14 Phrases for EXPLAINING in English

Hi, I'm Vanessa from SpeakEnglishWithVanessa.com.

Can you explain that a little bit more?

Let's talk about it.

Whether you're explaining how to do something or you're explaining your thoughts, it's important

to have the right words.

So today I'd like to help you learn 14 phrases for explaining in English.

Sometimes my mother-in-law will spend the night at my house so that my husband, Dan,

and I can go out on a date.

If you've ever helped a two year old settle down at the end of the night and sleep, it

can be a long process.

He has to take a bath, and brush his teeth, and then go into the room and play with his

animals, and tell some stories, sing some songs.

It's a long process, at least for my two year old, but it's worth it because he sleeps from

8:00 PM to 8:00 AM, very peacefully.

So all of that work is worth it.

But when we're explaining this to her, we need to explain these steps, and how to do

it so that it's easier for her.

And so that my two year old will actually calm down and rest at the end of the day.

In the first section of this lesson, you're going to be learning phrases for explaining

a process, how to do something.

And then in the second half, you're going to learn phrases for explaining your thoughts,

which is different, but we'll get to that a little bit later.

Let's start with the first section.

How to explain a process.

To start off with, try to have dinner between six and seven PM.

This is a great phrasal verb, to start off with.

You can also drop the word with, and just say, "To start off, try to have dinner between

six and 7:00 PM."

First, second, third, fourth, fifth.

These are called ordinal numbers, because you are ordering something.

First, take a bath directly after dinner.

Second, brush his teeth.

Third, go into the bedroom right after he brushes his teeth.

You can use ordinal numbers for really any number.

112th, 389th, but it gets a little bit excessive and overwhelming to label things like that.

Generally we try to keep things under five, especially in a spoken list.

This isn't a rule, but I feel like if you start saying fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth,

ninth, 10th, 11th, 12th, it gets a little bit overwhelming.

So if you're going to use ordinal numbers, this is just my general recommendation.

Try to keep it at first, second, third, fourth, fifth.

If your list gets above fifth, you can use some of the next expressions.

Next.

Next, he'll probably want to play with his stuffed animals in his room with you.

Then.

Then, ask him if he wants you to read a book or to tell him a story.

Once you've done that, or once you've finished that, once you've done that, turn off the

light, sit beside his bed and tell him about his day.

I've never heard of a small child wanting to do this for comfort, but my two year old

loves when we start at the beginning of the day and say, this morning when you woke up

we made some toast, and you just go through the entire day.

It kind of seems like it's cleansing to him, it's really sweet.

So at the end of the day, that's one of the things that we do, is we talk about his day.

Lastly, or finally.

Lastly, leave the room and tell him that you'll come back in, in just a moment to tell him

good night.

It's such a funny thing.

My husband, Dan, always puts him to bed.

But when Dan leaves the room, my child wants us both to peek our head in, and just say

good night.

And then he's quiet all night.

In the end.

In the end, he'll usually fall asleep immediately, and then wake up around 8:00 AM in the morning.

Occasionally, he'll wake up around midnight, get a drink of water, use the little potty

beside his bed, and then get back in bed, tuck himself in, and fall back asleep all

by himself.

He's growing up.

Occasionally, maybe once a month, he'll cry out in the middle of the night, and Dan will

go into him and comfort him.

But that's a pretty unusual situation.

Before we go on to section number two, which is explaining or clarifying your thoughts,

which is different than what we just talked about, let's review this first section.

You're going to really know how to put my two year old to bed.

This is reviewing that process.

So what I want you to do is, while I'm speaking, I want you to try to follow with my voice,

and speak out loud with me.

This is just going to help you to remember all of these expressions, and also it's good

for you to hear your own voice using English.

It builds confidence, and it's great for your pronunciation.

All right, let's start.

To start off with, try to eat dinner sometime between six and 7:00 PM.

First, give him a bath directly after dinner.

Second, brush his teeth.

Third, go into the bedroom directly.

Next, he'll probably want to play with his stuffed animals in his room with you.

Then, ask him if he wants to read a book or for you to tell him a story.

Once you've done that, turn off the light, sit beside his bed and talk about his day.

Lastly, leave the room and tell him that you'll peek your head in the door to say good night.

In the end, he usually falls asleep immediately, and will wake up around 8:00 AM.

And there you have it.

Our calm, peaceful night usually starts around 8:00 PM.

Let's go on to the second section, where I want to help you learn seven phrases for explaining

or clarifying your thoughts.

Have you ever said something and then realized that the other person didn't completely understand

what you were trying to say?

Well, you need to clarify yourself.

Native speakers use these phrases a lot when they're trying to reexplain what they said,

so I hope that you can use them as well.

Let's imagine the situation.

