Recovering mid-answer
“Let me say that more simply.”
When to use it
When a sentence has become a tangle. Restart in plain words; nobody minds.
What it replaces
"Sorry, sorry, what I mean is, sorry…"
The hedged version is not wrong English. It is English that asks the interviewer to do the work of deciding whether you meant it. The confident version makes the decision for them.
In an answer
“Let me say that more simply: the report was late because the data was wrong, and I fixed the data first.”
How to make it automatic
- Say it aloud five times now, at normal speed, with contractions.
- Pick one story from your own work where it fits, and say that story once using it.
- Record a 60-second answer tomorrow and listen for whether it came out on its own.