Tell me about yourself! Introduce yourself in English with EASE!

Well hey there I'm Emma from mmmEnglish!

Today I'm going to teach you to introduce

yourself effectively.

And there are three reasons why this is

such an important skill to learn.

Of course, we've got to introduce ourselves

all the time, right? In lots of different contexts.

So spending the time getting your introduction right

is gonna help you and it's gonna benefit you

over and over and over again.

And when you meet someone new,

you will likely feel a little nervous.

It's totally normal, right?

But if you can get off to a good start,

then it's gonna help you to feel more confident

going into the rest of the conversation.

So nailing that first introduction

is so important.

And of course, if you can introduce yourself

clearly and confidently,

you'll make a great first impression

with people that you meet.

This is going to help you build great relationships,

to make friends and be liked

which really, deep down is what we all really want.

Ideally, you're watching this video with your notebook

handy so that you can take some notes as we go.

You can listen to me talk about introducing yourself

as much as you like but if you don't start

playing with the language and the ideas that I'm sharing today

to make it useful and relevant for yourself,

what's the point?

So if you've shown up today and you're ready to participate

in this lesson,

let me know in the comments, I'm really excited to get started.

And of course, if you can think of a friend or a colleague

who needs to work on this skill too,

share this lesson with them, make sure you subscribe

and let's get into it!

So imagine hearing this question:

Tell us about yourself.

And feeling cool, calm and collected as you reply.

That is exactly what we're working towards today.

We want to, not only just answer this question with ease,

but we want to do it accurately as well.

There are lots of different places and contexts

where you might need to introduce yourself.

Some of them are formal, some of them are really informal.

So knowing your context and your audience

is extremely important, I can't stress that enough.

It's so important.

And adjusting your introduction just slightly

to those different situations is a really powerful skill to learn.

Because it might be useful to talk about your education

and your profession in some contexts,

but really weird to bring that up at a party, right?

Like that's a good way to bore someone to tears.

So let's get started with your introduction today.

And how do we start?

We start really simply and casually with your name.

I am Emma or I'm Emma.

Now in most situations, it's much more natural to use

the contraction I'm Emma, it sounds much more relaxed that way.

You can also say: My name is Emma.

Or my name's Emma.

Simple, right? You've got this.

Now what if you have a preferred name or a nickname?

It is always really good to let the person who you're addressing

know right up front right?

And an informal way to do that is to say:

My friends all call me

My name is Beatrice, but my friends all call me Bee.

A slightly more formal way to do that is to say:

My name is Ybiskay,

but it's hard for some people to say it, so you can call me Ybis.

This is a really great expression to note down

if people find it really hard to say your name.

Maybe it's a long name, maybe it's not

a very common name in the place where you live.

You kind of get sick of having to explain it again and again.

So as long as you don't mind,

then this is a really great way to introduce your name

or a version of your name that you'd like to be called.

The next piece of basic information to include

is something about location.

It could be to do with where you're living now

or where you're from originally.

And there's lots of different ways to elaborate on this

type of information.

So I'm going to give you a few different ways of doing it here

but it's up to you to pick and choose

which version works best for your story.

Okay so experiment,

get a little playful with some of these combinations.

I'm from Australia.

And again, I'm using that contracted form here because

I am from Australia

sounds just a little bit stiff, you know so to sound more relaxed,

and more natural, say: I'm from

with your country or your city name, could be either.

You could say: I am

and your nationality adjective, so I'm Australian.

Turkish, Vietnamese, Brazilian.

These are all examples of nationality adjectives.

And these nationality adjectives are usually different

to the country name, right?

So you've got to be careful that you're using the right form

of the word with each of these expressions.

We don't say:

I'm from Australian.

Or I am Australia.

Now if you said: I'm from Melbourne.

It's actually not super clear

whether that's the place where you live now

or where you're from originally.

So if you're not from the place that you're in

while you're making the introduction,

then you could say: I come from

a place, you know and we use this

when there's a bit of distance between

where you are now and wherever that place is so it could be

another city or another country.

