- Here are five tips
for more advanced English conversation
but first, roll that intro.
(upbeat music)
Good morning, good afternoon
or good evening, depending on where you,
my friend, happen to be
in this big wide world of ours right now.
It is very much morning here in Tokyo.
I am Julian Northbrook
and this is Doing English.
Wanna sound more advanced
when you have your English conversations?
Sure, you do
and that is what I'm here today,
my friend, to help you with.
Here are five tips, five things
that you can do to sound more advanced
in your English conversations.
First and foremost,
know that advanced speakers
are not advanced because they learned advanced English,
but because they have an advanced command
over the basic English.
A big mistake that a lot of people make
is thinking that in order to be advanced,
to have advanced English conversations,
they have to be having conversations
about difficult stuff,
using big, complicated, clever sounding words
and difficult grammar patterns,
but this doesn't make you advanced.
People who come across as extraordinary speakers
of English are people who have
not a basic command of advanced English,
but have an advanced command over basic English.
Point number two, be interesting.
This is another thing that people miss,
but in order to speak a language well,
you need three things.
You need the language, of course.
You need the phrases and expressions
that you need to express the things
that you want to express
if you're gonna speak the language.
And yes, using the language in interesting ways
is an important part of being advanced
when you speak and we're
gonna talk more about that
in a moment in points three, four and five.
But no matter how many interesting phrases
and expressions, good bits of language
that you have, if you don't have
anything interesting to say,
cuz' you're a boring old fart
who does nothing but sits around
at home all day watching TV,
then well, you ain't gonna be interesting anyway.
Point number three, make your speaking pop.
One of the things, no the only thing, of course,
but one of the things that really shows you up
as an English learner,
as somebody who is speaking English
as a second language and who
is still trying to improve,
is that you may be overusing dry, boring, stale language.
In an way, it's understandable
because as a second language speaker,
we get so caught up with worrying
about the surface level stuff.
Am I making a grammatically correct sentence?
Is this the right word in this context?
Is my pronunciation okay?
Is my accent difficult to understand?
We get so caught up with these things
that we tend to default to safe language,
but safe language is often quite dry
and quite boring.
Take for example this example
from Extraordinary English Speaker,
Season two, episode 22.
The story is called,
Bring Your Own Bottle,
and it's about one of our regular characters, John,
who is off to a party.
He needs to take a bottle of wine with him,
so, he's just run to the off licence
in the pouring rain
and bought a bottle of wine.
Since him and his flight mate, Alec,
have had a particularly tough day,
he bought a second one to take back
with him and have a glass
at home with Alec.
But when they open the wine
and try a glass, John realises
that the wine that he's just bought is nasty.
It is not as he expected,
a nice bottle of wine.
Now, in this kind of situation,
you might try the wine and say,
"oh, this doesn't taste good."
"Oh, this is not a good wine."
And that would be fine,
but it's a bit dry,
It's a bit boring.
Instead, John tries the wine and says,
"mmm, this is a cheeky little number, isn't it?"
To which Alec responds,
"you mean it tastes like old socks?"
The point is, it's the way
that they describe the wine.
Instead of just saying
this is bad wine,
John uses a bit of irony.
Oh, this is a cheeky little number, isn't it?
And Alec uses an analogy,
tastes like old socks.
It means this is bad wine.
It doesn't taste good,
but it's said in a way
that is not only more interesting
but conjures up more vivid images
of just how bad this wine is
for the listener.
Closely connected to this then, number four.
Play with the language.
In the same way as one of the things
that shows you up as a non-native speaker
is that you overuse dry, boring language.
Non-native speakers, people learning English
tend to be way too oversensitive to
the grammatical accuracy of the things
that we and you are saying.
Again, I get it.
We're so caught up with worrying about,
am I speaking incorrect English?
Am I making mistakes?
Am I looking stupid by screwing up the language,
that we default to this safe language
and we try very very hard
to speak in very grammatical, mistake free ways.
Whereas native speakers,
on the other hand,
don't really give a shit about that stuff.
And we often purposely manipulate the language
and use purposely ungrammatical language to
emphasise things to make what we're saying
more interesting and to really highlight points.
You may not know this about me
and this is a little bit embarrassing,
but I am a secret Sex and the City fan.
Yeah, yeah, I know, I know.
You probably just want to unsubscribe
from this channel now,
but check out this clip from Season one, Episode 10
of Sex and the City.
- I'm in total ovary overload.
Which kind do I get?
- Here, this one says sale, half off.
- Sweetie, I just spent $395.00 on a pair
of open toed Gucci's last week.
This is not the place to be frugal.
- Alright.
- What about this one?
- Oh, First Response.
I remember First Response.
I had a very reassuring moment once
with First Response.
- Oh.
- Here's hoping.
(woman speaking over PA system)
- What if I am?
- If you am, you am.
- I don't think I'd be very good at this.
- Do you see what Miranda did there?
