Advanced English Conversation: WOULD YOU RATHER...? 🇬🇧 🇺🇸

- Hello, this is Jack from tofluency.com.

And today, Kate and I are going to ask each other

some would you rather questions.

Now.

What does it mean if someone's asked you,

would you rather this, or that?

- So, to be honest,

this is not a game that I have played--

- You've never played it? - Since,

I was about 13 years old.

- It's a very popular game to play.

When you're at university, too.

- Oh really? - Yeah.

- Okay.

- It's known as a drinking game.

- Okay.

- And the questions you ask at university.

We are not going to ask today.

- Okay.

- We're gonna keep this somewhat PG.

Which means suitable,

for children.

- Yes.

- But we are going to ask each other some tough questions.

So if you ask a question, for example,

would you rather spend your entire life at the beach,

or in a city?

- Ooh.

I am

100% a beach girl.

And I love the ocean,

it's where I feel happiest

and calmest.

And I love a lot of different ocean sports,

so I would have to choose the beach.

- Yeah, so. - What about you?

- Just to

go into the game a little bit more.

What you're saying, this is your preference.

- Yes. - So the question is,

would you rather live here or here?

You're asking for the preference.

And you have to choose one.

- Okay.

- So this is

how difficult this game can be,

because it's not an easy option.

So, you would rather live at the beach.

I think I think I would rather live in a big city.

- Okay.

- Yeah.

For the rest of my life.

The rest of my life.

Because, hammering home,

that this is the difficulty of the game.

- Stakes are high.

- Yeah, very high. (chuckles)

I think, yeah, I'd choose the city because,

there's a lot more you can do there.

Now, there's always gonna be someone who says,

"Oh, I'd prefer to live in a big city by the beach."

But, the idea is that you can only--

- You can only choose one. - You can't change,

you can't change it.

- Okay. - But I knew,

I knew that you would say the beach.

- Why did you know that?

- Because you love the beach.

- I do love the beach.

- Yeah.

But it's a difficult choice.

Because the beach is fun,

you can do so many cool things at the beach.

It's very relaxing.

- It's very relaxing,

and I think that's what I based my decision on.

- Yeah.

- Because no matter how interesting and neat

the things that you can do in a city are,

I feel like the entire time that I'm in a city,

I'm just a little bit stressed out.

- Yeah.

- And every time that I'm at the beach,

I'm just a lot more relaxed.

- Yeah. - I'm the best version

of myself at the beach.

- When you meet people who live at the beach,

they always seem very relaxed.

But then if you meet people randomly in New York City.

I wouldn't describe them

as relaxed. - As relaxed.

They're a little bit

faster-paced. - Yeah.

Everything is hectic and stressful.

But the beach, everyone is chilled out and relaxed.

- That's a good question.

- What about you?

Would you rather live in a big city, or at the beach?

(upbeat music)

Number two is, and I'm reading from a screen here.

Would you rather be able to detect any lie you hear,

or get away with any lie you tell?

- You get to answer this one first.

- Okay, so, I'll just explain a couple of things here.

Detect any lie you hear, which means,

be able to know when someone is lying.

So if somebody lies to you, to detect that they're lying,

means you know that they're lying.

And to get away with something,

means that they won't know that you're lying.

Hopefully that makes sense.

- Yeah. - Hopefully.

This is a hard one, because

if you detect every lie someone says,

then you're never going to trust anyone.

And its going to be,

you're constantly going to just think,

"Everyone lies."

Like Dr. House says.

- That everybody lies.

- You're not going to ever feel comfortable, I feel.

But then you might meet that one person

who never lies.

- (chuckles) That's me.

- This is, yeah.

Or get away with any lie you tell.

Now that one's difficult too, because

that might make you wanna lie all the time.

Because if you can get away with lying,

then you can, think of the possibilities.

- Oh I am*

(Jack laughs)

- For example,

what's a possibility?

- This reminds me of the film with Leonardo Dicaprio.

- I was thinking the exact same thing.

- Yeah.

