Listening, Vocabulary, Comprehension: Business English

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Laughter is the best medicine.

James from engVid.

Today, we're going to work on medical words and phrases that people use in business and

casual conversation.

What we're going to do is have a special lesson, or I have a special lesson for you.

We're going to work on your listening, okay?

And that's this.

Your listening, your vocabulary, and your comprehension.

And how am I going to do that?

Well, we're going to start this video off with me not being here.

I'll just be telling you a story, and you'll work on your listening.

Listen for the words you don't know.

When we come back, I will teach you the vocabulary that you probably don't know because I especially

picked it for you.

And then I'll disappear again and we'll work on comprehension by reading the story again

for you to see what you understand and how much you comprehend.

Pretty cool, huh?

So, for this, we're going to require two things.

One, please get a pen and paper if you can.

If you can't, don't worry about it.

Just pay attention to see what you don't know because, of course, I will be teaching the

And number two, I need you to be prepared because we're about to start.

A bit weird I'm not here, but you're listening to my voice.

I asked you to do this specifically because when our eyes are closed or we can't see,

we get to use our listening facilities and they work much better.

So, I'm going to start the story.

Listen carefully.

Mr. E, get in here.

Who's running the Washington operation?

It's hemorrhaging more money than we can afford.

Yeah, you're right, boss.

We can't use a Band-Aid solution to solve this problem.

What's your solution, Mr. E?

Donny T needs to use a dose of strong medicine for the company or it'll be a DOA when November

Talk to Donny T and I want you to check up on him by the end of the week.

And we're back.

So, we did the listening portion of our LVC class and now we're going to do the vocabulary

and phrasal verbs and idioms.

So, I'm going to explain them now and then afterwards we're going to - well, you'll be

listening to the story again and see how much you can get for comprehension.

Let's go to the board.

So, the first one we're going to do and the first word we talked about was "operation".

Now, this is going to be a bit complicated, so I'm going to take my time on it.

The condition of functioning or being active, it just means doing something.

So, when there's a business operation, it means they are active doing business.

A military operation, they are active with the military.

Now, when we talk about medicine, because I did say this is - or these are phrases,

idioms, and vocabulary that are used in medicine, but people in business have adopted them or

taken them, I'm going to also tell you what it is in the medical sense, because who knows?

Maybe you're watching some medical TV, right?

So, that's surgery on a patient, and that's when the doctor is cutting the patient - and

I'm not eating steak - they cut the patient open, maybe hard, so that's it.

And you can see how these go together, because they're being active in surgery on the patient.

Next one, "hemorrhage".

Now, hemoglobin - "hemo" is right there - blood.

So, when you have a hemorrhage, it means the blood is being lost.

It's usually from a blood vessel, and that might be complicated, so we'll just say something

cuts you and a lot of blood is coming out, you're hemorrhaging.

But you can also hemorrhage inside the body, which means something breaks inside you and

lots of blood is coming out, but not outside of your body, it's inside of you.

So, you might see something come out like that, and it's hemorrhaging.

So, what does that mean?

Well, the blood isn't supposed to do that.

It's supposed to stay where it is, so my blood goes here to my heart.

It shouldn't all come over here.

That's a loss of blood, especially when it's a lot of...

A lot of loss of blood, then we call it a hemorrhage.

Now, when a company is losing money, they say they're hemorrhaging money.

Why you might say?

Well, blood is one of the most important liquids in our body.

If you lose a lot of blood, you will die.

If a company hemorrhages money, it will die.

So, you can understand why they took this word from the medical profession, because

it makes sense.

It's the lifeblood of a company, right?

Life, blood, money.

Next, Band-Aid.

Band-Aid is a brand.

It's like tissue, or sorry, Kleenex in Canada and America, Kleenex is the name of something

you blow your nose in, but it's a company, it's not the product.

The product is a tissue.

So, Band-Aid is this thing that you know, when you get a cut on your finger, you put

it on your finger to stop the blood.

Now, it's not for big cuts, so if you have a...

Your arm is cut off, you can't use a Band-Aid.

It's a temporary solution for a small cut.

So, Band-Aid is a brand of bandage used to cover cuts.

For business, a Band-Aid is a temporary solution.

What that means is they have a problem, they don't know how to fix the problem yet, but

they will do something small for now, so it won't be so bad.

So, they call them Band-Aid solutions.

