BE 604: Talk About Your Skills at Work with this Word

This is the Business English Podcast, episode 604. Talk about your skills at work with this word. 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. Hi, Michelle. How's it going? Hey, Lindsay. Good. Good. How are you? Good, but I have a question for you. You ready?

Uh-oh. So would you say that you're financially literate? What do you think? The basics, and I'm learning more as time goes along. I mean, you know what I realized is like,

did you ever when you were a kid hear your parents? Parents talking about all these things in life and like they might have had things in files and everything in the taxes. Yeah. And you're like,

how do they know about all these things? And there's so much that goes and you're like, what are they doing? So I remember having those feelings. And now as an adult, I

'm certainly learning things. So I would say that much, much more than I used to be, but there 's a lot I could learn. What about you? Yeah, same here.

I do remember having that thought as a kid. How do you know what they're talking about? Where do they learn these things? Like, did they learn them in school or what?

Yeah, like, there's just so much. Right? Yeah, exactly. Exactly. If you pay attention to things, you hear about terms and things. But I still feel like I have a lot more to learn.

I mean, in terms of investing and just general. So I think I fall somewhere in the middle of financial literacy. So, but Lindsay, when you hear the words "literate"

and literacy, you usually probably think about reading and writing, right? Yeah, that's true. That's the interesting part, right? It's kind of interesting that we put, I asked you, are you financially

literate, right? Not like, not just literate, because if we just said liter ate alone, it's do you read and write, or can you read, I guess, right ? Yeah. But yeah, these words do have other meanings that

might come up in business conversation. So for example, when we say financial literacy, we mean that you understand finance as well, and you have skills in finance. You get it,

you're able to talk about it, you understand. Yeah, so there are a bunch of words that we can tack on literacy. And I bet this is an episode where our listeners can also

invent new things that we're not going to even tell them, right? Where they can tack on literacy to but pretty much anything but we'll give you guys some examples today so you can

speak in a more creative way okay yeah Yeah, exactly. So these words are, you know, they're about different types of literacy, how you would use them in business.

And they're about professional abilities, which might come up during interviews. So that's super important. Yes, guys, go ahead and hit the follow button right here on

Business English. Don't miss a single episode. We come out with three episodes a week. I almost said a day, but that would be insane. Could you imagine?

Three episodes a week, and you don't want to miss a single one. So hit follow. Okay, good. That's right. All right. So yeah, so we're going to start with just the word

literacy. So the literacy is it's about understanding and using information in a specific area. Right. So when you use the word by itself, it refers to reading and writing.

So reading and writing is like you have the ability to read and to write. These are skills that most people learn in school, right? Yes, so but if you use another word in front.

of it, it takes on a new meaning. So, Lindsay, let's go over. Yeah, isn't it? So let's go over some types of literacy. Yeah. So like we said at the top, financial literacy. We both

rated our own financial literacy as somewhere in the middle . Understanding budgets, costs, finances, investing, buying homes, interest rates, all those things. Right. Does it mean you have to be an

accountant? No, no, no, no, for sure not. That's a different kind of skill set, right? That's a specialized skill set. This is more of an everyday to get by and to save money and

to be able to retire, right? Right, exactly. There's also media literacy. So this would be like evaluating news, TV reports, or online content. might be used about analyzing sources or headlines for

articles and reports critically. Yeah, for sure. I mean, this is something that I think a lot of people are concerned might be going away in terms of what kids are learning in school, right?

But it's so important now. It's so important. Yeah. With news becoming more biased. So much more. Yes, it's a very biased industry. And what else? Digital literacy.

So this is using digital tools well and adapting to new technology. So this could, AI, AI literacy could fall under this, or it could be a separate thing.

But just the ability to get online and use the intranet could be digital literacy. Right. Like I could imagine at a public library, there being like a digital literacy for seniors class

taught, you know, like that would be something you might see. But even like, I mean, for me connecting our Google Home or Alexa to different things like the fan, no way.

Forget it. Yeah, I get that. over there. Literacy. I'm a little bit illiterate when it comes to that . No, I, me too. It's okay. You know, listen, we have our strengths and then the other things in our life

we try and we, we like futz around with them to try and, to try. Yeah, exactly. So, but then there's scientific literacy. So, and I would say I am not scientifically literate.

