5 Advanced English Conversation Tips (See #4 for My Embarrassing Secret)
for more advanced English conversation
or good evening, depending on where you,
in this big wide world of ours right now.
It is very much morning here in Tokyo.
when you have your English conversations?
and that is what I'm here today,
Here are five tips, five things
that you can do to sound more advanced
in your English conversations.
are not advanced because they learned advanced English,
but because they have an advanced command
A big mistake that a lot of people make
is thinking that in order to be advanced,
to have advanced English conversations,
they have to be having conversations
using big, complicated, clever sounding words
and difficult grammar patterns,
but this doesn't make you advanced.
People who come across as extraordinary speakers
of English are people who have
not a basic command of advanced English,
but have an advanced command over basic English.
Point number two, be interesting.
This is another thing that people miss,
but in order to speak a language well,
You need the language, of course.
You need the phrases and expressions
that you need to express the things
if you're gonna speak the language.
And yes, using the language in interesting ways
is an important part of being advanced
in a moment in points three, four and five.
But no matter how many interesting phrases
and expressions, good bits of language
that you have, if you don't have
who does nothing but sits around
then well, you ain't gonna be interesting anyway.
Point number three, make your speaking pop.
One of the things, no the only thing, of course,
but one of the things that really shows you up
as somebody who is speaking English
is that you may be overusing dry, boring, stale language.
In an way, it's understandable
because as a second language speaker,
we get so caught up with worrying
about the surface level stuff.
Am I making a grammatically correct sentence?
Is this the right word in this context?
Is my accent difficult to understand?
We get so caught up with these things
that we tend to default to safe language,
but safe language is often quite dry
from Extraordinary English Speaker,
and it's about one of our regular characters, John,
He needs to take a bottle of wine with him,
so, he's just run to the off licence
Since him and his flight mate, Alec,
have had a particularly tough day,
he bought a second one to take back
and try a glass, John realises
that the wine that he's just bought is nasty.
Now, in this kind of situation,
you might try the wine and say,
"oh, this doesn't taste good."
"Oh, this is not a good wine."
Instead, John tries the wine and says,
"mmm, this is a cheeky little number, isn't it?"
"you mean it tastes like old socks?"
Oh, this is a cheeky little number, isn't it?
that is not only more interesting
but conjures up more vivid images
Closely connected to this then, number four.
In the same way as one of the things
that shows you up as a non-native speaker
is that you overuse dry, boring language.
Non-native speakers, people learning English
tend to be way too oversensitive to
the grammatical accuracy of the things
We're so caught up with worrying about,
am I speaking incorrect English?
Am I looking stupid by screwing up the language,
that we default to this safe language
to speak in very grammatical, mistake free ways.
don't really give a shit about that stuff.
And we often purposely manipulate the language
and use purposely ungrammatical language to
emphasise things to make what we're saying
more interesting and to really highlight points.
You may not know this about me
and this is a little bit embarrassing,
but I am a secret Sex and the City fan.
You probably just want to unsubscribe
but check out this clip from Season one, Episode 10
- I'm in total ovary overload.
- Here, this one says sale, half off.
- Sweetie, I just spent $395.00 on a pair
of open toed Gucci's last week.
This is not the place to be frugal.
- Alright.
I had a very reassuring moment once
- Oh.
(woman speaking over PA system)
- I don't think I'd be very good at this.
- Do you see what Miranda did there?
is that Carrie thinks she might be pregnant
and she's gonna take a pregnancy test,
because she can't decide whether she
would be happy or not happy if it turns out
What if I am pregnant, she says.
Clearly, this is ungrammatical English.
The correct English here would be,
Well, yes, that would, technically speaking,
and it would also lack the same kind
of emphasis and impact as the way
Both of these points, three and four,
are very much advanced English conversation technique
and practise to get good at them
and getting them wrong is just gonna confuse
and make you seem like you're really crap at English.
But again, with time, practise
and while learning, you can get good at them,
and this is, incidentally, or not,
be talking about this, something I'm
going to cover in immense detail
Mastering the Art of Advanced English Conversation event,
It's a free hour, also, event,
at a beautiful little hotel in Farringdon, London.
We're gonna go deep into the art
of an advanced English conversation,
Everything that you need to know
about speaking extraordinary English
in English, well, conversation.
are gonna get a nice, thick manual
to take away with them that has
of everything I'm gonna talk about,
of language, examples of phrases and expressions,
ways that you can actually do these things
You're gonna get a complete recording
of the event to take away with you,
so that you can review as many times
as you want, and you are going
to need to review because we're gonna be covering
a lot of very advanced stuff in this seminar,
and you're gonna get a 30 minute follow up call
with me on Skype so that if you have any questions
about actually implementing the stuff
and getting good at doing this stuff
in your own conversations, you
can do that and that's quite a bonus
But, people who come to the event
are gonna get that thrown in for free.
For more information, click on the link
in the description or head over
Number five, if you thought points three
and four were a little bit advanced,
you might wanna set number five aside
for now because this is one of
the most advanced things that I've got
to talk about and something which we're
at Small Talk Superhero, as well as
in next week's Extraordinary English Speakers lesson.
Members, pay attention to that.
Empathy points are what I call
the things that we say in conversation,
often subconsciously, most people,
at least native speakers aren't doing
this consciously, but the things
that we say in conversation to show
the person, I understand you.
To build rapport with that person.
in next week's EES lesson, two
of our regular characters, Tacomy
and Sasha, Tacomy and Sasha know each other,
but they work in different departments
at the same company and it's been
a couple of months since they saw each other.
But, the both come out of different meeting rooms
at the same time and bump into each other
They get chatting, catching up.
Tacomy replies, "Great, we've been busy
This is the first empathy point
You are familiar with this kind
of situation, right? Aren't you?
Builds rapport, tells the other person,
my life is not so different to yours.
Later in the conversation, Tacomy talks
about how expensive furniture is.
"I know the feeling," responds Sasha.
I've been in the same kind of situation.
Sasha then goes on to give Tacomy
to get some more affordable furniture
and the conversation flows from there.
But the point is, we are constantly slipping
these little phrases and expressions,
these chunks of language into our conversations
to help build empathy and rapport.
Five tips for advanced English conversation.
Know that advanced English does not
an advanced English speaker make.
Be interesting, make your speaking pop.
and slip empathy points into your conversations.
Remember, we're doing Small Talk Superhero,
Mastering the Art of Advanced English Conversation
on June ninth, live in London.
of the time of recording this.
Once they're gone, they are gone.
Cuz' the event room that we're using
This, then, is me, Julian Northbook,
handing the baton over to you.
about speaking extraordinarily well
but regardless, I'll see you,
same time, same place tomorrow
in the next exciting, Doing English, Julian Northbrook,
whatever you wanna call them, video.
If you're interesting in joining us,
at Small Talk Superhero, Mastering
the Art of Advanced English Conversation,
about what the event is, click
And if you are worried cuz' you're always stuck