Hello friends! Welcome back. In this video lesson you'll learn five interesting questions you can use to start a conversation
with someone in English. Friends, starting a conversation with someone you... It shouldn't be a daunting task.
In this lesson you'll learn five interesting questions
you can use to start a conversation with someone in English and to have more meaningful
Friends, to help me help you to help us learn these five interesting questions
I've invited Jacob from jacobteacher.com to talk to us a little bit about these five interesting questions.
Jacob is from Canada. He has a Canadian accent and friends, this is a great resource,
you can use to better understand natural
English, to understand native English speakers, as I have an Australian accent and
You'll listen to us talking about these five interesting questions. We even answer some of these questions ourselves
Friends, if you are struggling to follow this video lesson and to follow the natural
conversation, make sure to turn on the subtitles. You can do that by hitting the CC button.
Friends, I want to test you a little bit in this video lesson, to test your listening skills.
I did mention at the beginning that me and Jacob will be presenting five interesting questions
you can use to start a conversation with somebody in English.
Now I'm not going to give those five questions away
But I challenge you to listen to the whole conversation and at the end of this video lesson,
once you've listened to the whole conversation,
comment below this video those five questions me and Jacob talked about.
Friends before we hear from Jacob, I would like to thank those members, our students in the using English TP classroom
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Let's hear from Jacob. Let's talk about those five interesting questions you can use to start a conversation in English.
Hey, Adriana, I'm doing well. Good to see you. Good to see you. Jacob,
I don't know about you, but you know when you meet somebody for the first time,
starting your conversation with somebody. So I know a lot of my learners really struggle with this. You meet somebody, you
have to talk with them, or maybe you want to talk with them, but
you don't know how to start a conversation.
How do you... what tips do you have a to start a conversation with somebody in English?
Yeah, that's a really good question, and I think it's something that
quite a few people struggle with. So the first thing I would say is if you are struggling with this,
don't worry because it's kind of a
normal fear to have. It is quite uncomfortable to begin a conversation with someone who you
have never spoken to before, someone who you don't know. So don't beat yourself up if you are feeling that way.
There are a number of things you could do.
I think, to start a conversation with someone, one...
We're gonna go through some questions that I like to ask in a second here, I think.
But one thing that I like to do and one thing that I would advise is to try to use
the environment you're in. So imagine you're both in a coffee shop, for example.
Imagine that they're out of coffee, let's say that it's a self-serve coffee shop, and they're out of coffee.
And you see someone trying to fill up the coffee.
And it's not working. You could make a comment about that to them, and it could be something so simple as something like:
Oh, they're out of coffee today, it seems like that. It really
Doesn't matter what you say so much, as long as you just say
I just like to say to people - hey, how's it going and it's something as simple as that.
I think that sometimes people feel like they need to say something really
impressive or really smart. And that is just not the case. From my experience, a lot of the time if you just say hi and
have a nice smile on your face, that works perfectly.
It is really the case... How many times... Sometimes, I'm stuck for words, and I just like weather, it's something really common. Well, okay,
I know you have five interesting questions you want to share, so I don't want to comment too much about the weather, this, that.
You could share the first question. Yeah, well the first one I'm... And I wrote this post for you
after being in a situation where I was with a friend of a friend,
and we hadn't met before, so the three of us, my close friend and her friend,were at dinner and
my friend went to the washroom, so it was myself and this person who I didn't know, sitting there.
But this person who I didn't know was close friends with my friend,
one thing that I like to ask in these situations were... In situations when
you're with a group of people who know each other well,
but you're not too familiar with the group, is to simply ask how do you and
person X know each other, okay.
And people love to tell stories
about how they know, how they met their friends.
People love to speak about themselves if given the chance and this is a great way for you to give them that opportunity so
simply asking how do you and bla bla know each other? It's a great way to start a conversation
Interesting, but what about if you're in a situation when... and there... You're with two people, and there's, you don't have the third wheel.
What about in that situation, how can we set the conversation?
Yeah, well I've got another great one for you here. This is one that I wrote on your blog.
This is one of my favorites, and it's a very simple question, but..
The question is: What do you do to keep life from getting boring? And what you're basically asking here is:
What are your hobbies? What do you enjoy doing with your free time, but it's just a kind of unusual way to
word the question and so it's a way to word it that's a little bit more
exciting, I think, and another thing that's great about this question is
no one wants to sound boring. So if you ask someone. What do you do to keep life from getting boring?
They're really going to search their brain for an answer because no one wants to seem boring and they're gonna probably give you a good
So that's one that I really like to use in those situations, but that's almost a really difficult question to answer because I know
when... When I'm having a conversation with friends or even before, so we're having a little bit of a chit chat
I ask you:Wwhat have you been up to? What do you do for fun?
