BE 372: Computer Vocabulary You Should Know in Your Sleep
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This is the Business English Podcast, Episode 372, Computer Vocabulary You Should Know in Your Sleep.

Welcome to the Business English podcast from All Ears English. Get the English skills you need to achieve your dreams in global business. For a presentation, a meeting, or your office party, this is Real Business English with your favorite American hosts, Lindsay and Michelle, coming to you from New York City and Colorado, USA. Welcome to the Business English podcast from All Ears English.

As a global professional, you are good at your job. You know what you're doing. In fact, you sound confident when you talk about your job in English. However, in conversations with coworkers about daily topics and informal chats with clients on the phone, you might be struggling. This is the English that you need to truly express yourself in any situation.

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Hello, Michelle. How are you? I'm good, Lindsay. How are you? I'm fantastic. What are we talking about today? Are we getting into computers? Oh, yes. Lindsay, do you find working with computers to be complicated? I sometimes do. Like, for example, syncing my keyboard by Bluetooth with my laptop. Oh, my gosh.

I find that challenging or syncing a second screen. So these higher level tasks, sometimes I find them challenging, complicated. What about you? Yeah, there are definitely things that...

I think I try, I avoid, do you ever avoid doing something because you don't know how to do it? Yes. So you're just like, oh, okay, well, I'm not going to do that. Yes. I'm still using my old laptop because there are certain programs I don't know how to find or how to download on the new computer. So yeah, that happens. Sure. Yeah, exactly. What are we, well, before we get into our topic today, which is going to be applicable to anyone, which is everyone who works in an office with a laptop. I mean, I think most

many many many of our listeners not everyone but most of our listeners probably interact with a laptop on some level at some point in their careers right right so first hit follow guys hit the follow button right now if you love our style we show you how to connect at the workplace connection is the highest value that we have here on this show and on all airs english so if you believe in connection not perfection at work that relationships is what gets you further than

anything in business, go ahead and hit follow. All right. Definitely. Good. All right, guys. So today we are going to be talking about computers. So we're going to go over some important

vocabulary for basic computer skills that are used frequently at work or really anytime you use a computer. So this is important. Some of these words you may know, but I think that we're kind of going back to the basics here to make sure that we have this vocabulary for talking about computers at work and what we're actually doing. Or because this will help if somebody is giving you directions or if you need to get directions, I mean, or if you need to give directions, these are super important.

Yeah, for sure. So double click, clicking twice quickly, double click on that to get to the top, to get the pop up to appear. We also say right click. Right click is really common, right? Yeah. Right. Right. Click on certain things. Mm hmm. Love that. Ways to click. Yeah. Tab. So the tab is I'm sure if you look down at your computer, if you're at your computer by any chance, if this one gets you to jump to the next section without

without actually using your mouse. So you could say hit tab and you'll automatically get to the next cell. Oh, okay. This is in a spreadsheet, Michelle, or is this in like a internet, the internet, just browsing the net? Here I'm in the example, I'm in a spreadsheet, but you could use it in different ways. Got it. Okay. So we're talking, so I thought you were actually talking about tabs, like the tabs open in your browser. Oh,

- Oh no, I'm talking about the tab button. - Got it. - The tab button, it could be used also on the internet. Sometimes maybe you'll have to fill out some sort of form on the internet and instead of taking your mouse and clicking into every different box, you can sometimes just hit the tab button and it makes it go faster.

Okay. Yeah. Are you on a Mac or on a PC, by the way? Let's make sure, because this is going to be different sometimes depending on whether you're on a Mac or a PC. Yeah. I'm on a PC, but I believe that there's a tab button on a Mac. Yeah.

Yeah. Just extending the conversation about tabs, because we all spend so much time on the internet, right? Browser tabs. I think a good way to start a conversation and to connect here would be how many tabs do you typically have open? And this tells you how busy are you at work and how scattered is your thinking? Michelle, how about you? Right. Yeah. No. Oh, man. I don't want to

say. No, I'm just joking, but I am. No, I have a bunch of tabs open because I have our episodes and then I have, I'm already...

you know, for planning for the next week of episodes, I just might have them up. So yeah. So what about you? Oh, on average, when we're recording, I try to minimize the tabs, but when we're not, I might have like 20 open at a time easily. Yeah. It's just, this is where we are right now as a humanity. You know, we are so scattered working online and it's, I think it starts

to change the way we think, our brain, like the structure of our brain. Don't you think? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's just, we're always jumping around and going back to different tasks and it's hard to stay focused, I think. Mm.

