How to make a phone call in English. Part 2. Learn how to ask to speak to someone, or give the reason for your call.
Welcome to the second part of our class "how to make a phone call in English".
Do you need to phone an English-speaking client in the United States or a supplier in India? In the first part of the class we saw how to introduce ourselves and how to give the name of our company or department. In this video we look at what to say next!
When we phone a company the receptionist will normally answer the phone. We need to tell the receptionist who we want to speak to:
This is the most common way to ask to speak to someone:
| Could I speak to John please? | For any situation |
| Can I speak to John please? | For any situation |
There is no real difference between 'can' and 'could' in these phrases.
Here is an example conversation
In the example above the receptionist uses the phrasal verb 'put through'. This means to connect the caller with the person they want to speak to. We can also use the phrasal verb 'put through' when we MAKE the call. Alternatively, we can just say the name of the person who we want to talk to:
| Could you put me through to James Smith, please? | For any situation |
| James Smith, please. | For informal situations |
The verb 'can' is also correct in all situations:
Did you notice that we separate the two parts of the phrasal verb "Put though"?
Did you understand the phrases? Listen again:
When we are making a phone call it is not polite to say "I want to speak to...".
Perhaps we don't want to speak to a specific person we just want to speak to ANYONE in a particular department. We can say:
If we don't know the name of the person, we can also say:
If we call a colleague we can be more informal and more direct:
Perhaps we think we are talking to the right person, but we are not 100% sure. Let's check:
In these situations we do not normally use: "Are you....?".
We can ask the name of the person who we are speaking to? But remember to be polite!
However, it is more normal to ask somebody's name when we are ANSWERING a phone call.
Perhaps we are calling for a specific reason. We will probably start the sentence in one of three ways:
We use 'calling to' with a verb:
We use 'calling about' and 'calling regarding' with a noun in singular or plural.
If we are calling because we have received an email, then we use "regarding" like in the previous examples:
We can use the same phrase to refer to invoices, orders and documents:
Did you know that 'phone' is also a verb. We can use 'phone' instead of 'call' in all of the previous examples:
Here are two more phone conversations which use the phrases we've learnt earlier in this class:
Don't forget to listen to our Basic English Telephone Conversations. They'll help you to remember the key phrases we use on the phone, and they'll also help you to get used to understanding different English accents.
Check out all of our classes on Engish for the telephone: Phone English Course