¨Practice makes perfect!¨

 

 

Two or three weeks ago, I had been asked to make some telephone calls to invite Anglophone members of Éco-Quartier to a workshop. Having always only seen my colleagues complete such a task, I was very nervous at the thought of speaking to strangers and acting formally because I was afraid to mess it up and make mistakes and look like a fool. Before I started to panic, I thought that it would be a good idea to write a short dialog just to get my ideas straight. Although it took me a few minutes to gather my courage, I picked up the receiver without thinking and dialed the number. This is pretty much what my dialog looked like:

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*Ring ring*

Stranger: Hello?

Me: Hello! This is Christine from Éco-Quartier NDG. I believe that you’ve bought a composter recently; we hope that you haven’t had problems and that everything is going fine with it.

Stranger: Yes, everything is okay, but there is many of these tiny flies since I have the composter, is it normal?

Me: Absolutely, it is what usually happens after a few days, they are attracted to leftover fruits.

Stranger: Ohh, I see, (…). So everything is fine, then. Thank you!

Me: Excellent, I’m glad to hear that! I was calling to let you know that there will be a composting and vermi-composting workshop here at Éco-Quartier that will take place on Thursday, November 14^th. You are more than welcome to join and we will gladly answer any questions or concerns that you may have.

Stranger: That’s nice; at what time?

Me: It will be from 4 to 6pm. It is a bilingual event and people of all ages are invited. We hope to see you there!

Stranger: Perfect, I will try to make it. Thank you, bye!

Me: Have a nice day!

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My host gave me a tip to make the contact formal and welcoming at the same time. First, taking news of the composter that they had purchased and ask if there are any concerns is a good way to start the conversation while being thoughtful and polite. Second, I asked if it was too informal to introduce myself using my first name and she told me that the contact was in fact friendlier while still remaining polite. It was hard to improvise when people asked me questions but it worked out fine. People that care about the environment are generally very nice people. I don’t mean to generalise but that is what I noticed every time someone came in to pick up something they had reserved (recycling bins, fruit and vegetable baskets from the ecological garden, etc.). I did not want to give out too much information all at once to confuse my interlocutor so sometimes I took pauses to let them react or ask questions. This monitoring made me less stressful since I could take my time instead of blurting everything out in one sentence. I ended the conversation by letting them know that the workshop was available to everyone and that they could even simply drop by to ask for further explanations or participate to only a little activity. I ended each conversation with a little ¨Have a nice day! ¨ to be polite. Note: I did not exaggerate on the exclamation points; people were just really and surprisingly friendly.

 

 

 

 This task that seemed difficult given my timid personality type had become a task that I ended up enjoying because I could practice my English in a concrete way by interacting with other Anglophones in a typical real-life situation. The monitoring helped me a lot as I said, but also preparing the little dialog because I was prepared and more confident, at least at first.