Welcome back to Business English Pod for today’s lesson on finishing a meeting in English. We’ll learn how to summarize action points and wrap up the meeting.

A well-run meeting can be productive and useful. But a poorly run meeting can leave everyone feeling like their time has been wasted. And one of the big differences between good and bad meetings is how they end.

A good meeting doesn’t slowly run out of energy. Instead, there’s a clear ending to it. And people come out of the meeting with a strong sense of purpose and a clear idea of what they need to do. Without a sense of purpose, people might feel like the meeting generated a lot of discussion but nothing more.

Giving a strong finish to a meeting isn’t actually that hard to do. First off, you need to be clear that the meeting is about to end. That gives people a chance to collect their thoughts. Next, you can summarize the action points and assign tasks. You may also want to emphasize how important they are to give some extra motivation. Then you can wrap up the meeting with some closing thoughts.

In today’s dialog, we’ll join a meeting at a bank. The team has been discussing some recent issues and future plans. You will hear Lisa provide a strong finish to the meeting with James, Bryan, Charles, and Cecilia.

Listening Questions

1. What question does Lisa ask the group before stating the action items?

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