How to use THOUGH in daily English conversation

Hi, I'm Vanessa from SpeakEnglishWithVanessa.com.

How can you use the word "though"?

Let's talk about it.

In this English lesson you're going to learn how native English speakers use the word "though"

in daily conversations.

You're also going to learn a common mistake that English learners often make with the

word "though".

And then we're going to talk about some casual uses of this word.

Let's talk about the best way to use it in daily conversation.

The other day I met with my friend and she was telling me about her job, her life, her

family and she had a lot of energy.

She seemed pretty positive.

But I could tell by the look on her face, the look in her eyes that something wasn't

right.

Something was a little different.

Her fact wasn't matching her words.

So, in this situation we could say, "Her words are happy but look at her face though."

Here we have two contrasting parts.

The first part her face is happy.

She's positive.

She's energetic.

But, look at her face.

Something is different.

Something is not matching her words.

So we need to use a contrasting word "though".

What if you said, "English is tough.

Learning with Vanessa is easy though."

What does this mean?

We have a contrasting part.

The first part, "Learning English is tough."

It's difficult.

Oh it's not always easy.

But the second part, "Learning with Vanessa is easy though."

We have a contrasting second section of your sentence.

"It's easy though."

So when you use the word "though" you're contrasting with something that you already said.

You could say, "English is tough.

Learning with Vanessa is easy."

But this is kind of beginner-level English and you're here to use advanced English.

So the best thing you can do is add "though" at the end of the sentence.

"English is tough.

Learning with Vanessa is easy though."

You're often going to hear native English speakers combine two sentences together using

a conjunction, but.

"English is tough, but learning with Vanessa is easy though."

And in this sentence we already have a contrasting word.

We already are using "but" to show that there's a difference between the first part of your

sentence and the second part of your sentence.

So why do native speakers sometimes add "though" at the end when you're already contrasting?

Well this is kind of just for extra emphasis.

You're extra emphasizing that English with Vanessa is easy.

You're trying to really show a difference.

"Learning English is tough, but with Vanessa it's easy though."

Let's take a look at a couple other examples.

Let's imagine that you hate onions.

Some people hate onions.

They're pretty strong tasting.

You might say, "Well, I hate onions, but this onion snack is pretty good though."

You're contrasting your hate of onions and this onion snack.

What about if you said, "Learning online is great.

My time is limited though."

My time is limited though.

We have one part.

Learning online is great.

It's a positive statement.

And then you're using a negative statement.

"My time is limited though."

What about if you said, "I like my job.

Waking up is hard though."

For you if you don't like waking up in the morning, this might be the perfect sentence

for you.

"I like my job.

Waking up is hard though."

Or you could say, "I like my job but waking up is hard though."

Now that you know how native speakers use "though" in daily conversation, let's talk

about a common mistake that I hear English learners use all the time.

Have you ever said, "Though it's raining, I'm going to go hiking anyway.

Though I feel hesitant, I'm going to marry him anyway."

"Though" plus the rest of your sentence.

Does this look structurally different than the other sentences?

What's the main thing that you notice that's different?

Well, "though" is at the beginning of the sentence and this is something that is too

formal for daily conversations.

If you want to use this in a formal email, maybe in a really formal presentation, go

ahead.

No problem.

But I know a lot of you use English just while you're traveling or in daily conversations

in less formal situations.

So make sure that when you use "though" you put it at the end of that contrasting statement.

Don't put it at the beginning.

"Though I feel hesitant, I'm going to marry him anyway."

Way too formal.

Not natural.

Make sure that you use it at the end.

So you could say, "I'm going to marry him.

Well, I feel hesitate though."

You're using it at the end and that's natural.

Now we're going to talk about two casual ways to use the word though.

The first one is if I said to you, "That cake looks good, but its taste though."

What do you notice about this sentence?

Did I finish it?

Did I say, "But its taste is bad though."?

No I didn't explicitly say what I think about the, but it is implied.

Implied means you can understand my meaning even though I didn't use those exact words.

So, when I say, "That cake looks good, but its taste though," you can understand that

I think the taste and the look are opposites.

We have two contrasting statements.

Because the cake looks good, you can imagine that I think the taste is not good.

It's the opposite.

So you might use this in situations where you want to be a little bit more polite.

You're saying something negative but you don't want to say it so directly.

Let's imagine that you said, "I like Vanessa's videos, but her facial expressions though."

This means that you enjoy my lessons but you don't feel the same way about my facial expressions.

Maybe you think my facial expressions are a little crazy or strange or it's just not

a good fit for your learning style, but you don't want to directly say that.

You don't want to say, "I like Vanessa's lessons, but her facial expressions are strange though."

Instead, you're going to just stop your sentence.

Maybe have a little pause.

Maybe elongate that final part.

"Her facial expressions though," and you're kind of letting your listener imagine what

you think.

You're not directly saying it, but it's a little more casual.

It's implied.

For the second casual use of the word "though" you're going to see this most often in really

casual situations like an Instagram hashtag.

Somewhere like this you probably aren't going to say this in conversation.

You might see this.

You might hear it in a TV show.

But I want you to understand what it means.

Let's take the example, "That smile though."

Here we have that plus a noun plus "though".

What does this mean?

Well I'd like to give you a quick example.

I saw a video clip of a girl who got her purse stolen.

It was just a skit, it wasn't really real.

But she said, "Hey, he stole my purse."

And this guy runs up to save her and to get her purse, but instead he does a backflip

off the wall.

And she looks really surprised and says, "Hey, he got away.

He got my purse."

And he looks at the camera really proud and says, "The backflip though."

Why did he use the word "though"?

Here he's really just drawing attention to something impressive.

It's not a contrast.

It's not really comparing something.

It's just something that he thinks is impressive and he wants you to realize that it's impressive

too.

So you might see this if you are looking at Instagram and you see a picture of some famous

celebrity.

Maybe someone would comment, "Whoa, that smile though," and this just means they think that

his smile is really handsome.

They want to let everyone know, look, draw attention to his smile.

It's handsome.

This is more common in urban or even African-American English.

So you're going to see this, you might see this as slang but it might not be a good fit

for you to use in daily conversation, but now you know what it means.

Before we go let's do a quick recap or review.

You might say, "There is a lot of English vocabulary.

This lesson made it easy though."

I hope that this lesson make it easy for you to understand how to use the word "though",

when to use it and how not to make some common mistakes with this word.

Let me know in the comments a sentence using the word "though".

Try your best to use this and repeat it.

Say it out loud.

Use it yourself.

Thanks so much for learning English with me and I'll see you again next Friday for a new

YouTube lesson here on my channel.

See you again the next time.

Bye.

The next step is to download my free e-book, Five Steps To Becoming a Confident English

Speaker.

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Thanks so much.

Bye.