But if you want to be clearer, all you need to do is just

choose some more specific verbs.

You could say:

I was born in, with the place name.

I was born in Melbourne.

I grew up in

or I was raised in.

Or even, I spent my childhood in

and a place name, so this is talking about

you know when you were a child, where were you

what were you doing, it's an interesting way to bring up

that part of your life.

And they all express a really similar idea so you

can pick and choose how you use them.

I was born in Australia and spent my childhood growing up

in various cities along the east coast.

I’m originally from Melbourne, but now I'm based in Perth.

So if you wanna say how long you've been living in your

current location, it is

the perfect chance to use the present perfect.

I’ve been living in Perth since 2016.

I’ve lived in Perth for the past four years.

Or I could also say:

I moved to Perth a few years ago.

There are just so many different ways to express this

information, honestly. I could keep going!

And I'm sure that many of these structures are actually

really familiar to you but as you're preparing your introduction,

really pay attention to the story that you're telling.

And take the time to make sure that you're expressing

your ideas accurately.

And once you write your introduction, you are most welcome

to add it down into the comments below.

I'll take a look at as many as I can

and make sure that they sound awesome.

So talking about your name, your location,

these are the basics.

And like I said earlier, if you can get this part right,

and you can just say it really naturally as soon as you get asked,

then this is going to set you up really well

for what comes next.

And what comes next really does depend on the context

so I've got a few different options for you to consider here.

If you are introducing yourself to

a new neighbour for example, you might choose to focus

more on your family.

But then if you're introducing yourself at a job interview

you might talk about job related experience, obviously.

And if you're introducing yourself to an English class, you might

focus on your hobbies and your interests,

things that will help the other people in your class

connect with you and you know, reveal their shared interests.

Now you might want to talk about your family

a little bit when you introduce yourself.

And the amount of information that you share here is up to you

whatever you feel comfortable sharing.

We want to be careful not to overshare

you know, to bore someone with your entire family history

unless they asked for it because they're particularly interested.

But if you're married you would say:

We've been married since

and a time or a date.

I’ve been married to my husband since August last year.

For example.

Now if you're not married but you still want to mention

the length of your relationship, you can say:

We've been together for and a time period.

Okay, we've been together.

In a relationship context, that tells the length of your relationship.

I always find it kind of tricky to talk about my relationship with

my partner in English because we don't actually have

many words to describe it.

My partner, Shah and I have been together for eleven years now.

We're engaged

but we've been engaged for about six or seven years now.

So we have no plans to get married

so he's not ever going to be my husband.

I can introduce him as my fiance, but then I always get asked

When's the wedding? You know, what are your plans?

And of course,

we have none so that conversation gets really boring.

And after eleven years of being together,

the word boyfriend is really flippant

and not particularly useful so I usually just call him

my partner.

But in our situation, we are business partners too

and so in that context, things can also get really confusing.

So if you want to talk about the family that you live with,

then you could say something like:

We're a family of five.

I live here with my family.

We're a family of five.

But if you're talking about the family that you grew up in,

then you need to clarify, you need to say:

I grew up in a family of five.

Now that information is pretty general, it could be

a single parent and four kids,

or it could be two parents and three kids

it's pretty loose.

If you have children that you wanna talk about, say:

I have a seven year old son.

I'm a single parent.

I'm a mother of twins.

And it's really nice to add a little bit commentary around

family members, just to make it a bit more interesting.

You could say:

I’m a single mum. I’ve got twin girls, they’re five years old.

And they just started school this year, so it's been

pretty exciting for us!

And the reason why adding just a little bit of this type of

information is so great,

is because it gives hints and clues

to the person that you're talking to to help them continue

the conversation in a really positive way.

You know they could ask:

What school are they going to?

Or maybe comment and say:

You know,

now that they're at school, you must feel like you've got so much

time to yourself again!?

Something like that.

