Speaking English: How to express your reaction

252,464 views ・ 2014-01-04

Learn English with Rebecca


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

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Hi. My name is Rebecca, and in today's lesson, you'll learn two easy ways to express your
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reaction to something. Now, you can use these to express your reaction to something positive
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or to something negative. And they're really easy, so follow with me, and before you know
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it, you'll be able to use them yourself. Okay? Here we go.
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So the words that we're going to use are words which are very basic, and you know them. They
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are "what" and "how". But "what" we use with a noun, and "how" we're going to use with
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an adjective. Okay? Now, remember: These are all ex -- sorry -- exclamations. They are
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exclamations. That means normally, we would have an exclamation mark at the end of this
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expression. Okay? Like this. Right? So what we can say is something like this,
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"What a great singer!" Okay? So you see we're using "what" plus a noun, which is the word
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"singer". You can always use an adjective before that, but you must have a noun there,
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okay? You could also say, "What a singer!" which means he or she is a very good singer.
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All right? "What a talented actor!" "What a kind man!"
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"What a beautiful view!" "What a gorgeous sunset!" "What an experience!" "What a surprise!"
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Okay? So as you can see here, we used it to talk about people. Then, we used it to talk
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about places. And here, we used it to talk about an event or an experience, okay? So
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you can use it in any kind of context, and you can use it in positive situations to express
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positive emotions, or we can also use it to express negative emotions. Let's look at some
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of these. "What a rude person!" "What horrible weather!"
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"What bad service!" "What a shame!" "What a disaster!" "What a day!" Or, "What nonsense!"
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Okay? So all of these are obviously negative situations, but all you're doing is you're
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using "what" plus a noun somewhere in that entire exclamation, okay? All right.
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Now, how do we use "how"? With "how" we have to add an adjective. So we would say something
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like, "How wonderful!" Okay? So remember, this is your reaction or your response to
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something that you see or hear, okay? Somebody says -- tells you something, and you answer,
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"How wonderful!" Perhaps someone says, -"I'm getting married next month." -"How wonderful!"
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Okay? Or, -"We're going to Bermuda on our honeymoon." -"How romantic!" "How nice!" Okay?
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Somebody describes something that happened, and you say, "How nice!" Or "How lovely!"
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It could be about someone's dress. Okay? Or -- very often, we say this when we see a baby
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or a child doing something very adorable -- we say, "How sweet!" Okay? So that's another
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little expression that's very common. As I said, you can also use "how" for negative
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emotions. So you could say, "How awful!" "How sad!" "How terrible!" "How frustrating!" Or,
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"How tragic!" Okay? So we can use it in rather serious situations; we can use it in lighter
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situations. And these are very, very common ways of expressing our reaction to news or
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to events, okay? So if you'd like to do a little more practice
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with this, please go to our website www.engvid.com, and there you'll see a quiz on this subject
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as well as hundreds of other videos on many other topics in English. Okay? Good luck with
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your English, and thanks for watching.
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