English Conversation Skill Secrets - THIS is what GREAT speakers do!

[Music] hello everyone and welcome back to english with Lucy today I have a video for you on conversation and how to be an amazing conversation partner all of this is what amazing speakers do what amazing conversation lists do I think we should get straight into it the first tip I have for you is ask hypothetical questions you might notice a trend here we are going to be trying to avoid yes/no questions they are the devil when it comes to starting conversations and maintaining good conversations asking hypothetical questions and talking about imaginary scenarios and situations is a really good way of getting to know someone better and getting them to open up as well and it's not too difficult to do even if you aren't very advanced at English all you have to learn is the conditional tenses maybe I should make a video on the conditionals let me know if you'd like one but really good questions are questions like if you could have any job in the world what would it be that's a really good one because you get to know someone's biggest desires and they get to really open up to you so for example if you were to ask me that question if I could have any job in the world what would it be I would say I would love to be a reconstructive plastic surgeon that is what I always wanted to do unfortunately have to go through the whole medicine route which wasn't quite for me but I wanted to help people rebuild their faces after accidents and trauma fun fact about me or another question if you won the lottery what would you do what would you buy first that's a good one so if you ask me that what would I do if I won the lottery and the first thing would be to pay off my parents mortgage and then I would go about doing secret deeds I wouldn't tell anyone I'd won the lottery but make sure that the money goes to good places this brings us on to our next point our next tip which is to emphasize similarity so you could respond to some of the things I've said and emphasize how similar we are because we like people who are like us emphasizing similarity improves social relations and in fact sales people use this a lot and they do it in physical ways as well it's a known technique that salespeople will mimic hand gestures and body language and that can actually improve sales without the buyer even realizing it now we don't want to do that we're not necessarily salespeople well you might be saying you can use that but when we are having a conversation we want to find points of connection points of mutual interest if you hear your conversation partner say something that you really relate with or that you can add to you need to let them know so for example with that first hypothetical question about if I could have any job what would I do if that related to you at all you could say phrases like yes I totally agree with you or we're really similar on that or we think similarly on that or I'm on the same page as you those are really good phrases you can use to show connection and the fact that you are similar to someone now the next tip tip number three is slightly strange but it's really important it is to be aware of the sounds that you make whilst you are thinking now you might not be totally aware of the sounds you make whilst you're thinking and more importantly how different they are in different cultures in some cultures and in some languages it's totally and utterly normal to make really loud open mouth sounds when you were thinking of something and I noticed this in Spain I lived and taught in Spain for quite a while I had a Spanish partner I lived with his Spanish family I really did integrate into Spain Society and one thing that surprised me at the beginning was the sounds they make when they think and it was something like this hey it's just so different to what we do I think in British culture it's considered rude to have your mouth open in front of someone it's not like a written rule but in general we're very very conscious of eating with our mouths closed of not talking with food in our mouths and just not going so when we are thinking we are more likely to say with our mouth closed so we still make that sound we still take that thinking time let me know in the comments below what sort of sound and mouth shape you use in your language and culture when you are taking a break in a conversation and thinking and then maybe think about tweaking that if you're going to be speaking to native British people or Americans as well just English speakers in general because it's different to us we would be maybe slightly surprised if someone went hey now tip number four this is another one about filling in gaps but it's a more general one it is improve fluency to avoid having gaps it can be really embarrassing and frustrating when you keep getting stuck mid conversation it's something that all language learners are scared of a great way of improving your English conversation skills is to aim for fluency you can learn to speak fluently at your own pace from the comfort of your own home 24/7 thanks to lingo de the sponsor of this lesson segment and their new more flexible offer it's the language marathon challenge which you can choose to do for three months six months or 12 months you can learn English business English French German or Spanish in interactive virtual online classes with native speaking qualified teachers you'll also get a free Cambridge certificate exam at the end I'm very happy to bring you this offer because I have tried out a variety of lingo de lessons and I had an excellent experience you can choose from over 500 structured lessons that include all important aspects and skills such as grammar sentence structure vocabulary speaking and it costs much less than regular offline courses from as little as just 6 euros per class and as an extra motivational push you can earn up to 400 euros cashback if you attend over 90% of your lessons so now you have two options for this offer you can use my code Lucie 15 or you can claim a 7-day free trial choose wisely as you can only pick one the link is in the description box the best of luck and let me know how it goes right number five this is a tip that I wish I had learnt a long long time ago it's useful for you as learners of English and it's also useful for native speakers of English it is be sensible with how you word potentially sensitive questions so imagine I ask someone how is your job at Google going and they respond with I was fired thanks for asking or what do you do for work and they respond with I'm employed and desperately searching ah it's such an awkward situation when you ask someone a question trying to make positive conversation and they just knock you down and it puts a downer on the whole conversation and it makes you feel bad and it makes them feel negatively towards you now there are good ways of rewording these questions so that it gives people some escape room ways to avoid difficult topics so instead of asking someone how's your job going you could say something like fill me in on your life since I love saw you or catch me up on what's happened since I've last seen you if you asked to be filled in or you asked to be caught up that's a good way of asking someone to update you on everything that's going on or instead of asking something like what do you do for work what is your job what do you do for a living you could ask a more general question like so what keeps you busy it's a little nicer than what do you do it's funny because in British English what do you do is quite a common question it means what do you do for a living what do you do for work but when I went over to America and I asked people what do