When you get back to work
after a holiday season, is it polite and appropriate to ask
your colleagues about how they spent the holidays or does this just sound
like a superficial question? If a coworker has just returned
from a long weekend away, is it okay to be curious and ask about it? These are questions a student
of mine recently asked, and what she really wanted to know
was what kind of small talk questions are polite and allow you to reconnect
with coworkers or acquaintances after time away for holidays, a
vacation, or some kind of travel? That is precisely what we're going to
focus on in this Confident English lesson. Today. You're going to learn how to have
successful small talk about holidays, travel and vacation. Along the way, you're going to learn the right
questions to ask and how to show genuine interest. Plus, you'll learn what you can say
before you ask a question if you're not really sure whether it's too personal, and I'll finish with my number one
tip for how to feel comfortable and confident starting and
participating in small talk conversations in English. But first, if you don't already know, I'm Annemarie with
Speak Confident English. Everything I do is designed to help you
get the confidence you want for your life and work in English. One way I do that is with these
weekly Confident English lessons, which I share every Wednesday at the
Speak Confident English website and on my Speak Confident English YouTube
channel. In these lessons, I share my top fluency and
confidence building strategies, targeted grammar lessons and lessons
on small talk just like with this one today. So while you're here, make sure you subscribe to my Speak
Comfort English channel so you never miss one of these lessons. I'm going to
split this lesson up into two parts. The first will be questions
focused on small talk conversations after someone's vacation
or after they've traveled, and the second focused on
holidays. But before we go there, let's do a quick review
of why small talk is so important. If you haven't watched any of my
previous lessons on small talk, here's what you need to know. Small talk is a social skill. Small talk helps you avoid
uncomfortable awkward silences, and it's also what allows you to have
meaningful conversations with others and develop relationships.
Generally speaking, small talk is informal, polite conversation that tends
to revolve around unimportant topics, and most importantly,
small talk connects people. So is it polite for you to ask about your
coworkers' vacations or how they spent time over the holidays? Absolutely it is. And not only is it polite to do so, I'm going to help you show
genuine interest so you have engaging, friendly, polite conversations. So let's get into common
small talk questions. We ask
about vacation and travel. If you know in advance that a coworker
is going on vacation or if you just wanna have a conversation about someone's
vacation plans during the upcoming year, here are questions you can ask
before that vacation happens. Number one, what plans do you have for the
summer break or the winter break? The autumn break, just like we used the word break for a
lunch break or a coffee break at work. A period of time where you're not
working a summer break or a winter break implies that there's a period of
time when you'll be away from work. The same applies for kids at
school if they're on summer break, they're not attending school during that
time. A second question you can ask is, what are your upcoming vacation plans? Will you travel or are you staying
closer to home? Number three, what are your vacation plans for
the year ahead? And number four, you mentioned you have a vacation
coming up soon. That's really exciting. Tell me about it. Where are you going when a coworker
returns from a vacation or a long weekend away? Here are questions you
can ask after they return. How was your trip? How was your time
away? How did you spend your vacation? Did you travel or did you stay closer
to home? How was your long weekend? Did you get away somewhere? I remember last week you mentioned you
were going away for the long weekend. How was it? Those small talk
questions are all quite simple, but there's one thing they have in common. Before we move on to small talk
questions for talking about holidays, let's pause here and talk
about how to choose the right questions for small talk and how
do you show genuine interest? So your questions don't sound superficial. There are two keys to doing
this successfully. First, choose the right questions,
use open questions. If we review all the questions
we've talked about so far, they start with words such
as what, how, and where. These are question words similar to why, when who, when you start a question
with a question word, you ask questions that encourage detail, questions that encourage conversation, and you avoid questions that
can be answered with a simple yes or no or a simple one word answer.
For example, I could ask someone, did you enjoy your vacation? And
they can simply say, yes, I did, and that's it. Or I can say, what
did you enjoy about your vacation? When I ask that question,
they need to share detail, and that detail becomes particularly
important when I want to show genuine interest. And this leads me to the second tip
for successful small talk questions show genuine interest
with follow up questions. All the small talk questions we've
reviewed so far are simply starter questions. They're the questions that
start that small talk conversation. I want you to imagine this scenario. You've just come back
from a two week vacation and when you return, I ask you, how is
your time away? How is your vacation? I'm using an open question
encouraging you to share detail. And in your response you say to me,
oh my gosh, Annemarie, it was amazing. It was so relaxing. Every
day I swam in the ocean, I relaxed on the beach,
enjoyed the warm sun. I read several books and one morning
we hiked up to the top of a mountain to watch the sunrise. It was incredible. Now imagine after you tell
me all about your vacation, I look at you and I say,
cool, and then I walk away. How would you feel at that
moment? Definitely not cool. I'm obviously not very interested, and it becomes clear that my
starter question was simply superficial. I didn't really want to know the
details because I simply walked away in the end. Now, let's change
this scenario just a bit. And again, imagine I ask you
about your recent vacation. You tell me how amazing it was
and all the things you did, and when you're finished, I say,
that sounds amazing. Tell me again, where did you go or that sounds wonderful. watching the sunrise from the top
of a mountain sounds incredible. Did you get any photos? I would love to see one when I
ask those follow up questions, questions that are related specifically
to a detail you shared with me, I'm showing genuine interest. It's clear that I listened to
you and I want to know more. This is how we make small talk successful. We need those open questions
and we show genuine interest through follow up questions.
