Name: Polite & Positive English: How to wish “good luck” + how to respond
Uploaded: 2023-05-13T13:28:23.000Z
Duration: 12 min 50 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Future simple

My name is Emma, and in today's lesson, I am going to teach you about expressions you

Modal verbs - A2

So let me give you examples of a situation where you might need to wish somebody good

He's taking the IELTS, so he is really nervous.

So what I would like to do is I would like to wish Ken good luck for his test.

He also is really nervous, so what I'd like to do is I'd like to say something to him

to make him feel better and to show him I support him.

So when I speak to Alice, I want to say something to her to make her feel better about her presentation.

Okay, so here is a very funny but common expression in English.

When we tell someone, "Break a leg," we don't actually want them to get hurt.

So we say, "Break a leg" before someone performs, maybe you might have a child who is in a play,

Or maybe there is somebody doing a job interview, you might say, "Break a leg."

This is a very common expression nowadays.

So whenever someone is nervous because they have to do something like a test, a presentation,

maybe a job interview, their friends usually say to them, "You got this.

When I was a student, I remember there was one man in the class, Richard, who would always

go around and tell each person before a test, he would always say, "You got this."

So this is a great thing to tell people to encourage them.

Okay, this next expression is a little bit like the first one.

But when we say, "Knock 'em dead", it means do well.

Okay, so you're telling somebody you want them to do well.

Maybe you want them to do well at a job interview.

So you'll notice this weird word here, "em".

Well, "em" with this apostrophe actually stands for "them".

So when we say, "Knock them dead", we actually kind of say it in a slang way.

Before we look at the next expressions, I also wanted to bring up one thing about the

Usually in English, when we see "e" and "a" together, it makes an "e" sound.

We actually pronounce this more like an "a".

So it's not an "e" sound, it's an "a" sound, "break a leg".

Okay, now let's look at some other common expressions we can use to wish somebody luck.

Okay, the next expression is very common.

We can also do hand gestures with this, we can actually cross our fingers, okay?

So what does it mean when we say, "Fingers crossed"?

Well, when we say, "Fingers crossed", it means I hope you get the result you want, or I hope

So for example, my sister is selling her house.

I hope she gets a good price for her house, so I will say, "Oh, fingers crossed.

Or maybe if you have a friend who is, you know, doing a test, you might say, "Fingers

So it's just a superstition that we cross our fingers in order to bring luck to us and

And I want you to just pay attention to the pronunciation of this expression.

The "s" actually has a "z" sound, so it sounds like "fingers", so it has that "z" sound to

And "crossed" ends in "ed", but the way we pronounce "ed" in this case is like a "t"

So we do not say, "Fingers cross-ed", we say, "Fingers crossed.

Now, if we cross our finger or fingers and we put it behind our back, that has a different

"Fingers crossed behind the back" means we are lying about something, okay?

So if I said, "I will not watch Netflix tonight", I'm lying.

I am totally going to watch Netflix tonight, okay?

Okay, here's another expression you can tell somebody to tell them that you support them

and that you think they will do well on something.

Subtitles ListPlay Video

Polite & Positive English: How to wish “good luck” + how to respond

weird

pronunciation

bunch

expression