It's also, yeah, that's another topic for another day, but this would be a way to start a conversation out of today's episode. So how many tabs do you usually have open? You look over at your colleague's screen. Oh my gosh, you have 25 tabs open. Are you okay? Okay. Okay. Well, here's the question. Are you one of the, there are two types of people in the world, you know, somebody who's inbox is totally cleaned out and their email, right? And then people, and then there's people who they have thousands of emails.

Who are you? - I'm the thousands for sure. - Me too. - Thousands and not all of them are red for sure. And I use my emails as like, even though we use monday.com to organize our tasks,

I still, my email still ends up being kind of a task list to some extent. Like the other part of the task list is in my email, unfortunately. It's just crazy. I want to, I want to let you know that I am looking at a picture of an Apple keyboard just to make sure. Okay. Okay. There is a tab button. So guys got it. Okay. All right. All right. Cool. Well, what else, what else, Michelle, let's move on to the next one. Yeah. Next one is to scroll down or scroll up.

So that's with your mouse, right? When you're kind of directing someone. So for example, do you see it? Scroll up. No scroll down. There it is. Yeah, exactly. Very common. If we are ever on a screen share on a zoom meeting, I could imagine our listeners might be on a teams or a zoom meeting screen sharing. Someone tells you to scroll up, scroll down. This could be collaboration meetings, things like that. Screen

Screen grab would be the next one. I like this one. Really useful. Can you take a screen grab so I can help you identify the problem? We also say screenshot. Screenshot. Right. So, yeah. So, I mean, what is a screen grab? So basically when you you hit a button and then you go and take a picture of the screen.

So a screenshot, a screen grab. Sometimes you use a snipping tool, that word snipping tool. Yeah, snipping tool. More recently, the versions of Microsoft Word allow you to kind of snip what you want to take as a photo, not the whole screen, right? Yeah. Yeah. Love that. Right. Exactly. Yes. But screen grabs, I think

that you will ask for a screen grab sometimes if in the past I know that you'll say oh can you send me a screen grab of it so I can see you know if you're trying to it's really good if you're trying to troubleshoot something help somebody with something but you need to see what they see oh 100% super important yeah my dad works in b2b marketing he came by my school for career day and said he was a big ROAS man then he told everyone how much he loved calculating his return on ad spend

My friend's still laughing me to this day. Not everyone gets B2B, but with LinkedIn, you'll be able to reach people who do. Get $100 credit on your next ad campaign. Go to LinkedIn.com slash results to claim your credit. That's LinkedIn.com slash results. Terms and conditions apply. LinkedIn, the place to be, to be. Okay, Michelle, we are back. Oh, we talked about right-click already. Yeah, we did right-click. Oops, sorry about that. That's okay. I know, but it shows how natural it was, too. Yeah, that would have been...

And then we have two more. We have highlight. So highlight is when you, you know, grab something on the screen and then you scroll over so that you can kind of make it

highlight in a different color to be able to look at it, right? So highlight that sentence and copy and paste it in. Love it. Or hover. Put your mouse over something and usually some kind of a pop-up or some information will appear without needing to actually click it. We might see this sometimes if there's a little circle with a question mark in it, maybe it's gray, if we hover over that. So the word is hover. Yeah. And a lot of times you hear it with hover over.

That's a good point. Yeah, let's go with hover over. So, oh my gosh, let's just, I just want to shout them out one more time. So we had double click tab, scroll down or up.

screen grab, right click, highlight and hover over. I mean, Lindsay, this is a vocabulary rich episode. So why is this important? I mean, we're kind of going back to basics here and just making sure we have this vocabulary. Yeah, I suspect that a lot of our listeners do already know this vocabulary and use it. However, honing in on making sure we have the right prepositions like hover over something, not hover on something.

Right? For example, it's hugely important when it comes to collaboration meetings. A lot of meetings are working meetings. Maybe you're working with someone in Japan or someone in South Africa and you're in the US, for example, you're on a Zoom call, you're screen sharing someone's screen. You're actually doing the work together. You need this vocabulary. You need to say it correctly quickly because there's no time to waste.

Right? Right. Exactly. Or just, you know, let's say you're leading a meeting, you might need to explain how somebody should get to a certain window or a certain document. You need to give directions. There's just so many different times that you might need to use this. So I just wanted to do make sure make sure we have all of this. And so you could hear the pronunciation and some different ways that they're used. I mean, Lindsay, how important is it to be computer savvy?