I never really ask one common question we hear in textbooks, in English learning textbooks, it's what are your hobbies? And,
for me, hobbies sound so formal, and it doesn't sound like something fun like everybody has hobbies.
But when you ask somebody what do you do from keeping your life from being boring?
It just makes... It makes me feel happy. Yeah, I feel like: Ah, okay I want them to be more interested. What do I do
that's interesting? You could share maybe a fun fact about your life
that's different with somebody else and the conversation even could continue and flow from there.
Yeah, exactly yeah, I think you're right about that. I wanted to ask you too...
If we haven't spoken in a while, and I want to ask you the question, Adriana. Why don't you tell me?
What do you do to keep life from getting boring? This is a tough question!
Dancing, listening to music. So, I love listening to music and if life gets boring I like to find...
I like to find a new song to listen to, or
I like to keep active. So going walking and keeping myself physically active, so that...
You never know what you'll see if you go for a walk or do something outdoors.
Yeah, and I think that's important too. Especially given our careers as online English teachers.
We spend a lot of time sitting in front of a computer.
now that I have to force myself
more and actually make an active effort to get out and go for walks and just to start moving around. So that's
important for me, I think, too. Yes, oh interesting.
Maybe, can I... I know I'm cheating at the moment, but I saw this... this question is a little bit interesting.
I know the third question is: What's your story?
I know many English learners probably thinking:
What's youe story? What do you mean? If I ask you, Jacob, what's your story...
Do you have like a book you're gonna share with me or?
Yeah, well it's a very open-ended question so...
You'll find... I mean, if you ask ten people this question you'll get radically
different answers because you really... As someone who hears this question, you don't know how to answer it, so I imagine people would start
you know, maybe telling a story about where they grew up or where they went to school or
who their friends are. So you could answer it in a number of different ways.
But it's interesting to see, too, what people
share about themselves in response to this story and... in response to this question, rather, and
usually they'll give you some information that
you can work with and that you can build a
conversation on and that's really what you're trying to do with all of these questions, is you're...
You're trying to find some common ground that you can
have a conversation about and yeah... so it's... This, this question is really good for
eliciting that kind of information, I think.
Some, some English speakers really struggle with
confidence. So if somebody asked you... What if I asked you now, Jacob? What's your story?
Would you share a lot with me, your personal life, or your professional life, like, what... I know
this is a very personal question, but I know...
English learners, like, me personally, I probably wouldn't share a lot of my personal life, but I'd... Maybe, true, something about
My... What I'm doing at the moment. Maybe some of my hobbies, how I've come to be where I am, but...
This is... What would you share?
be kind of an open book, speaking about stories. I tend to be kind of an open book in that regard, so I
don't mind sharing personal information sometimes. That's a problem sometimes.
I share too much personal information, and I regret it. So, I mean, to be honest with you, if someone asked me this question I
have no idea how I would answer it,and I would probably answer it in a different way
every time, depending on my mood depending on how I was feeling that day.
But, yeah, it really, it really depends, I think.
I know. Because I know, so, many English learners ask me: But, I don't know if I feel confident asking this question.
I just wanted to make it highlight at that even if we get stuck answering such questions.
Interesting. But, maybe,
we can go on to the next question. So, we're a little bit stuck at the moment, Jacob.
Are we stuck at the moment? Your Internet you mean?
No, it seems the internet... but, we can continue.
Well the next one is... The next one on the list we've had and
perhaps, I'll ask you this question, because, again, curious to know. And I know that we're doing a podcast right after this, so maybe I'll
ask you more of these questions on my podcast, but the question is: What are you passionate about. And
the key word here, for me, at least, you can tell me what you think of this, Adriana. The key word for me here is
You know, if you rephrased this and said: What do you like doing?
It's not as powerful. When you're asking someone what they're passionate about, you're really,
asking them to dig deep and to tell you things that... Tell you about things that they really value and
about things that they really enjoy doing with their time. So when you ask someone:
What are you passionate about? You're going to get a better answer than if you asked
someone: What are your hobbies? Or: What do you like doing?
So it's just... This is a perfect example of how a single word like this can kind of change the feel of a question,
and it automatically makes it sound like a very serious question.
So should I answer you a question then? Yeah.
Please do, I'm curious to know. I well, I'm passionate, what am I passionate about?
I'm passionate about teaching.
So I do do... Well as you know, Jacob, I spend a lot of time connecting with people, so I'm passionate about
connecting with people and sharing skills. But also I love the Internet. So I am passionate about
developing learning methods around the Internet, modern technologies, seeing, testing new things...
