Name: English Conversation Lesson - How to Start a Conversation in English | 925 English Lesson 2
Uploaded: 2024-12-05T09:14:25.000Z
Duration: 12 min 12 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...

Present continuous

You're learning with 9 to 5 English Business English for the Workplace Hi Tim here with another 9 to 5 English lesson.

Future simple

In today's lesson, we're going to learn all about how to start a conversation.

Gerund

Sometimes, we call starting a conversation breaking the ice.

You can think of the ice as that initial silence between people.

It could be between strangers on a plane or co-workers in a lunchroom.

And when we break the ice, we say something friendly to start a conversation.

Well, in our first lesson, we had an example of a greeting between work colleagues who didn't know each other.

Can you remember how they got their conversation started after the greeting?

Let's have another listen to that short dialogue and you can listen for the conversation starter.

I should get them to come decorate my house.

So did you hear what the first person said?

She said, quite the set-up here, isn't it?

And that shows us that asking a question is a great way to start a conversation, especially if you've just been introduced.

You can use simple and direct questions or you can use a comment with a tag question.

The set-up of the room is the way it is organized and decorated.

So Amber thinks the decoration of the room is very impressive.

And Shelly agrees, saying, they've really gone to town.

If we go to town with something, it means we make a big effort.

All right, let's try a little practice with some simple questions for starting a conversation.

Listen carefully to each example, then repeat the example yourself.

Can you believe how much snow we're getting?

You visiting family for the holiday or just getting away?

Okay, so those are examples of direct questions about things like the weather and travel.

These are pretty safe topics for starting a conversation, which is why you might hear people use them so often.

And you will also hear yes, no questions, like, can you believe?

And WH questions, like, where are you going today?

Now, how about those tag questions I talked about?

Well, to make a tag question, you make a comment, then add a little question at the end.

For example, you might say, the airport is quite busy, isn't it?

Or you could say, you work in sales, don't you?

Let's do a little practice with this kind of question.

Remember, repeat each example after you hear it.

You were in the afternoon workshop, weren't you?

Now, there are a couple of tricks to tag questions.

First, the question tag needs to match the comment.

So, with a beautiful day, you need, isn't it?

But with, you were in the morning workshop, you don't say, isn't it?

The subject has to match, and the verb tense has to match.

And here's the second thing about tag questions.

A positive statement is followed by a negative tag question.

While a negative statement is followed by a positive tag question.

Okay, so remember that little dialogue between colleagues that we heard at the start of the lesson?

We'll repeat the dialogue, but this time we'll beep out a couple of lines so you can add your own responses.

You'll need to start with a tag question about the setup to get the conversation started.

And you'll have to respond to the other person's comment.

So that covers using questions to break the ice.

We've practiced tag questions and some simple direct questions.

But sometimes a question feels too direct, doesn't it?

It might even seem rude with someone we've never met before.

So, there's another way we can start a conversation and that's with a simple comment.

This is useful for talking with strangers or someone you haven't been introduced to.

What do I mean by making a simple comment?

All you do is say something about the situation or place you're in, and the other person can respond however they like.

We'll give you some good examples of icebreaker comments.

Looks like they've got quite the evening planned for us.

There sure are a lot of people here tonight.

Looks like it's going to be a full flight.

And maybe you noticed the expression looks like, which is very useful for introducing a comment, and the word sure, which is useful for friendly emphasis.

It means certainly, like it certainly is a nice day.

But how does this kind of conversation starter work in real life?

Remember, a comment like this invites a response from the other person.

Once they respond, you can continue on the same topic.

Let's listen to a short dialogue to see how this can work.

One of them starts with a simple comment, just like we practiced.

Then the other person responds, and the first person continues with some explanation of the situation.

Looks like it's really starting to fill up.