Useful Language

 Active listening, paraphrasing and checking understanding:

 Let me see if I follow you. You’re saying that….

 From your point of view the situation looks like this..
 Do I understand correctly that what you’re saying is…
 OK, you say that…Have I got that right?
 I’m not sure I follow you.
 I’m sorry, I missed that. Could you repeat, please?
 Please go on.
 I appreciate how you feel.
 Yes, you have a point when you say…and here’s how it looks from my angle…

 Adding extra information:

 As well as..
 In addition to/too/also/and
 With regards to
 With reference to
 Furthermore/moreover
 Apart from/besides

 Contrasting information:

 However
 Nevertheless/Nonetheless
 Despite/In spite of
 Although/Even though/Though
 Yet/While/Whereas
 But/unlike…
 In theory...in practice…

 Introducing the result of previous information:

 As a result
 So
 Consequently/As a consequence
 Given/due to
 Thereby/therefore
 Because of

 Giving the reason for something:

 As
 Since
  Because/because of
 That’s why/for this reason
 Due to/due to the fact that
 Owing to/owing to the fact that

 Expressing a sequence of events:

 Firstly/secondly/in the first place/in the second place

 Then/after that/finally
 The final point/step/issue
 The former/the latter/the following

 Correcting misunderstandings:

 Not quite, it’s….

 Well, actually, what I said/meant was that..
 Not exactly, I said/meant that…

 Summarising:

 In brief/In a nutshell/In short

 To summarise/In summary
 To conclude/In conclusion
 To sum up
 A quick recap of the main points/I’d like to recap the main points
 Well, that’s about it for this part. We’ve covered…

 Transition – moving from one topic to another:

 I’d now like to move on to the next part

 This leads me to my next point, which is..
 Turning our attention now to…
 Let’s now turn to..

 Asking questions politely:

 I’d be interested to know…

 I was just wondering what you thought about/with respect to/regarding
 Yes, but I was wondering if/whether
 I mean to say, could you tell us/explain to us..

 Dealing with questions:

 I’m glad you asked me that question.

 I’ often asked that question. What I (usually/often) say is..
 As I’ve said/mentioned before,…
 Do you mind if we deal with that later?
 I’m actually coming to that point later in my talk.
 Dealing with difficult questions:

 I’m not sure if I entirely understand your question. Do you mean…?

 What I would say is… I hope that answers your question.
 I’m afraid I don’t have that information at hand, but…
 I’m sorry but that’s not really my field/department/sector.
 I’m not really an expert on….My colleague will be talking about that later.

 Reaching agreement:

 I think we can work with that.

 That seems reasonable.
 Yes, that’s do-able.
 We might be able to work on….if you could….
 In exchange for …would you agree to…