- Hello, lovely students,
and welcome back to "English with Lucy".
Today I'm going to be teaching you
lots and lots of advanced phrases
that you can use in daily conversation.
We are going to take basic phrases
and I'm going to give you advanced alternatives
so you can really expand your vocabulary.
Before we get started,
I'd like to remind you
that there is, as always, a free PDF
that goes with today's lesson.
It contains everything we're going to talk about today,
the full list of alternatives.
Plus, an extra quiz at the end
so you can put what you've learned into practise.
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This video is going to be perfect
for improving your vocabulary skills.
If you'd like to expand your vocabulary even further
I have designed a 30-day challenge
especially, specifically for you,
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From those simple everyday words,
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Right. Let's start it with the lesson.
Firstly, let's talk about introductions.
Imagine you're in a business meeting
and you want to introduce your colleague
to someone you know.
A simple way to do this is to say,
"This is my colleague, Sarah."
It's fine. It's just a little bit plain and boring.
We have some better alternatives.
You can also say,
"Have you met Sarah? We work together."
or, "Have you been introduced to Sarah?"
If you want to introduce yourself to someone,
a simple way to say this is,
"Hello, I'm Lucy."
Obviously, you would insert your own name.
This is fine.
But of course there are some other ways to say this.
You could say, "I don't think we've been introduced,"
or "I don't think we've met. I'm Lucy."
Finally, let's imagine that you noticed
that the person you're talking to doesn't know many people.
Luckily, you do know some people so you could offer,
do you need any introductions?
Do you need to be introduced to anyone?
Let's move on to alternative ways
of saying "It's nice to meet you."
When you meet someone for the first time,
it's polite to say, "It's nice to meet you,"
or just "Nice to meet you."
An alternative way to say this is,
"It's a pleasure to meet you."
It's a pleasure to meet you.
That's something I really like about the word pleasure.
I think it's the zh sound. Pleasure.
This is quite a formal phrase.
You might want to use it in a work environment.
We also have a less formal version
which is "Glad to meet you."
I'm glad to meet you.
Glad means happy, pleased.
Finally, a really good alternative to use
with someone that you have spoken to via email
or over the phone or via Zoom.
It's great to finally meet you in person.
I feel like I know you already
'cause we've spoken so much via email.
It means that you're happy to see them face to face
and not just through a telephone line or a computer screen.
Let's move on to another vital part of conversation,
"How are you?".
How are you?
One of the most overused questions in my opinion.
"How are you?" suitable for all occasions.
You can use it with your CEO, with your boss,
with your colleagues, with your friends and family.
But if you're in less formal situations,
then you might want to say something informal,
like, "How's it going?"
or "How's everything with you?"
You could also say, "What's going on?"
or "What have you been up to?"
That's a really common question.
"What have you been up to?"
is what have you been doing lately.
Both of these questions
invite the person you're speaking to
to update you on what they've been doing
since you last saw them.
Finally, you could ask "How's life?"
or "How's life treating you?"
That's very informal. I like that one.
Okay. We have some great options for "How are you?"
But what about the response?
"I'm fine, thanks," is just a little bit boring.
If you are also getting bored
of repeating the same phrase over and over again,
I have some alternatives.
Ticking along. I'm ticking along.
This means, yeah, still going.
Another really popular one is "Can't complain".
Nothing's going wrong. I can't complain.
We also have "Same old, same old."
These are always of saying that things aren't great,
but they're okay.
I'm fine. I'm okay.
They're very neutral answers to "How are you?"
If you want to give a really positive answer,
if you are having a really great day,
then you could say something like "I couldn't be better."
I couldn't be better.
Or on the opposite hand, if you're having a terrible time,
you could say, "Could be better."
I could be better. I'm not doing that well, thank you.
Remember that English speakers
don't often give honest answers
when they're asked, "How are you?"
So you know, the house could have burnt down
the night before
and they'll still say something like "Could be better.
Yeah. Could be better."
Let's move on to the next question.
Where do you work?
When you're getting to know someone,
really common question is, where do you work?
There are other ways of saying this.
A really common one in British English is, what do you do?
What do you do?
That's shortened down from what do you do for a living?
If you know someone quite well
and you know that they've recently changed jobs
or they might change jobs quite often,
you could ask a question
such as, where are you working right now?
Or, what are you doing for work at the moment?
Or even, did you end up getting that promotion?
Or did you end up getting that job?
You'd only asked that if they'd already mentioned
that they were in the running for a new job.
Another really common question is, where are you from?
Where are you from?
And we have some alternate ways of saying that.
If you want to make it sound more natural,
you could say, "Whereabouts are you from?'
That's kind of the rough area.
Whereabouts are you from?
If you are wondering if someone's from same area
that you are in right now,
you could say something like, "Are you local?
Are you from around this local area?"
Are you from around here?
Or a really informal one,
are you from this neck of the woods?
"Neck of the woods" means local area, common British slang.
You can use the idiom "neck of the woods"
in lots of different questions,
like, how's the weather in your neck of the woods?
In your local area?
And of course weather,
my favourite topic as a British person.
Brings me on to my next topic: weather.
The number one small talk topic in the UK is weather.
I find myself mentioning it all the time.
I can't help it. It's like word vomit.
