Presenting your work at the office: Explaining results from a chart

🇹🇼 Using 您, the respectful "you", together with 請 is the right tone for asking a superior to review your work.

💬 的 links a description to the noun after it: 紅色的線 "the red line", 新的圖表 "the new chart".

💬 Question words stay where the answer would go. Ask 目標是什麼？ and answer 目標是…, with no word-order flip like in English.

💬 Long thin things like lines take the counting word 條 (tiáo), so you say 這條 rather than 這個. Roads and rivers work the same way: 這條路 "this road".

💬 Swap the first character to change the year: 去年 (qù nián) "last year", 明年 (míng nián) "next year".

💬 A 的 at the end lets you drop the noun when it's already understood. 今年的 means "this year's (line)".

💬 Walk through a chart legend with the pattern color + 是 + X + 的: 紅色是目標的 "red is the target's".

💬 To compare, use A 比 B + adjective, and put 很多 after the adjective to mean "by a lot". Don't put 很 before the adjective: 比去年低很多 "much lower than last year".

💬 Ending a sentence with 耶 (ye) adds a note of pleasant surprise, like "wow". It's very common in Taiwan.

🇹🇼 A manager reacting with 耶 sounds warm and genuinely impressed, which is a good sign in a review meeting.

💬 最 before an adjective makes it "the most", and no 是 is needed: 五月最低 "May was the lowest".

💬 Percentages put the whole first: 百分之 "out of a hundred" + the number. So 百分之五十 is 50%.

💬 Months are just a number + 月: 三月 "March", 十二月 "December".

💬 下降 (xià jiàng) "to go down" pairs with 上升 (shàng shēng) "to go up". These are the two key words for describing any trend line.

💬 In Chinese the time comes before 為什麼, not after it. Put it in the slot right after 那: 那上週為什麼下降？ "Then why did last week drop?"

🇹🇼 Taiwan has several 連假 each year, when public holidays join up with weekends. Many people travel then, so sales patterns shift and that's a standard explanation for a dip. One example is 清明節 "Tomb-Sweeping Day" in early April.

💬 比較 before an adjective means "relatively" or "-er" even when nothing is being compared directly: 比較忙 "busier".

🇹🇼 了解 is the standard crisp acknowledgment at work, suitable even with a boss. It's more polished than a casual 好.

💬 Put 得 between a verb and a description to say how well it's done: 說得很好 "spoken well".

🇹🇼 Bosses say this to staff to acknowledge their effort, and coworkers say it to each other when leaving. A good reply is a simple 不會 "not at all".

💬 忙 here works as "get on with my work", not just "busy". You'll also hear 你先忙 "go on with your work" when someone ends a conversation.

🇹🇼 This is the natural, polite way to leave a manager's office in Taiwan. It signals that you won't take up more of their time.