English conversational practice | Start A GREAT small talk conversation - food

Hi there, this is teacher Harry and welcome back to English lessons with Harry, where

I try to help you to get a better understanding of the English language so that you can improve

your conversational language, your business English. Idioms, phrasal verbs, everything

connected with English.

Before I do that, please remember that you can listen to me on my podcast, and you can

watch me on my YouTube video.

So what are we going to talk to you about today? Well, today, we're going to talk about

small talk. And small talk is a really important part of the English language. And in particular,

we're going to talk to about small talk questions about foods or small talk questions to do

with food. As I said, small talk is a really important part of the English language. Some

people dismiss it a little bit as chit chat. But remember, when you use small talk, it

helps you to get involved in conversations, that's the easiest way for you to get involved.

So not only will it help you and ease you into the conversation, it will avoid those

awkward silences that you might have. In an elevator, you got stuck there, for example,

or at the beginning of a meeting, when you're waiting for somebody to arrive at one of your

colleagues hasn't arrived. So there'll be generally a lot of small talk in those situations,

it'll help you and present you as a little bit friendlier, it will come make you a little

bit more acceptable to your colleagues, particularly new colleagues if you've moved jobs. So you

know, you don't feel like the outsider. And you sound much more like a native speaker.

Okay, so that's the general overview of small talk and why it's important.

So as I said to you, we're going to look specifically at small talk questions about food. And as

well as small talk being really important food is important to all of us. And we all

like eating it, preparing it and most of us, and certainly talking about it. So when we

have small talk conversations, food is one of the ideal topics. And usually it centres

around a number of particular areas. So I've broken this down into a few sections.

So I'll take them one by one, I'll read them to you first, and then I'll come back to them.

So the first one is about your favourite food.

Or it could be about eating out where you might eat out,

cooking at home,

just generally breakfast lunches and dinners.

And finally, diets, which is also an important part of eating food, if you eat too much of

it, we have to go on diet, so we have to do a little bit more exercise. So diets are another

important part of that general classification of food.

So let's take them one by one. So the first one, as I said, is your favourite food. So

the questions that you could ask people when you're in that situation is, but simply

What's your favourite dish? Now, in English dish means a plate of food or something that

somebody is prepared, it's not just the dish or the plate that the food arrives on. So

that can be sometimes a little bit confusing for non native speakers. So what's your favourite

dish?

What's your favourite meal? Or just simply?

What do you like to eat? Now, so you can put it in any of those situations.

Are there any foods that you absolutely hate? Are there any foods that you absolutely won't

eat? So, again, you're trying just to find out from people, you know, what their customs

are? Or what their cultures are, what sort of food they like? Or what food they don't?

Like?

Do you like trying new foods? Okay, and what's the most recent food that you've tasted? You

know, have you had Vietnamese or you have tried other Japanese stars? Whatever it might

be, you can broaden it out to include specific or just generally,

what have you eaten recently? or what have you tried recently? Oh, what new food? Have

you tried recently?

Okay, so when, when we're talking about eating out, that might be to do with places that

are local. So you know, if you're sharing offices with these people, and you've just

joined them, you might want to know, the places to eat locally for lunch, or perhaps for an

early dinner. So you could ask questions like,

How often do you eat out?

Have you tried any new restaurants recently? Or

what are the restaurants like around here?

Are there any nice small cafes?

Or what are the prices? Like, you know, are they good for lunches or dinners so you can

get into it in much more detail as you go along? Once you feel comfortable about asking

those questions. He could also like and ask

Do they like fast food? Because obviously people eat it, particularly if they're in

a hurry. So do you like fast food if you do,

what type of fast food do you like or what fast food restaurants are available here?

Do you order food as a takeaway? Do you order food as a delivery? Do you try some of those

apps where you order food to be delivered to the office or to be delivered to your home.

And then you can talk about your experiences, your, your experiences that were good, or

what most people have some experience that was absolutely bad where the food was late

or the food was cold or something strange happened. So people exchange their experiences

in that way. But all the time asking those particular questions about eating out.

A lot of people like to cook a lot of people are really good at preparing food, particularly

if they have the time. And they like to cook food, particularly when perhaps specific cultures

from what whichever country they happen to be from. So a lot of questions we can ask,

are related to cooking at home or cooking in the home.

So simply, are you a good cook?

Or who cooks in your house? Your partner or you? Who does most of the cooking? Do you

share the cooking?

What's your favourite dish to prepare? Or what's your favourite dish that you like to

prepare as another way to say it.

And what's your cooking speciality? What do you really like? What's your, your key dish

that you prepare that everybody talks about now?

So what are you well known for? So lots of people have a particularly speciality.

It could be paella or it could be shepherd's pie, in my case, whatever it might be. So

what are you known for? What is the dish that really sets you apart from other people?

Okay, so it comes down to the section and speaking particularly about just the three

basic core meals of the day breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

Do you usually skip breakfast?

Or do you bring it with you and have it in the office? That's a very simple question.

A lot of people grab a bite to eat on the way in on off the tube or the train, drop

into the local cafe, get the coffee and the breakfast bath or whatever it happens to be

or they have something already on their desk waiting for them when they get there. So do

you usually skip breakfast? Or do you have it before you leave home?

What time do you get up at if you have to have your breakfast before you you leave home?

What time do you usually have lunch? What time do you usually go for lunch?

Where do you go for lunch around here? I'm sick of sandwiches. Can you... Do you have

any really good suggestions as to work type lunches that you can prepare easily or bring

in what would put you usually half. So all of those questions, small talk questions that

will help you to fit into that conversation.

And finally, what do you usually have for dinner? Or what time do you eat dinner?

Do you prepare dinner dinner the day before? Do you prepare dinner as we do enough for

two days, for example, if you don't want to cook every day.

So general topics, conversational topics, questions that will be easy to ask, hopefully

for you and easy to answer.

And then finally, as I mentioned before, if we all as we do like food and we eat a little

bit too much of it, particularly at certain times of the year, then we might like to talk

or we will talk about the diet. Yeah, different types of diets. So the questions you could

ask relating to diet are

What diet are you on? Or do you ever go on diets? Do you follow a special type of diet?

Are there foods you definitely leave out or foods you include to make sure it's a healthy

diet that you have.

Do you think diets are useful or not? Are they just fads? And a fad is something that's

here today gone tomorrow.

Is anyone here on that raw food diet? So you can talk about the latest gimmick of a diet

which would be in all the magazines and the internet and all the superstars are talking

about them so people will try them and when they try them, they share them with their

colleagues and with the share them with their colleagues. They exchange their information

and their experiences, good or bad.

Okay, so lots of helpful and useful questions that you can ask around diet. Okay, so that's

small talk and as I said, small talk really, really important part of the English language.

It will help you to settle in to a new job. It will help you to make friends it will break

the ice when you're stuck in that elevator or before that business meeting when you're

turning left or right to colleague and you you want to talk about something to avoid

that on healthy silence that is there and it will make you fit into the organisation

and you won't feel such an outsider. So I hope you've enjoyed the experience of this

particular lesson and you can join me again in the future and if you want to contact me

well, of course, you can wwww.englishlessonviaskype.com

Transcribed by https://otter.ai