Respond to a written request
I will contact you again about the order later.
“I’ll touch base with the supplier tomorrow and circle back to you with a confirmed delivery date by Thursday.”
TOEIC vocabulary practice
Workplace Englishused precisely.
TOEIC is built from work: emails, requests, schedules, orders, and staffing. Recognizing an expression in a Reading passage is not the same as producing it correctly in a reply or an opinion task. Lyra Practice practices that production directly.
For candidates who already read business English comfortably and want the Speaking and Writing sections, and their next job, to sound like a colleague, not a phrasebook.
Try a real Lyra Practice exercise
Escalate
Free · No account needed
Which sentence correctly describes deliberately sending an issue to someone with more authority to resolve it?
From understood to precise
Sound like the colleague whose email gets a reply, not a follow-up question.
TOEIC rewards workplace English that does a job: a reply that names the next step, a status that names the dependency, an opinion that commits and qualifies. The right expression carries the meaning a generic sentence leaves out.
Project status
We cannot continue because we are waiting for the other team.
“The vendor approval is the blocker: nothing on the launch checklist can move until it lands.”
Express an opinion
I think working from home is good but also has problems.
“The benefits of working from home are real, with one caveat: teams need a fixed weekly cadence to stay aligned.”
Choose what you want to communicate
Start with the conversation in front of you. We'll surface only the expressions that fit.
Your situation
Emails & requests
Reply to a written request and commit to what happens next with language that makes your intent and next step clear.
Expressions for this conversation
How Lyra Practice works
Learn each expression deeply enough to use it naturally.
Hear each expression in real workplace use, understand its meaning and register, distinguish it from near-synonyms that carry a different message, then practice producing it in a TOEIC-style email or opinion task with feedback.
Example journey · touch base
Browse the full expression catalogWorkplace expressions grouped by the TOEIC scenario they appear in: emails, meetings, projects, purchasing, personnel, and opinion tasks.
26 expressions
Touch Base
Emails and requestsTo touch base means to make brief, informal-to-neutral contact with someone -- now or at a proposed future time -- to exchange a quick update or coordinate,…
Circle Back
Emails and requestsTo deliberately return to a topic, question, or person after a gap, dependency, or interruption — not simply any future contact.
Run Something By
Emails and requestsTo run something by someone (or run something past someone — both mean exactly the same thing) is to informally share an idea, plan, or draft with them before…
Get Around To
Emails and requestsTo finally find or make time to do something after it has been delayed or put off.
Touch On
Emails and requests"Touch on" means to mention or discuss a topic briefly, without going into full detail.
Table (Meeting Sense)
Meetings and schedulingIn a meeting, "table" means opposite things depending on the region, and both are fully correct, standard professional English: in US business/parliamentary…
Tentative
Meetings and schedulingTentative is a status label for something real but not yet locked in — a date, a number, an agreement, or a conclusion that could still change.
Play It By Ear
Meetings and schedulingTo decide how to act as a situation develops, rather than committing to a fixed plan in advance.
Weigh In
Meetings and schedulingTo contribute a considered opinion on a decision or discussion, usually because you were asked to or your role/expertise makes your input relevant — not to…
Blocker
Projects, deadlines, and statusA blocker is the specific thing — a missing input, pending decision, unresolved issue, or a person/team whose action is needed — that is currently preventing a…
Bottleneck
Projects, deadlines, and statusA bottleneck is the specific point in a process, system, team, or plan that limits how much can move forward.
Bandwidth
Projects, deadlines, and statusBandwidth means the practical capacity a person, team, or organization has to take on more work, considering time, attention, energy, staffing, and priorities…
Ramp Up
Projects, deadlines, and status"Ramp up" means to increase something — output, hiring, effort, or a person's or team's readiness — through a deliberate, staged process moving toward a target…
Iron Out
Projects, deadlines, and statusResolve the remaining manageable details, problems, or differences in something already broadly workable so it can proceed smoothly.
Ballpark
Purchasing, budgets, and costsA ballpark (figure) is a rough, non-final estimate — not a confirmed or exact number.
Overhead
Purchasing, budgets, and costsOverhead means the indirect cost, support effort, or coordination load needed to keep work running, separate from the main work or direct output.
Provisional
Purchasing, budgets, and costsSomething is already granted, agreed, produced, or in effect right now, but it still needs one more specific, defined step before it becomes final.
Wiggle Room
Purchasing, budgets, and costsWiggle room means a limited amount of room to adjust inside a constraint — a deadline, price, budget, scope, or rule — not unlimited freedom, general…
Escalate
Personnel and performanceEscalate means either deliberately sending an issue to someone with more authority or expertise to resolve it, or a conflict, tension, or cost becoming more…
Push Back
Personnel and performanceTo push back is to challenge, resist, or renegotiate something so a concern is addressed before it moves forward; in scheduling, push something back means move…
Buy-In
Personnel and performanceThe willing commitment of people whose cooperation a plan, decision, or change depends on—not just their formal permission.
Non-negotiable
Personnel and performanceA non-negotiable is a requirement, condition, or boundary that is fixed — stronger than merely important — because discussion will not remove or change the…
Hedge
Giving an opinionTo hedge is to reduce exposure, keep another option open, or qualify a claim when the outcome is uncertain; it does not mean fully avoid, solve, or prevent the…
Caveat
Giving an opinionA caveat is a specific limitation that either qualifies an otherwise confident statement or independently flags how far a claim, plan, dataset, or analysis can…
Boil Down To
Giving an opinionAfter you strip away all the secondary detail, "boil down to" names the one essential cause, reason, or deciding factor that's left.
Nuanced
Giving an opinionKeep exploring
Guides by situation
Optional reading for when you want more than the practice path on one situation.
After the exam
The same vocabulary, in your own profession
TOEIC scenes are generic workplace scenes. Once the exam is behind you, the expressions above keep doing their job in the meetings and emails of a specific field. Each profession hub practices them in that field’s situations.
Common questions
Does Lyra Practice guarantee a specific TOEIC score?
No, and be skeptical of anything that does. Lyra Practice is not affiliated with TOEIC or ETS. What it practices is real: producing precise workplace vocabulary in the kinds of emails, opinion tasks, and business scenes the exam is built from.
Is this a TOEIC word list?
No. A static list builds recognition, which helps with Listening and Reading. Speaking and Writing, and the job after the exam, need production: choosing the expression that carries the right meaning and register in a reply, and using it correctly.
How is TOEIC different from the other exam pages?
IELTS, TOEFL, PTE, and the Duolingo English Test lean academic: argument, evidence, comparison, cause and effect. TOEIC is workplace English, so this page draws on the same expressions as Lyra Practice’s profession hubs — which is also why it hands off to them at the end.
Why “escalate” as the sample question?
“Escalate” is everywhere in TOEIC-style personnel and customer scenes and is easy to recognize, but it is often confused with “raise”, “flag”, or “push back” — the choice between them is exactly what the exercise tests.
Do I need to sign up to try this?
No. The question above and the full catalog are open without an account. Signing up unlocks the scheduled practice path for each expression.