Good morning! ☕ Today’s session is about a skill most engineers avoid until they’re forced to use it: telling someone, clearly and calmly, that something is going wrong before it becomes a crisis. Escalating well is a career skill, not just a communication skill.

📖 Word of the Day: Escalate

3 example sentences:

  1. “I’m going to escalate this to the engineering manager — we’ve missed two deadlines already.”
  2. “Let’s not escalate yet. Give the vendor 24 more hours to respond.”
  3. “The outage escalated from a minor warning to a full page-out within ten minutes.”

💡 Note the two meanings: as a verb about people (“escalate to someone”), it means asking a higher authority to step in. As a verb about a situation (“the issue escalated”), it just means things got worse. Native speakers use both constantly in tech workplaces — don’t mix them up in a sentence.

🗂️ Vocabulary Table

PhraseVietnameseExample
Raise a concernNêu lên một mối lo ngại”I want to raise a concern about the timeline before we commit.”
Loop someone inĐưa ai đó vào vòng trao đổi/thông tin”Can you loop in the security team on this thread?”
Flag an issueĐánh dấu/báo hiệu một vấn đề”I flagged the issue in yesterday’s standup, but nobody followed up.”
Set expectationsĐặt ra kỳ vọng rõ ràng”Let’s set expectations early so nobody’s surprised at the deadline.”
Manage upChủ động trao đổi, quản lý mối quan hệ với cấp trên”Managing up means telling your manager about risks before they ask.”

🔊 Pronunciation Guide

Escalate breaks into three syllables: ES-ka-leyt

  • ES — like the letter “S” with a short “e” in front, stress falls HERE
  • ka — quick, unstressed, almost swallowed
  • leyt — rhymes with “late,” clear and crisp at the end

Common mistake: Vietnamese speakers often stress the second syllable (“es-KA-leyt”). The stress must land on the first syllable.

Practice sentence — read this out loud 3 times:

“If the client doesn’t respond by Friday, I’ll escalate it to our account manager and loop in the whole team.”

Say it slowly the first time, focus on stressing “ES” the second time, and say it at natural speaking speed the third time.

✍️ Exercise 1: Fill in the Blank

Fill in each blank with a word or phrase from today’s lesson (escalate, loop in, flag, set expectations, manage up).

  1. Before the deadline passes, we should _______ with the client so nobody is surprised.
  2. I already _______ this bug in the ticket, but it’s still not assigned to anyone.
  3. If support can’t resolve it in an hour, please _______ to the on-call engineer.
  4. Good _______ means telling your manager about a risk before it becomes a fire.
  5. Don’t forget to _______ the design team — this change affects their roadmap too.
Show Answers
  1. set expectations
  2. flagged
  3. escalate
  4. managing up
  5. loop in

🌐 Exercise 2: Translate to English

Translate these Vietnamese sentences into English using today’s vocabulary.

  1. Tôi cần đẩy vấn đề này lên cấp quản lý vì đã trễ hạn hai lần rồi.
  2. Hãy đưa đội bảo mật vào luồng trao đổi này trước khi triển khai.
  3. Cô ấy nêu lên mối lo ngại trong cuộc họp, nhưng không ai phản hồi.
Show Answers
  1. “I need to escalate this to management because we’ve missed the deadline twice.”
  2. “Let’s loop in the security team before we deploy.”
  3. “She raised a concern in the meeting, but nobody responded.”

🎭 Idiom of the Day: “Keep someone in the loop”

Vietnamese meaning: giữ liên lạc, luôn cập nhật thông tin cho ai đó

2 examples:

  1. “Even if you can’t fix it today, keep me in the loop with a quick update every few hours.”
  2. “We kept the whole team in the loop throughout the migration, so nobody was blindsided by the downtime.”

📺 Recommended Watching

  1. Harvard Business Review (YouTube) — search “how to escalate at work” for short, practical clips on raising issues without sounding alarmist.
  2. Communication Coach Alex Lyon — clear breakdowns of assertive, professional phrasing for workplace conversations.
  3. YouGlish — “escalate” (linked above) — hear the word used dozens of times by real native speakers in different accents.

🎯 Today’s Challenge

The next time something is behind schedule or broken, don’t just fix it quietly. Send one message today using the phrase “I want to flag…” or “Let’s set expectations on…” — even if it’s a small thing. Notice how it changes the response you get.

See you this evening for the next session! 🌆

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