How to Make Small Talk in English - 3 Strategies

hey everybody chris amerikos here and welcome to another video this video is going to be all about small talk [Music] and small talk doesn't mean that i'm just going to use small words you can use big words even when you do small talk so small talk is just when we first start a conversation and we talk about things that are not very serious they're not huge big important things they're just usual things that people talk about and it's very easy conversation very light conversation we call this small talk and in different countries you need to do a different amount of small talk in the beginning of a conversation before you talk about something serious so in some countries you need a lot of small talk you might do small talk for five minutes 10 minutes 15 minutes before you speak about something serious and in other countries you might only need you know 30 seconds or one minute of small talk before you speak about the real topic so in this video we're going to talk about a few strategies for small talk and i'll give you some examples now when we first start with small talk there are some questions that we usually ask we ask questions in english like how's it going or how are you doing right and you've probably heard english speakers say this a lot they like to start conversations by asking about how you feel and it's common it's usual and it's polite for us to say oh i'm fine how are you and to ask the person back now another part of small talk that a lot of english speakers do at the beginning of a conversation is when they talk about the weather they might say oh it's so cold outside today or they might say it's so hot i can't stand it right they'll make a comment about the weather right now and they might even ask you how you feel about the weather another common starting point for small talk is when we ask about current events or things that have happened recently in your life so someone might say what have you been up to recently or what have you been doing recently or they might say what's new with you what's new in your life and these are big questions that uh you could probably answer them for a long time right you could go on and on and you could say lots of things about what's new in your life and what you've been doing and typically we answer it in a short way though even though it's a big serious question uh we don't think that it's so serious right we don't tell them everything that's happening in our whole life many english speakers will answer this question by saying not much this phrase not much when someone asks oh what's new with you english speakers will say not much and this just means that they don't have a lot to say there aren't a lot of new things that have happened recently and maybe they just think that it's small talk so it's very common for people to just say nothing much not much but there isn't a lot of uh information to share right now it's interesting because it's not always true right a lot of times english speakers will say that there's nothing new and it's just because they know that it's small talk and they know that they just need to move to the next step in the conversation but also someone might say oh not much what about you what's new with you and maybe they think that because you ask this question that you have something to share and if you do have something that you want to share then it's a good time to do that but typically we see these kinds of topics at the beginning of a conversation used as small talk so it's not the main subject of our meeting or of our of our talk or conversation it's just things to get warmed up and that's really what small talk is doing small talk is just warming everybody up to the conversation so that we are ready to go when it comes time to discuss the main topic okay now let's talk about some strategies for doing small talk for for communicating at the beginning of a conversation with someone who maybe we don't know so well or maybe even someone who we do know very well so one small talk strategy that you should remember is to ask open-ended questions i see a lot of my students who join our english everyday speaking program they have trouble making small talk because they only ask yes or no questions we can call these closed questions right because they have a limited number of answers and when you limit the answers that a person can give you well then they're only going to answer within those limits but if you ask open-ended questions then a person has a lot more options of what they can say when they answer you so instead of asking a question like do you like ice cream maybe an interesting question to ask in the beginning of a conversation maybe if you're at an ice cream store you ask this question right but if as an example if you ask the question do you like ice cream then there's really only a few answers right yes and no those are the main answers that someone will give but if you ask the question what kind of ice cream do you like then there's lots of possibilities there's so many different types so this is the difference between a closed question a yes or no question and an open question or we might call it an open-ended question so when we ask someone in small talk what's new then there's a lot of options that they have but if we ask them did you see this movie did you did you watch this film then they can only say yes or no and the small talk will will be finished so if you want to continue small talk if you want to continue going and if you want to get the other person warmed up so that they start speaking more and share more information with you then you want to use open-ended questions so you could say which films have you watched recently this is an open-ended question but if we say have you watched any films recently then this is closed right because it's only yes or no now of course even if we ask a closed question a yes or no question the person could uh expand on this right they could give us more information but somebody who's not warmed up not ready to speak a lot then they might just take the easy way and say no or yes and that's it and and then now it's your turn to ask more questions right so when we do small talk correctly we get the other person to speak with us but when we do it incorrectly it sounds like an interview because we have to ask