گذاشتن قرار ملاقات کاری و دوستانه

Date and Meeting Appointments

My Super Patreoni Harui from Japan wants to know, how do you make an appointment? Plan a date? Arrange a meeting in English? But also, how do you cancel that? How do you reschedule it if you need to? You can get the lesson worksheet for today on my Patreon or by joining this channel as a member. Also, you can find out how to request your own video in the future. The link to do so is in the description.

So for this lesson, we need to use business English to arrange meetings.

You’ll need formal English for dealing with doctors, opticians, dentists, whoever you need to make an appointment with, and just casual English.

So make sure you have a pen and a piece of paper to take notes.

First arranging a meeting or arranging a video chat. First business English, so we’re talking formally but quite specifically for business. Now usually, when someone wants to set up a meeting with me by email, it’s always the same two phrasal verbs and I hate them but I don’t know why. Hi, I’d love to set up a meeting. Can we jump on a call this week? Or can we hop on a call this week? I don’t know why, but those two phrasal verbs

really annoy me. But yeah, fine. If you want to set up a meeting or a video chat with someone, message them, email them, call them, no one uses a phone like a phone anymore. Yeah, you can use can we jump on a call? Can we hop on a call? It just means can we arrange it? Can we have a chat? You can also say, can we set up a call? You could also say can we put something in the calendar? Yeah, in business, everything works with calendars and schedules, right? So you’ll need that phrasal verb, can we put something in the calendar? Now if you want to be more specific with the timing, Friday, for example, at 10:30. You want to suggest that time. You could make that a little more polite, a bit more friendly, a little less direct by adding two simple words. Hi, I’d love to set up a video chat with you this week. Can we hop on a call, let’s say Friday at 2? So adding, let’s say, you’re offering an example. You’re just saying, for example, Friday at 2. It’s not so direct and so it sounds a bit more polite.

So someone wants to arrange a meeting with you, Friday at 2. You think that you’re free, but you’re not sure. How can say that? You need to say, yes, 2 o’clock but also, I need to confirm. We have a phrasal verb for this situation. Okay, I’ll pencil you in for Friday or let me pencil you in for Friday. What does this mean? Pencil is this thing, right? If you pencil someone in your calendar, you might need to change that date, change the time. So to pencil someone in is like, yes, but I need to confirm. So, sure, let me pencil you in for Friday and I’ll confirm later. An alternative to this, I’ll pencil you in for Friday, and I’ll let you know if anything comes up.

We’re already looking at loads of phrasal verbs that you can use. When something comes up, it means that a situation or a thing appears unexpectedly. What could come up? Maybe you have car trouble, maybe something more important happened, and now you need to cancel, whatever. Something appears unexpectedly. It comes up. And of course to pencil someone in, it’s like yes, but something might change, or I might have to cancel.

But let’s look at other situations. For example if you need to make an appointment with a doctor, optician, dentist, whoever provides a service where you need to make an appointment; that’s a specific type of formal English that we need to learn vocabulary for. Again, you should be making notes.

You have a problem with your teeth. You need to make an appointment with the dentist. Hi, is it possible to book in for an appointment on Thursday? To book in, you reserve a time, you reserve an appointment with someone. Do you have any slots free? Do you have any availability Thursday? A slot is a time period. For example, the 1:00 p.m slot, the 2 to 3 slot. That is quite standard. You could say it’s anyone to make an appointment. Can you fit me in Thursday? Do you have any free space in your schedule, your itinerary, your calendar for me? Now because this is talking about a schedule, yes, you could use this for business English as well.

Okay, now casual English. So for a friend or something more, you want to go out with them. You want to do something with them. What do you do? What do you say to them? What are you doing Thursday? Do you wanna grab drinks? Do you wanna get a coffee? Do you wanna go out? Do you wanna go bungee jumping? Whatever, just be direct, you don’t have to learn a special idiom or expression, you’re not asking out your English teacher. So just keep it simple, keep it direct. You don’t need to do any more. I was thinking maybe we could hang out on Thursday. Notice that’s past tense. I was thinking, yes, you’re still thinking now, but it’s an idea you had. So it’s really common to use that in past. I was thinking maybe this, it’s just a bit less direct, you know? It adds a little bit more friendliness.

Also, we could or we might, I’ve written these two modal verbs because those are most common. This one is the most common. I was thinking we could blah, blah, blah. Again, because it’s less direct, you could use this structure to arrange a business meeting. For example, yeah hi, I was thinking maybe we could have a chat around 2 o’clock, Is that okay for you? This is completely fine for the business environment. It just makes you sound a bit more human. And honestly, that’s a good thing.

I was wondering if we could meet up tomorrow? Again, we have that past tense. Wondering, to wonder means to ask yourself a question. Very similar to, I was thinking, I was thinking about a question. I was wondering if, don’t forget the if, I was wondering if we could go, meet up, hang out. So maybe you are wondering, “Hmm” is my friend available? Is my friend free tomorrow? I was just wondering if you are free tomorrow? So you could add, just, it adds a little bit of spice in there. It makes your sentence a little bit more natural. This is tomorrow, that’s future. Why is this past? Because this is past. I was wondering if you were free tomorrow. Yes, you’re asking about the future. That verb should be past in this situation.

Let’s imagine you were wondering hmm, does my friend want to get food tomorrow? Again, we need to change that verb to past tense, right? So I was wondering if you wanted, past tense, to get food? It’s good to use in business English. Yeah, hi I was just wondering if you’re free for a chat around 2 o’clock, is that okay? In casual English for dating, I was just wondering if you wanted to get food? It’s good for everything. Even for making appointments. For example, hi, yeah, I was wondering if you had any availability today? Hi, I was wondering if you had any free slots today? We want to invite our friend out for coffee this Thursday. Now remember the word fancy? That means you want to do something or you want something at that moment. It’s way more British English to say, I really fancy a pizza. I really fancy going out. If you prefer American English, just use the verb want. But for this example, we’ll use fancy. Let’s do it over text. Okay, I was wondering if you fancy getting a coffee on Thursday? Do you notice something wrong with that sentence? Yeah, change the word fancy to a past tense. I was wondering if you fancied getting a coffee on Thursday? I was thinking, do you want to get a coffee Thursday? Really easy, right? And you can use this right now. Make some plans with your friends, invite them to do something. Call them, text them, email them, try to use that structure, make some plans for the future.

Okay, let’s imagine that your friend is busy tomorrow, whoops! You want to ask a simple question, okay, not tomorrow but when? Ask it this way. You’re busy tomorrow, no problem, when works for you? A great question because now, your friend will suggest the time or the day. Now you want someone to contact you, to call you, email you, message you, whatever. How do we do that? Give me a buzz. Give me a bell. Give me a shout. They’re definitely a more casual way of saying give me a call. But you might hear it in business as well. For example, if the colleagues know each other, if they have a friendly relationship. All of these three are much more British. I don’t think I’ve heard an American say, “give me a buzz.” No, they don’t say that. Drop me a line. Again, it just means call me. It sounds a bit old fashioned to me. In business, maybe you’ll hear it, but younger people probably won’t use it. Again, keep that in mind. Message me, text me, that’s good for everything. Hit me up, it’s very casual, but it’s also very douchey. What does douchey mean? Well, a douche is? Me, I’m a douche, I think I’m really cool but actually I’m kind of an idiot. So let’s hurry this up, I’ve got to take a shirtless photo of my Instagram, let’s get the nipple. So if you’re a douche yeah, you could say like, hit me up, call me. But even then, don’t be a douche.