Small Talk About Travel, Vacations, and Holidays in English

When you get back to work after a holiday season,

is it polite and appropriate to ask your colleagues about how they spent the

holidays or does this just sound like a superficial question?

If a coworker has just returned from a long weekend away,

is it okay to be curious and ask about it?

These are questions a student of mine recently asked,

and what she really wanted to know was what kind of small talk questions

are polite and allow you to reconnect with coworkers or acquaintances

after time away for holidays, a vacation, or some kind of travel?

That is precisely what we're going to focus on in this Confident English lesson.

Today.

You're going to learn how to have successful small talk about holidays,

travel and vacation. Along the way,

you're going to learn the right questions to ask and how to show genuine

interest. Plus,

you'll learn what you can say before you ask a question if you're

not really sure whether it's too personal,

and I'll finish with my number one tip for how to feel comfortable

and confident starting and participating in small talk

conversations in English.

But first, if you don't already know,

I'm Annemarie with Speak Confident English.

Everything I do is designed to help you get the confidence you want for your

life and work in English.

One way I do that is with these weekly Confident English lessons,

which I share every Wednesday at the Speak Confident English website and on my

Speak Confident English YouTube channel. In these lessons,

I share my top fluency and confidence building strategies,

targeted grammar lessons and lessons on small talk just like with this one

today. So while you're here,

make sure you subscribe to my Speak Comfort English channel so you never miss

one of these lessons. I'm going to split this lesson up into two parts.

The first will be questions focused on small talk conversations

after someone's vacation or after they've traveled,

and the second focused on holidays. But before we go there,

let's do a quick review of why small talk is so

important.

If you haven't watched any of my previous lessons on small talk,

here's what you need to know.

Small talk is a social skill.

Small talk helps you avoid uncomfortable awkward silences,

and it's also what allows you to have meaningful conversations with others

and develop relationships. Generally speaking,

small talk is informal,

polite conversation that tends to revolve around unimportant

topics, and most importantly, small talk connects people.

So is it polite for you to ask about your coworkers' vacations or how they spent

time over the holidays? Absolutely it is.

And not only is it polite to do so,

I'm going to help you show genuine interest so you have

engaging, friendly, polite conversations.

So let's get into common small talk questions. We ask about vacation and travel.

If you know in advance that a coworker is going on vacation or if you just wanna

have a conversation about someone's vacation plans during the upcoming year,

here are questions you can ask before that vacation happens.

Number one,

what plans do you have for the summer break or the winter break?

The autumn break,

just like we used the word break for a lunch break or a coffee break at work.

A period of time where you're not working a summer break or a winter break

implies that there's a period of time when you'll be away from work.

The same applies for kids at school if they're on summer break,

they're not attending school during that time. A second question you can ask is,

what are your upcoming vacation plans?

Will you travel or are you staying closer to home? Number three,

what are your vacation plans for the year ahead? And number four,

you mentioned you have a vacation coming up soon. That's really exciting.

Tell me about it.

Where are you going when a coworker returns from a vacation or a long weekend

away? Here are questions you can ask after they return.

How was your trip? How was your time away? How did you spend your vacation?

Did you travel or did you stay closer to home? How was your long weekend?

Did you get away somewhere?

I remember last week you mentioned you were going away for the long weekend.

How was it? Those small talk questions are all quite simple,

but there's one thing they have in common.

Before we move on to small talk questions for talking about holidays,

let's pause here and talk about how to choose the right

questions for small talk and how do you show genuine interest?

So your questions don't sound superficial.

There are two keys to doing this successfully. First,

choose the right questions, use open questions.

If we review all the questions we've talked about so far,

they start with words such as what, how, and where.

These are question words similar to why,

when who,

when you start a question with a question word,

you ask questions that encourage detail,

questions that encourage conversation,

and you avoid questions that can be answered with a simple

yes or no or a simple one word answer. For example, I could ask someone,

did you enjoy your vacation? And they can simply say, yes, I did,

and that's it. Or I can say, what did you enjoy about your vacation?

When I ask that question, they need to share detail,

and that detail becomes particularly important when I want to show genuine

interest.

And this leads me to the second tip for successful small talk questions

show genuine interest with follow up questions.

All the small talk questions we've reviewed so far are simply starter

questions. They're the questions that start that small talk conversation.

I want you to imagine this scenario.

You've just come back from a two week vacation

and when you return, I ask you, how is your time away? How is your vacation?

I'm using an open question encouraging you to share detail.

And in your response you say to me, oh my gosh, Annemarie, it was amazing.

It was so relaxing. Every day I swam in the ocean,

I relaxed on the beach, enjoyed the warm sun.

I read several books and one morning we hiked up to the top of a mountain

to watch the sunrise. It was incredible.

Now imagine after you tell me all about your vacation,

I look at you and I say, cool, and then I walk away.

How would you feel at that moment? Definitely not cool.

I'm obviously not very interested,

and it becomes clear that my starter question was simply

superficial.

