How to Continue and Extend Conversations Naturally - English Speaking Skills Lesson
Hi everyone! Thanks for joining me for another blog post! Today we will be having a short speaking skills lesson.
How do you feel about having extended conversations in English? Do you find it challenging? Starting a conversation may be easy, but if you are unsure of how to continue it and how to extend it naturally, you won't be able to practise and improve your English speaking skills!
In this communication lesson, I will share a lot of practical advice so that you can extend your conversations with people you know well and with people you have just met. You will also learn lots of helpful phrases which you can use in different situations and for various conversation topics. Don’t worry - continuing and extending a conversation is a lot easier than you think - watch the video and find out for yourself!
Click on the video below to watch and learn, and read the transcript underneath to check your understanding and revise today's speaking topic. Also, at the bottom of this post, you'll find a useful summary of the most important points to remember.
I hope that you enjoy this lesson - feel free to get in touch if you have any questions, I'm always happy to help.
:) Nicole
How to Continue and Extend Conversations Naturally - English Speaking Skills Lesson
From The Sydney English Teacher Youtube Channel
TRANSCRIPT OF THE ABOVE VIDEO: How to Continue and Extend Conversations Naturally - English Speaking Skills Lesson
Hi everyone, its Nicole again. And I've had a lot of people ask me about how to continue conversations.
You know, it's all well and good asking questions and starting conversations, but we do want to extend those conversations as long as possible and make them as natural as possible too. So, I thought I'd just give you a few quick tips to help you with that area and to make sure that you do feel confident to extend your conversations and to speak for a longer period of time.
Look, it is a little awkward, I suppose, when you are starting a conversation with someone you don't know because we don't know very much about them. So, we can't really naturally extend that conversation, but it's all about the questions that you ask and it's all about listening to what they have to say very very carefully, and reacting to what they have said.
So, look, in my situation, what I usually do is I listen to what they've got to say and I say, ‘oh that's really interesting’. ‘Really’. ‘I didn't know that, tell me more’ and you're basically showing an interest.
Then, if they say something that you're not sure about or you've never really talked about before, you can say ‘Wow, really, tell me a bit more about that’. ‘How do you do blah blah blah?’ So, you’re really wanting to drag out, I suppose, a particular point in their conversation and to get more details, more information about that.
So, you know, if they're talking about their job, and they say that they work at McDonald's, why not, you could say ‘oh really? I love McDonald's I won't tell you how often I go there, but it is a little bit too often! How long have you been working there?’ ‘And why did you decide to get a job at McDonald's? Wow, oh, that's really interesting’. ‘So was this your career path from the very beginning? You said that you started when you were pretty young. Did you think that you'd stay at McDonald's?’ ‘Oh, that's so funny’. Okay, um, ‘are there any particular, I don't know, training programs or anything at McDonald's that allow you to move up the levels?’
So, can you see there, what I'm doing is we're taking one particular point and we're extracting that information, and I’m asking more and more questions and reacting to that.
So, you know, things like ‘yes’, sound effects, ‘mmm’. ‘oh’, ‘wow’, things like that are really great. Yeah and always things like ‘really’ ‘interesting’ that makes a really really big difference.
So that's one of my tips. I’m more than happy to give you other tips, but I thought that that one particular one would really help, so, go out, have some conversations with people, listen really really carefully to what they're saying, and then extend that conversation by focusing on a little point they've said and dragging it out and asking for extra information and reacting to it, and I guarantee you that that is what will make your conversations more natural.
Anyway, have a great day. Thanks for listening, and I hope this helped. Bye!
How was the learning video? Did it help you understand how to extend conversations and to make them more natural? I hope so!
Let me summarise the most important points for you to remember:
-Listen and show an interest: ‘Oh that's really interesting’. ‘Really’. ‘I didn't know that, tell me more.’
-Get more details about a particular point in the conversation - ask more questions and react: 'Wow, really, tell me a bit more about that’. ‘How do you do blah blah blah?’
-Say yes, and make sound effects to show you are listening: ‘yes’, ‘mmm’, ‘oh’, ‘wow’, ‘really’ , ‘interesting’
That's all you need to know to extend conversations naturally - it's not that hard is it? Now it's your turn to go and practise - have a conversation with someone and try to make it as long as possible by asking lots of questions and reacting naturally with short words and sound effects - have fun!
I hope that this video has been helpful and enjoyable for you and I look forward to teaching you lots more speaking techniques in the near future.
Thanks for taking the time to learn with me, it is a great pleasure helping you!
:) Nicole
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