📝 Exercise: Fill in the Gaps

Look at this opening address from a company’s Annual Meeting and fill in the gaps with words from the box. The first letter of each word is already in the text.

Words box: participants, matters, objectives, schedule, achieve, address, recommendations, welcoming, report, get through, agenda, chair, minutes, clarification, floor, closes, interrupt, goals, points, complaints, contribute, notes, open, open-floor, opinions, bringing up, priority, progress, issues, attendance, questions, summarizing, supporting

Mr. Roberts:
I’d like to a________ this meeting by w________ you all. It’s good to see so many p________ here today – in fact, this is probably the best a________ we’ve had at a meeting for a long time – and I’d like to thank you all in advance for s________ me.

Well, we’ve got a lot on the a________ and I want to make as much p________ as possible in the next two hours or so. If we stick to the main s________, we should g________ everything and a________ all of our g________ and o________. I will c________ the meeting, as usual, but I really hope that you will all have something to c________, and if anything needs c________, please don’t hesitate to i________ me (although not too often, I hope: the more i________ we can a________ today the better).

I’ll be b________ several important m________ during the meeting, beginning with those that I feel should take p________, before s________ the main p________ and making r________. This will be followed by an o________ session where you can give me your o________. And I’m sure you will all be delighted to hear that after the meeting c________, there will be drinks and snacks for everyone.

Mr. Barker will be taking n________ and keeping the m________ of the meeting, and I will be using these to write my r________ afterwards, so if anyone has any c________, I suggest you talk to him and not to me!

Now, before I get going, are there any q________ from the f________?