15:53
What's up, global citizens? Welcome to another real life English lesson. And today, you're going to learn a simple stepbystep guide to keeping the conversation flowing in English and avoid getting stuck after the infamous words, "Hi, how are you?" And if you happen to be new here, hello, my name is Izzy. I'm an English learner just like you. And after a decade of teaching English, I decided to join Ethan and our other fluency coaches here who create these real life English lessons to share with you my firsthand experience, my real life experience speaking English as a non-native. Now, I feel fortunate for having made hundreds of friends in my life in the many jobs that I had early in my career. And of all these people
that I met, I was able to actually develop a friendship with them by doing the things that I'll talk about today. by knowing how to keep the conversation flowing in English. Let's get started. So, today we're addressing the biggest pain point that I know when it comes to developing communication skills in practice. That is how to get past the how hi, how are you question, right? Uh and people get stuck because usually like the idea of small talk is exactly that. like a it's it's superficial. It's small. But if you actually want to develop that into a real conversation, you need to go deeper, right? You need to get past that. So, how do you do that? Well, as I was saying earlier, I think I'm a little bit of a
conversationalist myself. You know, I always find myself like talking with different people and having these like longer talks. So, uh I thought about sharing with you all that experience today. And this is going to happen in two steps. So the first step is all about the magic of breaking the ice. Now the usual advice that you find online about breaking the ice comes in the form of questions just like how are you? Uh how's your day going? How's the weather? And I personally think these questions suck. I got to be honest. uh because all they do is put the listener and yourself in a situation where you feel like ah I've been through these through these conversations that they're not going anywhere and um it's not a
good feeling. So it doesn't make you excited about what's coming and know what's next. And in my experience, if you just say something more honest, more even surprising, more authentic, that's so much better. And it doesn't need to be a question. It could be a statement, you know. Um, and it's also a moment of vulnerability when you just go ahead and share something that's going on with you, uh, or, uh, your opinion on something that you both are experiencing at that moment. That makes it a lot more personal. So, I'm going to give you some examples here to make this a lot more concrete. And the formula here, if there is any formula to this, as you meet this person, you're going to look around and just feel your feelings, you know, about
a certain fact of something that you're experiencing. And then you're going to also think like what's your opinion about that fact. Let me give you this example. So, I was at a party last weekend and I noticed that of the food that was available, know the the drinks in and the food, uh, the sweet ones, none were sugar-free. Obviously, I mean, who people normally don't care about that, but right now I'm not eating sugar. Uh, so naturally, you know, I felt that it's like, oh man. Uh, and uh, when I feel things, usually when there's people around me, I sometimes use that just for making conversation. Uh, and that's something that you can do. You know, it's a fact that there's no sugar-free options
there. That's a fact. Great. What's your opinion about that if you feel strongly about it, you know? So, if you just feel your feelings and if you observe yourself, uh, what's going through your mind? That's great topics for conversation a lot of times, right? Uh, I feel like we don't share enough. So, that's one example, but I could give you more examples. So, when I was in Portugal, I was visiting Lisbon and some other towns with Ethan and some friends from work. I was I remember being on the train by myself uh when I was going to the airport back and there was a person sitting next to me that, you know, they didn't seem like uh unfriendly, you know. So, I just felt like uh giving it
a try because I was impressed by the views, you know, everything that I was seeing. And I didn't know that you could actually cross an entire country in just like one train ride practically, you know, so quickly. And um that was a thought that was running in my head. I was like, why not share this with this person like out of nowhere, you know? And I didn't even say hello or anything. I just looked at them. It's like, you know, like I didn't know you could cross the country in just a single. I said that in Portuguese. I mean, Portugal, right? And I'm Brazilian, so I speak Portuguese. And then that was enough for
