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Well hey there I'm Emma from mmmEnglish and it's time
to practise speaking with me.
We're going to practise talking about daily routines using
my daily routine as an example.
So we'll get to talk about my morning routine,
what I do before I go to work,
my workday routine, what I do at work during the day
and my evening routine.
So maybe
you like to watch Netflix or read a book or clean the house
or go out for dinner.
I'm going to talk about my evening routine as an example.
I'll give you lots of chances to speak out loud and to practise with
me and the cool thing is we're also going to brush up on
a little bit of grammar that you might need to use to talk about
how regularly you do things in your daily routine.
When talking about our daily routines,
we use the present simple tense.
I eat breakfast at 7am.
But adverbs of frequency can add more detail. They work
perfectly to this and I can choose any of these ones
to talk about how often I do something
and that's why they're called adverbs of frequency. They show
how often something happens or how often you do something.
Now for me, I would say
No. I never eat breakfast at 7am.
That's a little too early for me. You try it.
I always have my coffee before breakfast.
So if you use always it means that you're doing that activity
a hundred percent of the time, every time
but as that frequency gets less and less, your adverb can change
to usually,
sometimes,
rarely,
hardly ever
until you get to never which is
zero per cent of the time.
Can you think of something you always do in the morning,
what about something that you hardly ever do?
I want to hear about it down in the comments.
Now it's time for the fun part.
Here is a list of activities that you might do in the morning.
I've marked the ones that I do and you can do the same
or you can note down a few different ideas if you like.
Now some of these activities are really common,
most of us do them every morning
like wake up, brush our teeth
get dressed, go to work.
These are all things that happen pretty consistently.
So we'll practise using some adverbs that help to explain that.
I usually wake up at 6.30am.
Try it.
You can also say 6.30 or half-past six.
There are lots of different ways to express time in English,
aren't there?
But pay attention to the way that I said usually
with that sound and the
Usually.
Try it.
I always brush my teeth as soon as I wake up.
I sit down at my desk and start working by 8am,
but I'm often a little late.
Notice that I didn't pronounce the T in often.
Often. It's silent.
Though not for every native English speaker but
I don't pronounce it.
Often.
Sometimes I go for a swim before work
but usually only when it's warm.
I hardly ever check my emails first thing in the morning.
Now to show the order of your routine you can use sequences
like before,
after, then, next.
All of these words are useful to help you
organise your thoughts in order.
I usually walk my dog before I go for a swim.
After I get home, I make my coffee.
Then I start work for the day.
So even though I'm not giving you exact times,
you still have an idea about the order of these events,
which one happened first as soon as I woke up
and what was I doing just before I started work.
Our work routine is probably quite different.
Maybe your day at work is really dynamic and it's always changing
or perhaps it's pretty consistent and you do the same thing
every day so you'll have to adapt this section to make it
suit your workday.
We're going to use mine as an example to practise with.
I always have a meeting first thing in the morning
when I start work.
I usually work best in the morning.
That's when I'm most productive.
Sometimes, if I'm really focused on my work,
I won't even stop to eat lunch.
Well, until around 3pm when I get really hungry.
You try it.
I often take a break around 4.30pm and go to the gym.
I hardly ever go for a walk outside,
but when I do, it boosts my energy levels.
I rarely finish my workday by 5pm.
The evenings are probably my favourite time of day.
I try to use that time to wind down and to relax
as long as I'm not working late.
What types of things do you do in the evenings?
I usually take my dog, Frankie, for a walk.
Often, we go to the park but sometimes we go to the beach.
I hardly ever cook. Shah usually does the cooking in our house
but sometimes we go out for dinner.
After dinner, sometimes we watch Netflix but
often we'll go back to work for an hour or two.
I never go to bed before 10pm
but I always try to wind down
by reading a book and drinking herbal tea.
So now that we've been through my daily routine,
I want you to share yours. I want you to write a few sentences
down, maybe in the comments below using the adverbs
that we've been practising with but don't forget to practise
saying these things out loud too, okay?
Practise each morning this week,
the repetition is going to help you to remember
the different ideas but also get comfortable
saying these things and talking about them with ease.
This is speaking practice after all.
I hope you enjoyed today's speaking practice. I'm looking forward
to hearing about your daily routines.
I'm wondering if it's similar to mine or maybe quite different.
Now if you're looking for some more speaking practice with me
then check out this lesson right here. It's all about telling
great stories in English.
So check it out and I'll see you next week with another video.