Thanks to you, I get to teach English online and I'm looking forward to being your teacher
for many years to come. These are expressions that I use every day,
and you can too. Today you are going to learn 10 expressions in English that I use every day,
and I hope that you can add to your daily life vocabulary too.
Hi, I'm Vanessa from speakenglishwithvanessa.com, and like always, I have created a free useful PDF
with all of these daily life expressions, definitions, sample sentences and some tips
about when I use them and when you can use them too. Plus, at the bottom of the free worksheet,
you can answer Vanessa's Challenge Question so that you never forget what you've learned. You
can click on the link in the description to download that free PDF worksheet. My gift to
you today. All right, let's get started with the first expression that I use every day.
Expression number one is "To look forward to something." This is a great phrasal verb
and I often say I'm really looking forward to this weekend because my whole family will be
together and we can just enjoy a calm family time together. In reality, it's not always a calm time,
but it's usually a nice time when we're all together. This expression "To look forward to
something," is talking about something that you're excited about. What are you looking
forward to? Maybe it's finishing an exam so that you don't have to study anymore.
Or maybe you're looking forward to seeing your cousin who you haven't seen for a long time,
or maybe you're looking forward to studying English with Vanessa. Let me know in the comments
what you're looking forward to and let's go on to expression number two that I use every day.
Expression number two that I use every day is kind of two parts. It's "I'm thinking
about ... What do you think?" When you live with other people you're probably going to use this
expression a lot. So for example, I often say "I'm thinking about going to the gym tonight.
What do you think?" When I ask my husband this I'm not asking for his permission. Can I please go to
the gym? I need your permission. No, instead I'm asking him, "Hey, while I go to the gym,
can you watch the kids? Can you make dinner? Can you put them to bed?" There's a lot going on in
our house, so when one adult has to do something away from the home, we need to talk about it. So
here I'm using this great expression, "I'm thinking about ... What do you think?" We're
trying to make sure that we're on the same page so that our home ideally can be a peaceful place.
Expression number three is one that I say maybe too many times, and it is "Be careful that you
don't ..." something. So for example, I often say to my kids, "Be careful that you don't drop
that." "Be careful that you don't ..." And here I'm warning them, I'm worried about something
because I foresee a problem. When my child is carrying a plate full of food and they're
carrying it around the table, down the stairs, I might say, "Be careful that you don't drop that
plate of food please." Because this has happened before. I want to warn them to be careful. If you
are a parent, I'm sure that you have used this before, and if you are not a parent,
you can also warn other people. "Be careful that you don't drive too fast because it's snowing
outside." There's a lot of warnings that you can give to other people and use this great phrase.
Expression number four is one that I used at the beginning of this lesson,
and that is "Thanks to ..." Thanks to you, I can teach English online. Here I am telling you
thank you, but I'm using the expression "Thanks to ..." Thanks to my students,
I can teach English online. Thanks to modern technology, I can teach English online. "Thanks
to ..." here is something that you are grateful for so that you can do something you want.
But just a little note, this can also be used sarcastically to talk about something
bad. Sometimes I use this because it's a little bit funny, it's a little bit silly.
And when you're having a hard time, sometimes humor is the best medicine. So you might say,
"Thanks to my neighbor's dog barking all night, I couldn't sleep." I'm not really thanking my
neighbor's dog. I'm pretty annoyed that my neighbor's dog barked all night and I couldn't
sleep. But I'm using this expression with a little bit of a sarcastic tone. So listen to the tone of
my voice when I say it. "Thanks to my neighbor's dog who was barking all night, I couldn't sleep.
My face is not happy, not excited. Thank you, dog. No, I'm not saying it like that. "Thanks
to my neighbor's dog ..." so here, if there's something negative that's affecting your life,
you can also use this expression. Just make sure your tone of voice reflects that.
Expression. Number five is a fun one, "As far as I know ..." So in our house we have
a lot of things going on. There's five people who live in our house,
two adults and three children. So we have a lot of different moving parts. So when my husband says,
"Hey, do we have anything planned for Friday afternoon?" I might say, "No, not as far as I
know," or "As far as I know, I don't think so." This means I'm not exactly certain,
I don't have a perfect calendar in my head. But for me, and maybe some of you have also
said this to your husbands, "As far as I know we don't. But check the calendar." I think this
is a very stereotypical situation that the wife tells the husband, I don't know, check
the calendar. It's on the calendar, and husbands are notorious for not checking the calendar and
asking their wife first. So I would probably say, "Not as far as I know, but check the calendar."
Expression number seven is "Speaking of ..." So let me give you a little example. My husband is
a science teacher for elementary school students, and his project this week was to destroy and break
apart appliances with the students. So all of the students had a screwdriver and they
were taking apart broken radios, broken hair dryers. They loved this project. So when my
husband came home and he was telling me about breaking things with the students, I said,
"Speaking of breaking things, we broke three bowls today because the kids were
running around the house." So here I am kind of making a connection between one topic, breaking
things with the students in the classroom, and a similar thing that happened at home.
