When you are finished with this lesson go to the Greetings Activity

Business English:
Greetings

Almost every English course, Business English or otherwise, starts with introductions - and quite properly so, as often no one in the classroom knows each other, or at least the students often won't know the teacher - and it is a good way to warm up the class and get everyone to relax a bit.  And it is just good starting point for each course.

While in a typical conversation class the we might focus more on hobbies and interests, in a Business English class our target language following our names should move toward explaining our job functions and our company.

Unless your work setting is quite casual, the best option on the charts below is to use the FORMAL option.  It is better to be more formal than to be too casual.  Most non-Western cultures can be quite formal on initial meeting and being too informal can damage the potential of the meeting.  Remember the Korea adage: First impressions are everything.

First Meeting:

Response to Introduction:

Follow up with the initial response from the host might include:

Situation: Ms. Anderson arrives at the Bangkok Post to meet the circulation director, Khun Suwat.

Formal Dialog:

Anderson: Good morning, I'm Janet Anderson from Jiffy Transport Company.

Suwat: How do you do?  I'm pleased to finally meet you.  Please have a seat.

Informal Dialog:

Anderson: Hi, I'm Janet Anderson from Jiffy Transport.

Suwat: Welcome, come have a seat.

Dialog 2:

NOTE: You can easily see that less formal dialogs tend to be shorter and use ellipsis (leave out parts of the sentence).  Look at the differences in the formal and informal dialogs above to note how one is different from the other.

As the conversation continues . . .

Suwat: What do you do at Jiffy Transport Ms. Anderson?

Ms. Anderson: I'm the Business Manager in charge of new accounts, Khun Suwat, and your responsibilities here?

K. Suwat: I'm the Circulation Manager, I make sure our newspapers get where they need to go.

Go to the Greetings Activity