In the first part of this online exercise on English telephone vocabulary, you learnt some essential vocabulary which is used when both talking on the telephone and talking about telephone calls.
In this second part, you are going to learn some more. In particular, you will learn the meaning of 9 commonly used phrasal verbs and expressions used when making or receiving phone calls. Knowing these phrasal verbs and expressions will help you both talk about phone calls better and speak better when talking on the phone.
If you haven't done the first part of this exercise on essential telephone English vocabulary, I would recommend that you do that first. Some of the vocabulary from that exercise is used in this one.
In addition, to practise and learn what phrases you can both say and hear on different types of phone calls in English, look at our other exercises on telephone English vocabulary.
In the following conversation, Claire is telling her friend Sally about a phone call she made to her bank.
From the context, try to guess what the meaning of the words/phrases in bold are. Then do the quiz at the end to check if you are right.
Sally:'Hi Claire, you look stressed. Has anything happened?'
Claire:'I just had to make a call to my bank to change my home address on my bank account.'
Sally:'I hate calling banks. So, what happened?'
Claire:'Well, the first three times I rang them I couldn't get through to them. No one was answering my phone call there.'
Sally:'I suppose they were busy.'
Claire:'Anyway, on the fourth call somebody picked up the phone there. So, I started to tell a woman there that I wanted to change my address. But then the call started to break up. I couldn't hear everything that she was saying and could only hear parts of words. Then after a minute of this happening, the line went dead.'
Sally:'So, what did you do?'
Claire:'I had to call them back.'
Sally:'You called them again?'
Claire:'Yeah. The same woman picked up and told me that her line had gone dead as well.'
Sally:'So you were cut off?'
Claire:'Yeah. She told they had been having problems with their phones all morning.'
Sally:'So, she changed your address?'
Claire:'No! She didn't know how to change addresses on bank accounts. So she had to go and speak to her manager. She put me on hold while she went and spoke to him.'
Sally:'How long were you on hold for?'
Claire:'Only about 2 minutes. But I hate the music they play while you are waiting. When she started speaking to me again, she told me she couldn't speak to her manager because he was in a meeting with a customer. She offered to call me back when she had spoken to him, but I told her that I would hold on until she had spoken to him.'
Sally:'So, how long were you waiting?'
Claire:'I held on for a long time. But after 20 minutes of waiting, I was so angry that I ended the call.'
Sally:'You hung up?'
Claire:'Yeah. I was really frustrated with having to wait so much time. But I did call them back about an hour later. The same woman answered and apologised for me waiting so long. She told me that she couldn't change the address on my bank account, but her manager could. So she put me through to his extension and I started to talk to him. And he changed my address.'
Match the words/phrases in bold from the above text to each of the definitions/descriptions below. Click on the "Check" button at the bottom of the quiz to check your answers.
When the answer is correct, two icons will appear below the answer. The "" icon contains extra information on the word/phrase. In the "" icon, you can listen to the pronunciation of the word/phrase.
Now that you understand the meaning of the words/phrases and when to use them, practise using them by creating your own sentences with them in English. Also click on the "" icon under each correct answer and listen how each is pronounced correctly.
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