3 expressions to improve your conversation skills

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 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's 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're 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

if you ask me

[alright] 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

Speaking or if you ask me Wolverine is the greatest superhero of all time

Speaking of Wolverine did you know he's Canadian?

interesting back isn't it so speaking of Link's 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 and then

Your friends are talking and when you come back you want to continue talking about what you were talking [before]

So what you can say is as I was saying so if I'm talking about movies, but 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 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 and then maybe a third point might be

education

So 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

So 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

[so] [as] I was saying earlier about speaking of that um

some people they don't really get the art of conversation so well and

So 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

Now these two things don't really link up well in a conversation

so when you use speaking of you want to use something that kind of links to

two the initial thing you were talking about so don't

don't

say

If you're talking about aliens, oh 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

so a better example would be

speaking of aliens

I

Want to I?

Want to read a book?

[it's] it's all about Aliens or I want to see the x-files

It's a show about aliens, so it's good to have a link to keep the the topic consistent

Okay

so

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

wwlp.com

Take care. Thanks

you