Polite English: How to offer help

Hi, my name is Rebecca, and in today's lesson I am going to show you four different ways

in which you can offer help in a polite way to someone and also how you can accept or

refuse that help, in a gracious manner, okay?

So let's look at the board. This can help you in a personal situation and also at work

in a professional situation, so let's have a look. Okay, so there are different ways

in which we can offer help, some are more formal and some are more informal. The first

two I am going to talk about are more formal and the next two are informal.

In a formal situation or in any situation where you want to be more business-like or

more professional you could say, "Would you like me to," for example, "open the window?"

"Would you like me to open the window?" or "Would you like me to get you some water?"

or you can use this expression as well -- very polite: "Shall I shut the door?"

"Shall I switch off the television?" Okay, well, that's probably going to be more at

home. So let's say it was an informal situation. You could say, "Let me switch off the TV",

or just "I'll get the door for you." "Let me help you with you those bags." Okay?

So again, depending upon who you are talking to and in what context, you are going to use

something more formal or something more informal, okay? And any of these will work very well.

Now how do you accept or decline -- which is to say "no" to that help? Well, in a formal

way you could say "Thank you very much."

So if someone says, "Would you like me to get you some water?" You could say "Yes, thank

you very much."

If someone says "Shall I open the window?" You could say, "Thank you."

If someone says, "I'll get the door for you." You might just say, "Thanks." Okay?

So again, the level of response, it matches the level of the question, right? The level

of the offer. If it's more formal then you're going to respond more formally. If it's more

informal you will respond informally, all right?

You can also be very, very polite and if someone says, "Would you like me to get you some water?".

"Thank you very much. That's very kind of you."

Okay? So you could go on and be even more polite.

Now let's say you don't need any help. So if someone says, "Let me switch off the TV."

You can say, "No, thanks." Okay? Or if someone says, "I'll help you with those bags." "No thanks. I'm good."

Okay, "I'm good" is kind of slang, because normally we don't say "I'm good," but it's

used a lot, especially in North America, and it means "I'm fine, thanks. I don't need anything."

All right?

Or you could say if someone says "Would you like me to get you some water?" You could

say, "No, thank you. I'm fine." Or "Shall I help you with those suitcases?" "No, thank

you. I can manage." Okay?

So something like that... Again, depending on the situation, you could always just say,

"Thank you" here, and "No, thank you" here, all right?

If you'd like to do a quiz on this subject, just to get a little more practice into how

you can ask these questions, and how to accept or decline, you can go to our website, www.engvid.com.

Thanks very much for watching. Good luck with your English.

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