I didn't really want to know the details because I simply walked away

in the end. Now, let's change this scenario just a bit.

And again, imagine I ask you about your recent vacation.

You tell me how amazing it was and all the things you did,

and when you're finished, I say, that sounds amazing. Tell me again,

where did you go or that sounds wonderful.

watching the sunrise from the top of a mountain sounds incredible.

Did you get any photos?

I would love to see one when I ask those follow up questions,

questions that are related specifically to a detail you shared with me,

I'm showing genuine interest.

It's clear that I listened to you and I want to know more.

This is how we make small talk successful.

We need those open questions and we show genuine interest

through follow up questions. With that in mind,

let's transition now to common small talk questions we ask in English

conversations about the holidays. Now, in the upcoming examples,

you're going to hear me use the holidays with an S,

plural.

You'll hear me talk about the holiday season and a

holiday. So what's the difference? First,

it's important to know that I'm an American. I live in the United States,

and here in the United States when we use the word holiday,

we're referring to a federally recognized day

or a religious day in which government offices and many

businesses are closed.

Americans don't typically use the word holiday in connection to a

vacation. If someone's going on summer vacation,

they're spending a week in the mountains or going to the beach for a week.

We use the word vacation and holiday is for those federally

recognized and religious days. So if I talk about a holiday,

I'm referencing one of those days, for example, New Year's Day.

If I talk about the holidays or the holiday season,

I'm talking about a period of time during the year in which there may be

two or more holidays in close succession so that whole

period of time can feel festive or celebratory.

So if you're chatting with coworkers before a specific holiday,

before a long holiday weekend or before a holiday season

begins, here are some small talk questions you can use to learn more.

What are your plans for the holidays or what is your holiday plan?

What do you usually do during the holidays? Do you usually travel?

How do you like to spend your time during the holidays?

What are you looking forward to during the holidays?

How do you usually celebrate the holiday?

What's your favorite holiday tradition?

And then after the holidays when you get back to work,

here are small talk questions. You can ask your coworkers, how was your holiday?

How was your, and then insert the specific name of that holiday.

For example, how was your New Year? What did you get up to during the holidays?

Here I'm using the frail verb to get up to, which is really asking,

what did you do? How did you spend your time during the holidays?

How was your time away for the holiday?

Did you travel or did you stay close to home? Of course,

just like with our questions about travel,

all of these start with a question word.

We're using an open question to encourage detail,

and if we want to show genuine interest, we ask follow up questions.

Now, what if there's a question you'd love to ask,

but you're just not sure if it's too personal?

There are two phrases you can use before you ask your question

to let the listener know in a gentle way that you'll be asking a

question and it may be a bit more personal.

It gives that person time to prepare how they want to respond.

The first one is, if it's okay,

I'd love to ask if it's okay. I'd love to ask about your holiday.

How was it? How did you spend your time?

How does your family typically celebrate the holiday? And the second option is,

if you don't mind me asking, and then you continue with your question,

if you don't mind me asking,

how was your time with your family over the holiday?

Both of those phrases are perfect for those moments when you're just not sure

about the question you want to ask.

And now let's finish up with talking about how you can be comfortable and

confident in any small talk conversation.

My number one tip is to determine or identify the question you

want to ask in advance and prepare your own answer

to that small talk question. Here's why this is important. In English,

small talk.

Part of our politeness code says that after someone

asks a question and you answer it,

it's polite to return the question back.

If I ask you about your holiday,

you would answer my question and say, and what about you Anne-Marie?

How did you spend the holiday? How was your time with your family?

So if I start a conversation and I know what question I'm going

to ask,

I can anticipate that after I listen to the answer,

the person I'm speaking to will ask the question back to me.

So I also need to be ready to answer that specific question.

If I prepare the questions I want to ask in advance and think about

my own answer, I'm ready to have that conversation.

One of the best ways you can practice this is following the technique I share in

my How to Say What You Want training.

It's an in-depth training you can get at my website where I share my

number one technique for gaining true confidence in your English speaking skills

as well as improving your accuracy and your fluency.

If you're looking to gain more confidence in your small talk skills,

I recommend you get that free training.

You can get my How to Say What You Want in English training at my website,

and I'll leave a link down below. Now,

I want to ask one question to you before I finish today.

I would love to know what is your favorite small talk question when you want to

reconnect with a coworker or an acquaintance after a holiday or a vacation?

I shared a limited number of questions,

but there are endless possibilities when it comes to small talk,

and there might be a question I didn't use today that you love

to ask. If so,

I would like for you to share it with me and others in the Speak Confident

English community. You can do that in the comments below. And of course,

as always, if you have additional comments or questions,

you can share those in the comments section below as well.

If you found today's lesson helpful to you, I would love to know,

and you can tell me in one very simple way,

give this lesson a thumbs up here on YouTube or share one of your comments and

questions below. Thank you so much for joining me,

and I look forward to seeing you next time.