10 English Collocations You Need When Making Decisions [573]

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In this episode, you’ll learn collocations and expressions you need when making decisions in English.

Many learners know the individual words, but they struggle to:

• combine them naturally
• sound confident when thinking aloud
• explain decisions clearly

In this lesson, I focus on natural collocations used when deciding, thinking, and considering options.

You’ll learn what these expressions really mean, how they are used in context, and when they sound natural in everyday and work situations.

This episode is ideal for intermediate and upper-intermediate learners who want to speak more clearly, sound more natural, and avoid awkward or unnatural combinations.

My Business English Phrase Guide shows you exactly what to say in meetings, emails, and when problems happen - and which common phrases make you sound unprofessional.

Inside: Professional phrases for meetings, emails, delays, and corrections. Plus phrases to avoid.

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Transcript

0:09

(Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. Go Unlimited to remove this message.) Hi there, this is Harry. Welcome back to Advanced English Lessons with Harry, where I try to help you to get a better understanding of the English language. And in today's lesson, we're looking specifically at collocations. And these collocations are about decisions. So collocations are expressions that you use when talking about or wanting to talk about or wanting to make some sort of decision. Let's start. Number one, to hit upon an idea. So when you come up with an idea, you hit upon an idea. You know, so you could be, as I do, you could be having a shower, you could be lying in bed, you could be reading a book, and you suddenly hit upon an idea. I often come up with an idea that would be good for one of our lessons to record. So I hit upon an idea in some of the strangest places, having a shower, reading a book in bed, whatever it might be. So you can hit upon an idea when you're driving your car to work, travelling up in the elevator from the car park to your office, wherever it might be, or even working out in the gym. When you're relaxed, this is when the ideas spring to mind and you hit upon an idea. Or you could ask the question, who hit upon this idea? It's really great. We've never thought about that before. Let's try it. Who hit upon this idea? Number two, to bear something in mind. This is quite a well-used expression, to bear something in mind. And what it means is to keep in mind some little aspect when you're working your way through a particular problem. Please bear in mind that all of our customers are over the age of 50, for example. Please bear in mind that we're targeting or focussing on the teenage market or the young adults or whoever. Yeah, OK. So please bear in mind means keep in mind that this is our target market when you're coming up with any type of marketing document or some language you want to use. You must keep in mind who our focus group is, who our target market, who our target audience are. So please bear this in mind. Number three, to toy with an idea. Well, a toy is something we play with, our kids play with, our grandkids play with. So when we toy with an idea, we play around with the idea. We might not have finalised our thoughts, OK, so we haven't finished our decision making. We are toying with an idea. So how do we use it? Well, we could simply say to our colleagues, I've been toying around with this idea for some weeks now, and I really think this is the way forward. So you spell it out to them, you set it out and you're looking for their observations, their comments, their points of view, their input. OK, so to toy around with an idea is to think about it for a while, to play, play around with it in your head, to spend a couple of evenings thinking, will this work? Will that work? Until such time as you get it into a little better shape and then you can share it with your colleagues and everybody's happy. OK, so to toy around with an idea. Number four, rack your brains. Well, this is the opposite. Yeah, when you can't come up with any suggestion, you can't find that little something different that you want and you come back to your colleagues. Oh, it's terrible. I've been racking my brains all day, all night, all week. So to rack your brains means to shake your mind, your head, trying to find out what exactly is inside your mind that might be able to help you to find a solution to this problem. So eventually you might just have to admit defeat and say, guys, look, I really, really need your help here. You know, I've been racking my brains for days and days, but I can't come up with anything. Have you got any suggestions to make? So you open your heart to your colleagues with the hope that they will be able to help you solve the problem. Now, it could be just a simple matter of racking your brains, trying to find out what gift you're going to buy your partner for that special birthday that's coming up. So that is a very big problem that we all face at some stage. We said, oh, God, another birthday or another Christmas or whatever. I rack my brains every year trying to think of something really different, really good. And I always, always struggle to rack your brains. Number five, to entertain an idea. Now you can use this in the negative. I refuse to entertain such an idea. So you obviously rule it out. OK, so somebody suggests, OK, for the Christmas party, we're going to go away to another country, another city. We'll stay there for a couple of days. And he said, no, we tried that before. It was a disaster. So many people got drunk. So many problems. Yeah. The bill ended up double what it was intended. So, no, I will not entertain that idea. Meaning, no, you have to go somewhere else. I'm not going to consider. In fact, I'm not going to approve that as a suggestion for the staff party. OK, so when you don't entertain an idea, it means you're not going to think about it a second longer. It's dismissed. OK, if you will entertain the idea, you know, or you might be asking the question, do you think there's any chance that the board will entertain such an idea? So you're asking the question, do you think they'll give approval to it? It's a little bit off plan. It's a little bit off piste, as they sometimes say. It's a little bit different. But yeah, in the modern world, we have to be different. We have to be seen to be different and we'll be very different from the competition. So why not? But do you think the board will entertain such an idea? Number six, to grapple with a problem. When we grapple with something, we struggle. Yeah, we struggle to find a solution. I've been grappling with this problem for days, for weeks, and I'm making progress, but not as quickly as I would hope. So let's sit down tomorrow, all of us as a team, and let's see what