When you're talking about your brothers and sisters, of course

you can say: I've got three sisters.

But it's a bit of a mouthful to say:

I've got two brothers and three sisters.

Right? So instead, we use the word siblings to talk about

brothers and sisters, it's quite general.

Two brothers and a sister

would equal three siblings.

I have three siblings.

Now when you say that,

it doesn't include you.

Okay you're talking about the other children in your family.

If you want to include you, say:

I am one of four siblings.

And if you've got no siblings, then you're an only child.

I'm an only child.

You might also want to talk about your extended family.

Now this is a really, really great expression to use

when you're talking about aunties, uncles, grandparents, cousins.

By saying extended family, you're including all of them,

you don't have to go into detail about who and how many,

and all of that kind of thing.

I live in Perth, but most of my extended family lives in Melbourne.

But saying extended family means you don't need to list out

everyone, right?

So you might want to talk about interests or hobbies

things that you do outside of work.

We'll talk about work in a second so don't jump ahead.

But to talk about hobbies, you might say: I enjoy

with a noun. I enjoy baking.

Don't say: I enjoy to bake.

Right? Enjoy as a verb is always followed by a noun

and this is a gerund, okay?

You can always say I like or I love

with a noun. So I love playing football, for example.

But the verbs like and love, they can be followed by a gerund

or the verb infinitive and the meaning stays the same.

So you can also say: I love to play football.

The meaning is exactly the same.

You could say: I'm really into something.

And this is a really great, a really natural way

of talking about the things that you like.

I'm really into jazz music.

Now having a couple of interesting things to include about yourself

in your introduction is so useful in lots of different contexts.

If you've ever been part of an English class or some other meeting,

where you've got to meet people for the first time,

then the teacher will often suggest let's go around the room

and you'll need to introduce yourself.

Tell us your name,

where you're from and something interesting about yourself.

It's always good to have something ready to answer this question

maybe you've got a special talent or an interesting hobby

or a unique achievement that you can share in the situation.

And a fun way of introducing this it to say:

One thing you may not know about me is

One thing you may not know about me is I love to have dinner

parties and I'll spend whole days preparing and organising

themed events for my friends.

So I'm curious to hear your ideas about this.

See if you can finish the rest of this sentence

down in the comments below.

One thing you may not know about me is...

Of course, you might want to talk about your job, right?

So when you're talking about your job, when you're talking about

your job in your introduction, usually you're just sharing

what you do and maybe who you work for. And again,

there are lots of different ways to talk about your work,

the company, etcetera.

But what we really want to do today is make sure you're doing it

accurately.

Prepositions and articles are really challenging to get right

in this section, might be a little tricky so

I hope that you are definitely taking notes as we go and that

you're applying the information that I'm sharing now

to your situation.

Of course you could say: I am

a or an and a job position.

Your job position is a countable noun so this means

you need to include an article.

I’m a graphic designer

I’m an engineer.

Just make sure you're not saying: I’m engineer. That's wrong, okay?

And if there's only one of your role within your company, then

you definitely can use the definite article, the.

Okay I talk more about definite and indefinite articles

up here in this video.

But you could say

I am the CEO of a tech company.

Or I am the owner of a florist.

You could also talk really generally about the field

or the industry that you work in by using in.

I work in

and the industry.

I work in marketing.

I work in construction.

I work in design.

Now if you wanna say which company employs you,

then you can use either, at or for with the company name.

So you might say: I work at Vogue.

Or I work at an architecture firm.

Or I work for the government.

Do you work for yourself?

Are you your own boss?

Well in this case you could say: I work for myself.

I'm self-employed.

Or I run my own business.

And here's a little hint. If you're unsure about how to talk about

your job in your industry, as it relates to your industry,

then listen to others who are from your industry

introduce themselves. Lots of TedTalks or lots of

industry-relevant videos around where you can listen to people

introduce themselves in that context and learn from them.

