Using English at Work：08 Checking Mail,Email,and Voicemail(1)

Welcome to lesson two of ESLPod.com's "Using English at Work." I'm your host, Dr. Jeff McQuillan, from the Center for Educational Development.

In the first lesson of "Using English at Work," we learned vocabulary about arriving at work, or getting to the office.

In this second lesson, we're going to talk about checking email, mail, and voicemail at work.

Let's get started by listening to the story of this part of my day at a slow speed.

The first thing I do when I get to work each morning is to check my inboxes.

I go to the mailroom to check my mail slot to see what mail has arrived overnight.

There are always a lot of intra-office and inter-office letters and memos¹.

Much of it is junk mail, so I spend a few minutes sorting through it.

The next thing I do is to turn on my computer to check email.

I open my email program and my new messages automatically download into my inbox.

Even though I have a pretty good spam filter, I still check through my trash folder² carefully to make sure nothing important was filtered out.

We're also not supposed to get personal emails at work, but sometimes my friends send or forward me messages to this address and I have to make sure I respond using my personal email address.

When I don't have time to finish a message or when I get interrupted, I save it into my draft folder.

Finally, I check my voicemail. I call the voicemail system and enter in my PIN to bypass the outgoing message.

I have two new messages, and after listening to them, I save one of them and delete the other.

I look at the clock and it's already 9:30 AM! It's time for the morning meeting.

We begin our story by saying that the first thing I do when I get to work each morning is to check my inboxes.

An "inbox" is an electronic space or a real box that holds emails, or if it's a real box, papers, and other things that you need to read and respond to.

1 memos   

n.备忘录( memo的名词复数 )；（美）内部通知

参考例句：

• Big shots get their dander up and memos start flying. 大人物们怒火中烧，备忘录四下乱飞。 来自辞典例句
• There was a pile of mail, memos and telephone messages on his desk. 他的办公桌上堆满着信件、备忘录和电话通知。 来自辞典例句

2 folder   

n.纸夹，文件夹

参考例句：

• Peter returned the plan and charts to their folder.彼得把这份计划和表格放回文件夹中。
• He draws the document from its folder.他把文件从硬纸夹里抽出来。