Have you ever been chatting to someone and their story goes on and on and on and on until
you want to cry? Don't be that person guys! Here are five super useful phrases that you
can use to shorten your stories but still keep them really interesting for the listener.
All that is coming right up.
Sometimes when we are telling a story or we are explaining something we don't want to
give all the details. Maybe we think that the listener will get really bored or maybe
we don't actually know any other information and so we are trying to pretend that we do.
So we use phrases to shorten our stories and our explanations. The class example is 'to
cut a long story short.' And it means exactly what it says. We have a long story and we
use this phrase to cut it so it's shorter. For example 'Mate what happened to head?'
'Yeah, it really hurts. Yeah, crazy story. It was when you were away. You were away last
week. To cut a long story short, I had an accident while playing football. Yeah, really
painful. So what are we doing here? Well, we are speeding up the story and we are removing
any information that we don't think is important. I guess that's because we want to make the
story quicker we don't want to bore the listener. So we use this phrase to cut a long story
short to get rid of any information that's a bit boring and we can get to the end of
the story a bit quicker. When we are listing things and we don't want to list everything
we can cut the list by using a couple of useful phrases. Our first one is 'an so on' for example
'She really wants to improve her grammar, her vocabulary, her listening and so on.'
So the and so on is replacing all the other things in the list that could be reading,
writing, you get it right? So that's a really useful phrase to cut a list that's very long.
Similarly we can also use 'and so forth' for example 'Have you bought every thing for the
party like the drinks, the food and so forth?' So there and so forth is replacing the rest
of the list that could be the balloons, the plates, the knives and forks whatever else
you need for a party. And rather cleverly we use both of these phrases and we put them
together to make one phrase 'and so on and so forth'. Nice! 'I love visiting Thailand.
I love the food, the music, the culture and so on and so forth.' So and so on and so forth
is and so on and so forth put them together, you've an extra long sentence. You could use
any of those to do exactly the same thing. Choose whichever one you want. Another phrase
that we use to do exactly the same thing is et cetera. Now you'll very often see it in
written English etc. and then the full stop but also in spoken English we use it as well.
Often twice so 'Et cetera, et cetera' Let's put that into an example 'You've got to visit
London Zoo. They've got lions, tigers, monkeys et cetera et cetera.' So the et cetera et
cetera is just naming other zoo animals like elephants or giraffes or what ever it is.
So it's another phrase we use to cut a list. Our final phrase is a really good one and
it's one that has this meaning 'I don't need to say this because we all know this but I'm
going to say it anyway' and that phrase is 'needless to say'. So we use this phrase just
before saying something that everybody knows but I'm going to say it anyway. Let's use
an example. 'Did you hear that Sarah is going to the Caribbean? Needless to say she won't
need my ski jacket that i got her.' Ok did you hear that Sarah is going to the Caribbean,
well what do we know about the Caribbean? It's hot, it's sunny. Ok, so needless to say
she won't need the ski jacket that I got her. Alright, so I'm saying obviously in the Caribbean
you don't need to wear ski jackets because they are warm and they are used for skiing,
right? So she won't need it, now what I've done there is I have put the phrase 'needless
to say she won't need the ski jacket that I got her.' So why would we use this phrase?
Why, if we don't need to say this sentence, why are we even using this phrase. Well, sometimes
people like to state the obvious, so that's one thing. People like to say things that
we all know. Maybe to show that they know it or just because they want to say something.
I don't know! Another reason is that maybe you want to to do it for emphasis. We want
to do it to emphasise this point just even more than it already is. So there could be
a few reasons why you use this phrase. But yeah we use it when something is really obvious
but we are going to say it anyway. 'I just heard that Tony had a car accident. Needless
to say he's not coming in today.' So there he's had an accident and clearly it's obvious
to everyone that because he's had an accident you know, he can't work, he can't come to
work today so I'm saying it so that everyone knows. Needless to say he's not coming to
work today. So there maybe you are doing it for emphasis just to emphasise to everyone
you know this is an obvious thing but just to make it clear so that everybody knows and
we are certain everyone knows he's not coming to work today. Eat Sleep Dreamers how was
that for you? I hope you understood all of those. What I'd love right now is for you
to try and use one in the comments below, ok? So maybe write a list and use 'and so
on' or 'and so forth' and yeah I'll come in and have a look and correct it if it needs
correcting. If you want to use 'to cut a long story short' use that as well, ok? So hopefully
you've found those really useful guys. Really nice phrases to keep your stories short and
keep your listeners interested. if you enjoyed that guys please give it a big thumbs up,
make sure you share it with anyone you know that loves learning English and of course
make sure you subscribe to this channel so that you get every lesson that I do. I do
new videos every Tuesday and every Friday helping you take your English to the next
level. This is Tom the chief dreamer, saying goodbye.