How to politely request clarification in German interview settings

In German interview settings, politely requesting clarification can be done using several respectful phrases. Some common polite ways to ask for clarification include:

• Könnten Sie das bitte näher erläutern? (Could you please elaborate on that?)
• Entschuldigen Sie, könnten Sie das bitte noch einmal erklären? (Excuse me, could you please explain that again?)
• Darf ich um eine genauere Erklärung bitten? (May I ask for a more detailed explanation?)
• Könnten Sie das bitte präzisieren? (Could you please clarify that?)
• Ich möchte sicherstellen, dass ich Sie richtig verstanden habe. Könnten Sie das bitte wiederholen? (I want to make sure I understood you correctly. Could you please repeat that?)

Using phrases with polite modal verbs like “könnten” (could) and “dürfen” (may) makes the request respectful and professional. It is also good to start with a slight excuse or politeness marker such as Entschuldigen Sie (Excuse me) to soften the request. These phrases help to maintain professionalism and show your genuine interest in understanding fully during an interview. ^{1, 3}

References

• The Use of Phrases Containing misunderstanding in German Discussion Forums

• “Thought provoking”, “interactive”, and “more like a peer talk”: Testing the deliberative interview style in Germany

• Asking the Obvious: Other-Repeats as Requests for Reconfirmation

• A New Aligned Simple German Corpus

• Asking Clarification Questions to Handle Ambiguity in Open-Domain QA

• Building and Evaluating Open-Domain Dialogue Corpora with Clarifying Questions

• Building and Evaluating Open-Domain Dialogue Corpora with Clarifying Questions

• Asking the Right Question at the Right Time: Human and Model Uncertainty Guidance to Ask Clarification Questions

• OMoS-QA: A Dataset for Cross-Lingual Extractive Question Answering in a German Migration Context

• Filmische Interviews – führen und unterrichten

• A New Aligned Simple German Corpus

• Conjectural questions: The case of German verb-final wohl questions

• “Thought provoking”, “interactive”, and “more like a peer talk”: Testing the deliberative interview style in Germany