Telephone Conversation

1.  Introduction 
Telephone conversation has become very important for individual conversations, business and organizations. The manner in which one uses language greatly affects the way they are perceived by other people and institutions.
 The objective of this lesson is to help us manage the language of telephone appropriately. It is an interesting language full of politeness and phrasal verbs. Thus, some memorization is needed, especially, for non-native speakers of English; it is an interesting area however.
 One thing to note is that it is important to know what you want to say before you make a call. Equally, decide on what to do if the person is not around; you may consider leaving a message or asking them to call back. 
Secondly, you need to know that politeness is an integral part of this language, particularly because you are talking to people whose facial expressions you cannot see. You only depend on their voice to appreciate their moods and feelings. You will need to use expressions like could, would, can, may etc. 

 2. The Structures of a Telephone Conversation

The structure of a telephone conversation is like most ordinary conversations. Research has shown that in an ordinary conversation, you have an introduction, a body and a conclusion. In your introduction, you have an opening, which is a kind of greeting, then introduction and identification of speakers. Then you have the body, which is a message that is communicated. The conclusion is a way of saying good bye. In the middle of all this, many things can happen. You may call and not reach the person you want to talk to so that you decide to leave a message or call back later. You may ask your interlocutor to put you through to him if it is possible. If you a receiving the call, your interlocutor may be asking for something you can’t grant etc. All these need tact to manage, but luckily the expressions are available.
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