Emphasising & Reinforcing — Unit 19, Upper-intermediate English
Collocations for stressing key points, reinforcing arguments, and drawing attention in presentations.
Reading: Board Deck — Risk Slide
**Board deck · risk slide**
I'd **highlight** two points before the vote. The report **underscores** rising churn in SMB — **particularly** in month two. **It is worth noting** that cohort B outperformed while legacy accounts lagged. The chart **reinforces the point** on regional risk in Southern Europe.
**As I mentioned** earlier, retention beat target, but cost per seat remains high. **To reiterate**, billing stays off until UAT passes. We need stakeholder buy-in, **not least** from Finance and Legal. **I want to stress** that timelines are not flexible this quarter. **It bears repeating** that security review is non-negotiable before any price test.
Customer trust is **paramount**; the role of onboarding **cannot be overstated**. Trust is **central to** our value proposition and **at the heart of** the roadmap. **Bear in mind** that Q4 is seasonally weak — planning must stay **crucial** even if headline ARR looks strong. Testing is **doubly important** after the refactor.
Rising churn is **all the more reason** to fix activation. **Chief among** our risks is vendor concentration. **Make no mistake** — downtime will cost us enterprise deals. **Above all**, protect customer data. **Put simply**, we cannot scale on this architecture without reliability. This memo should **leave no doubt** about ownership before we approve the hiring plan. Finance and Legal must sign off **not least** because budget shifts affect runway.
**Speaker note, not for the slide**
A caution about this slide, which I will say aloud rather than print.
Every bullet on it is emphasised. Six items are described as **crucial**, **paramount** or **non-negotiable**. When a board hears that six things are the priority, it hears that nothing is, and it makes its own selection — usually the one that is cheapest.
If I am asked to name a single item, it is vendor concentration, and I would rather say so plainly than leave it as one of six equals. Sixty-one percent of our production dependencies route through one provider. Every other risk on this slide is recoverable within a quarter. That one is not, and it is the only item where the remediation must start before we know whether it will be needed.
The second thing I will not put in writing on a slide: the churn figure is real but the attribution is not. We are describing month-two SMB churn as an activation problem because activation is the thing we can fix. Two of the three cohorts showing the worst churn also received the pricing change, and we have not separated the effects. **I am not confident** that fixing activation will move this number, and the hiring plan attached to this slide assumes it will.
I would still approve the hiring plan. But the board should approve it knowing it rests on an unproven attribution, and if the number does not move by Q1 the correct response is to revisit the diagnosis rather than to add headcount.
**What I want the board to leave with** is one sentence: vendor concentration is the risk that cannot be fixed later, and everything else on this slide can.
If the discussion goes anywhere else, I have written the slide badly.
Vocabulary from this unit
| Phrase | Use |
|---|---|
| underscore / highlight | stress a key point |
| it is worth noting | flag analytical insight |
| particularly / especially | single strong case |
| not least | one reason among several |
| Phrase | Use |
|---|---|
| to reiterate / as I mentioned | repeat for clarity |
| crucial / paramount | strong adjectives |
| cannot be overstated | rhetorical emphasis |
| bear in mind | remind audience |
| Phrase | Use | Example |
|---|---|---|
| it bears repeating | worth saying again for emphasis | It bears repeating that security is non-negotiable. |
| above all | most importantly | Above all, protect customer data. |
| make no mistake | be clear about something serious | Make no mistake — downtime will cost us enterprise deals. |
| central to | at the core of | Trust is central to our value proposition. |
| I want to stress | emphasise strongly | I want to stress that timelines are not flexible. |
| doubly important | especially important | Testing is doubly important after the refactor. |
| at the heart of | most essential part of | Reliability is at the heart of the roadmap. |
| reinforce the point | make an idea stronger by repeating | The chart reinforces the point on regional risk. |
| all the more reason | additional justification | Rising churn is all the more reason to fix onboarding. |
| chief among | most important among several | Chief among our risks is vendor concentration. |
| put simply | state in clear basic terms | Put simply, we cannot scale on this architecture. |
| leave no doubt | make something completely clear | The memo should leave no doubt about ownership. |
This is the free sample from this unit. The full unit adds 1 more reading passage, comprehension questions with an answer key, the listening exercises, flashcards for the vocabulary above, and a speaking task — with your progress tracked so the next unit unlocks when you are ready for it.
Common questions
What level is this unit?
Upper-intermediate — roughly CEFR B2. If you are not sure of your level, the course places you with a short diagnostic before you start rather than making you guess.
Do I need to pay to use this?
The reading passage and vocabulary on this page are free to read. The rest of the unit — the remaining passages, the exercises, the listening, the answer key and the progress tracking — is part of the paid General English course.
Is this British or American English?
British English spelling and vocabulary, which is what most learners in Azerbaijan are taught and what IELTS expects, though both are accepted in the exam.