we can come up with. So we grapple with a problem on the budgets. We grapple with a problem as to how we are going to keep everybody employed in the next six, 12 months. OK, we grapple with the problem of about logistics. Maybe we've run into a logistics problem. We've got the products. We have them complete. But how do we get them to market? So we're going to grapple with that problem. Oh, indeed, grapple with the problem about having our business not only in bricks and mortar in the high street, but also online. We need to have an e-business. OK, so we really, really need to do it. We're way behind everybody else. We're being a bit slow or getting this off the blocks and off the paper. So what we need to do is grapple with this problem, but we need to come up with a solution and we need to come up with it now to grapple with a problem. Number seven, to seek advice. Now, be really, really careful here when we use the word advice. It's never advices. If you want more than one piece of advice, that's exactly how you present it. One piece of advice, two pieces of advice, three pieces of advice and so on. It's not one advice, two advices. Yeah, he gave me a piece of advice. He gave me two pieces of advice. I'm looking for some advice. Could you help me? It's not just one. It's more than one. So advice here is an uncountable noun and we have to treat it accordingly. So one piece of advice, some advice, any advice, no advice. Yeah. OK, good. So to seek advice. When we seek advice, we are looking for help. I've come to you seeking advice. I've come to you looking for help. That's exactly what it means. And when we seek advice, we look for help before we come up with the final solution, before we present it to the board, the team, whoever. OK, to seek advice. Number eight, before or during that advice period, we might carry out research. OK, this is all a part of the decision making process to carry out research, to carry out market research. We can, you know, go to our clients, see what they're looking for. We can go to the market, see what the market is looking for. We can see what the opposition are presenting. Whatever we do, we have to carry out some detailed research on the openings, the opportunities, the need, the desire. Is there a gap to be filled? Everything to do with product placement before we decide to launch any new product. So we are carrying out research. Number nine, something springs to mind. OK, this is when you get one of those light bulb moments. Ding! A little light bulb goes off in your head when you say, aha, that's exactly what I was looking for. That's the sort of information that I needed to get. So to spring to mind. Now, again, of course, when we use this, we can also use it in the negative when we can just say, oh, guys, look, nothing has sprung to mind yet. I've been racking my brains and, you know, really trying to come up with something different, come up with something unique, something unusual. But at the moment, I'm sorry, I have nothing to add. So nothing has sprung to mind yet. Or you just ask the question, does anything spring to mind when I mention blah, blah, blah. So you're looking to see what reaction you can get from your colleagues when you introduce the particular problem. Hopefully by doing a bit of brainstorming, you might be able to come up with a solution. So something will spring to mind. Or you might just simply say, look, guys, don't worry, something will spring to mind over the next couple of days. Just be conscious of it, conscious of what we're trying to do or trying to achieve. If you get any ideas, no matter how silly you might think it is, jot it down, send me an email and we can discuss it. So if something does spring to mind, come back to me immediately. Good. And then number 10, to have second thoughts. Ah, well, we've all had that in our time. Second thoughts about doing this. Second thoughts about doing that. Second thoughts about everything, every aspect of our private life, our business life, whatever it might be, anything to do with your career. So when you have second thoughts, you're wondering whether the idea you had in the first place, whether it actually really is going to work. So if you're sitting down with your marketing team and you say, guys, I've had second thoughts or I'm having second thoughts, I'm not quite sure. I know we agreed yesterday, but when I give it a little bit more thought, it seems to me a little bit unwieldy. It seems to me a little bit more complicated than it should be. You know, this should be a simple product. Therefore, it should be a simple product offering that our customers, our clients can understand exactly what we're trying to offer them. So let's not make it too complicated. So I'm having second thoughts about our launch plan objectives. Let's go through it again. See if we can not make it a little simpler and rather than overly complicated. OK, so to have second thoughts. OK, so that's number 10 in this particular list of our co-locations where we're talking about expressions relating to decisions. Let me give them to you one more time. Hit upon an idea to come up with an idea. Bear something in mind. Keep this in mind when you're thinking about it, to bear something in mind. To toy with an idea, to play around with an idea before you finalise it. To toy with an idea. To rack your brains, shake, rattle and roll, trying to get an idea out of that head of yours. To rack your brains trying to think of something that will resolve this particular problem. Rack your brains. To entertain an idea. So you can use it positively or negatively. Will they entertain such an idea? I doubt that they will entertain such an idea. Means I doubt that they will accept. Grapple with a problem. Struggle to grapple, to struggle. Grapple with a problem, to struggle with a problem until you come up with a solution. I've been grappling with this problem all day. To seek advice, to look for advice. And remember that this is uncountable, so it's not advice, it's a piece of advice or two pieces of advice or some advice. To seek advice. To carry out research means to go into it in detail. What does your customer want? What is he looking for? What's missing in the product range that's available from our competition? What should we do to fill those gaps? So we have to carry out research. And then in doing so something might spring to mind. Something might come to mind. Something important. Something relevant. Something that will be a little bit different might spring to mind. And then finally we might have second thoughts about something. When we think about it again and yeah are we really certain that this will work? Are we really certain that it will provide the solution that we need? So we're having second thoughts. So all of these collocations, advanced English collocations to do with expressions about decisions. Okay so this is Harry saying goodbye. Thanks for listening and join me as always for the next lesson.