And if you have a problem still with the word "solution", ah, look, it's our next word.

All right, so, in the hospital, a solution is a mixture, it's a liquid mixture where

they put two things together to create something new.

So, you got this and this.

And I'm going to use the word "saline", so if somebody's a bit sick in the hospital and

Their blood salt is low?

Well, you don't want to give them too much salt, that might kill them, and you don't

want to give them too much water, that might kill them, so they make a solution to solve

They mix salt and water so the person can get what they need.

And this solves the problem or a difficult situation for the body.

Now, when we have a solution in business, it's a way of dealing with a difficult situation.

If you have a problem, that's okay, like I've got a zit, it's a small problem, not a problem,

I don't need a solution for this.

But when you need money because your business is hemorrhaging money, you need a solution.

It's a difficult situation and you need something to fix it.

Well, a dose is a quantity of drug or medicine that is given at a specific time.

Well, when you go to your doctor and he gives you medicine, he might say to you or she might

say to you, "Take this medicine three times a day.

Take two pills three times a day."

So that's a quantity of medicine and they will tell you how much you need to take at

what specific time.

So, if you need a dose of medicine in the business, you need to have some kind of medicine

or solution that you have to use at a given time.

Next, "D.O.A".

"D.O.A" is an acRonniem for "dead on admittance" or "dead on arrival".

Well, not much more to explain to it, then.

When you go to the hospital, if you're dead, they will say - well, because at hospitals

you get admitted, right?

When you go to a hospital in North America, they admit you.

You don't just go in and go to a doctor.

You have to be admitted, let in.

So if they say "dead on admittance", it means you came in, they got the paperwork, and went,

"Hm.

He was dead when he got here."

Meaning, this is important for the hospital, you - they didn't do anything wrong.

You were dead when you came, so they didn't kill you.

But in business, if something is dead on arrival, it means you never had a chance to get it

So, let's say you want to do a business deal with somebody, but they don't like it.

As soon as you mention it, they go, "Oh, no.

We're not doing this.

It's dead on arrival."

They might not even let you speak.

Maybe it's dead on arrival because I don't have the money to do the business with you.

Or maybe they don't like the company you work for, so they say, "As long as that company's

working on the contract, this contract will be dead on arrival.

We'll never say yes to it."

Now, I have two words, and they're similar.

Checkup, checkup.

Pronunciation's the same.

They have a little different meaning, so I'll explain.

This is a...

When it's one word together, it's a proper examination, usually medical.

You go for "a medical checkup", and the "a" or the "a" tells you it's a noun, so the word

is together to make it a checkup.

I need a dental checkup next week.

But when you have a separation between the two, it's a phrasal verb, and it means to

check on someone.

I need to check up on the situation, to check up on someone or something.

So, if you take your car to a garage and it's broken, you might call the mechanic three

hours later to check up on what's happening with the car, to check, to see and investigate

what is happening.

So, now we've done our listening part, you've got the vocabulary, we're going to do the

So, after I clap, I'm going to re-read the story for you, use your new vocabulary to

see how much of the story you understand, and of course, afterwards we'll have a test

to make sure you get full comprehension.

Mr. E, get in here.

Who's running the Washington operation?

It's hemorrhaging more money than we can afford.

You're right, boss.

We can't use a Band-Aid solution to solve this problem.

What's your solution, Mr. E?

Donny T needs to use a dose of strong medicine for the company, or it'll be a DOA when November

Talk to Donny T, and I want you to check up on him by the end of the week.

Okay, welcome back, and now that we've done our comprehension, how did you do?

Some of you were probably surprised that even though you didn't know every word because

I didn't do the whole story on the board, you have a very good understanding of what

you were listening to.

Now, that's the power of focused listening.

I've got other lessons like that, so check them out if you like this one.

And don't forget to give a "likes" up on it, right?

We're going to go to the board, and we'll do our tests, and we usually do a test, so

I'll do the test, your bonus material, and your homework, as always.

Let's go to the board.

So, the first one was, or is, the something was a success, and the woman got a new heart.

What would that be?

Correct, operation.

We discussed the business use of it, but now you actually know the medical one as well.

Not bad, right?

Okay, the next one, number two, the difficult problem has two possible what?

Has two possible solutions, right?

And number three, yeah, this one was a bit difficult, right?

Well, not difficult, but you might have had to think about it.

That's correct.