I don't know what to say. There's an awkward moment.
So I mention the weather.
A really common British phrase is, "Lovely weather today."
Lovely weather today.
Alternatively, assuming you have sunshine,
could be "Beautiful weather out."
Beautiful weather out.
Beautiful out today, isn't it? Beautiful out.
Meaning, it's lovely outside today.
Unfortunately, most often it is not beautiful
outside in the UK.
We can say phrases like, "Oh, bit dreary today."
Dreary means dull, grey, little bit depressing.
Ugh. So dreary today.
One thing we possibly like doing more than talking
about the current weather
is talking about the future weather, what it might be like.
Our weather forecasts are hilariously inaccurate.
Hilarious. I don't know why we bother with them.
It says it will rain. It's glorious sunshine.
It says it'll be sunshine. It's a thunderstorm.
It snows.
We love talking about the weather forecast.
So we could say something like,
"Can you believe it's going to be 27 degrees this weekend?"
Or, "I can't believe it's going to rain all day tomorrow."
Well, my personal favourite,
"I've heard it's going to snow overnight."
There is nothing more exciting
than opening your window and seeing loads of snow,
unless you have somewhere to be.
Not exciting.
Okay, let's discuss alternatives for the question:
do you want to...
Asking someone if they want to do something.
Do you want to go for a coffee?
Do you want to have fish and chips tonight?
An informal but very British sounding alternative
is, do you fancy?
Do you fancy?
Do you fancy going for a coffee?
Do fancy fish and chips tonight?
Hear me say, "do you".
I almost say d'ya, d'ya.
D'ya fancy a coffee?
Do you fancy fish and chips tonight?
You could also replace "do you fancy"
with "what do you think about.."
What do you think about going for a coffee?
What do you think about having fish and chips tonight?
Finally, if you already made a decision about something
but you want to check that someone agrees with you,
you could say, "Any objections to fish and chips tonight?"
or, "Any objections to a coffee?"
Have you got any objection to a coffee?
And then you'll hope they say, "That'll be lovely,"
because you've already ordered them.
Let's move on to the question, do you agree?
Do you agree?
It's the easiest way to ask someone's opinion on something
but there are some really good alternatives.
We can say, "What do you think?"
or the really British one, "What do you reckon?"
What do you reckon?
I reckon that we shouldn't go.
Both of these are quite informal
but we do have some nice formal ones for formal situations,
such as "I'd love to hear your thoughts.
I'd love to hear your thoughts on this,"
or "I'm interested to know what you think about this idea."
What about changing the topic?
It's often one of the most awkward things that we have to do
second to ending a conversation,
which we'll talk about later.
Instead of saying, "Can I change the topic?"
or "Can we talk about something else?"
We could say something like, "I wanted to ask you about X."
I wanted to ask you about the new cafe in town.
Another really good one is "speaking of".
Speaking of.
If the other person mentioned something
that we could use to change the topic,
we could say, "Ah, speaking of that, what about this?"
Speaking of lunch, have you tried the new cafe in town?
Another option, "that reminds me..."
That reminds me, how's Julie?
You can also use the phrase "before I forget..."
Ah, before I forget, I must ask you this...
And ask something completely different.
Finally, you could say, "While I've got you here..."
While I've got you here,
I want to ask you about a new project.
You'll often hear that phrase used in business contexts.
The final conversation phrase is "goodbye".
We have some really good alternatives for this word.
One of the most common alternatives is "See you later."
If we're saying this informally,
we can shorten it to "See ya."
See you later. See ya.
But if you've been chatting to someone for too long
and you want to leave,
I have some really good examples.
One is, "I must be off."
Oh, I must be off, paired with looking at your watch.
Make sure you're actually wearing a watch,
'cause I keep doing that and I'm not wearing one
and it's a bit embarrassing.
Another, "I've got to run but it was great to see you,"
or "It's been lovely chatting but I need to shoot off."
These three phrases tell the other person
that you have somewhere else to be.
Of course, that doesn't need to be true,
but that secret can stay between you and me.
Another option you can use is,
"Let's catch up properly some time."
Meaning, I don't have enough time
to properly chat to you now,
let's do it another time.
In the office, people will often say,
"Right, let's get back to it," or "Let's get back to work."
British people will often slap their knees or slap the table
and say, "Right. Right, I've got to go,"
or "Right, I must get some work done."
So on that note,
right, I must get back to it.
I need to do some more work today,
and you have some more work to do as well.
You need to download the free PDF and take the quiz.
That's it for today's lesson.
I hope you enjoyed it, and I hope you learned something.
Don't forget to connect with me on all of my social media.
I've got my Instagram EnglishwithLucy, my English Instagram,
and @Lucy, my personal Instagram.
I've also got my website englishwithlucy.co.uk
where I've got a fantastic pronunciation tool.
It's a phonemic chart
and you can click on the phonemes
and hear me pronounce those phonemes
and words that contain those phonemes.
I've also got my vlogging channel, Lucy Bella,
where you can follow our lives here
in the English countryside.
And importantly, every single vlog is fully subtitled
so that you can use them for listening practise
and expanding your vocabulary.
You can also check out my English courses.
That's englishwithlucy.co.uk/courses.
There are lots there to choose from.
I will see you soon for another lesson.
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