Advanced English: Formal vs. Informal Language 🛸 What you need to know!

Hello everybody. It's Jennifer here with an English lesson for all you advanced learners out there.

I often like to start a lesson with a question. How I word that question and how I say it set the tone.

Hopefully, you agree that the first statement was more informal. It's something we might say in casual conversation.

The second was more formal and polite.

But what exactly makes the two questions different? That's what we'll talk about in this lesson on formal and informal English.

I've created this lesson with two goals in mind. First, as an advanced speaker of English,

you need to be comfortable speaking on different topics.

Conversations take many turns, and people have various interests. Can you express your opinion on different subjects?

We'll see how you do later in this lesson when we start talking about aliens,

conspiracy theories, and technology.

Second, your language always needs to be appropriate for the context. What are you talking about? And who are your listeners?

There are times you can relax and use a more conversational tone, and there are times when you need to use more careful

speech to match the polite company that you're in.

How comfortably can you switch between registers? Can you easily increase and decrease the level of formality?

So I'm going to test your ability to express ideas at different registers. And we'll have fun doing it.

Who doesn't like to consider the possibility of aliens and UFOs?

The first thing that made my two questions sound different was how I spoke.

I used less careful pronunciation in the first question.

In relaxed speech, we use short forms and reductions, for example, "wanna"

instead of "want to." I want to hear what you think.

I also used intonation that was very typical of everyday conversation.

So...

So I want to hear what you think. Or I could say, "So I want to hear what you think."

So I want to hear what you think about aliens and UFOs. You got any thoughts on that?

The second difference had to do with my structure.

In informal English, we sometimes omit words because we know they'll be understood.

This happens in particular with yes-no questions when we drop the helping verb.

You got any thoughts on that?

There's no helping verb "do" or "have" although I'm asking this question in the simple present.

This is a fairly common pattern with the verb got in American English.

We can start a yes-no question immediately with the subject pronoun "you." You got any thoughts on that?

You got any change?

You got anything smaller?

We do this with other helping verbs, for example, "You coming?"

instead of "Are you coming?"

You ever seen anything like that?

Instead of "Have you ever seen anything like that?"

In contrast, I used polite structures in my second question. I would like to... Would you care to...?

Also used the intensifier "very much" instead of the more conversational adverb "really."

I would very much like to...

Then I used the preposition "regarding" instead of the more common

preposition "about." I would very much like to hear your thoughts regarding aliens and UFOs.

So my word choice, my grammar, my intonation, and my careful diction help create a more formal tone.

If you'd like to work more on intonation, you can watch my series on intonation in American English.

And if you'd like to learn more about the changes American English speakers make in fast speech, particularly informal fast

speech, you can watch my 20-day Fast Speech Challenge. I'll put these links in the video description.

Okay. Let's get into the topic of aliens and UFOs.

I'll say something with an informal tone. You make it sound more formal. If you need more time, hit the pause button.

To be more formal, I could say:

Saying someone is nuts is an idiomatic expression. You're saying they're crazy.

Idioms are more typical of informal speech.

To be more formal, I could say:

Formal speech doesn't usually include interjections like "oh" and filler words.

Often there's a shorter more formal equivalent for a longer conversational phrase.

"People who saw aliens" changing to

"eyewitnesses" is a good example.

Using "supposedly" instead of "people say that" is another.

To be more formal, I could say:

Or to be more concise:

Again we have an idiomatic expression:

Get out. It's actually a phrasal verb. If the truth gets out, it becomes known. It becomes exposed or revealed.

Idiomatic expressions, including phrasal verbs are more typical of informal speech.

We sometimes start sentences or ideas with the conjunctions AND, BUT, SO.

This tends to be more typical of informal English.

Informal English also makes more use of the first-person

subject (pronoun), so we'll start sentences with: I think, I know, I heard, I feel...

All right. Let's switch it around.

I'll make a more formal statement, and you change it so it sounds more relaxed and appropriate for informal conversation.

In informal English, I might say something like this:

Sometimes you'll see that one word is more frequently used than another word in the same word family.

"Tend" and "tendency" are examples. We use the verb "tend" more than we use the noun "tendency."

In everyday conversation,

it's more common to say that someone tends to do something rather than someone has the tendency to do something.

When you learn a new word, note the part of speech and the context you heard it in.

As a less formal variation, I'd suggest something like this:

The passive voice is more common in formal English, especially written English.

"Have been known" and "deemed to be" are examples of passive verbs.

Again you see that academic words like "disseminate" are more typical of formal English.

Okay, last one.

There were some fancy words in that statement. To make it more appropriate for informal conversation, I'd suggest something like this:

One suggestion I have is to go back through my six statements and listen to the formal and informal

versions. You can listen and repeat. Try to imitate my speech, particularly the stress and intonation.

As your final task, I'd like you to consider the idea of free energy, meaning energy that is freely available.

If alien technology allowed us to make use of free energy within the near future, it would change our world in many ways.

We'd have no dependency on oil or other fossil fuels.

Think about the geopolitical implications and tell me your opinion.

If the technology for free energy is known, should we make use of it?

You're free to use formal or informal English, but I'll be looking for consistency and tone.

I hope my advanced learners were challenged by this lesson.

If you enjoyed the practice with formal and informal English,

please like this video and follow me on social media for more language practice.

That's all for now. Thanks for watching and happy studies!

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