Hi, I'm Vanessa from SpeakEnglishWithVanessa.com. Oh, what should I say? Let's talk about it.
Sometimes I'm surprised because my English students don't use expressions that I hear a
lot around me in daily life. Even some advanced English learners miss some of these expressions
that we use commonly. But today I want to help you learn some common English expressions for daily
life. Especially since the pandemic began, our interactions have been a lot different.
There have been more online meetings, Zoom calls, these type of interactions where there might be
some communication problems due to bad internet or wifi or some kind of misunderstandings,
so I hope that today's expressions will help you to have smoother interactions in these situations.
These 20 phrases fit into four categories: asking someone for information, making sure that
you understand something politely interrupting a conversation, and finally, politely agreeing
or disagreeing with someone. Let's start with our first category. When you're asking
for information, yeah, you can say, "What's that? What's this?" But this is really basic, and there
are a lot of more common expressions that we use. Do you happen to know what time the meeting is?
Beautiful. Do you happen to know? This is a little bit indirect, but it is beautiful.
Do you have any idea if Katie is coming to dinner tomorrow? Do you have any idea? This is simply
asking, do you know if Katie is coming, but we can use this word idea. Do you have any idea
if Katie's coming to dinner tomorrow? I'd like to know if Katie is coming to dinner.
I'd like to know if. This doesn't seem like a question, right? There's not a question mark,
but you're asking for more information without it being a direct question. Oh, I'd like to know
if Katie's coming tomorrow for dinner. Maybe I'll have to send her a message. I'd like to know if.
You might hear someone say, "I'm wondering if those reports about the marketing plan
are finished." I'm wondering if those reports are finished. If your boss says this, it means that he
or she is trying to be indirect and asking are they finished yet? But instead of directly asking
that, they kind of indirectly say, "I'm wondering if they are finished." It doesn't seem like a
question, but it is and they're asking for more information, to know are the reports done? So if
your boss says to you, "Hey, I'm wondering if those reports will be done by three o'clock."
You can say, "Yes, they will be done by three o'clock," or maybe, "Nope, they
won't." All right, let's go to our next category. The second category is checking for understanding.
Checking to see if someone else understands you, or if you understand them correctly. So when
someone asks you these questions, you want to make sure that you respond accurately. Whether you are
giving directions or telling a complex story, you want to make sure that other people can understand
because you don't want to get to the end of the conversation and the other person, or you says,
"Huh?" That's quite disheartening. So I want to make sure that you can use these
expressions to check along the way, to make sure that you are being understood.
Do you know what I mean? Especially if you're talking about something that is
annoying you or close to your heart. Let's imagine that your child is having problems
going to bed at night and it's really frustrating for you, so you're talking with your husband about
it, maybe this is similar to my life, and you say, "Oh yeah, it's so tough. Why won't he just sleep?
I'm so annoyed. You know what I mean?" And here I am asking to see if he understands how I feel.
Did you notice that I cut off the first question word "do"? The full question is,
do you know what I mean? But we often just say, you know what I mean? And you want the
other person ideally to say, "Yes, I understand what you mean. I understand how you're feeling."
They might say, "No, I really don't," and then you realize, okay, I need to explain it a different
way or we're just on different pages. But this is a great question to ask, you know what I mean?
Or you can ask, are you following? Maybe if you're telling some complex sets of directions about
how to fill in this paperwork to get a visa, and you're telling your friend,
"First, you got to do this, and then you got to go over here," and it's quite complex and their
eyes start to look like this. We say their eyes glaze over. You might say, "Are you following?
Are you following these directions?" And they might say, "Sorry, I lost you a long time ago."
Or maybe their eyes are not glazing over. Instead, they're saying, "Yes. Okay. Okay. All right. All
right." But you know that your directions are pretty complicated, so maybe they should write
things down, but they're not. You might ask them, "Got it?" That means, do you understand? Are
you following my directions? Are you getting it? This is another meaning of the word get,
which means to understand. I get you. This means I understand you. I understand how you're feeling.
And an answer to this, if someone says, "Got it," you might say, "Got it." So you can just respond
with the same phrase. If someone's telling you something complicated and at the end, they say,
"Did you understand?" Or they say, "Got it?", you can say, "Yep. Got it."
Let's go back to my previous example about my son having difficulties falling asleep. Well,
when I'm talking to my husband about it, I might say, "Well, we need to make some changes in his
nighttime routine to help him sleep better or maybe changes in our daily routine to help him
wind down and feel more tired at the end of the day." I could ask him, "Are we on the same page?"
We're not reading something, but this just means, do we have the same ideas? Do you agree with me
that we need to change something so that he can sleep? Do you understand what I'm saying?
