25 English Collocations with 'Stay' [Vocabulary-Building Lesson]

Hey, it's Annemarie was Speak Confident English and welcome to this.

Week's Confident English lesson.

This is exactly where you want to be every week to get the confidence you want

for your life and work in English.

This week it's all about advanced-level vocabulary building.

This is something I talk about quite a bit on the Speak Confident English

channel.

I love sharing videos on natural sounding language that

English speakers use. If you've been following me for a while,

you've probably heard me use the word collocation.

And if you haven't heard me use that word before, it's definitely a strange one.

You might be wondering what exactly is a collocation.

The best way for me to explain it is to think about things that you wear,

the clothing that you wear. You probably know that certain colors,

certain patterns just naturally go together. In language,

there are words that just naturally go together.

So a collocation is two or more words that go together

well, or they're used together often.

And you already know a lot of them. When you first begin studying English,

you learn words that go together with the verb make and words that go

together with the verb do. For example, make the bed,

not do your bed. Do the dishes after dinner,

not make the dishes. Over the last couple of years,

I've done Confident English lessons on collocations with the word think,

collocations about progress,

collocations with the word say and many more.

So today we're going to focus on 25 collocations that

use the word 'stay' in English.

And we're going to focus on five different categories.

Things that we say when we talk about staying focused,

staying updated,

staying in one place or remaining as you

are, invitations to stay with someone.

And finally what we say,

when we talk about how long we will stay with someone,

Let's start right away with things that we might say when we talk about staying

focused. If you're working on something particularly challenging,

you might stay at it, which means you don't give up on it.

You continue working,

you continue staying focused to accomplish something that you want.

When you do that. It's also important to stay on track.

In other words, you're avoiding distractions.

You're avoiding interruptions so that you can keep your focus and get what you

want finished. And now category number two,

collocations using the words stay when you want to

stay updated, you want to get all the details that you need.

Certainly if you're coordinating a project,

you want to stay up to date on what everyone is doing,

or you want to stay in the loop.

If you're going away on vacation for a few days,

you might tell a coworker I'd like to stay in the loop.

So please let me know if there are any changes. Similarly,

you can ask to stay informed. Again,

what that means is you want to make sure that you get all the details and

updates necessary. Now stay up to date,

stay in the loop and stay informed are all things you

might say when you want someone else to give you updates.

But when we talk about updates,

you might also tell someone to stay tuned.

What that means is you are telling someone else, keep watching,

keep listening, watch your emails.

I'm going to give you an update soon.

You're asking them to stay connected with you. For example,

if I want to give you a preview of what's coming next week on my

Confident English lesson, I might say:

stay tuned for next week's Confident English lesson where I talk about____.

And then I give you some kind of preview.

Companies will often use this when they want to get people excited about

something new that's coming.

And our last collocation for this category on staying updated is stay in

touch. This is a request to stay connected.

Imagine one of your coworkers gets a new job,

or maybe their position will be transferred to a new city or state.

You might tell your coworker to stay in touch.

What that means is you're asking them to email you from time to time,

call you and let you know how things are going. You want to stay connected.

And now category three collocations to talk about staying in one

place or remaining as you are.

When you want to tell someone to stop moving,

you don't want them to go anywhere or do anything you might

say, stay there.

Don't move or stay put stay still.

All three of those mean that you want someone to remain where

they are. And as they are, you don't want them to move.

You don't want them to go away. That collocation stay still.

I could also use like this.

I'm so nervous about my presentation tomorrow. I can't stay still.

What do you think that means? I'm so about my presentation tomorrow,

I can't stay still. I can't stop moving.

Maybe I'm walking around or I'm tapping my foot on the floor.

I'm moving around because I have a lot of anxious energy.

When someone's upset, you might tell them to stay calm.

And right now I'm seeing a lot of emails where people write,

stay safe, stay healthy.

When we talk about staying in one place,

there are many people who are staying home more often.

Now there are some mornings when you might want to stay in bed a little

longer. And if you're in the middle of a big project,

you might need to stay at work later than usual.

When that happens,

you might say something like I'm going to stay behind at work

today. What that means is everyone else's leaving and going home,

but you still have work to do so. You are going to remain.

You're going to stay at work,

even though everyone else is leaving similar to stay

behind at work. We can also say,

stay to do something at work.

Maybe all your coworkers are going out for happy hour and they invite you to

come along. You might say, I'll join you in 30 minutes.

I'm going to stay to finish up my,to do list before I leave.

And finally, one last collocation. When we talk about remaining, as you are,

is to stay together.

We use this when we talk about two people staying in a

relationship. All right,

we have eight more collocations with the word stay on our list today.

Let's move on to category number four,

things that we say when we stay with someone.

Let's say one of your neighbors comes over just for a quick chat.

And in the conversation,

if you want to invite them to stay for dinner or to stay for a drink

to stay for dessert, you might say, won't you stay?

Won't you stay for dinner? Won't you stay for a drink? Similarly,

you could also say, stay for awhile.

Like won't you stay and stay for awhile.

You might also ask someone to stay in chat.

All three of those examples. Won't you stay,

stay for awhile and stay in chat are all casual ways

to invite someone into your home or to invite them to hang out with

you for a little while. If you have kids, they might ask.

If one of their friends can stay overnight on a Friday night.

And if you want to invite someone to come,

stay in your home for a longer period of time,

you might encourage them to come and stay with you. For awhile. For example,

recently I was chatting with my sister who lives in another part of the United

States. And while we were talking, I said,

I would love for you and your family to come and stay for awhile.

When we do that, when we invite someone to stay with us,

we also have some collocations to talk about how long someone might

stay.

We might talk about the length of someone's stay in our home.

For example, it might be a long stay, a couple of weeks,

a short stay, just a few days,

a temporary stay. If my sister comes to visit,

it would probably be a short stay about four or five days.

And finally,

our last example on this list today of collocations using the word stay.

If someone invites you to stay in chat or to stay for

awhile, you might want to accept,

but you know that in 30 minutes or in 45 minutes,

you have somewhere else to be.

You could definitely accept the invitation and say, I'd love to,

but I can't stay long. And with that,

you have 25 collocations using the word stay that you can add

to your vocabulary in English.

When you learn a long list of vocabulary like this,

I have a recommendation.

Do not try to learn all of them on the same day.

You'll only end up frustrated and probably forgetting most of

those words. Instead, review the list from today,

choose two or three collocations that you absolutely want to

remember,

that you want to add to your active vocabulary and then use those again and

again and again, until they're permanent in your memory.

Once that happens,

you can choose two or three new words and go through the same process.

The key is identifying a small number of new words or phrases that you want

to learn and giving yourself the opportunity to use them

again and again.

So today I have got your first opportunity choose two or

three collocations from this list that are new for you and use them in your own

example situations.

You can create a sentence and share those with me in the comments just below

this video. And if you found today's lesson useful to you,

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collocations, new vocabulary to their English,

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Thank you so much for joining me,

have a wonderful week and I'll see you next time for your Confident English

lesson.