opening up the conversation because that's the point of this first step. the icebreaker when done right is that it opens up the conversation and it helps you gain momentum. It helps you strike up a conversation the right way. It's a nice phrase by the way to strike up a conversation is exactly this, right? It's kind of visual like it's striking, you know, like so make it striking, make it unexpected and say something that feels honest and real. Hey guys, let me quickly interrupt this lesson to ask you a question. Do you feel like you can understand what I'm saying? What Ethan says in these lessons, but you can't speak quite like we do? You know that you can understand
all the words, but when it's time for you to use them, they don't come to you. Well, if that happens, it's just because all of these words, they just exist in your passive vocabulary. So, in order for you to transfer these words to your active vocabulary, you need to use them. You need to practice. And that's why we created the real life app so you can master all the key expressions, the useful expressions that we use in these lessons in a way that's super convenient. You can do it in 10 to 15 minutes a day. And I want to invite you right now to try the app for free by clicking the link in the description below. It'll take you directly to this lesson over there. And I'll see you on
the other side. Let's move on out to the second step of this two-step guide. Once you're past this first step, now you want to be an explorer. I think this is so great, this whole mindset of being an explorer that I actually brought it to our lessons here with Ethan. Uh we were chatting about a year ago, I think, about um you know, how to make great lessons for you guys. We work hard, you know, to create these. And I realized like maybe the mindset that I'm having here when Ethan is presenting something, you know, an idea of his or his story of his is wrong because who am I in this conversation? And I
noticed like I need to be an explorer, right? I need to be curious. That's a great value to have as well. Not just in conversation but like in any situation like to be ready to learn you know to you may have your own convictions but what else you like what is something that you don't know about who the person you're talking to or the situation. So being an explorer imagine yourself exploring the territory just helps a lot and this is what you can do in a conversation once it opens up you can ask all these questions. So, for example, um last year in December, I went to a concert of this band that I'm a huge fan of, probably my favorite band called Dream Theater. It's a rock band.
And I had never seen them live. So, I actually flew to Rio. I'm nowhere close to Rio de Janeiro. I'm really far. Uh it's like a 3-hour flight, I think. But I went there because it's like I don't know if I would have any other chance. It's a 30-year-old band, I think. So I was in line waiting to get you know into the concert hall and there were all these people there uh waiting with me. Now obviously in that kind of situation the topic for the conversation is easier right we're all there uh and I know there's one thing in common among all those people there right that is we like this band uh and by the way that's another really great thing about the first step that is you're sharing something that will make you feel more human to other
person so they feel like they're more like you in the same sense that in the second step we are taking advantage of these similarities and these values we share these stories we share these experiences to connect even more. So, there's so many questions that I you know, I had to ask and topics to approach. For example, uh what song do you think they're going to play tonight? Like what's your favorite song and do you think they're going to play it? Or their drummer, the old drummer's back, you know, that's so amazing. There's like many stories and gossip around that too. Or even like traveling to the
location of the show. For me it was a very long trip but I know other people there they traveled by bus you know it's just huge adventure and we sh we shared our travel stories too or even uh what when was your first show. So you see there's this range of questions that you can ask um that allow you to explore the territory. The territory is the dream theater show. Great. What is there to know about it? What is there to know about this person in regards to that topic? And the cool thing is also that you can connect topics from one to another and make the conversation just go really a different direction. Um can say that's like going off on a tangent when you are like kind of escaping that uh
known territory into something that was not planned, right? So do that. It makes conversations great. Like that's one of the things that we love about podcasts, right? that when it's just like it doesn't follow a script and you make a conversation like that often times I think when we feel like oh man this conversation was so great I wish I had recorded it and made it into a podcast is exactly because you were just wild wildly exploring it I would say right uh so that's my tip there when it comes to what you do after you break the ice now if you want to think about a formula for this too is you can ask questions. It's one thing. I just explain how to do it. Or you can just