Um, really? I mean, understanding technical or I mean, yeah , sure. I can, if I can read something and understand it, but I'm not a scientist. I don't, you know,

it's been a while since I had to do anything like that. So understanding technical or scientific information well enough to make informed decisions. Yeah. These are hard terms because each term doesn't have

like a benchmark of what score you'd get on a test. Right. So it's really context-based how you use these terms. I really like to keep up with health news, like nutrition updates and new scientific.

studies we talk about on the show sometimes that come out about nutrition and health. So there's some level of scientific literacy there. But I'm not going to go and like join a lab and become a,

you know, a genetics researcher. Right. So yeah, well, that makes me think of Dan because he's in the medical industry. And so he sometimes I'll see an article.

I don't even bother anymore because I've kind of learned from him, you know, oh, this is going to kill you or this is whatever. I have more of this. And he'll be like, he'll just roll his

eyes and say, like, let me look at this. Let me look at the sample size, you know, because those are the kinds of things that he studied . I'll be like, this is ridiculous.

Yeah, these studies are sometimes not a good sample size, not done well. Totally. Yeah. Yeah. And then AI literacy is the big one now. Understanding what AI tools can and can't do, using them

effectively. Now we have this new thing that I just heard about this term, vibe coding. I think I'm a little late to the game when it comes to vibe coding.

Wait, wait, wait, whoa, if you're late, I'm late later. What is it? Okay, and this is also coming out in the summer, so we're really... really late by the time this comes out. I guess vibe coding

is where people can create their own websites, their own apps just by using AI. I don't exactly know how they do it. I think maybe they go to ChatGPT or something and say, make me an

app. I don't know. But it's like the next level. It's getting beyond just chatting and asking ChatGPT, where should I go on vacation? It's like the next step of

AI, putting technology creation in the hands of consumers so you don't have to hire an app developer, for example. Yeah. That's all I know. I listened to one

podcast episode about it. That's all I know. Live coding. You know more than I do. Okay. And then there's cultural literacy. So understanding or navigating cultural differences.

So communicating and working with people from diverse backgrounds. Lindsay, I would say you and I thrive in this category. Yeah. I mean, yeah, for sure. This is our interest. I did a

lot of work on this in my graduate program. It was all about this and so this is. kind of our focus. This is the one area I think we can say we're pretty literate,

but you have to keep up with things too, right? I mean, things change. Oh, yeah. Yeah, things change all the time. Yeah. So again, these terms are nouns,

but you can also use them as adjectives to describe ability . So for example, and we've been dropping that in. True, we've been dropping it in. So instead of literacy,

He was literate, so financially literate. I consider myself financially literate. Financially, so we need the L-Y right now. So financially literate, scientifically literate.

He has a PhD in chemistry, so there's no doubt he's scientifically literate. Probably off the charts, scientifically literate. Yeah. Yep, or digitally literate.

You have to be digitally literate to survive in the modern world. That's true. That's true to some extent, yeah, for sure. Media literate. Now this is interesting because with this

one we don't say "medially", "medially", that does not exist. Yeah. So you have to be media literate. Being media literate helps you avoid clickbait, fake news,

things like that, right? Clickbait is so annoying. I just don't even, I don't even try not to engage. I just like ignore, I don't know. Same. But I'm sure we all at some point find it

and become victim to it. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Exactly. So then there's also AI literate. So being AI literate could save you loads of time. Yes, absolutely.

I feel like I need to take a class again in like just updating my knowledge on how to use AI at work, you know, because it's constantly changing and there are ways we can save time for sure.

Right. They say that like, yeah, AI may take the jobs, but if you know how to use AI, so you should be learning about like how to use it. And so it's interesting to think about.

Yes. All right. So how do we think these words might come up in business conversations because this is the Business English podcast, Michelle. So we, of course, ask that question, right? Yeah.

