Office English: Formal or informal?
Learning English For Work

Office English: Formal or informal?

B1IntermediateAugust 10, 20268 min
  • Language lesson
  • Language learning

Is everyone at your office formal and polite, or do they speak more informally? Pippa and Phil talk about how formal you need to be at work. Find a transcript and subtitles at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/learningenglish/english/features/office-english/250810 Want to boost your speaking skills? Try Beating Speaking Anxiety, our series to help fight your fears of speaking English: https://www.bbc.co.uk/learningenglish/english/features/beating_speaking_anxiety Get our latest programmes. Subscribe to our free email newsletter https://www.bbc.co.uk/learningenglish/newsletters

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Sentence 2 of 12 · 0:59

How formal should we be?

. .

I think with colleagues that you spend a lot of time with, you have a bit more freedom to be

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0:30

How formal should we be? at work. I think it's more about the context than how formal the language should be. I think with colleagues that you spend a lot of time with, you have a bit more freedom to be informal because it takes a lot of effort to be formal with people you see all the time.

1:21

If you get on quite well with your colleagues and you're just having a chat about the weekend, then of course you can speak using language you wouldn't use in a meeting with your boss. Today we're talking about formal and informal workplace language. So Phil, we've just been hearing from some of our BBC Learning English colleagues about using

1:44

formal language at work. What do we mean by formal language, Phil? What's the difference between formal and informal language? Sometimes this could be a bit tricky, but the main thing to think is that it's the kind of language that you probably don't use with your friends and family. It's often more like the kind of language you'd write in a letter, maybe.

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