- Catch Me If You Can. - Catch Me If You Can.

And he lies his way into all of these situations.

- So he gets away with the lie of being a pilot,

for a long time.

He is somebody who says he's a pilot.

(mumbles) It snowballs, doesn't it?

- So it's kind of like, would you rather be a sociopath,

or would you rather be

a bitter and deeply suspicious person?

- That's one way to look at it.

I'd say,

get away with any lie I tell.

And then,

I wouldn't lie.

(laughing)

- I also would choose to get away with any lie that I tell,

but, for different reasons.

- To take advantage of it.

- Well, I wouldn't wanna think

that I would take advantage of it,

but I would like to think, first of all that

there aren't too many people that are lying to me.

- Yeah.

- And usually I can tell, when someone is lying.

- Right.

- And that, conversely,

I feel like,

if I had the power

to make anything that I said seem so convincing,

I would be able to use that power for good.

- Okay.

What about you?

Leave your answers below.

(upbeat music)

Okay, number three.

Would you rather get a paper cut between you finger

every time you touch paper,

or bite your tongue every time you eat something?

It's easy.

- Yeah.

Well, I would say that,

a couple years ago,

it would not have been as easy.

- Well, what's your answer?

- My answer is the paper cut, every time I touch paper.

- Yeah. - Because we are living

in a paperless world.

(laughing)

Where you can now get-- - Yeah.

- Everything on your phone.

And for a while, it was really difficult for me

to transition from reading print.

- Yeah. - 'Cause I love

the feel of books, and I love to read.

To a kindle,

or a reading device.

But now that I've transitioned,

I'm not looking back, and I love to eat way too much,

to get burned every time that I ate.

- Yeah.

I think that's an obvious one.

But papercuts do hurt.

- They do hurt.

- They do hurt. - Yeah.

- And, it just means that you will never touch paper again.

Because you don't want to get a paper cut.

- Nope.

- Biting your tongue

every time you eat something-- - Yeah.

As a teacher, I would have to say,

"Students, please, pick up the papers." (chuckles)

- Yeah.

- Which I do anyway.

- Yeah, you can just

delegate that task. - Delegate that (laughs).

- But then, yeah,

to bite your tongue every time you eat something,

this is painful and, well you know, we eat all the time.

- We eat all the time. - Yeah.

So, that one's easy.

(upbeat music)

Would you rather be allergic to chocolate

or allergic to smartphones?

(chuckles)

- (exclaims) That is a tough one.

- This is specific to you.

- This is, it seems like this question

was designed to

stump me.

- Should I go first?

- Yeah. - Alright.

Definitely, chocolate.

(Kate exclaims)

Easy.

It's easy.

- It's not easy-- - Chocolate.

- It's not, it is not easy.

It's not easy.

- Chocolate.

- Yeah, oh, I'm gonna have to

go with chocolate-- - Come on.

- I'm gonna have to-- - There you go.

- Go with chocolate too.

- This is when it gets difficult,

but you have to make a decision.

- Yes.

I think that I love chocolate,

I have chocolate everyday.

- Yeah.

Me too, more or less.

- More or less.

But

in these days like,

a smartphone has so many things.

But chocolate just has one role,

and I think you could find other things to fill in,

for chocolate. - Yeah.

Definitely.

But, (exclaims).

- I can see why you are struggling.

- Uh-huh.

- But at the same time, it's an easy choice.

- Yeah, yeah it's-- - If you actually

have to make the choice.

- Yes.

- Just because, for me anyway,

we use them so much, probably so much

probably too much.

And that's

another conversation.

- Yes. - For another time.

But they're just so practical.

As you were saying before, you now read books on there,

et cetera.

And remember what we were talking about the other day?

This is interesting.

That people talk about how

smartphones are taking all these natural resources,

and they're bad for the environment.

But when they actually looked at

what smartphones have replaced,

when it comes to books,

so they don't have to produce books anymore.

Calculators,

torches,

- Flashlights.

