EASY ENGLISH CONVERSATION: How to tell a story in English

Hello. My name is Emma, and in today's video,

I am going to teach you how to tell a story

in English. This is a very important conversation

skill because a lot of the times when we see

our friends or our family or coworkers, we

often tell stories. You might talk about your

weekend and tell a story about something funny

that happened to you, or maybe you want to

talk about something funny from your past or

something scary. So, we often tell stories

in conversation. So, let me teach you how you can tell a story in English. So, let's

get started.

There are different ways to introduce a story

in conversation. So, a lot of the times, we

actually will use an expression, and that

shows the listener that we are going to tell

a story. It's almost like a signal. So, when

you hear somebody say these things, you know,

okay, a story is coming. They are about to

say a story. So, let's look at some of these

different ways to start a story in conversation.

This is an example of something my father

says all the time in English. He always says,

"Did I ever tell you about the time when _____

happened?" So, this can be many different

things. "Did I ever tell you about the time

when I got in trouble at school?" "Did I ever

tell you about the time when I met your mother?"

"Did I ever tell you about the time when the

storm of the century happened?" Okay? So,

there's a lot of different ways you can introduce

a story. This is a very common way. "Did I ever tell you about the time when _____?"

You might also hear somebody say this, "Oh,

that reminds me. That reminds me of when _____

happened. That reminds me." We usually use this when someone is telling us something

and it reminds us of a story. So, they're saying something and suddenly we think of

a story from our own experience. So, maybe somebody is talking about maybe something

from their childhood, and maybe they're talking

about soccer, and I go, "Oh, that reminds

me of when I was a child and I used to play

soccer." And then I'll probably tell a story.

So, "that reminds me" is a common way to introduce a story.

You might also hear this, "Let me tell you

about... Let me tell you about the time when

I got really scared. Let me tell you about

the time when I was on a roller coaster. Let

me tell you about the time when I went to

China and my experiences there." So, we often

use "let me tell you about" as an introduction to a story.

You might also say something to somebody like,

"You'll never guess what happened." This is

a great introduction to get the listener interested

in what you are going to say. "You'll never

guess what happened." And then you tell something

interesting that just happened. "You'll never

guess what happened." You might actually

just say something like, "Oh, I have a funny

story for you." This is common, too. Or, "I have a story for you." So, if it's funny,

you might use this. If not, you might just

say, "I have a story for you." So, these are

all common ways to start telling stories in conversation.

Now, let's learn a little bit more about how

to tell stories in English. So, the next thing

I want to tell you about telling a story in English is you need to be careful about

the length of a story. Telling stories is

very cultural. So, in some cultures, we might

tell very long stories, whereas in other cultures,

we might typically tell shorter stories. In

English, people often have a shorter attention

span, so they prefer stories to be on the

shorter side, unless it's a really good story.

So, the reason I'm telling you this is it's

important when you are telling a story to pay attention to the listener. You want to

look at the listener and look at their cues.

Are they yawning? Are they looking at their

watch? That would be rude, but maybe they're

doing that. Are they not even looking at you?

By looking at what the listener is doing, that can actually help you improve your own

storytelling, because you don't want your stories to be too long and you don't want

them to be too short. There's a good amount of

time you might tell a story. So, in English,

again, usually we prefer shorter stories to longer stories.

The next thing I wanted to tell you about

telling stories in English is in conversation,

we often use signal words. So, what are signal

words? Well, they're words that tell us where

the story is going, or maybe they tell us

the sequence of events. What happened first?

What happened next? Then what happened? So, to improve your storytelling, I recommend

using signal words. Here are some examples.

First, then, next, later, finally. These are

just a few signal words, but they're examples.

They really help with the organization of

your story. One other point is I mentioned that it's important to listen... Or to pay

attention to the listener and see how they are responding to your story. One good sign

is if the listener says, "Then what happened?"

"Then what happened?" means they are interested.

Okay? So, while you're telling the story,

the listener might say, "Then what happened?"

So, this is a good thing to hear from a listener.

