Hello, this is Jack from tofluency.com. Now, in this lesson,
I'm going to talk about a really powerful way
to overcome your fear of speaking English or your shyness when it comes to speaking English especially when you meet new people. So imagine the situation. You are at a party in your native country and in walks this group of
people who are English speakers and they come over to you to say hello, to introduce themselves
and you know, okay, now I have to start speaking English. So this is when you panic or this is when you start
to feel really nervous, you start to feel very
stressed about speaking. Well, I've got a quick tip that's going to help
you overcome this fear to make you feel more confident and comfortable in these
types of situations and I'm also going to teach
you the type of language you can use in these situations too so that you're ready to
start speaking English and then watch until the end
because I need your help too. So I'll have a question for you at the end that I want you to answer. Before I talk about the little trick here, know that this can often be
quite awkward or uncomfortable when you're doing this
in your native language. Meeting new people can be
uncomfortable for a lot of people. So know that this happens when you're speaking in
your native language too and that it happens to English
speakers at the same time. It's a normal thing to
feel but the trick is this. Ask questions. So you be the one who
asks the most questions and this helps you in a few ways. Firstly, it gives you an opportunity to get used to the situation because you can ask one question and then the other person starts speaking and it gives you a chance just to get used to this new
situation that you are in. So it gives you some time
to overcome your fear but also it gives you an opportunity to learn the English you need to know in order to have a
conversation with this person because if you ask this person a question, they're quite likely going
to ask you the same question and when they're answering,
you can listen for key phrases that you can also use because
when you speak to people, it's not just about
practicing your speaking, it's about listening for key phrases, it's about learning English in context and also improving your English too. So when somebody is
answering the question, you can steal little phrases from them. You can imitate the way they speak. You can take the phrases that they use and use them when you're speaking too. So with that in mind, I've
got a few questions for you to have in your arsenal,
to store up your sleeve or without using an idiom,
to store in your brain so that you can use these
questions and ask these questions when you find yourself in these situations and finding yourself in these
situations is quite common if you put yourself out there
if you are in an environment where there are other
English speakers around. So things like when you go to parties, when you go to events, when
you go to language exchanges or even when you go to weddings. So learn these questions,
commit them to memory and go to my website to learn more about how you can store these
sentences in your brain. The first one is this. So how do you know and Paul and Sarah? How do you know Paul and Sarah? This is when you're trying
to find common ground because if you're at a
party or an event or wedding or something similar then
somebody's hosting this, the host, the hostess or the hosts. So you can say how do you know
Paul, how do you know Sarah, how do you know Paul and Sarah? So you're trying to
find that common ground and this is a question
people ask all the time in these situations. People ask me this at
parties and weddings. So when you're sat next
to somebody at a wedding who you don't know, you can say, oh, how do you know the bride and groom, how do you know Paul and Sarah and again, when you're
listening to the answer, you can use some of those phrases to then answer for yourself and it also gives you a bit of time to think about how you're
going to answer too. Another common question
to ask is about their job and a very common way to
do this is just to say, what do you do? What do you do? What do you do? When people ask me this when I'm meeting them for the first time, I tell them that I'm an online
teacher and then usually, there are a a lot of
followup questions here like how do you teach, do you teach for yourself
or for a company, what is YouTube like, how
do you find your students? So this is when you need
to be a little bit flexible and think about some followup questions but a common one is to ask do you like it or do you find it enjoyable? So you can ask them if they like their job or if they find it enjoyable but don't ask them about their salary. It's quite rude to ask people
how much they are earning although I do find people want to know if how much I'm earning
when I talk about what I do. The next one is something
you learned a long time ago but the followup question is something you probably don't know. So you can ask people where are you from? Where are you from? And in these types of situations when you're talking to somebody
who isn't from your country, they're going to tell you the country. So they'll say I'm from
the UK, I'm from England, I'm from Australia, I'm
from America, et cetera but you want to be more specific here. So you can ask whereabouts in England or whereabouts in Ireland? So this is when you're
getting more specific about the city or the region and again, this happens
to me all the time. Where are you from? The UK. Whereabouts? Near Manchester. So people ask me this all the time and then it's time to
use the present perfect because you can either
say oh, I've been there or I've never been there, what's it like? So this is when you can start
using the present perfect and if you have been to the
place that this person is from then you can be more specific. You can say, oh, I was there
in 2009, I used to teach there or I went traveling there
for a couple of weeks. So this whereabouts, whereabouts in Spain, whereabouts in the UK,
whereabouts in England is a really good followup question and then you can ask somebody how often do you go back to the UK, how often do you go back to the UK, how often do you visit your