Well, I feel like this is the baseline now. I mean, this stuff we could teach, probably they're teaching this to third graders. I think what's important now is probably being AI savvy, honestly, right? So I feel like I need to catch up already. It's not even, this is probably, yeah, again, kindergarten work. And what's really important now is how do we ask ChatGPT or your chosen chat bot

the right questions. How do we work with AI? How do we learn how to code AI to build things in the next 50 years? That's- - Oh man, this takes me back to the last episode. This is very daunting to me to think about learning with AI. So I know it's crazy, but you gotta get into it, Michelle. You gotta get into it. But we do have a role play here.

So let's do this. So here you came to help me with something at work on my computer. So it sounds like we're in the same physical office. Is that right? No, maybe I'm like kind of if you're in the same physical office, somebody might kind of then look over your shoulder to help you out. So that's what we're doing. Okay. Okay. So how can I help? Well, I can't get this to open. Hmm. Okay. Um, hover your mouse over there. Okay.

That's odd. It usually comes up there. Okay, scroll up. No, scroll down. Okay, here, maybe if I highlight it and right-click? No, okay, just double-click in the box, tab over. Okay, ugh.

I think we need IT's help. Take a screen grab and I'll call them over. Okay. Oh, IT. All right, cool. So we weren't able to solve the problem. So we'll call in extra help for sure. But this was this did really get into the details, the nuances of the prepositions that we're using to give instructions to guide our coworker.

through the process, right? Yep. Lots, a lot going on. So yeah, guys, we want you to be able to use these like also quickly when you're explaining something or something. See, this conversation was so fast. So, you know, so we want to make sure that you are comfortable listening to these and understanding them quickly and to also be able to be the one to give directions on the other side. Yeah, that's a good point. Yeah. So first,

I said, okay, hover your mouse over there. Now we talked about hover over, but we could also just say hover your mouse over there.

Right. Hover your mouse over there. Okay, good. And then you said that's odd. It usually comes up there. Okay, scroll up. No, scroll down. It's fast. There's a lot of back and forth going on here. And I need to be able to respond quickly. We don't have a lot of time. We're busy, right? For sure. So we need to be really confident with these. Like in your sleep, you should know these to me. So then you said, okay, here, maybe if I highlight it and right click, right?

Right. So highlight and right click. And then I said, no, OK, just double click in the in the box. Tab over. Yeah. Double click in the box and tab over. Yes. And then I said, I think we need IT's help. Take a screen grab and I'll call them over. So trying to get some information so they can look at the look at the problem and see it in one shot.

Love it. Michelle, what's another episode our listeners may want to check out to keep going with vocabulary and business skills? Yes, exactly. This is episode 361 was are you dead set on learning a business English? Oh, I love it. Go scroll back and check out that episode just 10 episodes ago.

Where should we leave our listeners? I mean, I feel like, you know, words are the basis of connection, Michelle, because when you come together with people, you need vocabulary. You need these words to make things go smoothly, whether you're screen sharing and collaborating or whether you're troubleshooting in the office like this. Yeah. I mean...

Exactly. And Lindsay, you mentioned that our listeners may know these words, maybe they've heard of them, but these are words that we want to know in our sleep. Like I said, if I...

I think a good way to practice would be to get a friend and practice explaining something to them. How do you, how do you do this? How do you get to this and have them practice explaining something to you and just see how fast are you with these? Because these are the ones that are so basic. It almost is like, okay, well, why are we going over this? But they're so basic that we just got to get them super fast so that you can do it when you need to without thinking.

Yeah, so that it doesn't hinder connection because people, you know, people are already a little stressed out. And if you're doing this through a remote meeting, if you're giving these instructions through a remote meeting, you're in four different corners of the world, which is very common now.

you don't have that kind of personal interaction to kind of mitigate any, if someone loses their patience, there's not really a way to kind of bring the tone down. Right? So we need, it becomes even more important to know these words and be able to produce them quickly. All right. Exactly. Exactly. All right. So have somebody wake you up in the middle of the night and start telling you if you can write to right click and, uh, that sounds like quite a task. Yeah, no, no guys don't actually do that.

But it was fun, Lindsay. Thanks for talking about this with me today. And guys, thank you for listening so much. All right, Michelle. Take care. Bye. Great. Bye.

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