You may want to talk about education or your qualifications

in your introduction and this is

most common in a professional context

maybe in an interview or you know, a work context.

And again, there's lots of different ways that you can do this.

You could say:

I have a degree in with an industry.

like architecture or design.

I have a degree in engineering.

You can also say: I'm a qualified with your job title.

I'm a qualified engineer.

I'm a qualified architect.

Now notice that I'm using the job title and not the industry there,

okay?

Sounds similar to saying I'm an architect

but the difference is that the adjective qualified

clarifies your status.

Add it if it feels important to clarify given the context.

Maybe in an interview it's relevant.

But there's no need to tell someone at a party that you're

a qualified engineer, alright? In that context, you would just say:

I'm an engineer.

If you're studying at university now then some of

these expressions are gonna be really useful.

I'm studying with the industry.

I’m studying environmental science.

Or it could also be the name of your degree as well.

I’m studying applied science.

I’m completing a PhD in

and whatever the research area is, maybe it's public health.

I’m completing a PhD in Public Health.

I’m in my final year of something degree.

You know, I’m in my final year of an economics degree.

I’m nearing the end of my studies

is another way of expressing that.

And maybe you're undertaking some less formal training.

And that's totally cool as well, you might wanna say:

I’m currently taking an online course to upskill.

Or I'm doing an extra course to improve my skills

in that area, something like that.

So by now you should have a whole list of dot point ideas

that we can start to build your introduction around.

For me, we could say: I'm Australian. I live in Perth.

I’m originally from Melbourne. Interests, hobbies.

I love swimming in the ocean every morning.

I’m a qualified English teacher. I teach on YouTube.

I’m interested in businesses and startups.

Great!

Okay have you got your list ready too?

If not, just hit pause now, pause the video, write out your list

and then continue on.

Because now we need to find a way to pull all of those ideas

together, okay? We want to make sure that your sentences

flow together and that they sound really natural

as you speak or you say your introduction.

And to do that we need to combine these ideas into some

longer sentences and add a few grammatical words to help.

Hi, I’m Emma. I was born in Melbourne and I grew up in

various cities along the east coast of Australia.

I’ve been living in Perth on the west coast of Australia

with my partner for the past four years and we absolutely love it,

especially early morning ocean swims!

I’m a qualified English teacher and I teach students online

and I also have an interest in business and startups, as well.

One thing you may not know about me is that I teach

millions of students each month on my YouTube channel.

Now obviously you know that about me, but most people I meet

don’t so, it’s always an interesting conversation starter.

This is the type of script that I want you to write now.

Alright, and once you've got it written down,

make sure you share it down in the comments below

so that I can give you some feedback and some corrections

to help you improve it if you need it.

The sooner you get your introduction written and shared

down below, the better, the more likely I'll be to see it

and be able to respond.

I definitely love to see you each commenting and giving support

and constructive feedback to each other down in the comments

below. It's so helpful

and it helps everyone to keep improving together.

Now once you have your script prepared and reviewed,

save it on your phone, make a recording of it,

whatever it takes to just have it with you regularly okay?

And you need to practise it out loud.

Alright? On a daily basis. Don't just read it, practise how it sounds,

how it comes out of your mouth. This is going to help you to

speak more naturally, feel more comfortable as you are saying

the words and the sounds and connecting those things together.

It's really, really important that you practise out loud

daily until you nail this.

But even before then, you know, start practising it in real English

situations. It's probably not going to be perfect at first,

but you will get better every time you put it into that context.

And you put yourself into that situation or you hear that question:

Tell me about yourself.

And you might freeze at first

but it's going to change over time, you know,

you've prepared for this. You've got your answers ready.

You don't need to panic and that is the kind of headspace

and feeling that you need to step into a conversation with.

I hope this lesson was really practical, really useful for you.

And if you’re ready to keep building your conversation skills and

learn how to keep your conversation going

after you’ve introduced yourself,

well move along to this lesson right here where we'll practise

some small talk conversation starters together.

I'll see you in there!