Good morning! Today’s Friday session is about something every engineer eventually runs into: the difference between being right and being trusted. You can have the best architecture proposal in the room, but if people don’t believe you’ll follow through, nobody signs off on it. Let’s talk about credibility — how to build it, talk about it, and keep it.

🔤 Word of the Day

Credibility

  • IPA Pronunciation: /ˌkredəˈbɪləti/
  • Part of speech: noun (uncountable)
  • Vietnamese meaning: sự tín nhiệm, độ tin cậy, uy tín

Example sentences:

  1. “He lost credibility with the team after missing three deadlines in a row.”
  2. “Good documentation gives your API real credibility — people trust it because they can verify it works.”
  3. “Her credibility as a tech lead came from being honest about what she didn’t know, not from pretending to know everything.”

Listen and practice:

📋 Vocabulary Table

PhraseVietnameseExample
build credibilityxây dựng uy tín”You build credibility one shipped feature at a time, not with a single big presentation.”
earn someone’s trustgiành được lòng tin của ai đó”It took six months to earn the backend team’s trust after the migration mess.”
own your mistakesnhận trách nhiệm khi mắc lỗi”The best thing she did in the postmortem was own her mistakes instead of blaming the on-call rotation.”
speak with authoritynói có sức thuyết phục, có thẩm quyền”He speaks with authority on caching because he’s actually debugged it at 2am.”
deliver on your promisesthực hiện đúng những gì đã hứa”If you say the fix ships Friday, deliver on your promise, or say so early if it slips.”

🗣️ Pronunciation Guide

Breaking down “credibility”: /ˌkredəˈbɪləti/

  • Four syllables: cred-i-BIL-i-ty
  • Stress falls on the THIRD syllable: cred-i-BIL-i-ty
  • The first “e” sounds like short “eh” (as in “bed”), not long “ee”
  • Common mistake: Vietnamese speakers often stress the first syllable (“CRED-i-bil-i-ty”) — practice hitting “BIL” harder than the rest

Practice sentence (read aloud 3 times):

“Credibility isn’t built in one meeting — it’s built by delivering, being honest about mistakes, and speaking with authority only when you’ve actually earned it.”

Read it slowly the first time, focus on stress the second time, then read it at natural speed the third time.

✏️ Exercise 1: Fill in the Blank

Fill in the blanks with the correct word or phrase from today’s vocabulary.

  1. She refused to make promises she couldn’t keep — that’s how she _______ with the whole engineering org.
  2. Instead of hiding the outage, he _______ in the incident channel, which actually made people trust him more.
  3. New tech leads often struggle to _______ because the team hasn’t seen them deliver yet.
  4. If you want to _______, don’t guess about things you haven’t tested.
Show Answers
  1. built credibility
  2. owned his mistakes
  3. earn the team’s trust
  4. speak with authority

✏️ Exercise 2: Translate

Translate these sentences into English using today’s vocabulary.

  1. Anh ấy xây dựng được uy tín bằng cách luôn giao đúng hạn.
  2. Cô ấy nhận trách nhiệm về lỗi thay vì đổ lỗi cho người khác.
  3. Bạn không thể nói có thẩm quyền về một hệ thống mà bạn chưa từng vận hành thực tế.
Show Answers
  1. He built credibility by always delivering on time.
  2. She owned her mistakes instead of blaming others.
  3. You can’t speak with authority about a system you’ve never actually operated.

💬 Idiom of the Day

”Practice what you preach”

Vietnamese meaning: nói đi đôi với làm

Examples:

  1. “You can’t tell the team to write tests and skip them yourself — practice what you preach.”
  2. “Our director always says work-life balance matters, and she actually leaves at 6pm. She practices what she preaches.”

📺 Recommended Watching

🎯 Today’s Challenge

The next time you’re in a meeting and you don’t know the answer to something, say “I don’t know, let me check” out loud in English instead of guessing. It’s a small sentence, but it’s one of the fastest ways to actually build credibility instead of just talking about it.

See you tomorrow for Social English! 🌤️

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