The context here, the story
is that Carrie thinks she might be pregnant
and she's gonna take a pregnancy test,
but she's worried to do it
because she can't decide whether she
would be happy or not happy if it turns out
that she's pregnant.
Is she ready?
She doesn't know.
She can't decide.
What if I am pregnant, she says.
To which Miranda replies,
"If you am, you am."
Clearly, this is ungrammatical English.
The correct English here would be,
If you are, you are, right?
Well, yes, that would, technically speaking,
be more correct.
But it would be boring
and it would also lack the same kind
of emphasis and impact as the way
that she says it has.
Both of these points, three and four,
are very much advanced English conversation technique
and they take learning time
and practise to get good at them
and getting them wrong is just gonna confuse
and make you seem like you're really crap at English.
But again, with time, practise
and while learning, you can get good at them,
and this is, incidentally, or not,
cuz' otherwise I'm wouldn't
be talking about this, something I'm
going to cover in immense detail
in my Small Talk Superhero,
Mastering the Art of Advanced English Conversation event,
live in London on June ninth.
It's a free hour, also, event,
at a beautiful little hotel in Farringdon, London.
We're gonna go deep into the art
of an advanced English conversation,
the language you need,
the technique that you need.
Everything that you need to know
about speaking extraordinary English
in English, well, conversation.
People that come along
are gonna get a nice, thick manual
to take away with them that has
all the notes and everything
of everything I'm gonna talk about,
packed, as well, with samples
of language, examples of phrases and expressions,
ways that you can actually do these things
that we're talking about.
You're gonna get a complete recording
of the event to take away with you,
so that you can review as many times
as you want, and you are going
to need to review because we're gonna be covering
a lot of very advanced stuff in this seminar,
and you're gonna get a 30 minute follow up call
with me on Skype so that if you have any questions
about actually implementing the stuff
and getting good at doing this stuff
in your own conversations, you
can do that and that's quite a bonus
cuz' I charge a lot of money
for my personal time.
But, people who come to the event
are gonna get that thrown in for free.
For more information, click on the link
in the description or head over
to SmallTalkSuperhero.com
Number five, if you thought points three
and four were a little bit advanced,
you might wanna set number five aside
for now because this is one of
the most advanced things that I've got
to talk about and something which we're
also gonna talk a lot about
at Small Talk Superhero, as well as
in next week's Extraordinary English Speakers lesson.
Members, pay attention to that.
Use empathy points.
Empathy points are what I call
the things that we say in conversation,
often subconsciously, most people,
at least native speakers aren't doing
this consciously, but the things
that we say in conversation to show
the person, I understand you.
To build rapport with that person.
Great example of this,
in next week's EES lesson, two
of our regular characters, Tacomy
and Sasha, Tacomy and Sasha know each other,
but they work in different departments
at the same company and it's been
a couple of months since they saw each other.
But, the both come out of different meeting rooms
at the same time and bump into each other
in the corrador.
They get chatting, catching up.
"How've you been?
"How's life," asks Sasha.
Tacomy replies, "Great, we've been busy
"with this and that.
"You know how it is."
This is the first empathy point
in the conversation.
"You know how it is."
You are familiar with this kind
of situation, right? Aren't you?
And it just bridges the gap
between two people.
Builds rapport, tells the other person,
my life is not so different to yours.
We are similar.
We are the same.
Later in the conversation, Tacomy talks
about how expensive furniture is.
"I know the feeling," responds Sasha.
Another empathy point.
It shows, I get you.
I understand you.
I've been in the same kind of situation.
Sasha then goes on to give Tacomy
some advice and talk about
some places he might be able
to get some more affordable furniture
and the conversation flows from there.
But the point is, we are constantly slipping
these little phrases and expressions,
these chunks of language into our conversations
to help build empathy and rapport.
So, there we have it.
Five tips for advanced English conversation.
Know that advanced English does not
an advanced English speaker make.
Be interesting, make your speaking pop.
Play with the language
and slip empathy points into your conversations.
Remember, we're doing Small Talk Superhero,
Mastering the Art of Advanced English Conversation
on June ninth, live in London.
Link in the description
or SmallTalkSuperhero.com.
We've got three places left
of the time of recording this.
Once they're gone, they are gone.
Cuz' the event room that we're using
is pretty small.
This, then, is me, Julian Northbook,
handing the baton over to you.
If you've got any questions
about speaking extraordinarily well
in English conversation,
ask them in the comments.
Hopefully, I'll see you
at Small Talk Superhero,
but regardless, I'll see you,
same time, same place tomorrow
in the next exciting, Doing English, Julian Northbrook,
whatever you wanna call them, video.
Thank you and good bye.
(rock music)
If you're interesting in joining us,
at Small Talk Superhero, Mastering
the Art of Advanced English Conversation,
or simply want to know more
about what the event is, click
on this button here.
And if you are worried cuz' you're always stuck
using simple words, I recommend you watch
this video right here.