9 Ways to Ask for Help in English

48,851 views ・ 2017-02-10

Learn English with Bob the Canadian


Please double-click on the English subtitles below to play the video.

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Hi Bob the Canadian here.
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In life there are times when you need to be able to ask someone for help.
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Maybe you're in danger or trapped somewhere.
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Maybe you just want to ask for help because you're going to attempt a task that you know
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will be too difficult to do alone.
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Or maybe you've already started on a task, and you're of the middle of doing it and you've
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found out it is too difficult and you want to ask more directly for help.
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So let's look at a number of ways to ask for help in English.
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Let's first look at the situation of being in danger or trapped.
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Imagine you're in an elevator and you need to be able to yell for help.
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The simplest way to do this in English is to yell, "Help".
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"Help!
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I'm stuck in an elevator!"
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"Help!
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I'm stuck in the elevator!"”
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You could also say, "Help me!"
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"Help me!
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I'm stuck in the elevator."
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And if it's more than just you, you could say, "Help us!
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We're stuck in the elevator!"
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In the second situation, let's imagine you're about to attempt a task and you know it's
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going to be too difficult.
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Maybe there's a large box that you know you can't lift.
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There are several ways to politely ask for help to be able to do this job.
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The first would be to ask someone, "Could you help me lift this box?"
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You could also say, "Would you be able to help me lift this box?"
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You could also say, "Could you give me a hand with this box?"
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Those are ways to politely ask someone to help you with a job before you do it.
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But let's imagine you thought you could lift the box yourself, but you've lifted it and
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you realize it's too heavy and you are going to drop it.
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Here are a few ways to ask someone more directly for help.
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You could say, "Little help here please!"
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Or
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"I could use a little help here please."
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Or
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"Give me a hand!"
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All of these are ways to ask more directly for help when you're in the middle of a task
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that maybe you should not have attempted in the first place.
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Well that's a number of ways to ask for help in different situations.
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I hope this has helped you a little bit while you continue to learn English.
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Before you go I just wanted to say thank you so much for watching these videos.
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If you could just take some time to share this video with other people I would really
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appreciate it.
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Bob the Canadian here.
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Learn English with Bob the Canadian.
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I hope you have a great day.
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