continue sharing more and that'll allow them to ask you more questions, right? It's kind of like a game, but it's not a competitive game. You're not trying to impress this person, right? If you actually try impress them, you're going to be in your head. So, don't just when uh do you want to win playing this game? Be vulnerable. That's winning. So, it's not a competitive game. It's a collaborative game. You share one thing, the other person shares another thing and you just keep going and it's fun. And by the time you're done, you're just more close to this person. Maybe you've made a friend. So, this is what I do in most conversations I get into with strangers that I really want to connect
with. Now, there's one thing that you need to be cautious when you get to this part of the conversation. That is you don't want to be too talkative, right? I mean unless the other person is like listening and you feel they're engaged. We'll talk about that in just a little bit how to really understand if the person is engaged but in most cases you want to make it more balanced, right? Like uh it's again it's collaboration in getting to know each other. So remember that you have uh two ears and one mouth. So we need to use them proportionally. That means maybe listen twice as much as you talk. But then if you do that, the other person is going to be talking twice as much as they speak. So you see,
but it's just like something a mindset or principle to keep in mind that maybe it's more about the other person than it's about you. s principle. Before we continue, I just want to tell you that if you feel that your problem with having natural conversations in English is with either vocabulary, that you don't have enough vocabulary, that you don't know the words that you need to use, or that you're just simply afraid of speaking English, I'm going to be leaving links in the description below in the show notes to two lessons that we have already created on these two separate topics. So, click the link once you're done watching this lesson if you feel that these are issues that you
usually go through. Now, let's get into some frequently asked questions that I see a lot that I hear a lot from students, from learners, friends who are learning English. Uh, they ask me these things and I decided to compile all of these. And to start, I have a question here from our producer in the studio, Tago. He's an English learner just like you, just like me. And he had this question. How what can you do to not be in your head, you know, to not get anxious and just like be thinking too much about what you're going to say? You know, how's the other person viewing me? How what do they think of me? All these
questions that don't do anything for you. How can you prevent that from happening? Well, I think this is all about mindset. I could give you formulas, right? I could give you maybe exercises even. But the best thing in my experience that you can do to change this is just like really stopping and just reflecting thinking like what am I doing here? What's the point of this? Am I am I trying to impress this person? Just be honest with yourself. Like if you are why do you care? Like why is that so important? And that's going to allow you to change your convictions. Like change what you the reason why you do things. Once you change that, everything else changes, right? Once we connect to a different
purpose of why we do things, it's natural that it'll allow you to just like change the way you behave. It's much easier to change the reality of things by changing your beliefs rather than just trying to force a certain action or behavior. So, what is the mentality here? What is the mindset that you need to adopt? It's the one that we were just talking about is exploring. It's a connecting over perfection, right? Connection over perfection. It's the idea that this person is a human being just like you. Uh that you are not the center of the universe also, right? That's why I was saying you have two ears only one mouth and make the other person the center of your universe at least for that moment and that'll be
great because people love talking about themselves. So they'll feel like they really connected with you and they did and you too if you have empathy as well. That's even another question that I had saved here is I heard that if you are more empathic or empathetic that's the key and yeah like once you learn what the person about what the person's going through and if you already know start the conversation from there. Why uh um not talk about the maybe the even like the elephant in the room you know maybe they're going through something really difficult like a tough time.
