How to Master Small Talk in English with 3 Simple Rules

Hey, it's Annemarie with Speak Confident

English and this is exactly where you want to be if your goal is to develop

the confidence that you need in English to say what you want,

and this week we're going to talk about how to master small talk in English.

Now I know a lot of us don't like small talk.

Honestly, I don't really like small talk either,

but it does play a really important role in English speaking culture and it

doesn't have to be really challenging or even really boring.

We're going to talk about three simple strategies that will help you have

effective small talk in English and get to know others.

So whether you're starting a new job and you want to get to know your coworkers?

Maybe someone that you've recently met at your gym or Yoga Studio invited you

to a party and you know that you're going to have to talk to a lot of new

people or maybe you're getting to know parents where your child goes to school.

In all of those situations, it's important to know what kinds of

questions you can ask and how to do it, so that's what we're going to focus on

in this week's Confident English lesson.

Now, of course,

when you meet someone for the very first time,

you start with an introduction and maybe you've had that moment where you've

introduced yourself and then

and then it's just really quiet. You're not really sure what to say.

You don't know what questions to ask and it just feels so uncomfortable.

That's what we want to avoid, so let's talk about why small talk is

important and how to do it effectively in English.

The truth is, small talk is polite but unimportant

conversation. We're not trying to change the world and

we're not making big decisions, but it does have a purpose.

It helps us make those first steps toward building a connection or a

relationship with someone. We can't get to know someone and we

can't build a real friendship or relationship if we don't know anything

about them and small talk helps us do that.

Small talk also helps fill the silence and if you're living in an English

speaking country or you're working in a business with a lot of English speakers,

you might notice that English speakers really don't like silence.

We do everything we can to avoid it, so to help us do that,

we use small talk. Now with the right tools and an

understanding of how small talk works. You'll be able to have small talk at a

job interview, when you meet new colleagues at work,

when you've got new neighbors, or you're meeting people at a party or

other parents at your child's school, almost any situation where you're

meeting someone new, you'll need to know how to effectively

do small talk. So now let's talk about three simple do

and don't rules for how to have effective and successful small talk in

English. Number one,

do talk about hobbies, interests,

families, movies,

TV shows, travel,

all those different things that we do in our free time.

Those are great topics for any small talk conversation.

Of course we have common questions like what did you do over the weekend or what

are you doing next weekend?

But we can make those questions a little bit more interesting.

For example, instead of asking someone,

what did you do last weekend? Ask them what their ideal weekend is.

Everybody loves to talk about the things that are their favorite,

how they would spend their time, if they could do anything they wanted.

So that's a great question to ask. How would you spend your ideal weekend?

Other great questions might be, what's a good movie that you've seen

recently? Or have you read any good books

recently? Just like we talked about how someone

would spend their ideal weekend, you could also ask someone about their

ideal holiday getaway or their ideal vacation.

If they could travel anywhere, where would they go?

That's a great question and you're using the conditional in English now for

several more options. You can visit the online lesson where I

have a great list of questions on all of these different topics.

Now I said that for small talk you should definitely ask about movies,

TV shows, vacation travel,

family, friends,

holiday plans, weekend plans,

but there are a couple of topics that you want to avoid.

Generally speaking, in small talk,

we don't talk about religion, politics,

or money. Those are big no's in small talk.

Rule number two is do ask about personal information.

In general, it's common when we're getting to know

someone to want to know about their family,

where they're from, what their traditions are,

what their life is like, so those are great questions to ask.

Whether someone is from another country or another city,

you can always ask them where they're from originally,

where they grew up, what was it like growing up where they

lived. You can also ask them about what they

love and their current neighborhood or city and an English speaking culture.

It is pretty common to talk about our jobs.

We actually seem to like talking about it quite a bit.

So you'll probably hear people ask you what do you do?

Which is another way of asking what is your job now?

To be honest with you, I do try to avoid what do you do?

I'm not always successful, but I try to have questions that are a

little bit more interesting. So instead of saying something like,

what do you do? I often ask the question,

what's something you're working on right now that you're really enjoying or

what's something interesting that you're working on right now?

We would definitely avoid things like asking about someone's divorce or why

they don't have kids to be honest. Those are just way too personal and they

might be really painful or emotional to talk about,

so it's best to stay focused on very general information and finally,

rule number three is specifically for that small talk that you have at work,

whether it's with clients, coworkers,

or even your boss.

It's definitely okay to talk about other things going on at work.

For example, you could ask about a project that

they're currently working on and how that project is going,

or again, my favorite question,

are you working on anything interesting right now?

If you're at a conference or traveling for work,

of course you could talk about the conference that you're at.

Maybe talk about a lecture or a presentation that you heard with someone

and you can focus on the highlights and the things that you've learned at that

conference. If you're traveling to another city,

you might ask some of your colleagues or peers about what recommendations they

have for where to eat or what to do while you're visiting their city.

Now, the key to successful small talk in

these workplace situations is to focus on the positive.

You don't want to speak negatively about your colleagues,

your peers, your boss,

your workplace that really isn't the appropriate time for that,

and with that you've got three super simple rules for how to successfully

have small talk in English.

Again, those rules were number one,

do talk about common interests such as sports,

hobbies, free time,

vacation, movies,

tv, all of that good stuff.

Number two, do ask questions related to personal

information in a general way, and number three at work,

do definitely ask about other things happening at work or things related to

business, travel,

conferences, events,

and so on. Now,

to end today's lesson, I do want to share my favorite small

talk question with you and a few other resources,

but before I do that, if you enjoyed this lesson and found it

useful to you, please be sure to let me know.

You can do that in just a few simple ways.

You can give this video a thumbs up on youtube and subscribe to this channel so

you never miss a lesson. You can also share this lesson on

facebook with friends and colleagues and you can leave your comment below by

answering one of my challenge questions.

You can leave your comments below the video or in the online lesson.

So first, my favorite small talk question is

what's something interesting that you've seen,

done, read or heard recently?

I don't always use all of those verbs. I usually pick one,

but it might be something like, so what's something interesting you've

done recently or what's something interesting you've read recently?

That's my go to question in almost any situation where I have to do small talk

and now I have to challenge questions for you.

Question number one is what is your favorite small top question?

It might be a question you always ask or maybe you've learned a new one from

today's lesson. I'd love to hear what your favorite

question is and you can share it with me in the comments section below.

And question number two, what is one tip that you have for

successful small talk in English? What has helped you to do it

well? Your tip and advice might be exactly

what someone else in the Confident English community needs,

so would love to have you share it, and again,

you can do that by sharing in the comment section just below this video.

Thank you so much for joining me this week.

I look forward to hearing from you in the comments and I'll see you next time

for your Confident English lesson.