With that in mind, let's transition now to common small
talk questions we ask in English conversations about the holidays.
Now, in the upcoming examples, you're going to hear me
use the holidays with an S, plural. You'll hear me talk about
the holiday season and a holiday. So what's the difference? First, it's important to know that I'm an
American. I live in the United States, and here in the United States
when we use the word holiday, we're referring to a
federally recognized day or a religious day in which
government offices and many businesses are closed. Americans don't typically use the
word holiday in connection to a vacation. If someone's
going on summer vacation, they're spending a week in the mountains
or going to the beach for a week. We use the word vacation and
holiday is for those federally recognized and religious days.
So if I talk about a holiday, I'm referencing one of those
days, for example, New Year's Day. If I talk about the holidays
or the holiday season, I'm talking about a period of time
during the year in which there may be two or more holidays in close
succession so that whole period of time can feel
festive or celebratory. So if you're chatting with
coworkers before a specific holiday, before a long holiday weekend
or before a holiday season begins, here are some small talk
questions you can use to learn more. What are your plans for the holidays
or what is your holiday plan? What do you usually do during the
holidays? Do you usually travel? How do you like to spend your
time during the holidays? What are you looking forward
to during the holidays? How do you usually celebrate the holiday? What's your favorite holiday tradition? And then after the holidays
when you get back to work, here are small talk questions. You can
ask your coworkers, how was your holiday? How was your, and then insert the
specific name of that holiday. For example, how was your New Year? What
did you get up to during the holidays? Here I'm using the frail verb to
get up to, which is really asking, what did you do? How did you spend
your time during the holidays? How was your time away for the holiday? Did you travel or did you
stay close to home? Of course, just like with our questions about travel, all of these start with a question word. We're using an open question
to encourage detail, and if we want to show genuine
interest, we ask follow up questions. Now, what if there's a
question you'd love to ask, but you're just not sure
if it's too personal? There are two phrases you can
use before you ask your question to let the listener know in a
gentle way that you'll be asking a question and it may be
a bit more personal. It gives that person time to
prepare how they want to respond. The first one is, if it's okay, I'd love to ask if it's okay. I'd
love to ask about your holiday. How was it? How did you spend your time? How does your family typically celebrate
the holiday? And the second option is, if you don't mind me asking, and
then you continue with your question, if you don't mind me asking, how was your time with your
family over the holiday? Both of those phrases are perfect for
those moments when you're just not sure about the question you want to ask. And now let's finish up with talking
about how you can be comfortable and confident in any small talk conversation. My number one tip is to determine
or identify the question you want to ask in advance and
prepare your own answer to that small talk question. Here's
why this is important. In English, small talk. Part of our politeness code
says that after someone asks a question and you answer it, it's polite to return the question back. If I ask you about your holiday, you would answer my question and
say, and what about you Anne-Marie? How did you spend the holiday? How
was your time with your family? So if I start a conversation and
I know what question I'm going to ask, I can anticipate that after
I listen to the answer, the person I'm speaking to will
ask the question back to me. So I also need to be ready to
answer that specific question. If I prepare the questions I want
to ask in advance and think about my own answer, I'm ready
to have that conversation. One of the best ways you can practice
this is following the technique I share in my How to Say What You Want training. It's an in-depth training you can
get at my website where I share my number one technique for gaining true
confidence in your English speaking skills as well as improving your
accuracy and your fluency. If you're looking to gain more
confidence in your small talk skills, I recommend you get that free training. You can get my How to Say What You
Want in English training at my website, and I'll leave a link down below. Now, I want to ask one question
to you before I finish today. I would love to know what is your favorite
small talk question when you want to reconnect with a coworker
or an acquaintance after
a holiday or a vacation? I shared a limited number of questions, but there are endless possibilities
when it comes to small talk, and there might be a question I
didn't use today that you love to ask. If so, I would like for you to share it with
me and others in the Speak Confident English community. You can do that
in the comments below. And of course, as always, if you have
additional comments or questions, you can share those in the
comments section below as well. If you found today's lesson helpful
to you, I would love to know, and you can tell me in
one very simple way, give this lesson a thumbs up here on
YouTube or share one of your comments and questions below. Thank you
so much for joining me, and I look forward to
seeing you next time.
