BE 644: Are You Good at Spitballing in English?

This is the Business English Podcast, Episode 644. Are you good at spitballing in English? 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 Aubrey, coming to you from Arizona and Colorado, USA.

Hello, Lindsay. How are you today? Good, Aubrey. Got a question for you. You ready? All right. Let's hear it. Yeah. Are you usually pretty good at thinking on the fly or do you need time to prepare that kind of thing?

Good question. I think I am pretty good at thinking on the fly. If we like jump into a brainstorm session, I usually can throw out some ideas right away and they're not all gems, but usually I can get some ideas pretty quick. What about you?

Mm-hmm. I think I'm pretty good in a brainstorming session, especially when I'm excited about the topic. But when I'm under pressure, like let's say on a podcast interview or something, and I have to come up with something in that moment, you can't have dead air on a podcast, right? Or some interview that becomes a little more stressful.

That's true. But that's true. Being a podcaster helps you be pretty good at thinking on your feet. It does, I would say. Yeah. But this is interesting.

We got a question about a verb that we use that means the same as thinking on the fly, but that I hadn't heard in a while. So I'm excited to dive into some of this vocab. Do you want to share the question with us? Yeah, this is a great question from Saddam Mohamed.

Thank you to Saddam. Guys, we're on YouTube. All Ears English Podcast is on YouTube. So make sure you find us over there and hit subscribe. So Saddam says, Hi, Lindsay, Michelle, and Aubrey.

Quit, quiet, and quiet can be confusing for some learners. I believe watching this episode, all my confusion will dissipate. Okay. So that was a comment he made on another episode.

Yeah. That was an episode on Allers English about those quit, quiet, and quiet. So yes, I'm glad that Saddam loved that episode. And often if you leave comments on an Allers English video, if I'm like, oh, this is perfect for business English vocabulary, we use this a ton at work, we might ask your question over here on the Business English Podcast.

So be sure you're following both podcasts. Exactly. And so here's the next question that he asked. What does spitballing mean? I heard this phrase. I've heard this phrase lately.

I'm just spitballing here. The meaning, when I looked it up, it wasn't adequate. Thank you so much for your amazing work. Nice. Yeah. I love that. And it's true.

Sometimes you'll look up a verb like that and you're like, this doesn't make sense. Or maybe there's multiple meanings because it might be used as slang as well. So tricky. Because literally, let's just go back to the original meaning as I understand it is in school, right?

Kids, often it was boys in school that would kind of like take little pieces of paper. I don't know. What did they do? Like throwing spitballs. Yeah, they would like get them wet, right?

So then that's what I call the spitballs. It'd be like a wet piece of paper. They're like putting it on their tongue and then like flicking them around the room. Or put it in a straw and blow and like it would fly all over the place.

This is kind of the analogy. I forgot about that. I forgot about spitballs. That's terrible. It's terrible, but it gives our listeners the mental idea of what we're actually talking about here.

We're talking about balls flying around a classroom, right? Whereas we're talking about ideas flying around. It's the same thing. It's true. That's a good point, right?

You can have that visual from a classroom. Hopefully, they never hit you in the back of the head with one of those. I know. But that's true. Just like spitballs would fly around, this is about brainstorming, about when you're just coming up with ideas on the fly.

Yes, exactly. So that's really – that's the first term we're going to define. And then in today's episode, we'll give you guys a bunch of others for other ways of saying coming up with ideas spontaneously, right? Yes.

So what would be some examples for spitballing? Yeah, let's dive in here. So first of all, we're just spitballing ideas right now. So don't worry about whether they're realistic.

Yeah, you might hear this at the beginning of a brainstorming session. In order to encourage people to throw out ideas, you don't want them to be too married to the idea to think like, oh, it has to be a really good one. Just throw out anything and then we'll go from there. It's about as casual as it gets in terms of a phrase.

The environment is as casual as it gets. There are certain types of meetings you would never say this, right? Like a meeting with the board where you're presenting numbers. That's not spitballing ideas.