question after question after question so that's how you know really if you're doing small talk the right way because the person will open up and that's the whole goal is to get the person open get the person ready to speak with you before you talk about more serious topics strategy number two for small talk is not about talking at all it's about listening listening and speaking are linked so closely together and many people forget about this that's why in our speaking practice program it's even as important as speaking is having listening practice and it's really great to have listening practice with people from all around the world that's why in our program we have students from over 100 different countries so you can really hear how a lot of different people speak and what they say and what they think about and it's great practice not only for you to speak about things yourself but also to hear what other people say and then to react and the way that you react when other people speak we can call this active listening well it should be active you shouldn't just sit there and look at them because this will make people think that maybe you're not listening or maybe you don't care so active listening this is our second strategy for small talk when a person is speaking to us or with us then we need to give them some signals that we hear them and that they can continue speaking so imagine that you're speaking to me and while you're speaking at the same time that you're speaking i make some noises some sounds like this you're speaking and speaking and i go uh-huh okay [Music] really wow so these are just some small words and small sounds that i can say to show you that i hear what you say and in english we want to do this uh sometimes we want to do this often when a person speaks to us we want to give them these signals that we hear them now if somebody speaks to me and i don't give these signals then probably that person will think that maybe i just didn't listen to them at all right maybe i'm just looking at them but i'm thinking about something else like my body is here in front of you but my brain my mind is in a different place and sometimes that's true right sometimes that happens but instead uh we want to do active listening where we give these signals another thing that might happen is if you just look at a person and you don't give active listening signals then the person will probably stop talking and will ask you do you hear me do you understand me so if you're not sure people usually will give you signals that you're not doing active listening if you're doing it the wrong way they'll stop speaking in the middle of the sentence or before they have finished what they're saying they'll stop and they'll look at you and they'll ask you strange questions like do you hear me or hey are you paying attention they'll think that you're not paying attention that's that's how it will feel to them or maybe they will just um quickly say what they were going to say and then stop and then look at you this is another reaction that some people have if you don't do active listening correctly so uh we want to definitely work on active listening if it's something that is strange for you if it's different from how it works in your language or in your country the third small talk strategy that we need to know is we need to be excited and this might sound a little strange because it means that we need to show some positive emotions even in the situation when we might not really feel so positive so we need to show some kind of excitement that we're listening and we want the person to continue so let's go back to my example of active listening if a person is speaking with me and i say wow that's so cool great uh huh wow if i if i say things like this then it tells you that i'm actually interested in what you're saying what you're saying is interesting to me i have reactions the reactions of a person who is interested and because i'm interested you can continue now if i do it differently if a person speaks to me and i say no stop right if i say these things if i give a negative reaction then the person will think that i want them to stop talking they'll think maybe i think that they're stupid maybe i think that what they're saying is not worth my time to listen to them maybe i think that i'm better than them so it's not worth them explaining something to me right so we want to show some level of excitement enthusiasm being interested and excited about what's happening and being positive so this is connected to active listening and people can also see that when we ask questions back so really small talk is all about the correct mix of active listening and open-ended questions and the purpose of small talk is to be an introduction to more serious topics later so there's not a specific amount of time that we have to use small talk and like i said in different places it will definitely work differently but as a rule in english when you're communicating in english we should use some small talk at the beginning of a conversation especially when we first meet someone not only the first time that we meet them but when we first see a person even if they're our old friend so that's it for this video thanks a lot i hope that these strategies for small talk help you understand how to communicate with english speakers and people from other countries if you're interested in joining our speaking program you can click on the link below this video somewhere and i'll see you there because we have 24 lessons every day so anytime that you want to practice speaking you can come over and join a lesson have a great morning afternoon evening or night wherever you are and i will see you in the next video bye

Channel: English With Kris Amerikos

Views: 6,778

Keywords: how to make small talk, how to make small talk in english, small talk in english, better at small talk, english conversation, everyday conversation speaking english practice, everyday conversations learning american english, everyday conversation in english, english fluency, english speaking, english conversation teacher, kris amerikos, small talk tips, how to have small talk, small talk questions, small talk strategies, how to make small talk with anyone, small talk

Id: VhdTxesZ4PE

Length: 13min 36sec (816 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 11 2021