You're trying to meet your friend for dinner, but you're going to be late.

Well, what are some phrases you could use?

What I mean is...

You call your friend and say, "Hey, I'm so sorry.

I'm stuck in traffic.

I'm going to be late.

What I mean is, I'm going to be 30 minutes late."

In this situation, you're clarifying directly at that moment.

If you had said, just, "I'm going to be late," You're not really giving them any details.

So if you want to clarify at that moment, you could say, "Hey, I'm sorry, I'm going

to be late, there's lots of traffic.

Oh, what I mean is, I'm going to be 30 minutes late."

What I mean is ... So you're clarifying what the word late means.

It could be five minutes, it could be two hours.

So you want to let them know, "What I mean is, I'm going to be 30 minutes late."

What if we want to use mean in the past tense?

What I meant was...

When can we use, what I meant was?

Let's imagine that you're in that situation, you're trying to meet your friend for dinner,

and you're going to be late.

So you call your friend and say, "Hey, I'm sorry.

Traffic is awful, I'm going to be late."

And that's all you say.

You hang up the phone.

And then 20 minutes later, your friend calls you and says, "Hey, where are you?

I've been waiting for 20 minutes."

You are going to need to clarify what you previously said, so we're going to try to

use the past tense here.

What I meant was, I'm going to be 30 minutes late.

What I meant was...

So you're realizing, oh no, I didn't give you enough details, I'm sorry.

I need to go back and clarify what I said before.

So you're explaining your previous statement, "I'm going to be late," but you're explaining

it, using that past tense.

What I meant was ... So we're using meant, which is the past tense, and was, which is

the past tense.

This is great, especially if you want the other person to not feel so bad, and you are

thinking, "Oh, I'm so sorry, I should have told you exactly what I meant."

So you can use this wonderful expression in your daily life, in business conversations.

"Oh, I'm sorry.

What I meant was, I'm going to be 30 minutes late."

Or in that same situation, your friend calls you and says, "Hey, I've been waiting 20 minutes,

where are you?"

And you realize, ah, I forgot to clarify and tell you exactly how late I was going to be,

especially with Google Maps these days, it's pretty easy to know how late you're going

to be based on traffic.

So you are going to need to go back and explain, and clarify what you originally meant.

You can say a simple phrase, "Oh, I meant that I was going to be 30 minutes late, traffic

is awful."

Instead of saying, "What I meant was..."

You're just saying, "I meant.."

This is the past tense.

You're saying, "Oh, I should have said this before, but I didn't, so now I'm going to

say it to you."

Oh, I meant that I was going to be 30 minutes late.

I'm sorry.

I forgot to tell you.

It was kind of crazy in traffic.

I meant that I was going to be 30 minutes late.

Okay.

Are you ready to take this to the next level?

The final four phrases are used generally in negative situations to clarify and explain

something, but each one has a slightly different meaning, so you need to make sure that you

understand how other people are using it so that you know their context, and also when

you use it, you need to make sure you use it in the correct way.

So for each of these final four statements, we're going to be looking at two different

situations.

One is how to use that statement in an indirect way, and one is how to use it in a more direct

way.

So take a deep breath, we've talked about a lot so far, let's talk about these final

four explaining phrases.

Let's say that your friend asks you about your new job and your friend asks, "How's

the job going?

Is it what you thought it would be?

How were your coworkers?

What's your boss like?"

But unfortunately, your job isn't going that well.

How can you clarify and explain this situation?

You can use our first phrase, "Let me put it this way."

Let me put it this way, I probably should have stayed at my old job.

In this situation you're not saying, "I hate my new job, it's terrible."

You're being indirect.

You're saying something positive about your old job.

Let me put it this way, I probably should have stayed at my old job.

You're choosing to use a clarification or an explanation in a positive way.

But can we use, "let me put it this way," to be even more direct?

Yes.

Let's look at another situation.

If you go on a date with someone and you're trying to explain how your date went, you

might say, "Oh yeah, the food was good, he was nice, and kind, and handsome.

And he picked me up on time."

Well, these are all general statements.

How can we make this more direct and more concise?

We can use this expression and say, "But, let me put it this way.

We just didn't have a good connection."

So you're using all of these general statements, and then you're narrowing it down to one final

conclusion, "Let me put it this way, we just didn't have a good connection."

So if you want to use this in a direct way, you definitely can.

As opposed to our previous way, which is taking something that's narrow, "Well, ah, I think

instead I should have stayed at my old job," you're being very indirect.

Instead, we're doing the opposite.

We're taking general words, "He's kind and handsome, the food was good.

But let me put it this way, we just didn't have a good connection."

You're making the summary of this situation to be more direct.

The next phrase, "The thing is," can be used both in an indirect way and in a direct way.