It means they are interested in what you are

saying. "And then what happened?" Okay, now

let's learn a little bit about the verb tenses

we use when we tell stories in conversation.

Okay, so when you tell a story in English,

one of the most common tenses we use is the

past tense. It's possible to use the present

tense, but in general, we usually use the

past tense when we tell stories. So, I'm going

to talk a little bit about the past tense and how we use this when we tell stories.

So, there are different forms of the past tense in English. Two examples are we have

the simple past tense, and we also have the

past continuous tense. These are both popular

to use when we tell stories. So, I'm going to give you an example of the simple past

tense. "I saw a bear." So, in a story, this is true. One time, I saw a bear. Notice the

verb I used. The verb is in the simple past tense. The verb is "to see", I've changed

the verb into the past tense, and now it is the verb "saw". "I saw a bear." So, a lot

of the times when we tell stories, we just

use the simple past tense. Simple past tense,

regular verbs in the simple past tense often

have -ed endings, so if that helps you to

remember. So, for example, you might talk

about how you worked yesterday, or you visited

your grandmother. So, we use the simple past a lot when we tell stories.

We also use the past continuous. So, you might

wonder, what is the past continuous? Well,

whenever you see grammar with the word "continuous"

in it, or "progressive", that usually means

there's an -ing ending somewhere. So, here

is an example of the past continuous. "I was

walking down the street when I saw a bear."

So, "walking" has our -ing in it, it's a verb

with -ing, and we also have the "be" verb, "was". So, "I was walking down the street.

It was raining. It was snowing. It was...

The sun was shining." These are all examples

of the past continuous.

So when do we use the past continuous, or

how do we use it when we tell stories? Well,

we use it to talk about either the background,

so what was the weather like? What was happening

when something happened? So, we use it to talk about the background description, or

we can use it to talk about an activity that

is in progress at the time of your story.

So, just a clear example, here is what is

happening. This is the activity in progress.

"I was walking down the street." So, that is happening when I saw a bear. So, this is

an interruption of that activity.

So, we have videos on the past continuous. I

recommend if you don't know how to use this

tense to watch some of these videos, they

can be very helpful. But again, when we tell

stories in conversation, we often use the

simple past tense or the past continuous tense.

Now, let's learn what else we use when we tell stories in English.

So, you've told your story now, and the question

is, "How do you end it?" We like to signal

to the listener that the story is finished.

So, what can we say to show our story is over?

Well, there's a couple of things we can say.

At the end of a story, we can say, "Can you

believe that?" So, this is a way to show my

story is finished, and it's a surprising story.

"Can you believe that?" Or you might say something like, "I'll never forget it. I'll

never forget it. I'll never forget what happened."

You might say something like, "I can't believe

that happened. I can't believe it. I can't

believe that happened." So, we often use these,

especially if there's a surprise in the story.

Now, sometimes when we tell a story, we think

it's a great story, and we look at the listener,

and they are like this. They don't find the story

funny. They don't find the story interesting.

They're not really showing any emotion. So,

after we tell a story, if the listener looks

like this, you can say, "I guess you had to be there." This means in order to like

the story, you needed to experience it. "I guess you had to be there." This is a very

common thing people say at the end of stories

when the reaction to the story is not good.

So, if the listener looks like this, you can say, "I guess you had to be there."

Okay, so we've covered a little bit about how to

tell stories in English. There is a lot more to

say on this subject. One thing I recommend my

students do is listen to people tell stories.

The best way to improve is to actually hear models of what you want to do.

So, the way you can listen to native speakers

tell stories is watch English talk shows.

If you ever watch an English talk show, you

will notice that the celebrity on the talk show

always tells a story, and it's usually a funny

story or an interesting story, and they're short.

So, I recommend you watch talk shows if you want

to improve your storytelling. You can watch The

Late Show, The Tonight Show, The Colbert Report.

There are many different talk shows in English.

You can watch them on YouTube, but I highly

recommend doing this to improve your storytelling.

So, thank you so much for watching. You can practice what you learned today by visiting

our website at www.engvid.com. There, you can

actually take a quiz on some of what we talked

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So, thank you so much for watching, and until next time, take care.