Podcast: I’ll bring you up to speed

Podcast Inglês Online

What’s up? No podcast Inglês Online de hoje eu falo sobre a expressão ‘bring someone up to speed‘. Mais uma que é super comum no dia a dia dos nativos de inglês.

Transcrição

Hey, everyone, how’s it going? Here’s our podcast for this week. Yes! I’m recording it just now. How have you guys been? It’s been crazy over here at Inglês Online as, I guess, many of you know… This week we’ve opened up enrollment for module one of our Curso Básico. In the past few weeks I… the past couple of weeks I recorded a series of three free classes where I talked about possessive pronouns and it’s been awesome. I got great feedback, people told me that it’s been really useful to finally understand those pronouns and you know what? It’s been a lot of fun.

You know what I just noticed? Everything I said up to now… I’m using the present perfect a lot, so there you go. Here’s a little bit of practice on the present perfect at the beginning of this episode for you. Alright! We’re right now in the middle of the enrollment period for the Curso Básico and, again, I know that you’re probably not part of the target audience for the Curso Básico.

I know that there are many former students of my first version of the Curso Básico here, right now, listening to this podcast and… They tell me that right after they completed the Curso Básico they were able to start listening to the podcast, which is awesome – because this podcast is not exactly just basic English, you know. I just… I just used the present perfect, I use present perfect continuous, I use conditionals, I use complex verb tenses, vocabulary and prepositions, and pronouns, and all kinds of things and expressions. So kudos to you if all you did was complete my Curso Básico and now you have a habit of listening to this podcast. This is amazing and I want you to know that. I want you to be aware of that, okay? This is really… a really great result. Congratulations.

Okay, I was looking at a few posts here, that I did… And I saw this expression – this idiom bring someone up to speed. And let me give you an example from an office situation – because that’s going to be really easy to understand. So, let’s say that you work as part of a team in your company. So you have your colleagues, and you have your manager… And one of your colleagues went on holiday for two weeks, and while your colleague was on holiday your manager asked the team to start working on a new project.

So obviously your colleague who was on holiday wasn’t aware of the new project… but when your colleague came back you had to tell him – let’s say it’s a guy, Mark. You had to tell Mark what the new project is about; what it entails; what you have to do; what the results expected are; what kind of work each of you in the team is going to be doing… In other words you have to bring Mark up to speed.

So, that’s an expression for when there’s something going on… Some kind of project, some kind of activity, some kind of event… And then someone new, for some reason, gets involved in that situation. But because they’re new, they’re not aware – right? They’re not aware of what’s going on, so someone has to bring them up to speed.

Bring someone up to speed is just – to inform them of what’s going on. I mean this happens a lot in work situations, right? I’m pretty sure you can remember the last time at work – or maybe in your personal life – when you had to bring someone up to speed, because they just arrived in this situation which is ongoing. So everyone who’s involved in the situation obviously knows what’s going on, but that new person doesn’t – so you have to bring them up to speed.

That’s it for today. I’ll just… before I close, I’ll ask you to please forward the emails where I’m talking about the new Curso Básico to your friends and neighbours and family… If you know people who really want to learn English or are really interested in improving their English, and learning how to speak… Please forward my emails to them, because we’re in the middle, like I said, of the enrollment period.

Thank you and speak to you soon, bye.

Key expressions

• Bring someone up to speed

Vocabulary

enrollment = Inscrição, Cadastro

you know what? = quer saber de uma coisa, quer saber

everything I said up to now = tudo o que eu disse até agora

kudos = parabéns

went on holiday = saiu de férias

what it entails = o que isso significa/acarreta/envolve

ongoing = em andamento

forward the emails = encaminhar os emails