Hey,
it's Annemarie with Speak Confident English and this is exactly where you
want to be if your goal is to develop the confidence that you need in English
to say what you want, and this week we're going to talk about
how to master small talk in English. Now I know a lot of us don't like small
talk. Honestly,
I don't really like small talk either, but it does play a really important role
in English speaking culture and it doesn't have to be really challenging or
even really boring. We're going to talk about three simple
strategies that will help you have effective small talk in English and get
to know others. So whether you're starting a new job and
you want to get to know your coworkers? Maybe someone that you've recently met
at your gym or Yoga Studio invited you to a party and you know that you're
going to have to talk to a lot of new people or maybe you're getting to know
parents where your child goes to school. In all of those situations,
it's important to know what kinds of questions you can ask and how to do it,
so that's what we're going to focus on in this week's Confident English lesson. Now,
of course, when you meet someone for the very first
time, you start with an introduction and maybe
you've had that moment where you've introduced yourself and then and then it's just really quiet.
You're not really sure what to say. You don't know what questions to ask and
it just feels so uncomfortable. That's what we want to avoid,
so let's talk about why small talk is important and how to do it effectively
in English. The truth is,
small talk is polite but unimportant conversation.
We're not trying to change the world and we're not making big decisions,
but it does have a purpose. It helps us make those first steps
toward building a connection or a relationship with someone.
We can't get to know someone and we can't build a real friendship or
relationship if we don't know anything about them and small talk helps us do
that. Small talk also helps fill the silence
and if you're living in an English speaking country or you're working in a
business with a lot of English speakers, you might notice that English speakers
really don't like silence. We do everything we can to avoid it,
so to help us do that, we use small talk.
Now with the right tools and an understanding of how small talk works.
You'll be able to have small talk at a job interview,
when you meet new colleagues at work, when you've got new neighbors,
or you're meeting people at a party or other parents at your child's school,
almost any situation where you're meeting someone new,
you'll need to know how to effectively do small talk.
So now let's talk about three simple do and don't rules for how to have
effective and successful small talk in English.
Number one, do talk about hobbies,
interests, families,
movies, TV shows,
travel, all those different things that we do in
our free time. Those are great topics for any small
talk conversation. Of course we have common questions like
what did you do over the weekend or what are you doing next weekend? But we can make those questions a little
bit more interesting. For example,
instead of asking someone, what did you do last weekend?
Ask them what their ideal weekend is. Everybody loves to talk about the things
that are their favorite, how they would spend their time,
if they could do anything they wanted. So that's a great question to ask.
How would you spend your ideal weekend? Other great questions might be,
what's a good movie that you've seen recently?
Or have you read any good books recently?
Just like we talked about how someone would spend their ideal weekend,
you could also ask someone about their ideal holiday getaway or their ideal
vacation. If they could travel anywhere,
where would they go? That's a great question and you're using
the conditional in English now for several more options.
You can visit the online lesson where I have a great list of questions on all of
these different topics. Now I said that for small talk you
should definitely ask about movies, TV shows,
vacation travel, family,
friends, holiday plans,
weekend plans, but there are a couple of topics that
you want to avoid. Generally speaking,
in small talk, we don't talk about religion,
politics, or money.
Those are big no's in small talk. Rule number two is do ask about personal
information. In general,
it's common when we're getting to know someone to want to know about their
family, where they're from,
what their traditions are, what their life is like,
so those are great questions to ask. Whether someone is from another country
or another city, you can always ask them where they're
from originally, where they grew up,
what was it like growing up where they lived.
You can also ask them about what they love and their current neighborhood or
city and an English speaking culture. It is pretty common to talk about our
jobs. We actually seem to like talking about
it quite a bit. So you'll probably hear people ask you
what do you do? Which is another way of asking what is
your job now? To be honest with you,
I do try to avoid what do you do? I'm not always successful,
but I try to have questions that are a little bit more interesting.
So instead of saying something like, what do you do?
I often ask the question, what's something you're working on right
now that you're really enjoying or what's something interesting that you're
working on right now? We would definitely avoid things like
asking about someone's divorce or why they don't have kids to be honest.
Those are just way too personal and they might be really painful or emotional to
talk about, so it's best to stay focused on very
general information and finally, rule number three is specifically for
that small talk that you have at work, whether it's with clients,
coworkers, or even your boss. It's definitely okay to talk about other
things going on at work. For example,
you could ask about a project that they're currently working on and how
that project is going, or again,
my favorite question, are you working on anything interesting
right now? If you're at a conference or traveling
for work, of course you could talk about the
conference that you're at. Maybe talk about a lecture or a
presentation that you heard with someone and you can focus on the highlights and
the things that you've learned at that conference.
If you're traveling to another city, you might ask some of your colleagues or
peers about what recommendations they have for where to eat or what to do
while you're visiting their city. Now,
the key to successful small talk in these workplace situations is to focus
on the positive. You don't want to speak negatively about
your colleagues, your peers,
your boss, your workplace that really isn't the
appropriate time for that, and with that you've got three super
simple rules for how to successfully have small talk in English. Again,
those rules were number one, do talk about common interests such as
sports, hobbies,
free time, vacation,
movies, tv,
all of that good stuff. Number two,
do ask questions related to personal information in a general way,
and number three at work, do definitely ask about other things
happening at work or things related to business,
travel, conferences,
events, and so on.
Now, to end today's lesson,
I do want to share my favorite small talk question with you and a few other
resources, but before I do that,
if you enjoyed this lesson and found it useful to you,
please be sure to let me know. You can do that in just a few simple
ways. You can give this video a thumbs up on
youtube and subscribe to this channel so you never miss a lesson.
You can also share this lesson on facebook with friends and colleagues and
you can leave your comment below by answering one of my challenge questions. You can leave your comments below the
video or in the online lesson. So first,
my favorite small talk question is what's something interesting that you've
seen, done,
read or heard recently? I don't always use all of those verbs.
I usually pick one, but it might be something like,
so what's something interesting you've done recently or what's something
interesting you've read recently? That's my go to question in almost any
situation where I have to do small talk and now I have to challenge questions
for you. Question number one is what is your
favorite small top question? It might be a question you always ask or
maybe you've learned a new one from today's lesson.
I'd love to hear what your favorite question is and you can share it with me
in the comments section below. And question number two,
what is one tip that you have for successful small talk in English?
What has helped you to do it well?
Your tip and advice might be exactly what someone else in the Confident
English community needs, so would love to have you share it,
and again, you can do that by sharing in the
comment section just below this video. Thank you so much for joining me this
week. I look forward to hearing from you in
the comments and I'll see you next time for your Confident English lesson.
