Welcome to Advanced English where we come together to improve your fluency, confidence, and clarity in English! Mary Daphne here and today we’re covering ten different ways of making polite requests and a non-pushy, non-aggressive way of asking someone to do something.
Let’s get into it!
To start let me use three different seemingly polite ways of asking someone to do something. Ready?
You are required to…
You are required to send out the newsletter at noon.
It is requested that you…
It is requested that you prepare the meeting notes a day before the meeting.
You are requested to…
You are requested to send me your PowerPoint deck ahead of the presentation.
It is required that you…
It is required that you eat your lunch in the office.
Ok, any guesses as to why these are actually not very polite requests? And no, using the passive voice doesn’t make it any more polite.
Phrasing it like this is a demand. A requirement, a necessity. A “do this or else”… It’s pushy and demanding and will not be received in a good way, because people don’t like to be told what to do. They’d prefer to have the option.
So, while the above are mandates an official order to do something, they are not requests.
Let’s look at 10 polite requests with some examples.