It's one word, because this is a medical checkup, it's the noun, not the phrasal verb.

And number four, Band-Aid.

Band-Aid solutions never work over the long period, right?

So, Band-Aid solutions never work over a long period.

And number five, we've got two, so take your time, figure it out.

The something of medicine he took was too high, and he something when he was admitted

to the hospital.

Alright, well, we talked about when you get medicine at a certain time and a certain amount,

that would be your dose.

And next, he was admitted to the hospital, I helped you a little bit with that one, right?

Yeah, that's right.

Dead on arrival.

Oh, it's too much medicine, it's not a good thing.

So, anyway, we've done this one, you got it, let's see what you got in your score.

Okay, so now we're going to move to our bonus section, and I'll start off with triage.

Now, triage is to assign degrees of urgency to wounded people, and what does that mean?

Well, when you have a situation in front of you, you need to know who should be first,

and sometimes that depends on the severity, right?

Someone's got a little cut on their hand, it's different than losing your leg.

So, you want to say, maybe this person needs more, so we should do more right now, and

they need it right now, urgency.

When do you need it?

The same thing can happen in a business.

So, you have - you've got a problem, a small problem in one part of the company, but the

other part of the company is being sued, and you really should put money towards that to

get rid of that before you put money towards that small problem.

So, in that case, what we're doing is we're looking at what do we need to do right now,

and who needs it the most, okay?

So, if we do - victims were triaged before going to the hospital, what we're saying is

they're going, okay, this person has a heart attack, this person has a cut, they need a

band-aid, they shouldn't be first in line, the heart attack person should go first.

And that's how they would triage them, figuring out who needs it, severity, and the urgency

in which they need it.

"DNR".

"Do not resuscitate".

So, if someone puts a DNR on your file, usually you put it on, it means if the heart ceases

to function, brain or lungs, do not try to bring them back alive.

This happens for what we call "terminal patients".

Some people will say, okay, if I'm in a serious accident and my brain doesn't work, don't

try to save me.

So, don't pump my heart and everything, get me going, because I don't want to have brain

Some people actually request this, sometimes, I don't know if hospitals would do that, but

most of the time you see something like this, a DNR, the person will request it.

Or the family will say, that person doesn't want to be resuscitated or brought back.

If they are going to be, we call it "vegetative state", no brain, or they won't be able to

be functional, no arms or legs, paraplegic or quadrilegic.

Quadrilegic, ah, I can speak English, yes I can.

So, they put a DNR on his career as a bit of a joke.

You do something really bad, Harvey Weinstein, and you go to jail, for instance, they might

say, yeah, your career's over, we're putting a DNR.

We're never going to hire you again, nobody in this industry will hire you, and that would

So, be careful what you do, because you don't want that kind of thing on your career.

So, that was our bonus.

You did a listening component, you did a vocabulary and phrase component, you did a comprehension,

you did a lot of work, so you can tap yourself on the back, right?

And then we did a test to show you how much you actually learned from what you've got,

gave you a bit of a bonus, some extra words, and finally, your homework.

And why are we giving you homework?

Because this is my thank you to you, as always.

Thank you for paying attention, not paying attention, watching the video and staying

to the very end.

What I'd like you to do for your homework today is fill in the blanks for these two.

You can't put a something on a broken heart, what would that be?

And I have an annual dental something.

Now, for each one of these, I will give you 100 points.

Put it in the comments below, either on YouTube or on an engVid or whatever platform you're

Students, often, as I said, they will give you thumbs up and thumbs down, and you can

figure out your score.

So, before I go, I've got a quote for you, of course.

And before I do the quote, please go to - to do the - for another test on this - www.eng,

as in English, vid, as in video.com, where there'll be another test on this subject to

check your comprehension even further.

Kind of good, no?

Not a bad deal.

And I'm going to end with a quote for you, okay?

So - oh, don't forget to do subscription.

Hit the notification bell and subscribe, and then any video I do will be brought to you.

So, today's quote is "Patience is the best medicine".

This was brought by John Florio, he was a translator around the time of Shakespeare.

So, if you think about it, patience - and I use this one for - you have the patience

to go through the lesson, and if you keep your patience and you maintain it, you'll

get the medicine.

And medicine is supposed to do what?

Make you better.

You'll get better at English.

Anyway, you have a great day, and I'll see you soon enough.

Don't put no DNR on my career.