A morning briefing

A morning briefing

Listen to a morning briefing to practise and improve your listening skills.

Do the preparation task first. Then listen to the audio and do the exercises.

Preparation

Transcript

Hi, everyone. I know you're all busy so I'll keep this briefing quick. I have some important information about a change in the management team. As you already know, our head of department, James Watson, is leaving his position at the end of this week. His replacement is starting at the end of the next month. In the meantime, we'll continue with our projects as usual.

I have two more quick points. Firstly, there will be some improvements made to the staff car park next month for a few weeks. It will be closed during that time.

Don't worry, we've found a solution. We can use the local church car park until our own one is ready. If you arrive before 8.30 a.m., please use our small car park on Brown Street, and if you arrive after that, you should go directly to the church car park. It's only a five-minute walk away. But they need it in the evenings, so you have to leave before 6 p.m. Sorry about that – I know how much you all love working late!

The other thing I wanted to tell you about is that the canteen has now introduced a cashless payment system. So, you can't use cash for payments any more. You can pay directly with your smartphone or you can pay using your company ID card. The total amount put on your company ID card comes off your salary at the end of each month.

OK. That's it? Are there any questions?

Discussion

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Language level

Average: 4.5 (375 votes)

Hello Nguyen Hien,

In this sentence, using is a present participle. It describes how the action can be done. It's quite a common construction. For example:

He opened the door, turning the old key slowly.

She travelled to London immediately, using sleeper trains so she could get there early in the morning.

You can read more about these constructions on this page:

https://learnenglish.britishcouncil.org/grammar/intermediate-to-upper-intermediate/participle-clauses

 

Peter

The LearnEnglish Team

Submitted by Milena1 on Mon, 25/05/2020 - 11:20

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I work at a high school in the Department of Study Control and Evaluation. I must provide information to parents and students about the processes and requirements they must meet. I give instructions to the teaching staff I direct, to the administrators under my direction. I also follow instructions from the educational authorities such as the campus director and the Ministry of Education.

Submitted by Olimpia Costa on Sun, 24/05/2020 - 14:53

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I already gave my information, but didn't confirm the subscription. I want a course where I listen to people talking, because i want to improve my accent and pronunciation. Please advise..

Hello Olimpia,

Can you specify what kind of course you're interested in, please? There are several options, some free and some paid, some based on self-access and some on working with a teacher. You can read about them here:

https://learnenglish.britishcouncil.org/online-courses

 

You can also find a course in your own country, whether face-to-face, online or blended:

https://learnenglish.britishcouncil.org/courses/language-schools

 

On our site we have a lot of listening materials at many levels, so there is a lot you can listen to in order to improve your pronunciation and listening skills. The first thing to do is to identify your level so that you can choose appropriate material. If you do not already know your level then our online test is a good place to start:

https://learnenglish.britishcouncil.org/online-english-level-test

 

Peter

The LearnEnglish Team

Submitted by Sharif Tayyebi on Fri, 22/05/2020 - 20:58

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I am an assistant professor at the University, faculty of criminal law. I usually give information or instructions to my students during the class or after class via an email. But sometimes it is necessary to share some information about the incidents and situations of faculty with my boss or other professors or even some staff of university. All these information or instructions will be about the quality teaching and obeying the rules of university. Some of them will be about paying salary which is unfortunately a big problem in our university.
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Submitted by Katvp on Thu, 21/05/2020 - 01:16

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I give instrucción to my subordinates, on the subject of quality, because I am the director of the quality department. Also, I instruct my dogs, about for where walking, cath the ball, sit them. when eat, when to go for a walk, etc.

Submitted by Emily Mellor on Tue, 19/05/2020 - 14:12

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As I'm a medical student, I often give information and instructions to patients. It includes about the disease conditions they suffer, side effects of drugs they should know, what they should avoid to recover from the disease and changing their lifestyle to become healthy. But I'm not a doctor and just a medical student now. So there are a lot of new things to learn and I have little chance to give information and instructions to patients.

Submitted by mouna99 on Sun, 17/05/2020 - 16:12

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Sometimes I give informations to my classmates