you do they were a bit confused maybe they were just being difficult I'm sure they understood me but how do I ask the question like what keeps you busy maybe they would have been more chatty with me now number six is a great one if you have a lower level of English but you want to keep conversation going it is ask open-ended questions and again this is part of avoiding yes/no questions so if I ask someone do you like London they could say yes or no and then that might be it and then I'm stuck searching for something else to say however if I ask a question like so what do you like most about London what do you like least about London that gets the person talking they've got no way out they have to say something a bit broader and then you can expand on that so questions using what and how are really good for keeping conversation going and then you can use all the other tricks like emphasizing similarity if someone dislikes the same thing as you I'm with you on that one I can't stand queuing queuing came to my mind because we're in lockdown at the moment because of the coronavirus and I don't like the queues outside the supermarkets now number seven is ask for advice and I'm not sure if I have a video on asking for advice and if I don't I should definitely make one because it's a big topic and it's a great tool in conversation so when you ask someone for their advice or for their opinion but more advice showing that you trust them that you respect them it makes them feel knowledgeable and it just improves the connection between the two of you if you shared a problem and you feel like you've spent quite a long time talking about it and you want to pass the baton to send it over to the other person for their response you could say something like so what would you do in my situation what would you do if you were me and that's a really nice way of asking for advice and asking for opinion without saying what is your advice what is your opinion another great way is to say I've always wondered about why there are so many pigeons in England why do I always end up talking about pigeons I think my first ever video I spoke about pigeons maybe it was my second anyway I've always wondered why there are so many pigeons in England maybe you could offer some insight in that then they could give their opinion as to why there are so many pigeons what a ridiculous example so in general the majority of these tips have been about making sure that the other person has lots of opportunities to speak in general people enjoy talking more than they do listening you can use this to your advantage if you are a learner of English I have some extra little mini tips these could be considered obvious but I think they're quite important and these are more specific to learners of English a big one is don't be afraid to ask for repetition a really good tip that I provide to my students is just don't use the same asking for repetition phrase over and over again have a couple up your sleeve oh sorry what was that oh could you repeat that would you mind saying that again what does that word mean different ways and maybe brief the person say or do you mind if I ask you a couple of questions about the language you use because I am learning and I really like the way you speak that we're offering a compliment making them feel good they'll feel flattered that you like the way they speak and they should be more than willing to help you this brings me on to my next little tip which is offer sincere compliments I'm not talking about physical compliments in general I find that physical can actually make people feel uncomfortable unless they're really genuine say I have two people come up to me one says oh my god you look great and the other one says wow I really enjoyed our conversation it was so interesting to talk to you I would find the compliment about my personality and about an experience that we've shared much more flattering and much more easy to digest than a compliment or physical appearance but everyone's different but I do feel like in general offering sincere compliments that aren't about looks can be a really good way of bonding with someone it's like in the comments section of my videos I don't necessarily respond to comments about the way I look but I do often respond to comments about the quality of my lessons especially open-ended questions with what how and why but if someone just says I like your top today I am I don't really have much to say apart from thank you and the last little mini tip is talk about emotions and make sure that you know how to talk about emotions there's lots of obscure vocabulary related to emotions and lots of little nuances especially to do with the negative ones there are lots of idioms attached to them as well I have done a video on happy happiness related idioms which i think is a really good one because when people say things like oh I'm absolutely over the moon or I'm on cloud nine it can be really really confusing and you can you know wonder if they're being positive or negative I mean even I sometimes get confused I used to have an American boss and I remember she said can you come in and help with a co-workers presentation because she's absolutely bombing it and I thought bombing it like whew bomb like absolutely she is the bomb I was like great what she need help with and she was like I need you to take over and I was so confused but it turned out that I just didn't understand the idea she was using so yes the one on happy expressions would be really useful for you and fun fact that was a video I filmed after going on a first date with my fiancee I think I was in a really happy and I decided to write a happy video and I remember all the comments like oh my god you've drunk a lot of coffee and the funny thing was that I hadn't drunk any coffee I was just I'd met a really great man and we'd been on a date finally so yeah if you want to see giddy Lucy who's just fallen in love and has just realized that she's met the man of her dreams and you can watch that video I'll link it down below I've done another video about ways to express disgust because that's an emotion that I've never really seen lessons on that in school but I thought it was a really important topic to cover for my students let me know if there are any lesson topics on emotions and feelings that you think that I haven't covered that you think I should cover that would be interesting for you I think if that brings me to the end of today's video I hope you enjoyed it and I hope you learned something don't forget to check out lingo de they've got their new marathon language challenge you can get up to 400 euros cash back and also the access to the Cambridge Certificate exams is pretty phenomenal actually when they told me about that new feature I was really excited for my students don't forget to connect with me on all my social media I've got my facebook my Instagram and my Twitter and I have my personal channel which is now turning into my vlogging channel who I do vlogs of my life here on the farm if you don't know I am marrying a farmer we live here on a farm and we have a very quiet and peaceful life especially in lockdown well I really enjoyed filming this video for you I've got lots more planned but do put your recommendations down below I will see you soon for another lesson [Music] [Music]

Channel: English with Lucy

Views: 595,446

Keywords: english conversation secrets, english conversation, conversation tips, english conversation advanced level, english with lucy, english conversation skills, this is what great speakers do, english conversation tips

Id: vpOCIIx-_Zo

Length: 17min 29sec (1049 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 22 2020