home where you are from? This is again a question that
people ask me all the time. So it's a really good question to have. How often do you go back home? How often do you go back to the UK? People are going to answer
I go back every six months or I go back about once a year. So people are going to say I go back and then use some type of time expression. Now, before I give you
some more questions, you can also just give
statements, make observations and a good one that I like when you are at a party or an event is this is such a good spread,
this is such a good spread and this means that you think
the food is really good. I think this might be
quite a regional expression so be careful when using it. Instead, you might want to
say the food is fantastic or the food is really good because when you're having a
conversation with somebody, there are times when it
goes a little bit silent when no one speaks and
this is just a good way to continue the conversation. So you can say the food is fantastic and then that person is going to say, oh yeah, I love the chili, I
love the macaroni and cheese or that broccoli and dip is really good and then you can start
talking about food from there. Another statement you can
make is about the weather. People love talking about the weather. It happens all the time. So just saying things like
it was so cold this morning or it's gone cold, hasn't it or I don't think this
weather is going to last or do you know if it might rain later? So that's a question you can ask. Now, to learn lots of phrases to help you better talk about the weather, check out the videos that
I've made on this subject. I'll leave them in the description. You can also just make
statements about the party like this is a great party,
this is a great wedding or if you're at a wedding,
the ceremony was fantastic or if you're at the
party, you can just say I love this song if it's playing. Just simple statements keep
that conversation going. I'm not sure why these next
questions can be awkward but asking people about
their hobbies and interests isn't the easiest thing to do. I don't know why. It just sometimes seems quite strange to ask what hobbies do you like or what do you do in your spare time? What do you do in your free time? And I know these are the
types of questions you learn when you're learning
English through a textbook but it can just sound
a little bit strange. Having said that, that doesn't
mean you shouldn't ask them and as an English second language learner because English isn't
your native language, you can get away with asking questions sometimes in an awkward way. So don't worry about this too much but I like to say things
like so what are you into or if you think that this
person is into sports, you can say so do you have a soccer team or do you play any sports around here, those types of things. So people know that I'm from the UK and when they find out I'm
from the UK, they can ask me, they usually ask me
about football or soccer like do you have a team in
England or do you play soccer? So you can start thinking
about where they're from or the information you already have and then ask them something like that or you could just simply ask
them like what are you into? So what are you into? So what do you do when you're not working? Ask something like that because
that can open up a new topic and you can find some good
common ground there too. Now, speaking about a question
that could be awkward, let's say that you really
hit it off with this person or you connect in a really good way. Now, I'm not talking about romantically although I'll leave a question
for you soon with that but let's just say you want to be friends and you want to meet up. You can just say something like hey, would you like to grab a coffee sometime? Would you like to grab a coffee sometime? It's just a way to say let's
meet up in a casual way because we have this new friendship, we could be friends maybe. Would you like to grab a coffee sometime? Or you could ask them would
you like to hang out sometime? Would you like to hang out sometime and then you can get their
number or their Facebook profile and then get in touch
with them at a later date. Now, you can also ask these questions if you are interested in
this person romantically too. So these questions still work like would you like to
grab a coffee sometime but you might want to
invite them out to a date by saying would you
like to go out sometime? Would you like to go out sometime? Anyway, it's been a long time since I asked somebody out on a date so I'm probably not the
best person to ask here and then finally, I've just got a really
good question for you which you can use in lots
of different situations. So before, we talked about
your job, okay, and jobs or asking about jobs and
then followup questions and you can ask things like how do you like working at the hospital, how do you like working for that company but you can use this how do
you like for almost anything. For example, how do you
like going back home, how do you like playing
for that soccer team? So it's a really good
question for you to ask if you want to know more information about what someone has said. All right, so those are
the questions you can ask. Those are the statements
you can give as well so that you have things to ask and say when you meet someone for the first time. So having that knowledge,
having those common questions and also knowing that asking a question allows you to feel more
comfortable with the person and also allows you to steal
the language that they're using means that you can overcome
your fear of speaking English using these tips. So my question for you is this. What other questions can
you ask in these situations? Leave these questions below and I'm going to comment
on some of those posts and let you know if it's
a good question to ask or if you need to change it slightly. So leave those comments below. If you are new to this channel, welcome. My name is Jack from To Fluency. You can find some really good
resources in the description, things like my book, The
5-Step Plan For English Fluency and also my To Fluency program. So check those out,
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and I'll speak to you soon. Bye bye. (calm music)