If you're talking about your new job that you don't really like, you might say, "Well,

the thing is, I miss my old coworkers.

What are you trying to say here, but you're not saying directly?

When you say, "I miss my old coworkers," you're kind of implying that your new coworkers aren't

that great.

Maybe the atmosphere isn't very enjoyable at the new job, but you're not saying that,

you're choosing to say something positive.

The thing is I miss my old coworkers.

This is quite indirect.

You're not directly saying something negative about your new job.

But we can use, "The thing is," to be more direct.

Let's look at that second situation where you go on a date and it doesn't really go

that well.

You might use this as a conclusion or a summary.

"The thing is, we just didn't have a good connection."

So you're being very direct.

The thing is, we just didn't have a good connection.

Instead of saying, "Well, the thing is, I just don't really have much time to devote

to a relationship," this is very indirect.

You can also use it directly and say, "The thing is, we just didn't have a good connection.:

It's straightforward and clear.

Let's go to the next one.

"Well, you see..."

If we want to talk about that new job that you don't really like, you might say, "Well,

you see, the boss is nice, but I'm not a fan of the commute."

Here you're being indirect.

You're saying something positive, but you're also saying something negative, your true

feelings.

The boss is nice, but I'm not a fan of the commute.

Well, you see, you're kind of introducing this indirect statement.

But like the previous two, we can use this to be more direct.

If you want to explain your boring date night and your friend says, "Well, it looks like

everything was great.

The food was good.

He was nice and handsome, picked you up on time.

What's wrong?"

You might say, "Well, you see, we just didn't have a good connection."

So here you're summarizing, like in the previous two expressions, you're summarizing this directly.

Well, you see, we just didn't have a good connection.

If you go on a date with someone and you tell them, "I'm sorry, I don't want to go on a

second date because we just don't have a good connection."

It's probably not the best thing to say to them, at least in my opinion.

It feels like there's no way that the other person can improve from that statement.

It's so general, but this is something that people often say about going on a date, we

just didn't have a good connection, and so I'm not going to go on another date.

We just didn't have a good connection.

In other words, if you're talking about that boring job, you might say, "In other words,

I guess no job is perfect."

Well, you're not saying I hate this job.

Instead you're being indirect and saying, "No job is perfect, every job has flaws.

Okay, I guess that I will continue with my new job."

In other words, you're trying to explain something with different words.

In other words, I guess no job is perfect.

We can use this phrase, in other words, for positive situations, but it's more likely

to be used in negative situations.

So let's look at that date situation to see how you can use it to be direct.

In other words, we just didn't have a good connection.

"In other words," so you're saying all of these indirect things, and then you're summarizing,

"In other words, we just didn't have a good connection."

But if we want to use this phrase in a positive situation, let's imagine that your date goes

wonderfully.

And you had such a fantastic time, you talked for hours and hours, you felt so comfortable.

You might say, "In other words, I think he is the one."

"The one," means your soulmate.

So you're summarizing your date by saying, "In other words, I think he's the one.

This is it."

Same as before, you probably shouldn't tell your date this after only one date, it's a

little bit strong, but feel free to tell your friend if you want.

All right, let's review the second section of explanatory phrases so that you can practice

them out loud.

I challenge you to speak out loud again, repeat with my voice, and remember these phrases.

What I mean is, I'm going to be 30 minutes late.

What I meant was that I will be at least 30 minutes late, traffic is awful.

Oh, I meant that I would be at least 30 minutes late, traffic is awful.

Let me put it this way, I should probably have stayed at my old job.

The thing is, I thought I would like it, but I miss my old coworkers.

Well, you see, the bosses nice, but I'm not a fan of the commute.

In other words, I guess that no job is perfect.

Great work, practicing all of these phrases for explaining things in English.

As you can see, there are a lot of different nuances and ways that you can explain a process,

or explain and clarify your thoughts.

I hope that you'll be able to recognize these phrases when native speakers use them, and

when you hear them and movies and TV shows, but the next step above that is to be able

to use them yourself.

So feel free to repeat this lesson, and practice them as much as possible.

And now I have a question for you.

Let's use those phrases for explaining a process.

In the comments, can you tell me what steps you take this morning to get ready for the

day?

You might say, "Well, to start off with, I got out of bed and washed my face," and then

you can go on and tell me the other things that you did using those explanatory phrases.

Thank you so much for learning English with me, and I'll see you again next Friday for

a new lesson here on my YouTube channel.

Bye!

The next step is to download my free ebook, Five Steps To Becoming A Confident English

Speaker.

You'll learn what you need to do to speak confidently and fluently.

Don't forget to subscribe to my YouTube channel for more free lessons.

Thanks so much, bye.