- (chuckles) Recording devices, cameras,

all these apps have now taken away the need

for those stand alone products to be made.

And they say,

I read this article,

with the headline

where they said, (laughs)

I did read y'all.

Well, they said,

because of that,

it's actually better for the environment

to create smartphones. - Smartphones.

- Found that very interesting. - very interesting.

- So in my case,

I would rather be allergic to chocolate.

I wonder...

Allergic to smartphones.

So you touched it

and you get a rash. - Maybe.

- Maybe.

Okay, what about you?

(upbeat music)

The last one is,

would you rather eat the food prepared by your mom

or by your partner?

- You didn't say that one first.

(Jack laughs)

I just realized how difficult this is (chuckles)

and I have to answer as well.

It's very difficult. - Yeah.

- This is (chuckles) mainly because you are both

fantastic chefs.

You both excellent in the kitchen

and you make delicious food.

- And we will both be aware of this video.

- Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, and you both don't cook that often,

but when you do, it's excellent.

Yeah, that's my answer.

What about you?

- You haven't answered. (Jack laughs)

Nice try.

Nice try, try again.

- Okay I will do five seconds.

If I had to decide one,

I'd rather eat food prepared by my mom.

She makes an excellent hot pot,

a very good chili,

and she also makes more of the kind of food that I like.

- Pause.

Last week,

my Thai beef stew.

- It was good.

It was good.

- My Mexican sweet potato soup.

- Yeah, decent good.

- The coconut soup.

- I know it was good.

I thought you're saying, if I had to decide.

Now when you answer this question,

Forget my answer.

Don't use what I answered too influential your answer.

- My answer was already my mom.

(Jack laughs)

- Is she a good cook?

- Better than you.

- Good chef.

(laughing)

- Well, some of my favorite foods

I think he'd said I've grown up with.

- Yeah.

- And

I am still reeling by the way

but I'm trying to answer my question.

I love vegetables.

and my mom really prepares vegetables well--

- Yeah. - And salad.

She also,

I mean everything that I grew up eating

really was through my mom--

- Yeah and I...

- And you--

- (mumbles) things.

- Yeah just like meat and potato.

- Meat, potato and a little bit of vegetable.

- No vegetable. - On the decide.

- No vegetable.

- (laughs) Potato and vegetables. (chuckles)

And pasta sauce is a vegetable.

- Pasta sauce is not a vegetable.

- Yes it is, it has tomatoes...

But it has onions and it has peppers.

There is tomatoes...

Anyway, so we got interrupted. (laughs)

We got interrupted.

I don't know where we were up to on that,

we run out of memory

on the memory card.

And we had to just start again.

But

Kate was asking. (laughing)

Kate had a few questions about my answer.

The way I interpret this question is, right now,

would you prefer to eat the foods prepared by your mum

or your partner?

I know that my mom is going to make, okay, Shepherd's Pie,

or hot pork.

Or something like that.

Maybe like the lamb and potatoes.

And then in my head you would make

a smoked salmon salad, which is good,

but I prefer to eat (mumbles)

- Have you ever heard the expression

of digging yourself a hole? - Yeah.

- In the conversation? - Yeah.

- That's when you say something

inappropriate or just playing wrong.

- Yeah.

- And then you try to fix it by saying more things.

And every time you say something,

it just makes the situation worse.

- But do you have to insert same answer?

- I know, but mine...

- So if you want to learn more about the phrases

that we (chuckles)

that we use in this video,

then go to go to (laughs) the description.

We'll leave those phrases for you.

And then check out the other conversations that we've had.

I've made a great playlist.

I think this is maybe episode 15.

- Okay.

- It might be the last one. - No.

- And I hope you enjoyed it.

And if you did enjoy it,

then please like and share this video

with your friends, your partner,

and your mom.

Anything else?

- I would like for Kate's question

every day-- - Oh yeah.

- To be for people to answer.

Would you rather eat the food prepared

by your mother and by your partner?

- Thank you again for watching.

Speak to you soon, bye.

- Bye.

(upbeat music)