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M: Hello English learners! Welcome to EnglishPod! I'm joined here today with…

E: Erica.

M: And my name is Marco. And we’re gonna be looking at an office lesson today.

E: That’s right. We’ve got a lesson about describing somebody, who’s not such a good

employee.

M: Right, so, we’re gonna be talking about how to describe this type of situation.

E: Uhu.

M: And language for making your point.

E: Yes.

M: So, let’s look at some vocabulary from the dialogue in “vocabulary preview”.

Voice: Vocabulary preview.

E: So, two words today. The first one is a good fit.

M: A good fit.

E: A good fit.

M: A good fit. So, when we’re talking about an employee and he’s a good fit, it means he’s

suitable for the job.

E: Yes, he’s suitable for the job or for the company.

M: Or for the company, right?

E: Uhu.

M: So, the opposite would be not a good fit.

E: Exactly, the title of today’s lesson.

M: Right. And our last word for vocabulary preview – performance.

E: Performance.

M: Performance.

E: Performance.

M: Your performance is…

E: How good or bad you do your job.

M: Right, so, you can have good performance or bad performance.

E: Uhu, just how well you do your job.

M: Perfect. So now we’re ready to listen to our dialogue for the first time and as always it’s

gonna be at a normal speed, but you don’t have to worry about it.

E: Cause we’ll come back and explain all the key language. Now we’re going to listen as two

managers discuss the performance of one employee.

DIALOGUE, FIRST TIME

M: So, apparently Lauren hired her cousin.

E: Yes.

M: That’s always a complicated situation – working with family members.

E: Yeah, makes it really difficult for Geoff, doesn’t it?

M: Yeah, and apparently Geoff isn’t very happy. Hehe.

E: Well, let’s look at the language he used to tell us that he’s unhappy about this.

Voice: Language takeaway.

M: Okay, the first word on language takeaway today – unreliable.

E: Unreliable.

M: Unreliable.

E: Unreliable.

M: So, let’s listen to some examples of unreliable, so then you can understand what it

means.

Voice: Example one.

A: The trains here are so unreliable; they never arrive on time.

Voice: Example two.

B: Thomas is pretty unreliable; he never finishes his projects on time.

Voice: Example three.

C: You promised you would pick me up from work today; you’re so unreliable.

E: We can understand that if someone is unreliable, we can’t trust them to do their job,

right?

M: Right. So, you don’t want to be unreliable. The opposite would be…

E: Reliable.

M: Reliable.

E: You can trust them.

M: Okay. Our second word today – productive.

E: Productive.

M: Productive.

E: Productive.

M: When you’re productive it means that you accomplish your job, right?

E: You do a lot of work in a short amount of time.

M: Productive.

E: Uhu.

M: You want to be a productive employee.

E: Yes.

M: Our third word – work ethic.

E: Work ethic.

M: Work ethic.

E: Work ethic.

M: So, a person’s work ethic is that person’s attitude towards work.

E: Yes, if someone has a good work ethic, then they are always hard working and they

come to work early and they finish their jobs on time and they stay and do lots of overtime.

So, that’s a good work ethic.

M: Uhu. Okay, great, and our last word – coach.

E: Coach.

M: Coach.

E: Coach. When you coach an employee, you train them, right?

M: Yeah, you help that employee out by showing him or her how to do certain tasks.

E: How to do their job better.

M: Right.

E: Uhu. So, we’ve got some great language to describe work performance, let’s listen to our

dialogue a second time. This time it’ll be a little bit slower, so you can understand these

words and phrases a little bit more clearly.

DIALOGUE, SECOND TIME (slow)

M: Alright, so, if you noticed, a lot of useful phrases have come up, so let’s take a look at

“fluency builder”.

Voice: Fluency builder.

M: On Fluency builder today we have three phrases.

E: That’s right, three phrases that will help us make our point better.

M: The first one is bottom line.

E: The bottom line.

M: The bottom line. Let’s listen to how this was used in the dialogue.

Example: And the bottom line is I don’t think he’s a good fit for our company. And the

bottom line is I don’t think he’s a good fit for our company.

M: So, basically, it means…

E: Like the most important point.

M: The most important point.

E: Uhu.

M: Perfect. The bottom line. Our second word – overall.

E: Overall.

M: Overall.

E: Overall. So, this is the same as saying “on the whole”.

M: Right, the big picture, how you would say.

E: Yeah, in general.

M: In general.

E: Uhu.

M: So, his overall performance is good. It means in general…

E: His performance is good.

M: Perfect. And our last phrase is very interesting, because we can mix it up a little bit.

E: Yep.

M: Perfectly good.

E: Perfectly good.

M: Perfectly good.

E: Perfectly good.

M: So, this is an interesting phrase, because you can describe different objects in this way.

E: Yeah. A perfectly good reason.

M: A perfectly good car.

E: A perfectly good computer.

M: So, by the sounds of it, it’s kind like justifying.

E: Yeah, it’s… it’s saying there’s no problem with it.

M: There’s no problem with it.

E: Uhu.

M: Why are you…

E: Yeah.

M: Would you throw it away if it’s a perfectly good computer?

E: Exactly.

M: Okay, perfectly good. Okay, so now we can listen to our dialogue a third time at a

normal speed and now we’re ready to understand everything.

DIALOGUE, THIRD TIME

M: Okay, I hope everyone enjoyed our lesson today.

E: Uhu.

M: We’ve found some really useful vocabulary for a business situation.

E: Yes.

M: So, go to our website at englishpod.com where you can leave all your questions and

comments and also find a lot of other resources.

E: That’s right, Marco and I are always on the site and we are happy to answer your

questions.

M: Right, so, until then it’s… 

E: Good bye!

M: Bye!