Well, I mean, I would say job interviews and the hiring process, right? So to describe expectations, so it actually might be listed in the job description. So, but a question

could be, how would you rate your media literacy skills? Yeah. Or you don't need accounting skills, but you need to be financially literate. So we talked about the difference

between the two there. An accountant knows how to take advantage of certain tax breaks or certain tax looph oles that your average person just, when you're talking about

like saving for retirement and investing and saving, they don't need to know that. That's why we hire account ants. Right. Right. Yeah. Or you'll need a high level of scientific literacy to

analyze studies. Okay, or performance reviews, yeah, professional development. So this is a politer professional way to talk about the skills that might need improvement, right?

Or skills that you've built this year. We need to build financial literacy across the team. That's a nice way of saying to your team, you guys need to like get better at like financial, I don't know, knowledge.

Right. Maybe you need to read a book. Maybe we're going to have a course. Right. Yeah. Or remember, being media literate means double checking sources before going to print.

Of course, for journalists, oh my gosh, so important, right ? I think, I don't know, I'm not a journalist, but I'm sure they have some kind of rules of how many sources need to

corroborate a statement before they can print it, at least maybe two or three, I don't know. Everyone should brush up on their AI literacy skills to stay competitive, and that is true.

Thanks. All right, well, let's go through a role play. All right, Michelle, today we are in a job interview for a financial reporting position, so like the Financial Times or something.

Let's see. I, let's see. We're both in it. Are we both in the job interview? So you said you're asking me. So I, yeah, I, I would for this position be analyzing,

writing, and reporting on finance trends on your, the hiring manager and I'm the candidate. All right. Hello. Thanks for coming today. So to start off, I'm curious about your skill set.

This role doesn't require accounting, but financial literacy is important. So how comfortable are you with budgets? Oh, well, yes, I am definitely financially literate. I'm

comfortable with financial reports and evaluating trends, but I haven't produced my own financial reports. All right, that's good. That's exactly what we're looking

for. We obviously value media literacy. How do you keep up with industry news and reports? Oh, well, I definitely keep up with financial news outlets,

and I'm good at evaluating sources and spotting any inaccur acies and biases. That's super important. I probably wouldn't say super. in this. That's important. The team also works with new

tools often. Would you say you have strong digital literacy skills? Oh, yeah. I'm very tech savvy and I'm really into AI right now. We had super written in here. Yeah. Overriding that because

I agree. Super, probably not into the job interview. Yeah. That's a time to button up and sort of sit up straight and drop the casual terms like super, right? And

so swapping in a really or a very much, I'm very much into AI right now would be fine, right? Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So you said this role doesn't require accounting,

but financial literacy is important. So you have to know a lot of the basics. Yeah, for sure. Probably asking, like, how good are you at Excel? Excel seems to still be, and I wonder if Excel would go

away with AI too, but there's a lot of skills to learn with Excel. Just running reports and formulas and things like that. That's right. So getting to that skill.

That's exactly what we're looking for. I said we obviously also value media literacy because this is a financial media company. Right. Wait, did we say what I said?

I said I'm definitely financially literate. I'm comfortable with reports, evaluating trends, and then yeah, media literacy. And then I asked you about digital literacy.

So I'm kind of asking you here, are you good at taking on new tools, like learning new tools quickly? Because the tools are always changing, right? Yes.

And then you used a bonus term, tech savvy, right? We didn't teach this today, but it's a bonus for today. Tech savvy. Savvy, great word. Yeah, I think we've done an episode about the word savvy.

I think we have. Yeah, that was a fun one. Yeah, it was a good one. Definitely. Yeah, tech savvy. Love it. Guys, head over to episode 523. Do you? Put blood, sweat, and tears into learning English.

Sounds gory, but it's not. There's going to be no blood, we promise, but you will learn something important. So takeaway today is anytime you are presenting yourself as

a candidate, you know, or even in a performance review, you're not a candidate, but you do need to defend, you know, what you've done and present your skills in a way.

So this becomes important for our job success, keeping a job, building a career to describe our own skills, right? Yeah, yeah, definitely. Really, really interesting topic today.

You're usually going to start hearing this word a lot. Yes. And yeah, definitely use it to describe your skills, all the things you're working on. It'll be useful for you at work.

All right. Sounds good, Michelle. I'll talk to you soon. All right. Bye, guys. Bye, Lindsay. Bye. Thank you for listening to Business English, a podcast just

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