives you a glass of water and you will hear people saying appreciate it okay, appreciate it. They mean thank you. Okay so that’s the word you can use, you can replace thank you with appreciate.
Moving on to a little sweeter is flatter, flatter means when you praise someone when you exaggerate while you’re praising someone. Oh your dress is looking so nice or you’re looking like a princess, oh my god your face is so flawless. You know that you know it’s getting a little too much that means the person is flattering you okay. It’s actually exaggerating okay. Flatter or flattering means to exaggerate or exaggerating. So next time when people are being extremely nice to you, maybe because they want some ice cream or some money from you, they’ll say, oh my god you’re looking so good can you do this for me? Ah! Right got you? So you can say please don’t flatter me or please don’t butter me up.
Okay, another word is butter me up. Oh! Sorry, please don’t butter me up that means please don’t flatter me, okay but there are some people who just try to bring only and only positive. Remember people if you just bring only negative it is wrong, it is very harmful. Similarly, if you’re just bringing out only positive now that is called to paint a rosy picture. That means they’re bringing out only that is good or that is nice to hear or to see. For example, let’s say there’s an old man who died okay and he meets an angel and he says hey where are you taking me? And this angel says, oh! I’m taking you to a place which is warm and it’s nice and you will have a lot of privacy and you’ll exercise a lot. So he’s like okay sounds nice okay sure and guess what? That angel took that old man to hell. Yes, why because that angel painted a rosy picture of hell. I don’t mean flowers, I mean only the nice, nice things and it may be, it will be exaggerated to the extent, it becomes fake. Can hell be a nice place? Of course, not right, a lot of corporates are hiring officers to do that. When they ask you to come and join their company, they’ll paint a rosy picture, oh you should join us, our company is the best you know we have perks. We have a high salary, you can do whatever you want. You can you can leave whenever you want. They’re painting a rosy picture but when you enter the office you realize all of them, whatever they said might be true but it’s actually a very taxing job. You know you can leave whenever you want why because you can never leave, you can never finish the job in a day. So that’s painting a rosy picture.
Okay, so these are the words and phrases that we use quite often in English when you are trying to give an opinion to someone about that job. I hope you learn something new and I hope you found it interesting. I will be back with another lesson until then have fun, stay healthy, be beautiful, see ya.
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