Learn English
at work

Work English is its own vocabulary

Courses teach general English. At work you need phrases that come up every week and are hard to guess from their words, plus the terms of your own job.

Meetings: turn the captions on

In a call, a phrase can be gone before you have understood it. Live captions let you read what you just heard. In Google Meet, by Google’s own help pages:

• At the bottom of the call, point at Captions and translation and choose Turn on captions, or press C. They are shown only to you (Google Meet Help).
• Set the spoken language from the menu at the left of the captions, so the captions match what people are saying.
• Google lists dozens of caption languages, some marked beta, so check yours is there.
• Translated captions exist only in some paid Google Workspace editions (Google Meet Help). For learning, keep the captions in English anyway: you want to read the words you hear.

Other video-call apps have live captions too; look for CC or Captions in the call’s controls.

Collect without losing the thread

1. In the meeting, catch only the phrase. Note it, or save it with one click, and go back to listening. Two or three per meeting is plenty.
2. Right after, add the sentence. Write down the line it came in while you still remember it.
3. From e-mails and documents, keep phrases you would write yourself, with their sentence.
4. Leave out names and anything confidential. A phrase does not need the client, the project or who said it.

Use them back within the week

• Review a few minutes before the next meeting. Look at the phrase, say its meaning, then check: the answering is what makes it stay.
• Write it once. Put one new phrase in an e-mail or a chat message the same week. Using it yourself turns a word you recognise into one you can say.
• Say it aloud. Read the line out loud before a call, or repeat it right after hearing it (shadowing).
• Watch for false friends of meaning. “Table” a topic means to propose it for discussion in British English and to put it off in American English (Wiktionary, “table”, verb). When a phrase surprises you, keep the sentence that shows which one your team means.

A week that works

Five minutes a day is enough to keep going: during the day, catch the phrases; on the way to work or before the first call, review the ones that are due; once a day, use one in writing. The spaced repetition calculator shows how many reviews a few new words a day bring.

Your employer’s rules come first: some workplaces limit browser extensions or apps on work computers. Check before you install anything.

How Lexpad helps at work

Made by the author of this page

Catch the phrase, keep the sentence

• In Google Meet, with captions on, rest your pointer on them: a still copy of the last lines appears, so you can click the word you just heard. “Earlier” shows the last ten lines. Only that word and its line are saved, with “Google Meet” and the date; never names, the meeting link or its title. Google Meet captions.
• On web pages and web mail, select a word and press the small + button. In any app on a Mac or Windows PC, select it and press ⌘⇧L or Ctrl+Shift+L with Lexpad for Mac and Windows; the note says “Seen in” that app.
• Each word comes back on growing gaps, on the commute in the Android app or on Today in the web app.
• With Pro, Use it in a sentence reads a sentence you write with the word and says whether it is natural, and Lex can quiz you on the words you saved recently. Every new account gets Pro free for 7 days, no card needed.
• The extension is free; each card uses the AI allowance (25 AI cards a day (400 a month) on Free). YouTube subtitles need extension 0.4.0 or later; TED, other web players and Google Meet captions need 0.5.0. Versions in the stores: Firefox 0.5.0, Chrome 0.4.0, Edge 0.3.1. Each store reviews a version on its own; the extension updates itself.

Open in LexpadAll downloads

Free account, no card. Apps: Mac · Windows · Android · iPhone