Talk about it first. It'll address that. they'll feel more respected, you know, and you also if there's something that you can help them by doing, you can get into that too. U if you know, if you don't know, it'll feel like you don't care. Uh so I think empathy is huge. If you know, and if you don't know, get to know and uh then you realize what you need to realize. And about that, uh another person asked me about active listening. uh they're asking me like how to develop active listening and if that's at all important for all of this and as we were saying yes um it is important and what it means is being present is and it's something that you can change also with the mindset. Do you want to again do you
want to impress this person or do you want to learn about them? Do you want to maybe prove that you're right if you're debating something or do you want to learn what this person learn something new so maybe you can grow a little bit with the conversation? When is it that you win? What's your victory status? Is it when you in the case of an argument like a debate is it when you prove that you're right uh and you walk away um not having learned anything or maybe that you're proven wrong but now you've grown you know just think about that and I think all these things help you shift from being in a place where you just want to talk to a place where maybe let's listen and not just listen but pay close attention
because I don't want to miss anything. Focus. Look in their eyes. And the more you do it, I think the more you become capable of it. And that's also connected to body language, right? Because if you're not looking at the person, it's just looking away. Like right here, if I look away, if you're watching this lesson, um like it's harder to connect with me, right? Because I'm like I'm shy or something. Look at the camera, Izzy. Look at the person's eye. Uh and that's the first step I would say of um having really great body language. And there's a there's an important thing that I would say that uh I was I referred to this earlier about noticing when other
person wants to leave you know they are not engaged they don't care uh or they have something that urgent that they need to do. If you have empathy, true empathy, just be aware, you know, you could ask them literally, hey, uh, do you need to be somewhere? I'm sorry. U, that's that's better, you know, because it'll give them that chance. But you can see in their body language, too, you know, maybe they're they're they're just like a moving more than they should, you know? uh um they're feeling like restless when they're they're not rested, you know? They're they're just agitated or maybe their body is pointing to another direction that's not you or their feet even and you're not noticing these things because you're so into what you're saying. And that's
fine, I guess. But uh do you want to be that person? Would you want somebody to do that to you? And you don't want to be rude, so you stay there. So don't be that person. People like you more because of that, you know, uh and uh they'll respect you more and that's what it's all about. And the final question that I have here is what is the most common mistake people make when trying to keep the conversation flowing. I've already touched on this like it was the very first thing I said that is they started with how are you doing or how is it going when it was not necessary. If you just say it to be polite but you already have what you want to share, great. But don't start without knowing
what you wanted to say, you know, what you want to talk about. Uh if you're purposefully like if you're uh deliberately trying to connect with somebody, you saw them at a party or something. My example was that uh there were no sugar-free options at the party, but maybe the music is loud. Maybe it's your vibe that you know you wish it was like a cooler party, you know, more chill. Um, and if you see that a person is also has that vibe of like being more chill, maybe you could say it's like, "Hey, um, I know it's not my favorite type of party because it's like very loud the music here and it's love, you know, to talk to people more, you know, and then maybe they would say, you know, let's let's go to another place where we can actually talk and
just feel your feelings and say what you want to say. But before you engage, know what you want to say. Know how you're feeling. Be aware." So that's the most common problem that I see is like people just start conversations without knowing what is it. They don't even know what's going on in their minds or their heart themselves. And you know what? I could go on and on about this topic. It's uh one of my favorites since I've started doing these lessons uh last year with Ethan and SA as well. It's become this passion of mine to learn more about myself and bring all that ability to just have conversation to casually talk with people. Bring that here in a way that also feels natural. The point of these lessons is exactly to make them conversational
casual just like we are in real life. Uh so you can experience all of this real life English too. you know, if this was like completely scripted and everything, it'd be difficult for me to actually come across as like natural, right? Uh, and it's been a long journey, I would say, and like changing my mindset, you know, so to become more authentic and not be in my head even. And all these things I said was because that's my experience. So, it's not I wasn't born this way, right? This is something that you can actually develop. Um if you know if you understand the concept of growth mindset you'll know that you know I don't need to be innately skilled in things meaning you don't have to be like born with
abilities you develop them over time you choose and you work on them and that's it for today's lesson thank you so much for joining me and if you haven't downloaded the real life app yet as I said earlier do it right now. Uh all of these lessons that we do here, they come with so much vocabulary that if you master, you can speak more like me, like Ethan naturally. And that's a great also I would say a great piece of advice for improving your conversation skills. You need more vocabulary, right? If you don't know how to express yourself, how you're going to do this. So I didn't talk about this today because it wasn't the focus of the lesson. It was implicit. But please do. If you want to
connect with people more, you can start right now by downloading the real life app and practicing with all the expressions they learned today. And as we say in all of our lessons, remember that no matter what divides us, that which unites us is far greater. 1 2 3. A yeah. All right. Picture this. You're in a big meeting at work. Everyone's talking fast. Ideas are flying around. Suddenly, your boss turns to you. What do you think? Your heart races. Your mind goes blank. You open your mouth and words come out slowly, awkward, not quite what you meant.
