Sometimes you don’t understand what someone said, but asking them to repeat it feels dangerous.
What if they realize my English is bad?
So you smile, nod and pray you weren’t just asked a question.
The funny thing is that pretending to understand will become a problem much faster than asking someone to repeat themselves.
People mishear each other constantly. Maybe the connection was bad. Maybe they spoke too quietly. Maybe your brain simply went on vacation for two seconds. Even native speakers say “Sorry, what?” approximately 700 times a day.
And even if your English is the reason, asking for clarification doesn’t make you look incompetent. It shows that you noticed a gap and fixed it before it became a problem.
If you you're still worried about asking “Can you repeat that?”, tell the person which part you missed:
“I caught the first part, but what did you say after ‘the deadline’?”
“The team needs which tools?”
“Did you say Tuesday or Thursday?”
“Sorry, could you repeat the last part?”
This shows that you understood most of what they said and only missed one specific detail. It also makes their life easier by showing them exactly what they need to repeat, saving them from giving the entire TED Talk again.
You don’t need to understand everything the first time. You need to notice when you haven’t understood something, and be comfortable fixing it before it becomes a problem.
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Небольшая практика.
На созвоне вы понимаете примерно 90% того, что говорит человек.
Задача — найти баланс: понять, что можно надежно восстановить из контекста, а что действительно нужно уточнить, вместо того чтобы просить человека повторить весь монолог.
“Before ██ deploy the update on Thursday, ████ the final build to the ███ team so they can run ████████. If they find anything critical, we’ll ███ the release ███ Monday.”
Что вы решили бы уточнить? Напишите в комментариях на английском, как бы вы переспросили. По нескольким вариантам дам фидбек.