English Grammar - Passed or Past?

Hi. My name is Emma, and today we are going to talk about conversation expressions. We're

going to talk about three very important conversation expressions that will help you to organize

your conversation, as well as help people listening to what you're saying know where

you are going to go with what you are saying. So these are very good conversation devices

that are everyday expressions we use. You will hear them a lot, and the other thing

to know about these expressions is they never change. You memorize them as a chunk, so you

memorize each of these words, and you use it always together. Okay, so let's get started.

The first expression we are going to learn today is, "If you ask me." Now, I quite like

this expression because I have a lot of opinions, and when you say, "If you ask me," what you

are saying is, "This is my opinion." So for example, "I love comic books. I love reading

about superheroes. I like Batman, Superman, but if you ask me, Wolverine is the greatest

superhero of all time." Now, some of you watching may be in complete disagreement with

me. Maybe you think Spider-Man is cooler, or Batman is way better, and so what you could

respond is, "If you ask me, Wolverine isn't the greatest superhero of all time. Batman

is," and I would have to disagree with you. "If you ask me." "If you ask me, Toronto is

a great city to live in. If you ask me, the government should spend more money on health

care." So this is a very useful expression because anytime you are giving your opinion,

you can use it. And remember, even though it says, "Ask me," you don't need to be asked

your opinion to use this. Even if somebody doesn't want to know your opinion, you can

still use this in a conversation and say, "If you ask me."

All right. Number two, "speaking of." "Speaking of" is very important because in English,

we really like to link things. We like conversation to flow very smoothly. We like to know where

somebody is going in the conversation. So speaking of, what it does is it links a new

topic to an old topic. So I'll give you an example. We were just talking about Wolverine

as a superhero. I said, "If you ask me, I think Wolverine is the greatest superhero

of all time." Now maybe I want to talk about something else about Wolverine. I have a new

topic I want to talk about. I can use "speaking of" to link Wolverine as the greatest superhero

to a new topic. So here's an example. "If you ask me, Wolverine is the greatest superhero

of all time." "Speaking of Wolverine, did you know he's Canadian?" Interesting fact,

isn't it? So "speaking of" links the old topic with the new.

Another example is maybe I'm at a party, and somebody is talking about a hockey game they

just saw the other night. Maybe I could say, "Speaking of hockey, did you read about Wayne

Gretzky's daughter in the newspaper? Some interesting news has just happened with her."

So speaking of, what it does is it links, again, a new topic to an old topic.

Our third example. This one is very useful as well. "As I was saying." "As I was saying."

What this does is it helps you to go back to an earlier point in the conversation. Sometimes

maybe you're having a great conversation. You're talking about movies, for example,

and then suddenly, there's an interruption. Maybe somebody knocks at the door. Maybe your

phone goes off, and you have to answer it. Then, your friends are still talking. When

you come back, you want to continue talking about what you were talking about before.

What you can say is, "As I was saying." If I'm talking about movies, there's a knock

at the door. I leave. When I come back, I can say, "As I was saying about movies, I

really want to see J. Edgar Hoover," a new movie that's just come out.

Another example. It's not just for interruptions. We use it often for interruptions in order

to keep the conversation flowing smoothly, but people during presentations use this a

lot as well. Maybe I'm giving a presentation on government, and I'm talking first about

the environment, and then I move on. My second point might be economics. Maybe a third point

might be education. I talk a lot about education, but now I want to go back. I want to go back

to environment. I can use, "As I was saying." "As I was saying" or "As I was saying earlier,

the environment is very important to Canada." Again, this is to go back to an earlier point

in the conversation.

I forgot to mention one thing about speaking of. This is actually quite an important point.

As I was saying earlier about speaking of, some people, they don't really get the art

of conversation so well. What they tend to do is they'll be talking about something like,

for example, UFOs. The conversation is talking about aliens and UFOs, and suddenly somebody

wants to talk about shoes. These two things don't really link up well in a conversation.

When you use "speaking of", you want to use something that links to the initial thing

you were talking about. Don't say, "If you're talking about aliens..." "Speaking of aliens,

I want to go shoe shopping this weekend," because it won't make sense. You really want

to link some aspect of what you were talking about originally to the new topic.

A better example would be, "Speaking of aliens, I want to read a book. It's all about aliens."

Or, "I want to see the X-Files. It's a show about aliens." It's good to have a link to

keep the topic consistent. If you ask me, everyday expressions such as

these are very useful. As I was saying earlier, we use these expressions often, and it will

really help you in terms of both your speaking and your listening.

Speaking of speaking and listening, if you want to become a better conversationalist,

I highly recommend checking out our website at www.engvid.com.

Take care. Thanks.