Polite English - How to give advice

Hi. My name is Rebecca, and in today's lesson, I'm going to show you how to give advice to

someone in a diplomatic way when you're in a personal situation or a professional situation.

Okay? Now, of course, there's many ways in which we can give advice to others. Some are

nice and some are not very nice. Let's look at some of these possibilities. Okay?

All right. So suppose you think that somebody that you're talking to should go and see the

doctor. You could say to them, "Go to the doctor." Now, that's called an imperative.

That's the imperative voice, so that's like giving somebody an order. Not very nice. A

person isn't going to feel very good when you say that. Okay?

You could also say, "You should go to the doctor." Now, that's a little better than

the first one, but it's still going to sound to the other one like you're telling them

what to do, and nobody likes too much to feel that somebody's telling them what to do. So,

if you'd like to give advice in a way that's a little bit more diplomatic, a little bit

more gentle, you could learn this useful expression. You could say, "If I were you, I would go

to the doctor." Okay? So, what you're learning is this part. "If I were you, I would", and

then you add the advice. Okay? So, let's see how to use this now in different situations.

Let's say you would like to suggest that somebody stop smoking. So, you could say, "If I were

you, I would stop smoking." Okay? So, you're just saying that you would do that. You're

not telling them to do that, but indirectly, you are, in fact, telling them to do that.

Okay? "Look for a new job." "If I were you, I would look for a new job." Okay? "If I were

you, I would finish university." "If I were you, I would accept their offer." "If I were

you, I would buy that house." Okay? And, "If I were you, I would arrive by 6 p.m." All right?

So, by learning this expression, "If I were you, I would", and you just use the verb in

the regular tense, right? "I would finish my homework." "I would go to school every

day." "I would eat a healthy breakfast every day." Okay? So, whatever you want to say,

you can say after that, but by putting it this way, it's much more likely that your

advice will be accepted, and you'll be a lot more polite. Okay? So, if you'd like to do

a quiz on this or many other aspects of English, please visit our website, www.engvid.com.

Thanks for watching. Bye for now.