ENGLISH QUESTIONS for Conversations with Native Speakers

my cats making noises Monty please stop hi guys welcome back to english with max in this video we're going to look at various questions that might be useful when you're talking with people in English particularly native speakers these are mainly things that you can say if you have difficulties understanding or hearing the other person this video is aimed at intermediate students but it might also be good for you if you have an advanced level because I've often heard advanced students make mistakes with these sentences if you think you might forget these questions then I recommend that you get a notebook and write them down if you would like to watch this video with English subtitles you just need to turn on the captions remember to subscribe and to hit the little bell if you want to be updated on new videos and don't forget that you can also follow me on social media I regularly upload short videos to Twitter Instagram and Facebook the first question is something you can say if you didn't hear or understand what the person said it's could you please repeat that or could you repeat that please with this construction you can either put the please after the could you or at the end of the sentence you can also replace could with can so it would be can you please repeat that but could is just a little more polite you can also use the construction would you mind then it would be would you mind repeating that please but I think it's just easier and shorter to say could you please repeat that now be careful with this you cannot say could you please repeat that's incorrect you need to put something after the repeat so you have to say could you please repeat that or could you please repeat what you said to make this question more polite you can first say I'm sorry or just sorry either one is fine for example I'm sorry could you please repeat that and you can add I'm sorry or sorry to any of the questions in this video in English particularly in British English we like to apologize a lot so it's not strange to say sorry quite often another thing you can say if you didn't hear or understand what the person said is sorry what was that it's a little bit direct so it's maybe not quite as polite but if you say it with a pleasant or polite tone of voice it's normally fine these next two sentences are actually questions but if you say them it's implied that you would like the person to repeat what they said these are I'm sorry I didn't hear what you said and I'm sorry I didn't catch that both of these mean the same thing I didn't catch that is just more colloquial if the person is speaking too quickly for you the question you should ask is could you please speak more slowly or could you speak more slowly please if you want to modify it you can also say could you please speak a bit more slowly if somebody uses a word or an expression that you don't underst stand you can say what does that mean or what does X mean for example what does spatula mean this is a spatula be careful because lots of people get this wrong you cannot say what means X or what means spatula you have to say what does spatula mean another useful question is what do you mean by X we use this when we understand a word or a phrase but we still don't know exactly what the person means we use it especially if something has several meanings or if something might mean different things to different people for example what do you mean by she's rich does she own one house or 10 or what do you mean by clean do you mean it's like a hospital or do you mean he cleans his house once a week in French it's a bit like saying kiss Kachiguda Paulo and in Spanish it's something like que quieres Athiya gonna so if the person you're speaking to understands your native language and you want to know the translation of a word or a phrase in English you can say how do you say X in English let's pretend you're a Spanish speaker you could say how do you say caballo in English if you don't speak Spanish caballo means horse and be careful here as well because you cannot say how is X in English how is caballo in English no but you can say what is caballo in English that's fine too sometimes you might want to know how to spell something in English then you could say how do you spell that or could you spell that for me please or could you please spell that and if you're still confused you can say could you please write that down for me you don't have to use the down here you can just say could you please write that for me but it's more common to say could you please write that down for me I hope you found that useful if you have any questions please write them in the comment section down below and if you like the video please give it a thumbs up see you next time want to know the trip no there oh use to watch it but you

Channel: English with Max

Views: 11,448

Keywords: english questions, english questions for conversation, talking with native speakers, english conversation, english speaking, english speaking practice, useful english questions, useful english sentences, how to talk with native speakers, english sentences, english with max, common english expressions, common english phrases, useful english phrases, speaking skills, learn english, english phrases, conversations with native speakers, speak in english, everyday english

Id: f73kQZbKivg

Length: 7min 47sec (467 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 30 2018