hi i'm gabby wallace founder of gonaturalenglish.com
and the fluent communication course helping intermediate english speakers to become fluent
and confident for any english speaking situation what separates an intermediate english speaker
from a fluent english speaker are the phrases and expressions that you use in everyday conversation
there are some expressions that you learn in a textbook for example why did you move here to
this country well a native speaker is probably more likely to ask what brought you here what
brought you here this is a more colloquial native expression that we often ask when people move to
a new country a new state or city or even when you start a new job what brought you
here to this new place whether it's a new country or a new company there are many many expressions
that are just more natural sounding and i'm going to share several of them with you in this lesson
that is a sneak peek a video from inside my fluent communication course we're talking today with
chuck my colleague and friend from japan excuse me we met in japan but he's from the united states
you'll meet him soon enough we're gonna talk about different uh career questions and how
he ended up in japan what brought him to japan and as we're speaking i'm going to explain the
native speaker phrases that he uses and this is the best way for you to learn really is observing
and listening to native english speakers speaking having spontaneous unscripted conversation
and then getting a little help where needed to understand those phrases and the native speaker
vocabulary words as they come up or appear naturally in our conversation so here's chuck
and our conversation and i hope that it helps you a lot to unlock those native english
speaking phrases so hey there hi how are you i'm doing great okay um chuck right yes awesome
i'm gabby okay nice to meet you yeah thanks for coming over um i'm really excited to talk with you
get to know you a little bit i know we have some mutual friends online and uh they recommended that
we meet up and it's so cool to connect with you absolutely what that means too because here do you
mind if i get comfortable yeah sure please please get comfortable so um tell me a little bit about
yourself like where are you from what brought you to japan okay well i have been in japan
for 12 years wow but i think i've been in asia for 16 years now in total 15 or 16. okay so originally
you're from the states okay i'm from michigan oh michigan i'm originally from minnesota oh okay
yeah cool yeah so and then originally i came to asia um for martial arts because i was an olympic
style taekwondo player wow so i started off in korea doing on a bike take wander training in
korea wow i was there for several years okay and then after that i was in hong kong for a little
while and then from there in thailand for a little while and then i came to japan and then wow once
i got to japan i ended up just never leaving oh my goodness so i'm kind of still here so you came
to asia to train intensively yes what's your style of martial art nowadays i do well as a
function of the fact that i you know i work in entertainment and i do i do film action cool i
have to know a lot of different martial arts so i know about ten of them all together oh my goodness
okay let's hear it what are the ten my base is olympic taekwondo okay i've been doing taekwondo
for 20 years now i've got a masters rank in that wow um i'm also a brown belt in judo and then
i'm also ranked in capoeira and wow kobudo which is like the traditional japanese weaponry and
wow and then just i've done a lot of other kind of martial arts on the side as well like i've done a
little bit of krav maga um along with my taekwondo training i've always been doing hop keto but i'm
not okay which is kind of like the joint locking type stuff oh okay but i'm not actually ranked in
it so i don't i don't profess to having a rank in it or anything right and then little things like
wing chun kung fu and a little bit of boxing a little bit of kickboxing and just anything
else i think martial arts awesome that's crazy you you're familiar at least with a bunch of stuff and
ranked in several so martial arts is a big part of your life yes stunts and acting also yes very cool
so that was kind of the thing that that kept me in japan i had a great time talking with chuck i hope
that you enjoyed the conversations too and now i'm going to help you by breaking down some of
the phrases that are really important for you to know in order to understand american english and
to be able to use english like a native speaker so i'm sure that you could understand the main
idea of the conversations that's great but the thing that might be keeping you from really
engaging in conversation like a native speaker is understanding these phrases that i'm going to
present to you now okay in conversation one i say i'm doing great now this is not what you learn in
your textbook you learn to say i'm fine thank you and you but as we know sometimes textbooks don't
talk like native speakers so i'm doing great is a perfectly acceptable way to respond when
someone asks you how you're doing so let me hear you say it i'm doing great good okay next chuck
asks do you mind if i get comfortable so this is a common phrase that you could use if you just
arrived someone's home and you're sitting down at the table or at the couch or whatever and you know
you want to maybe sit in a more relaxed way so people will ask do you mind if i get comfortable
tell me a little bit about yourself so this is a question that i asked chuck i want to know where
he's from you know what brought him to japan these are all very common questions for when you first
meet someone so you can use them in any kind of situation whether you are in a social situation
or a work situation they're really key questions so i'm gonna ask you to repeat them after me
tell me a little bit about yourself okay what brought you to
uh let's say what brought you here right since i don't know
japan might not be the place where you're living what brought you here what brought you here
okay great so i say i'm originally from minneapolis that means you know in today's
data age where people often move you may have been born in one place but you
moved to a new place and maybe you moved several times so if you want to talk about
your birthplace you can say i'm originally from and then your city
okay chuck says right on that's kind of you know words of encouragement very cool to use those
words right on uh midwest represents so this is another kind of slang phrase just to say you know
i'm from the midwest too so if you have something in common with someone you could say the thing
you have in common like let's say you both play guitar you could say guitar players represent
and it's just a fun modern slang that you can use to express you know your
common feelings of uh enjoyment of that thing or your common your pride in that one thing
he says chuck says originally i came to asia so originally i came to asia for i think he said
martial arts originally is like at first um but a little bit different it just means to begin
with so originally he came to asia for martial arts and then you know later he started teaching
he started doing other things acting so the first thing that he came to do was martial arts
he says once i got to japan i ended up just never leaving so ended up is the result of something
that you didn't think was going to happen like you had a plan and maybe your end results
didn't exactly fit your plan you didn't think you were going to stay
in japan forever uh or for you know 10 years or more but you did you ended up doing something
unplanned chuck says i have to know a lot of martial arts so he's saying i have
two but when native speakers say have two together it sounds like hafta so let me hear you say it
have to okay good he says i know ten of them all together so all together is a way of saying
the sum of many things is all together so in unison when you add them all up it's all together
he says i've done a lot of other martial arts on the side so on the side is something that's not
your main focus on the side could be a hobby it could be something you do on the weekends
on the side he then says that was the thing that kept me in japan so
to keep you in a place is to make you want to stay
so i thought i would explain that phrasal verb to keep me in to keep me in japan is to make
me want to stay longer i hope that was helpful and if you're interested in learning more about
my fluent communication course click on the link in the description or go to gonaturalenglish.com
pre-reg and i'll send you information with details about how the course works when and
how to join and the price thanks so much for watching and have an excellent day bye for now