5 Useful Linking Words | Vocabulary Lesson | Story Telling

22,413 views ・ 2018-01-09

Eat Sleep Dream English


Please double-click on the English subtitles below to play the video.

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Have you ever been chatting to someone and their story goes on and on and on and on until
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you want to cry? Don't be that person guys! Here are five super useful phrases that you
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can use to shorten your stories but still keep them really interesting for the listener.
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All that is coming right up.
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Sometimes when we are telling a story or we are explaining something we don't want to
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give all the details. Maybe we think that the listener will get really bored or maybe
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we don't actually know any other information and so we are trying to pretend that we do.
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So we use phrases to shorten our stories and our explanations. The class example is 'to
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cut a long story short.' And it means exactly what it says. We have a long story and we
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use this phrase to cut it so it's shorter. For example 'Mate what happened to head?'
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'Yeah, it really hurts. Yeah, crazy story. It was when you were away. You were away last
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week. To cut a long story short, I had an accident while playing football. Yeah, really
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painful. So what are we doing here? Well, we are speeding up the story and we are removing
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any information that we don't think is important. I guess that's because we want to make the
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story quicker we don't want to bore the listener. So we use this phrase to cut a long story
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short to get rid of any information that's a bit boring and we can get to the end of
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the story a bit quicker. When we are listing things and we don't want to list everything
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we can cut the list by using a couple of useful phrases. Our first one is 'an so on' for example
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'She really wants to improve her grammar, her vocabulary, her listening and so on.'
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So the and so on is replacing all the other things in the list that could be reading,
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writing, you get it right? So that's a really useful phrase to cut a list that's very long.
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Similarly we can also use 'and so forth' for example 'Have you bought every thing for the
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party like the drinks, the food and so forth?' So there and so forth is replacing the rest
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of the list that could be the balloons, the plates, the knives and forks whatever else
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you need for a party. And rather cleverly we use both of these phrases and we put them
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together to make one phrase 'and so on and so forth'. Nice! 'I love visiting Thailand.
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I love the food, the music, the culture and so on and so forth.' So and so on and so forth
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is and so on and so forth put them together, you've an extra long sentence. You could use
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any of those to do exactly the same thing. Choose whichever one you want. Another phrase
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that we use to do exactly the same thing is et cetera. Now you'll very often see it in
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written English etc. and then the full stop but also in spoken English we use it as well.
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Often twice so 'Et cetera, et cetera' Let's put that into an example 'You've got to visit
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London Zoo. They've got lions, tigers, monkeys et cetera et cetera.' So the et cetera et
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cetera is just naming other zoo animals like elephants or giraffes or what ever it is.
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So it's another phrase we use to cut a list. Our final phrase is a really good one and
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it's one that has this meaning 'I don't need to say this because we all know this but I'm
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going to say it anyway' and that phrase is 'needless to say'. So we use this phrase just
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before saying something that everybody knows but I'm going to say it anyway. Let's use
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an example. 'Did you hear that Sarah is going to the Caribbean? Needless to say she won't
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need my ski jacket that i got her.' Ok did you hear that Sarah is going to the Caribbean,
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well what do we know about the Caribbean? It's hot, it's sunny. Ok, so needless to say
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she won't need the ski jacket that I got her. Alright, so I'm saying obviously in the Caribbean
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you don't need to wear ski jackets because they are warm and they are used for skiing,
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right? So she won't need it, now what I've done there is I have put the phrase 'needless
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to say she won't need the ski jacket that I got her.' So why would we use this phrase?
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Why, if we don't need to say this sentence, why are we even using this phrase. Well, sometimes
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people like to state the obvious, so that's one thing. People like to say things that
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we all know. Maybe to show that they know it or just because they want to say something.
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I don't know! Another reason is that maybe you want to to do it for emphasis. We want
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to do it to emphasise this point just even more than it already is. So there could be
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a few reasons why you use this phrase. But yeah we use it when something is really obvious
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but we are going to say it anyway. 'I just heard that Tony had a car accident. Needless
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to say he's not coming in today.' So there he's had an accident and clearly it's obvious
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to everyone that because he's had an accident you know, he can't work, he can't come to
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work today so I'm saying it so that everyone knows. Needless to say he's not coming to
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work today. So there maybe you are doing it for emphasis just to emphasise to everyone
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you know this is an obvious thing but just to make it clear so that everybody knows and
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we are certain everyone knows he's not coming to work today. Eat Sleep Dreamers how was
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that for you? I hope you understood all of those. What I'd love right now is for you
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to try and use one in the comments below, ok? So maybe write a list and use 'and so
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on' or 'and so forth' and yeah I'll come in and have a look and correct it if it needs
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correcting. If you want to use 'to cut a long story short' use that as well, ok? So hopefully
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you've found those really useful guys. Really nice phrases to keep your stories short and
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keep your listeners interested. if you enjoyed that guys please give it a big thumbs up,
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make sure you share it with anyone you know that loves learning English and of course
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make sure you subscribe to this channel so that you get every lesson that I do. I do
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new videos every Tuesday and every Friday helping you take your English to the next
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level. This is Tom the chief dreamer, saying goodbye.
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