Presentation Series 10 - The Q and A Session

Hello everyone and welcome to EnglishPod. My name is Marco.

My name is Catherine and for those of you who have been following, this is the very

last episode of our 10-part series about giving a presentation in English.

That's right. This is part 10 where we are going to receive questions from the audience.

So this is called a Q&A session or question and answer session. Let's take a listen to

our dialogue. We'll be back in a moment.

Well everyone, I'm sure you'd like to join me in thanking Michael for what was a really

inspirational presentation. Sincere thanks, Michael. Now I'm sure many of you will be

keen to ask some questions, so I'd like to open up a Q&A session. Please raise your hand

if you have any questions at all. Yes, Janice, go ahead.

Yes, thank you, Jonathan. I would just like to go back to the comment Mr. Ford made in

regards to our competitors, particularly Orange. Now as you know, Orange has established themselves

as the market leader in the high-end laptop market. How does Mr. Ford expect to compete

with a company that has such a huge reputation and huge resources?

Well Janice, first of all, thanks for a very good question. I think you have hit the nail

on the head actually. Orange are the global leaders precisely because of their size and

power. But although we can't compete in terms of size, I do believe we hold an advantage

in terms of dedication to customer service. Yes, I admit this is a David and Goliath battle,

but don't forget who won that contest.

Mr. Ford, could you elaborate on actual technical details of the X420 a little more?

I'd love to, but I think we're a little pressed for time right now. However, Jonathan has

all the technical specs for you on the PowerPoint presentation, which you can look over in your

own time.

Mr. Ford, one final question. Would you like to join me for a game of golf this Sunday?

All right, we're back. So now let's take a look at some words on Language Takeaway.

Language Takeaway.

Well, at the beginning of today's dialogue, Jonathan said, I'm sure many of you will be

keen to ask some questions. What does this word keen mean?

All right. So to be keen to do something, which basically means that you want to or

would like to do something.

Right. Are you keen? Would you like to do it? Are you interested in doing it?

Now, this is a very British form of addressing something, right?

That's right. This is very British. We don't really say this as much in America, but you

can. People will understand you. I would say, I'm sure many of you would like to ask some

questions and so you could say that both ways.

That's right. That's right. Okay. So many people want to ask questions and Jonathan

said, so I'd like to open it up to a Q&A session. So the series of words here, to open it up

to a Q&A session. What does that mean?

To open it up. It means the discussion. So he would like to invite people to ask questions.

So I'd like to open it up for questions mean I would like to give you guys the opportunity

to ask.

So to open up a discussion or to open up a conversation, right?

I would like to open this up to you guys.

Okay. Now, one of the audience members asked about another company, which is their competitors

and said that they have a huge reputation and huge resources, this competitor. So what

is this word reputation?

Reputation is important. A person can have a reputation, but a company can also have

a reputation. Now, reputation means the way that other people talk about you. Okay. So

he has a good reputation means people say good things about him. Or the media like newspapers

and websites, they say good things about him. But if you have a bad reputation, it means

people are saying bad things about you.

Right. Okay. So that pretty much sums it up a reputation, what other people say about

you or how other people see you. So maybe if a company like this has a huge reputation,

it means that it's very well respected and people talk very good thing and people talk

well about this company.

That's right.

Right. Now, another question came along and they wanted to know a little bit more about

the technical details of this product that they are introducing. And Mr. Ford said that,

you know what, right now we don't really have time, but I'm going to leave all the technical

specs on this PowerPoint presentation and you can look at it later.

Okay. So specs, this is something you'll hear very, very often, especially in technical

areas, but it means specifications or details. So maybe I have a computer and I know it's

an IBM computer, but I don't know the specs. I don't have the details. So that's something

that you would want to find out if you have a problem or you want to look into it more

closely. And so specs.

That's right. Okay. So these are the specs. Now, why don't we take a break? Let's take

a look at our dialogue again and we'll be back in a bit.

Well everyone, I'm sure you'd like to join me in thanking Michael for what was a really

inspirational presentation. Sincere thanks, Michael. Now I'm sure many of you will be

keen to ask some questions. So I'd like to open up a Q and A session. Please raise your

hand if you have any questions at all. Yes, Janice, go ahead.

Yes. Thank you, Jonathan. I would just like to go back to the comment Mr. Ford made in

regards to our competitors, particularly Orange. Now, as you know, Orange has established themselves

as the market leader in the high-end laptop market. How does Mr. Ford expect to compete

with a company that has such a huge reputation and huge resources?