So if you are reminded of a topic and you want to connect those topics together, this is the perfect
expression. You could say, "Oh yes, speaking of food, what are we going to eat for dinner?"
"Speaking of ..." plus the topic, it's a great way to connect things that you're talking about.
Expression number eight has two options. It's "We may as well," or "We might as well." They both
mean the same thing. It's just your personal preference. We often use this when there's
some kind of change of plans that you have to make, that you can't avoid. So for example,
my oldest son got invited to a birthday party of one of his friends, but when my son woke up,
he was not feeling well, and I thought, "You know what? Maybe he'll feel better
throughout the day and he can go to the party tonight. No, you know what? We might as well
cancel now." This is talking about a change of plans that you can't avoid. He's probably
not going to feel better later today to go to that party. So what's the conclusion? Well,
we may as well cancel our plans now, or we might as well cancel our plans.
Now there's kind of a reluctance like, I don't really want to, but I probably should. I don't
know 100% what's the right thing to do? We may as well just do whatever it is,
cancel our plans. This is a great expression to use because in life plans are always changing.
Expression number nine that I use every day is a good follow-up to expression number eight. It
is "This doesn't mean that ... It just means that ..." so let's take that example of my
son missing his friend's birthday party because he wasn't feeling well. Well,
can you imagine when I told him, "Sorry, I don't think we're going to be able to go to
her birthday party. You just aren't feeling well." How do you think he
reacted to that? Do you think he said, "great! Yay!" No. Even though he wasn't feeling well,
he was really disappointed. His reaction was not positive. Poor guy. He felt really
disappointed to miss that birthday party. So I used this expression to help him feel better.
I wanted to explain a little bit. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't with children,
but this is a great expression to use. I said, "This doesn't mean that we can never
play with your friend. It just means that we can't see her today." Okay. Sometimes
we jump to the biggest conclusion "I'll never play with my friends ever again. Oh,
no!" And we want to kind of tone it down a bit. You can say, "This doesn't mean that
you'll never see her again. It just means that we won't see her today."
Here we're trying to kind of make some realistic expectations to help us deal with disappointment.
You can even use this in the workplace. Let's say that you're really working on
a big project and all of the team has to work overtime in order to finish the project. Well,
your manager might say something like this, "This doesn't mean that you'll
always be working overtime. It just means that for this project, this week,
I'm going to need you to work a little bit extra so that we can finish." Great. They're trying to
make the expectations realistic, help to deal with some disappointment and just set out the facts.
The final 10th expression is a great one for expressing your preferences. It is,
"I would rather ... than ..." And we often make a contraction out of, I would, and say, "I'd." "I'd
rather ... than ..." "I'd rather learn English with Vanessa online than drive 30 minutes to learn
in a classroom." We're talking about preferences, and this is something that we do all the time.
Just a little note, there is a verb, to prefer. "I prefer learning English online." Well, you
know what? This is okay, but in the US, we don't really use the verb prefer that much. Instead,
we're more likely to say, rather. "I'd rather learn English online because my life is just too
busy. I don't have time to go into the classroom." "I'd rather something than something else."
Let me give you another example from my daily life. Every week, my family has certain meals that
we make a lot. For example, every Monday we make miso soup. We call it "Miso Mondays." And there's
different types of miso soup that we make. But this past Monday, it was just such a busy day and
all of the steps for making miso soup felt really overwhelming. So I told my family, I know that
you guys like to eat miso soup, but I'd rather eat something quick and easy than spend a lot of time
in the kitchen making miso soup. This doesn't mean that we'll never eat miso soup. It just means that
we'll eat it tomorrow when we have a less busy day. Great way to use both of these expressions.
So here I'm talking about my preference. I'd rather eat something easy today. Let's
just toast some bread, make some eggs, cook a little vegetable or something,
and have an easy dinner because I'd rather have an easy dinner than a more complicated dinner.
Today has already been too much. This is a great way to just naturally express your preferences.
Well, thank you for joining me for all of these 10 expressions that I use every day. I'm curious in
the comments, do you use any of these expressions or are any of these new for you? Let me know. And
don't forget to download the free PDF worksheet, which includes all of these daily expressions,
definitions, sample sentences, and some extra tips about when you can use them so that you can
easily integrate them into your vocabulary when you're speaking and express yourself completely.
You can click on the link in the description to download that free PDF worksheet today. Well,
thank you so much for learning English with me,
and I'll see you again next Friday for a new lesson here on my YouTube channel. Bye.
But wait, do you want more? I recommend watching this video
next to learn more words that I use every day, including whipping
something. What? Every day? Yes. Check out this video and I'll see you there.