Conversational English - How to Generalize

Hi. My name is Rebecca, and in today's lesson, I'm going to show you a number of words and

expressions that you can use when you want to generalize about something, when you want

to speak about something in general. Okay? So let's look at them. They're very useful

when you're discussing an issue with someone, or if you're writing an essay, or a paper

about something. You can certainly use these transition kind of words and these expressions.

Here we go. Okay. So, here's the first one: "Overall," okay? You can also practice pronouncing

them after me, if you like. "Overall,", "Generally,", "Basically,", "All in all,", "On the whole,",

okay? So all of these mean that you're going to make a statement which is a general statement,

or comment, or remark.

So, for example, you could start with something like this:

"Overall, I believe the situation is out of control."

And you don't have to say this part. You could just say:

"Overall, the situation is out of control." But you could add this, if you're saying that... If

you want to qualify it and explain that that's your perspective and your view. Okay? You

can do that with any of them. "Generally, I think the govt has misspent our money."

"Misspent" means spent it in the wrong way or in a bad way.

All right, here are some other expressions you can use when you want to indicate that

you are generalizing about something. You could say: "By and large," okay? "By and large,"

it means the same thing like: "In general," okay? Or: "Broadly speaking,", "Broadly speaking,",

"In general," or: "For the most part, I feel the storm has passed." Okay? Last one: "Essentially,"

right? "Essentially, I would say the crisis has been averted." "Has been averted" means

the crisis has been avoided. We managed to avoid it or prevent it from happening. Okay?

So, these are the important words you need to know if you want to generalize, and this

is how you could continue a sentence once you have used one of these words or expressions.

Okay? If you'd like to practice doing this, which is probably a really good idea, go to

our website: www.engvid.com. There, you'll be able to do a quiz on this subject, as well

as watch lots of other videos on many other topics in English. Okay? Thank you very much.

Good luck with your English.