Are we on the same page? This is very important for relationships. You absolutely need to be on
the same page as your partner for a lot of stuff, but you can even use this at work.
If you're talking about a project that you're working on, you want to make sure
that everyone in the team is on the same page, understands the same thing. So you might say,
"All right, everyone, are we on the same page? Everyone understands what we're doing now.
Are we on the same page? All right, let's do it." Our next category are polite interruptions. This
could be in real daily life conversations where you need to interrupt someone, or it could be on
a Zoom call when someone's internet cuts out and you need to tell them something, but you want to
tell them it politely, or maybe they say something and they got some information wrong about your
marketing meeting. So you need to interrupt them before they continue. You want to do that
politely. What can you say? Here's some ideas. You might say, "Excuse me, may I have a word?"
Excuse me, great way to introduce this, may I have a word? This is not just one word.
This means, can I say something? Can I interrupt you and say something? So you might say, "Excuse
me, may I have a word?" You can use this when you knock on your boss's door and you want to tell him
something. Knock, knock knock. Excuse me. May I have a word? Great. That means you got to tell him
something. Usually something brief and short. Do you mind if I jump in her?,
Jump in means interrupting. You're not literally jumping, but we can imagine that idea that someone
else is talking and you are jumping or cutting or interrupting in the middle of what they're saying,
but this is very polite. Do you mind if I jump in there? Do you mind if I jump in here?
I want to say something that is important right now. Do you mind if I jump in here?
Sorry, I didn't catch that. Is it possible to repeat that last point? This this especially if
it's something organized where someone is giving a presentation or they're trying to tell you some
steps and you missed the last thing they said, you could use this whole phrase, sorry, I didn't
catch that, means I didn't understand that. Can you repeat that last point? Or you can shorten
this even further and just say, "I'm sorry." Notice my head here. It's tilting. I'm sorry.
That means I didn't get it, but this is really polite because you're apologizing for not
understanding. And you can just say, "I'm sorry," and they'll be able to repeat what they said.
And finally, our more direct question you can say is, "Do you mind if I interrupt
you?" You're still using this polite expression, do you mind if, but you're using a clear word
interrupt if someone is speaking, speaking, speaking. Do you mind if I interrupt you?
I want to share something that's relevant to this exact point before we move on to something else.
Do you mind if I interrupt you? Great. Our final category of common daily phrases for
daily conversation are different ways to agree or disagree with someone. Let's start with agree. For
one word responses, strong agreement, you can say, "Totally. Absolutely. Right." Great, you strongly
agree. English is the most fun language to learn. You might say, "Totally. Absolutely. Right."
For partly agreeing with someone, you can use these slightly longer phrases. I see your point,
but... This means, yeah okay, I understand where you're coming from. I understand your
point of view, but I disagree. So if someone says skiing is the best sport in the world,
you might say, "Well, I see your point, but I really would rather play basketball."
It's warm outside. It can be on a team. Okay. You're agreeing with them, that's polite,
but you're also showing your point of view. Or if someone again says, "Skiing is the
best sport in the world," you might say, "I'm not so sure about that."
Here, you're just kind of partly agree. Not 100%. Well, I'm not so sure if. You see this kind
of indirect language? I'm not so sure. You could say, "I'm sure about it. 100%. I'm sure." But here
they say, "I'm not so sure about that. I would really rather play basketball. I'm not so sure
about it." Very polite way of partially agreeing. Our final three phrases or for disagreeing. Let's
imagine that you really do like basketball more than skiing. You could say, "That's not always
true. Skiing is dangerous. Skiing is really cold." Yeah, that's not always true. Or you might say,
"I don't agree. I don't think so." This is pretty clear, but you know what? Sometimes
you just got to get your point across. I don't agree. Basketball's better. I don't think so.
Basketball is better. This is my opinion. I disagree. And that's just the way it is.
I hope that your daily English vocabulary has improved and these phrases will be more
understandable to you as you're listening to conversations. And also as you're participating
in them in daily life or in meetings on Zoom or online, I hope these will be helpful to you. I
know the 20 expressions is a lot to learn. You know what I mean? But I hope you got it. Got it?
Got it. And now I'm wondering if you can use any of these expressions in the comments below this
video. Let me know which one of these you would like to use. And thank you so much for learning
English with me. I'll see you again next Friday for a new lesson here on my YouTube channel. Bye.
The next step is to download my free ebook, Five Steps to Becoming a Confident English Speaker.
You'll learn what you need to do to speak confidently and fluently.
Don't forget to subscribe to my YouTube channel for more free lessons. Thanks so much. Bye.