Hi there, this is teacher Harry and welcome back to English lessons with Harry, where
I try to help you to get a better understanding of the English language so that you can improve
your conversational language, your business English. Idioms, phrasal verbs, everything
connected with English.
Before I do that, please remember that you can listen to me on my podcast, and you can
watch me on my YouTube video.
So what are we going to talk to you about today? Well, today, we're going to talk about
small talk. And small talk is a really important part of the English language. And in particular,
we're going to talk to about small talk questions about foods or small talk questions to do
with food. As I said, small talk is a really important part of the English language. Some
people dismiss it a little bit as chit chat. But remember, when you use small talk, it
helps you to get involved in conversations, that's the easiest way for you to get involved.
So not only will it help you and ease you into the conversation, it will avoid those
awkward silences that you might have. In an elevator, you got stuck there, for example,
or at the beginning of a meeting, when you're waiting for somebody to arrive at one of your
colleagues hasn't arrived. So there'll be generally a lot of small talk in those situations,
it'll help you and present you as a little bit friendlier, it will come make you a little
bit more acceptable to your colleagues, particularly new colleagues if you've moved jobs. So you
know, you don't feel like the outsider. And you sound much more like a native speaker.
Okay, so that's the general overview of small talk and why it's important.
So as I said to you, we're going to look specifically at small talk questions about food. And as
well as small talk being really important food is important to all of us. And we all
like eating it, preparing it and most of us, and certainly talking about it. So when we
have small talk conversations, food is one of the ideal topics. And usually it centres
around a number of particular areas. So I've broken this down into a few sections.
So I'll take them one by one, I'll read them to you first, and then I'll come back to them.
So the first one is about your favourite food.
Or it could be about eating out where you might eat out,
cooking at home,
just generally breakfast lunches and dinners.
And finally, diets, which is also an important part of eating food, if you eat too much of
it, we have to go on diet, so we have to do a little bit more exercise. So diets are another
important part of that general classification of food.
So let's take them one by one. So the first one, as I said, is your favourite food. So
the questions that you could ask people when you're in that situation is, but simply
What's your favourite dish? Now, in English dish means a plate of food or something that
somebody is prepared, it's not just the dish or the plate that the food arrives on. So
that can be sometimes a little bit confusing for non native speakers. So what's your favourite
dish?
What's your favourite meal? Or just simply?
What do you like to eat? Now, so you can put it in any of those situations.
Are there any foods that you absolutely hate? Are there any foods that you absolutely won't
eat? So, again, you're trying just to find out from people, you know, what their customs
are? Or what their cultures are, what sort of food they like? Or what food they don't?
Like?
Do you like trying new foods? Okay, and what's the most recent food that you've tasted? You
know, have you had Vietnamese or you have tried other Japanese stars? Whatever it might
be, you can broaden it out to include specific or just generally,
what have you eaten recently? or what have you tried recently? Oh, what new food? Have
you tried recently?
Okay, so when, when we're talking about eating out, that might be to do with places that
are local. So you know, if you're sharing offices with these people, and you've just
joined them, you might want to know, the places to eat locally for lunch, or perhaps for an
early dinner. So you could ask questions like,
How often do you eat out?
Have you tried any new restaurants recently? Or
what are the restaurants like around here?
Are there any nice small cafes?
Or what are the prices? Like, you know, are they good for lunches or dinners so you can
get into it in much more detail as you go along? Once you feel comfortable about asking
those questions. He could also like and ask
Do they like fast food? Because obviously people eat it, particularly if they're in
a hurry. So do you like fast food if you do,
what type of fast food do you like or what fast food restaurants are available here?
Do you order food as a takeaway? Do you order food as a delivery? Do you try some of those
apps where you order food to be delivered to the office or to be delivered to your home.
And then you can talk about your experiences, your, your experiences that were good, or
what most people have some experience that was absolutely bad where the food was late
or the food was cold or something strange happened. So people exchange their experiences
in that way. But all the time asking those particular questions about eating out.
A lot of people like to cook a lot of people are really good at preparing food, particularly
if they have the time. And they like to cook food, particularly when perhaps specific cultures
from what whichever country they happen to be from. So a lot of questions we can ask,
are related to cooking at home or cooking in the home.
So simply, are you a good cook?
Or who cooks in your house? Your partner or you? Who does most of the cooking? Do you
share the cooking?
What's your favourite dish to prepare? Or what's your favourite dish that you like to
prepare as another way to say it.
And what's your cooking speciality? What do you really like? What's your, your key dish
that you prepare that everybody talks about now?
So what are you well known for? So lots of people have a particularly speciality.
It could be paella or it could be shepherd's pie, in my case, whatever it might be. So
what are you known for? What is the dish that really sets you apart from other people?
Okay, so it comes down to the section and speaking particularly about just the three
basic core meals of the day breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
Do you usually skip breakfast?
Or do you bring it with you and have it in the office? That's a very simple question.
A lot of people grab a bite to eat on the way in on off the tube or the train, drop
into the local cafe, get the coffee and the breakfast bath or whatever it happens to be
or they have something already on their desk waiting for them when they get there. So do
you usually skip breakfast? Or do you have it before you leave home?
What time do you get up at if you have to have your breakfast before you you leave home?
What time do you usually have lunch? What time do you usually go for lunch?
Where do you go for lunch around here? I'm sick of sandwiches. Can you... Do you have
any really good suggestions as to work type lunches that you can prepare easily or bring
in what would put you usually half. So all of those questions, small talk questions that
will help you to fit into that conversation.
And finally, what do you usually have for dinner? Or what time do you eat dinner?
Do you prepare dinner dinner the day before? Do you prepare dinner as we do enough for
two days, for example, if you don't want to cook every day.
So general topics, conversational topics, questions that will be easy to ask, hopefully
for you and easy to answer.
And then finally, as I mentioned before, if we all as we do like food and we eat a little
bit too much of it, particularly at certain times of the year, then we might like to talk
or we will talk about the diet. Yeah, different types of diets. So the questions you could
ask relating to diet are
What diet are you on? Or do you ever go on diets? Do you follow a special type of diet?
Are there foods you definitely leave out or foods you include to make sure it's a healthy
diet that you have.
Do you think diets are useful or not? Are they just fads? And a fad is something that's
here today gone tomorrow.
Is anyone here on that raw food diet? So you can talk about the latest gimmick of a diet
which would be in all the magazines and the internet and all the superstars are talking
about them so people will try them and when they try them, they share them with their
colleagues and with the share them with their colleagues. They exchange their information
and their experiences, good or bad.
Okay, so lots of helpful and useful questions that you can ask around diet. Okay, so that's
small talk and as I said, small talk really, really important part of the English language.
It will help you to settle in to a new job. It will help you to make friends it will break
the ice when you're stuck in that elevator or before that business meeting when you're
turning left or right to colleague and you you want to talk about something to avoid
that on healthy silence that is there and it will make you fit into the organisation
and you won't feel such an outsider. So I hope you've enjoyed the experience of this
particular lesson and you can join me again in the future and if you want to contact me
well, of course, you can wwww.englishlessonviaskype.com
Transcribed by https://otter.ai