Podcast: Time to step up your game

Podcast Inglês Online

How are you doing? Hoje, no podcast, eu falo sobre mais duas expressões super comuns do inglês do dia-a-dia. Não perca!

Transcrição

How are you doing? You’re listening to the new episode of the Inglês Online podcast. Download the Inglês Online app at the Google Play Store or the Apple Store – search for “inglês online Ana”. Thank you for telling everyone you know about this podcast and, enjoy!

So, imagine you’re working with your boss on a sales proposal for a new client. The two of you have worked on it for a couple of days, and you both agree that it looks alright. So, now you’re both presenting the proposal in the client’s meeting room, and the client people don’t look like they’re buying it. They look kind of suspicious… or just a bit unconvinced.

So, by the end of the presentation, the head of Strategy for the client is saying “You know, we were expecting better terms, and a better offer in general. We have cheaper offers from other companies that do exactly the same thing you offer, but we were hoping you would be able to take it a step further and give us the kind of top-notch service we expect for this price.”

Yikes! Your boss tells the client that you will take that into consideration and evaluate how you can revise the order, and get back to them. He says to you “We need to step up our game”. When you step up your game, you improve something. You make it better quality, or you improve the quality, or you develop a skill, or something. So, that’s more or less what your boss is saying: we’re going to have to improve our proposal and come back with something that is higher-caliber if we want to get this client.

So, how would that apply in your life? Let’s say you love volleyball but you’re not that great a player at the moment. So, you go ahead and join a group of people who play every Thursday. You realise they’re pretty strong, and you’d better step up your game so you won’t be too disruptive of the good game they play. So, what do you do? You start practicing a bit on your own, and the reason is… You want to step up your game and come up to their level – or at least a bit closer.

So, here’s another example of how it might apply to your life: you like cooking, but your lasagna is just average. However, a rumour was spread that you cook a mean lasagna… You, on the other hand, know that the person who spread the rumour is someone who only ever had frozen lasagnas before and that is possibly the reason why they loved yours so much. So, you decide that it would be a good idea to step up your game – you start practicing with some excellent recipes you found online.

You make lasagna following like five different recipes, and by the end of the week you’ve had so much lasagna you can’t even look at it – but you’ve certainly improved your lasagna-making skills. You have definitely stepped up your game. You’re confident now that when your friends come over they will leave satisfied and content.

So, I remember years ago when I was teaching English the traditional way and it was working out very poorly. I decided to step up my game and I did that whole research on how to actually improve fluency, and then I wrote my How-to-speak-English tips. I really stepped up my teaching game and it was a game-changer for me and lots of people – Inglês Online readers and others.

So, let’s wrap things up for now – and I will leave you with the question: When did you have to step up your game? Let us know and see you soon.

Key expressions

• step up (one’s) game

Vocabulary

head of Strategy = o “manda-chuva” de Estratégia

top-notch = de primeira, de altíssima qualidade

a mean lasagna = (informal) mean, aqui, é uma gíria usada para dizer “excelente”