Well Janice, first of all, thanks for a very good question. I think you have hit the nail

on the head, actually. Orange are the global leaders precisely because of their size and

power. But although we can't compete in terms of size, I do believe we hold an advantage

in terms of dedication to customer service. Yes, I admit this is a David and Goliath battle,

but don't forget who won that contest.

Mr. Ford, could you elaborate on extra technical details of the X420 a little more?

I'd love to, but I think we're a little pressed for time right now. However, Jonathan has

all the technical specs for you on the PowerPoint presentation, which you can look over in your

own time.

Mr. Ford, one final question. Would you like to join me for a game of golf this Sunday?

Alright, we're back. So now let's take a look at some of those phrases on Fluency Builder.

The first phrase we have here is one that I really like and I use very often. It's,

I think you have hit the nail on the head.

That's right. To hit the nail on the head. So this is a very common phrase, which basically

means I think you got it exactly right.

Okay. So think about a nail that you're hammering something, you have a hammer in your hand.

It's very easy to miss, but boom, when you hit it, hit the nail on the head, it means

you have it exactly right.

That's right. So this was actually a response to one of the questions because it was a very

good question and it had a valid point. So this is why Mr. Ford said you hit the nail

on the head. This is exactly right. I completely agree with you.

After that though, we had this interesting phrase. He said, I admit this is a David and

Goliath battle.

Okay. So now this is obviously, he's speaking metaphorically, right?

That's right. So David and Goliath, that's actually a story that we often talk about.

It's a biblical story, so it comes from Christianity and David and Goliath fought, but David was

very, very small and Goliath was a monster. He was very big. And so everyone said Goliath

will win the fight, but David won the fight. And so this is an example or a story that

people often use when they say, listen, it may be the case that you think the big giants

will win, but actually the small man or our small company will win.

That's right. As you said, we many times make reference to this, even not in the biblical

sense, but it's just the size. Maybe we're a small company, we're going to fight this

big company. So we say it's a David and Goliath battle or even athletes, maybe two boxers.

One is bigger than the other. So they'll say it's a David and Goliath boxing match.

That's right.

Okay. Now when we got the questions about the technical details of the computer, Mr.

Ford said that we are a little bit pressed for time right now. That's why we can't really

answer that question.

That's right. And so to be pressed for time means that you don't have a lot of time. You

are in a rush.

That's right. So if you are pressed for time, you don't have too much time. You can't, you're

in a hurry basically.

So I could say, Hey Marco, can you come here and look at this thing on my computer please?

I'm sorry. I'm a little bit pressed for time right now. I'll take a look at it in an hour.

Okay. So those are all of our phrases from Fluency Builder. Let's take another listen

to our dialogue and we'll be right back.

Hello everyone. I'm sure you'd like to join me in thanking Michael for what was a really

inspirational presentation. Sincere thanks Michael. Now I'm sure many of you will be

keen to ask some questions. So I'd like to open up a Q and A session. Please raise your

hand if you have any questions at all. Yes, Janice, go ahead.

Yes. Thank you, Jonathan. I would just like to go back to the comment Mr. Ford made in

regards to our competitors, particularly Orange. Now, as you know, Orange has established themselves

as the market leader in the high end laptop market. How does Mr. Ford expect to compete

with a company that has such a huge reputation and huge resources?

Well Janice, first of all, thanks for a very good question. I think you have hit the nail

on the head actually. Orange are the global leaders precisely because of their size and

power. But although we can't compete in terms of size, I do believe we hold an advantage

in terms of dedication to customer service. Yes, I admit this is a David and Goliath battle,

but don't forget who won that contest. Mr. Ford, could you elaborate on actual technical

details of the X420 a little more? I'd love to, but I think we're a little pressed

for time right now. However, Jonathan has all the technical specs for you on the PowerPoint

presentation which you can look over in your own time.

Mr. Ford, one final question. Would you like to join me for a game of golf this Sunday?

Alright so that was part 10 of our 10-part series about presentations. We took a look

at many different aspects where you can take it as an example as we talked about computers

and marketing, but you can more or less have an idea of how a presentation should go and

the type of vocab you can use. That's right, and I think that this particular

dialogue today was very, very useful because a lot of times you're going to have people

asking you questions and filling in details, and so you can use some of these phrases to

help explain exactly what your presentation was about when people do have questions.

That's right. So we hope that you enjoyed this series and we would like to hear from

you if you have any other suggestions about a series of dialogues or a series of lessons

that we can do. We had one about a job interview, all the steps and everything, how a job interview

would go. We just had a series about presentations, so maybe you can give us some feedback or

some ideas of what you would like to learn. Let us know. Our website is EnglishPod.com.

We'll see you there. Alright, bye.

Bye.