Name: Conversation Skills: 5 questions to make you the most interesting person in the room
Uploaded: 2025-07-18T18:10:19.000Z
Duration: 14 min 24 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...

Past simple

Five questions to make you the most interesting person in the room.

Those of you who speak German probably thought, oh, his German is nicht gut, but it makes me interesting because I'm reading philosophy.

But you don't need to read philosophy to be interesting.

In today's lesson, I'm going to give you just five general questions you can throw into a conversation with someone that will make you a very interesting person.

So instead of the usual, hi, my name's Dietrich.

The first question we ask, because what I want you to do when we do this exercise is

I want you to have fun and make an adventure out of it.

Think of it as you're a super spy like James Bond, and you're going out there to get to know people.

But you can't ask questions directly like, are you the bad guy?

You have to ask questions to get them to speak to you, to give you information, okay?

And in doing that, our first question is this, what's your superpower?

Well, everybody has something that they do really well or they're proud of.

I can't do it, but some people can take their tongue and stick it to their nose.

You know, it's a secret little superpower of theirs, or they're great at cooking or something.

And once you ask them what their superpower is, they will usually get a smile and a little bit of excitement because you're showing genuine interest in them.

Remember that you're on an adventure now, because now you're going to take a journey with them, because you can ask follow-up questions like, how did you discover it?

Do you use it as a party trick, or is it something you use at work?

And they get to show you a side of themselves that people don't usually ask.

So one of the best questions you're going to start off with, with someone, and of course, this is after you have gotten to know them, and I have done a video on getting respect when we talk about asking questions, and you should watch that video, and it'll give you some ideas on how to get to this part of the conversation.

But ask somebody, friend or family, what's your superpower?

So remember I told you we want to create secrets, create bonds.

That's because secrets are filled with adventure.

There's something that makes people excited about them, so when they share them, they want to continue the conversation with someone that they have a secret with.

My first one to you is your superpower, but the second one is, what's your secret passion or obsession?

A superpower is something that you're proud of.

I can do this, I can do that, but your passion or obsession might not be something you're quite proud of.

Some people like watching, and there's nothing wrong with Mexican novellas or the drama shows, but some people, that's their secret passion.

They don't want to tell people that's what they do at night, but that's what they like watching.

They're like, oh, what's the doctor is now going to be marrying, da-da-da-da-da.

And it's a passion of theirs, and a secret, they keep it to themselves.

So as much as this one is a positive one, this could be something that you're a little embarrassed.

Yes, they have rocks, they name them Jeffrey, Thomas, Bobby, and Billy.

Maybe they draw little beards and mustaches and put hats on them, and they have fun with them, and they're 50 years old.

It's a secret passion, but you will watch their face light up when they tell you and you're interested.

You're like, so what's your secret passion?

And soon as some people find out, they ask me what my favorite one is, and I'll usually tell them some obscure, and that means strange or hard to find comic that people don't know.

Disguised like Batman and Superman, and they watch me get like I'm five years old.

The kid comes out in me and I want to communicate.

Notice how I didn't say anything about language and you're learning English here?

This can work in any language in any situation, but it's especially good if you're learning languages because you want people to interact with you enthusiastically and be patient with you, and they're happy to do that when they're excited about the topic.

Same old, same old, and your English isn't very good.

When you ask me what my secret superpower is, I go, I can put my tongue in my nose.

All of a sudden I'm five and you're like my best friend and we're having fun.

When you ask me about my secret passion or obsession, I'm already filled with energy.

So you've just filled the conversation with energy.

We get there by being interested in other people, and they'll share that energy with you and give you the time to learn the language and get a new friend.

When I gave you these, these are one questions, you'll see.

The next ones I'm going to give you are basically two-parters.

So I'm going to teach you how to take a question of interest and add on a second part to the question to continue the conversation.

Next time you're out at a party or visiting some friends, you'll be surprised what the answers are.

So part two, I'm going to call it imagine if, okay?

So it's going to be two, because these are things people don't probably have in their mind right away, but you're going to take the time to get them to open up their imagination and think about what if, or imagine if, okay?

So let's come back for number C, which will be the third part of the questions to make you the most interesting person in the room.

So we've used secrets to create bonds, and now what I want to do is go and use people's imaginations, or that's what you want to do.

And in this way, we're going to do a two-part questions, and the next couple of questions will be that two-parts.

So you can start with a question and continue the conversation with another question.

What did you want to be as an adult when you were a child?

If you're at a business meeting, you probably want to say child.

If you're at a party or a bar, you probably want to say kid.

So we can make it formal or informal just by changing one word, okay?

You might have said, I want to be a cowboy or an astronaut, or I wanted to be president or a YouTuber or something.

Subtitles ListPlay Video

Conversation Skills: 5 questions to make you the most interesting person in the room

obsession

basically

journey

impact