Good point, right? And we're going to share today some of the phrases you maybe would use in those more formal situations. This is a casual meeting among coworkers who know each other well. If you're going to say, we're just spitballing here.

It's quite a casual word. Yeah, exactly. You might say, let's spend 10 minutes spitballing before we decide which ideas are actually worth pursuing. Aubrey, do you think it's easier to spitball ideas in a live work environment like work from the office?

Or do you think you can get the same results on Zoom, for example? This is the hot debate right now. Yeah, I think you can get the same results on Zoom. If you're working with coworkers that you've worked with a lot, so you may as well be in person, you know each other well.

I think you can have the same banter, the same kinds of meetings online. We're used to it now as you would have in person. Yeah. So you think it's more about how well you know your coworkers, how comfortable you feel with your coworkers rather than physically being in the same room?

Yeah, I think so. Because if I'm on a Zoom call with people I've never met before, I might not be comfortable to spitball, to throw out any idea without worrying about judgment. But if it's people that I know well, whether we're in person, face to face, or whether we're on a Zoom call, I think that's going to be the same meeting. Yeah, I think that's probably true.

I think the same thing. A lot of employers are using that as a reason to call people back to work. I mean, post-pandemic, some people are still working from home, right? And what are the results of that?

There's a lot of this research starting to come out now. So we'll talk about that more in the future, I think, on the podcast. Yeah. Yeah. And I can see where they're coming from because sometimes if you don't know people well, it could be harder to have that kind of meeting over Zoom.

For sure. What's the next phrase that we need to know here? All right. So this one is thinking on the fly. So yeah, this just means like without any preparation.

This is still pretty informal, right? It's an idiom, but would be appropriate for meetings with pretty much anyone at work, as opposed to spitballing, which is so informal. Yeah. So for example, the client asked us a question we hadn't anticipated.

So I had to think on the fly. Yeah. It's more acceptable among different types of people. Yeah. Yeah. Or she's great at thinking on the fly when a meeting doesn't go according to plan.

This just means the same as the next one here, thinking on your feet. It just means that you, without a lot of preparation, without knowing ahead of time, you're able to come up with something. You can think, yeah, just last minute.

And I think this is probably a skill that you can train as well, right? You can get better at that. We are here on the podcast. But even if you're not a podcaster, for example, you can get better at this in different ways, maybe playing games, things like that.

Yes. Good point. Yeah. The more you practice this, the better you get at it. And younger people, most younger people struggle with it a little more because they just don't have the life experience.

They don't have the practice. And that's definitely a skill that can be trained. Right. I had never thought about that. This is more of a skill that comes with life experience.

It makes total sense. You have all those experiences in your mind. You have opinions, thoughts, things you've read in the news that maybe kids aren't exposed to necessarily. Definitely.

That makes a huge difference. That makes a difference for us podcasting, right? We've got... lots of stories from all this life experience that we can usually think of something related.

Whereas, you know, one of my teenage kids might have a harder time. They just haven't lived that much. I don't have any experiences. Interesting. And then what about thinking on your feet?

Can we also say that? Yeah, this one's very similar to thinking on the fly. And it is idiomatic, a little bit casual, but could be used in most work situations. You might say, you may have to think on your feet if the client asks unexpected questions during the meeting.

Yeah, it just means you might not be prepared for everything you're going to have to say. You may have to come up with some things at the last minute. Exactly. Or when the projector stopped working, he had to think on his feet and find another way to present the data.

Nightmare. Everyone's nightmare. But you can't just sit there and be like, it's not working, right? This is where you're like, okay, I got to think on my feet.

Let's try to figure out what else could work. Exactly. And then there's one more, which I love, winging it. Winging it. What's this? Yeah, same. So it just means like when you haven't prepared, but you have to go anyway.

Like maybe you're called to give a presentation or a speech if you just have to wing it because you haven't prepared anything. Yeah. So I, yeah, again, so I didn't have time to prepare for the presentation, so I had to wing it. Or we can't keep winging it with these client meetings.

We need a more structured approach. Yeah. Yeah. I feel like I got really good at this when I was teaching in the Bronx. I was teaching high school and there were so many times where you would be pulled in to cover someone else's class last minute for whatever reason.

