¶ Defining Urgency and Importance
Welcome back to Studio ESL. I'm Kim Cooper, and thank you for listening to the Studio ESL podcast. Now, if you're anything like me... Everything that you do is urgent. Means you do it in a hurry. And you may not be like me. And perhaps you like to procrastinate. procrastinate means put things off until a later date delay things so there are good things and bad things about having a sense of urgency and conversely Putting things off.
But if you have a sense of urgency and or if you are in an emergency situation, you need to be able to communicate that to people so the message is clear that you're in a hurry. So let's consider all of the options to communicate that something is urgent. If you need to communicate that something is urgent and simply important, you can just say, this is important. This is important. Or, this is an important matter. You try it. This is important. Repeat. This is important. Repeat.
is an important matter this is an important matter
¶ Expressing Critical and Urgent Matters
If you need something done in a hurry, then you can say, this is urgent. This is urgent. You try it. This is urgent. So that means you want it done in a hurry. You can also say, this is an urgent matter. This is an urgent matter. You can also say, this is critical, means it's really important. This is critical. You try it. This is critical. Or, this is a critical matter. This is a critical matter. Repeat. Good.
Now, let's say the matter is truly urgent and it's an emergency, like it involves someone getting hurt or something really dangerous. You got to call it out. This is an emergency. Repeat. This is an emergency. You may sometimes hear an interesting expression that's life and death as far as this is an emergency. So it's a matter of life and death.
it's a matter of life and death so she told the nurse her dad's condition was worse than ever and it was a matter of life and death Now, if you're in the workplace at a business, if you're talking about the level of importance of doing tasks, for example, you can say, this is high priority, which means... This is very important. You should do this right away. This is high priority. Or, this is a high priority matter. Very important.
matter so high priority in a business means that you should probably be doing that task first high priority
¶ Applying Urgency with Practice Sentences
Now let's start practicing some of these words and expressions in a sentence. Let's start with important. So it's very important that you put the key back in the lock box so the dog walker can get in the house to walk mickey so for example my dog his name's mickey and we have a dog walker
that comes to the house so if the person who leaves the house last does not put the key in the lock box outside the door it means that the dog walker can't come in and then mickey won't be happy because he won't get his walk so the sentence again it's very important that you put the key back in the lockbox so the dog walker can get in the house to walk Mickey. I know, I know it's a long sentence, but it's a good one. Well, because it has to do with dogs and Mickey. So let's practice urgent.
So here's an example for you. If we don't get this document finished by 5 p.m., we have to pay a late fee of $100. This is an... urgent matter. We've got to get this document done ASAP. So, we have to get this document done by 5 p.m. or else we have to pay one hundred dollars in a late fee charge nobody wants to pay late fees period let alone one for a hundred dollars
So that's why we say this is an urgent matter. We've got to get this document done as soon as possible ASAP. ASAP means as soon as possible. So what about high priority matters? So for example, let's say you deal in the stock market and stock prices are going to drop, are going to go down tomorrow. So you better look at your stocks. This is a high priority matter. I think most people would agree that anything to do with the stock market, if that is where...
you house your money, that is a high priority matter. So that's an example of high priority. And the last one, emergency. So again, emergency may be something related to your health. Disaster, something is an emergency. So for example, I'm walking and... i step on a nail a sharp nail and my foot is bleeding i might say i just stepped on a nail and my foot won't stop bleeding i've got to get to the hospital
This is an emergency. This is an emergency. So that is really important. This is an emergency is like this situation is an emergency. So good. I hope today's podcast has given you a few options to express urgent matters and emergencies. And again, remember, it's all in the facial expressions as well. So don't forget that. For now, I'm signing off, but Studio ESL will be back with our new podcast soon. And until next time.