How to make suggestions in English

Hello, I'm Jade. What we're talking about today is suggestions -- giving advice to people.

And we have one question to work with, which is: "What should I do when visiting London?"

Well, I am a Londoner, I can give you some advice about that. So we'll look at the grammar

structures you can use for giving advice, and a little bit later, some phrases that

you can use if you need to give somebody advice. So, the first way to do it:

"You should go on the London Eye." And in this grammar structure, what we're

using is: "should" + bare infinitive. "Should", bare infinitive, and then you can just finish

the sentence. Here's another option:

"You should walk along the river." Well, you can do that anywhere, not specifically

London. Let's take a look now at the second way to

give suggestions: "How about" - you can start a sentence with:

"How about" - "How about going for a stroll?" A stroll is a very slow, relaxed kind of walk.

Actually, I do really like walking around places, the countryside and the city, so I

would recommend that. When we're using: "How about", the grammar is different. We use verb

+ "ing" and the other word for that is the gerund form. "How about", verb + "ing".

So: "How about going for a stroll?"

Or: "How about watching a musical?"

A lot of people do that when they come to London, they go to see... they go to the theatre

and watch a show. Suggestion number three for grammar:

"Why don't you..." "Why don't you", we use a negative to stress the great suggestion

that we're making, "Why don't you go to Madame Tussaud's[SM1][JK2]?"

A very popular tourist destination in London that, personally, I just don't get. Why would

you pay to go and look at wax work models of random famous people from anywhere in the

world that don't have anything to do with London? Sorry, if you like that. I just personally

don't get it. "Why don't you go to", if we're using: "Why don't you", we have the subject:

"Why don't you". So it might be: "Why doesn't he", or: "Why don't they", and then bare infinitive.

"Why doesn't he go to Madame Tussaud's", for example, you can say that.

And the fourth structure for making a suggestion is the second conditional and we usually use

this phrase: "If I were you" - "If I were you", I'm imagining

me being you visiting London - "If I were you, I would have tea at The Ritz."

The Ritz is a famous hotel in London. You can go for afternoon tea, you can have champagne

and scones or scones, and you can have a lovely time at The Ritz. So, how do we make the second

conditional? We have the past simple, but you can just learn this phrase: "If I were

you," followed by: "would" and bare infinitive, "would", bare infinitive there.

And, yeah, there are four different ways to make suggestions in grammar. When we come

back, I've got some phrases for you, you can also use those phrases to make suggestions.

It's time to look at the phrases for making suggestions. So, here's the question:

"What should we do tonight?"

You might say... If someone's making a suggestion, most of the time, people don't just like suddenly

jump in with their desire, the thing that they really want to do; might be quite indirect.

So, and sometimes people say something like this:

"I'm easy." It means: "You decide, I'd rather you decide."

Or: "It's up to you."

It's the same, means: "Okay, I want to do something, but you can decide for me." Or

even if they don't mean that, they might say that first of all and let the discussion about

what to do happen a little bit more. Next phrase:

"Would you mind if we stay home?" Just being a little bit boring, or tired,

or not feeling well, we don't want to do anything. "Would you mind", it's like: "I know you want

to do something, but would you mind if tonight we don't do anything?"

Next one: "Would you mind having a night in?"

When we're not using: "if", then we need to use the gerund after "mind", "Would you mind".

"Would you mind having a night in?" - "A night in" is opposite to: "A night out". For a night

out, you go to a club or... Or out for dinner, or you go and play chess; whatever you do.

So a night in, you probably stay home, watch TV, watch a film, maybe have a bottle of wine

or something. I don't know what you do, but that's a night in.

Next phrase: "I wouldn't mind going to the pub."

Well, now it's a negative. What this means is... It's quite indirect. It means... It

actually means: "I want to go to the pub." But we use: "I wouldn't mind". "Oh, of all

my options, I wouldn't mind going to the pub." Next example:

"Let's go ice skating." I love ice skating. I would make this suggestion.

It's very direct: "Let's go ice skating." I'm... I tend to be quite direct in my language;

I'd feel quite comfortable saying: "Let's go ice skating." And if the other person said:

"Oh, I can't ice skate, I'm not good at it." I was like... I would be like: "Oh, okay.

Do something else." I wouldn't be upset if someone refused my suggestion. But some people,

they can get embarrassed or something, so those kinds of people sometimes use indirect

language. They might say: "Would you mind if we go ice skating?"

And our last example. If... This one's indirect as well:

"What do you feel like doing?" So you're not sure; you haven't got any ideas,

so you can say to the other person: "What do you feel like doing?" And you can go from

there. So, yeah, this is how to make suggestions

about plans and social things to do. What you can do now is go to the website. Go to

the website, find this quiz. And yeah, you can practice all these different structures

we looked at. Make sure you've got all those phrases fixed in your head so that next time

you want to make a suggestion to a friend or offer to do something together, you've

got all the language that you need. Also, I want to say: please subscribe. If you like

my videos, you can subscribe to my engVid channel and also my personal channel because

I've got two... I've got two YouTube channels because one's not enough for me. And, yeah,

I'm finished now; I'm not going to say anything else. So, see you, see you.