You just had to wing it. You would kind of figure out what they had been doing and then just roll with it with nothing prepared. And yeah, the more you have chances to just be thrown in and figure it out, the better you get at that. I bet you.

Yeah. I bet that that's an acquired skill for sure. Definitely. Yeah. All right, Aubrey, let's do a role play. We are brainstorming a marketing campaign.

So let's start by spitballing and just throw out some ideas and see what we think. Okay. Yes. Love that. How about a social media campaign featuring customer success stories?

I like it. I like it. We could partner with a few influencers. Yeah. Oh, by the way, it looks like the client just moved our presentation up to this afternoon.

Seriously? I haven't finished the slides. I'm not ready either. I guess we'll just have to think on the fly. I don't want to spend the whole presentation winging it.

Let's at least agree on our main talking points. Good call. We'll have a basic plan, and then we can think on our feet if they throw us any unexpected questions.

Mmm, stressful situation, right? Oh, I don't want to be in that situation. Oh God, no thanks. So we open the role play by saying, hey, let's just start by spitballing.

So a lot of times people will, someone who's leading a meeting would set the tone that way. Hey, this is just a meeting to spitball some ideas, throw them out. You're setting a tone, a very casual, open, accepting room.

Exactly. Yes. And I do feel like this is a great word for doing that for making people feel like, oh, okay, I can throw it any idea, even if it seems dumb. You never know, it might actually be exactly what they need to hear.

You never know. Yeah. And then you said, I'm not ready either. I guess we'll have to do some thinking on the fly. So you've been forced to give the presentation this afternoon instead of tomorrow.

You're going to have to think on the fly. So we're going to have to just get in there and come up with it as we go, right? Think on the fly. And then you say, I don't want to spend the whole presentation winging it.

Let's at least agree on our main talking points. You're like, let's pause the spitballing session and try and figure out a couple of things that we know we're going to say so that we're not winging it the entire presentation.

Exactly. And then the last phrase, think on our feet. Good call. We'll have a basic plan and then we can think on our feet if they throw us any unexpected questions.

Okay, nice. Yeah, these are all really great phrases when you need to talk about this. So you're talking about not being prepared, and just having to come up with something at the last second. Yeah.

And I know one of the big skills that our listeners want to get better at is thinking on their feet in English, right? Because for our listeners, it's an added layer of challenge. It's already hard to think on your feet in business. But then if you add English to it, that's what we're dealing with here, right?

Those are the skills that we're building, how to be spontaneous with our thinking and our language skills, make sure the language skills keep up with the thoughts. Yeah. I would, you know, I think we mentioned the idea of playing games. Do that in English.

Right. That could get us there to that point. Yes, absolutely. Right. If you have conversation partners, find other people who are learning English or native English speakers, if you can, and any games you play that encourage speaking.

Right. There's a fun one called Chameleon. Have you played Chameleon, Lindsay? No. I really recommend that for anybody out there. It's a board game. You can order it online.

And it's like everyone has, most of the people know the word and there's one chameleon that doesn't know the word. And you're all sort of giving a related clue and trying to figure out who the chameleon is, who doesn't have the word. So it's really good for encouraging, speaking, using interesting vocabulary. So that's a really great game that we recommend for just conversation practice.

That's a great example. We know where to go when we need game ideas. And we do play games, brief games in our fluency parties. Fluency parties are for students in any of our courses.

You'll get invited once a month and we play a small language game and they're usually really fun. Students have a great time in there. So guys, check out our courses at allersenglish.com. Join a course.

You'll be invited to the fluency party as well. Aubrey, where should we go next? Yes. Be sure to check out the episode Saturday, August 29th is the one that Saddam was referring to.

Vocabulary shortcuts with three common English words. That was all about quit, quiet, and quite. So to get those all squared away, check out that episode over on All There's English. All right.

Sounds good. Great to hang out today, Aubrey. And I'll see you very soon. Have a good rest of your day. All right. Awesome. You too. See you guys next time.

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