Technology and learning. This is something that I'm really passionate about, because I think this is an underdeveloped area and
So, my passion would be teaching and
figuring out you learning mechanisms. Were you, were you always into that or is that something that
developed as a consequence of what you're doing online
right now? I have no idea. I mean, I can't say... I actually hate technology.
That can be a little bit of a ditz when it comes to some text things.
But I think it's just gradually as I'm doing what I'm doing. I've noticed the power of technology
how you can actually meet new people, interact with new people, learn so much.
I know I've learned a lot through YouTube, through
tutorials, through courses, through Instagram, Snapchat, Instastories...
And then, I do... I think because I've seen the results on me that this brings about that passion in
sharing these through language learning, but...
Yes, clearly, I'm very passionate about this.
Well, it's good to be passionate about what you do, so, there you go.
What about you Jacob? What are you passionate about?
I'm... So, I share that passion that you have right now. It's kind of funny when you were answering that question,
I was thinking about myself and
I
used to hate Facebook and social media. Like I deleted my Facebook for about, I mean, I got it in high school...
Well, I'm 27 right now, so I got it maybe 10 years ago,
when everyone got it, when it was first becoming popular.
And then I deleted it for a long time, three or four years, because I just didn't like it so much.
Then I got back onto it and...
Part of... Got back onto it before I started teaching English online.
But then I started spending a lot of time because I'm teaching English online now, and I use Facebook a lot.
And I'm on it way too much now
I mean, I'm on it for maybe, I don't know five, six hours a day, but I've become more interested in
finding out ways to make Facebook and other social media platforms and other forms of technology
learning and I'm super interested in that too right now, and I think for me that was just a consequence of
trying to do this online teaching thing and seeing all the different possibilities, and it's like every day I
platform or something that I'd never heard of before and you just... It's so easy to imagine all of the different
possibilities that are available.
And so that's yeah, I share that passion, I think, to answer your question. Oh, interesting.
It's weird that we have the same...
It's not weird, of course, we're both online English teachers, and really we dedicate a lot of time
It's, it's weird for me kind of, that when I think back to what I was like, you know, 10,
15 years ago, someone would have told me I'd be
thrilled to spend 10 hours in front of a computer a day,
I would have said you're crazy, because that was so not me before. So it is kind of strange in that sense
I don't know what you were like as a child ya know,
Wow I just sat like for four hours in front of a computer. Yeah.
Yes, sure, I'm thinking of getting one of those, the...
Standing treadmills, I'd really like to try that out. You know those things
I tried that standing desk, but I couldn't do it, but...
Was it you just couldn't concentrate out with it, or was it? What was it? I don't know, I just gave up.
It's... sitting was easier. Maybe that's not the best option but,
I was typing and maybe it wasn't the best thing, but,
A standing threadmille? What's that?
Well, I think it's... I saw an infomercial for it once, but I think it's the same idea.
Maybe I was thinking of the standing desk before, but I actually saw someone on a
treadmill walking, and they have their desk set up, so they're walking very slowly.
But they're walking, they're not sitting and they're doing their work, and I guess it works for some people.
I don't know, I feel like I'd be...
I'd be confused doing it. I was at the gym the other day, and I put it on a really slow pace and
practiced by myself, it was kind of silly but,
I felt like I wouldn't be able to concentrate if I had that, but I feel like I need to do something, because I'm sitting
Let's finish up with the last question. Sure. What are you most proud of?That's an interesting question indeed.
Why, why is this an interesting question?
It's interesting, I think because, one, you don't hear it very often.
So it's another one of those questions that will kind of grab your attention, I think.
And two, it really makes people think about what they've done in their lives and
about what they're proud of, you know. It's so easy to get caught up in the day-to-day grind and to
lose your perspective that way, and a lot of the time I think we
were hard on ourselves, and we don't look at what we've accomplished in the past, and we don't,
you know, give ourselves a pat on the back sometimes.
One, that's nice to do and this question kind of asks people
to do that. It asks the person to think to what they've done in their lives and to
talk about what they're, what they're proud of, what they're excited about what they
feel like they've accomplished.
One thing I would say about this question is that
if you asked someone right away, like, if you just met someone at a coffee shop,
and maybe two minutes into a conversation you asked this, it might
I would definitely wait for a while to ask this question, until you know the person a little bit better, until you've established
some kind of core, but yeah, it is an interesting question and whenever I've asked this question, people... it's...
We've always had something good to talk about as a result, I think, so I really love this question.
Fantastic friends! You've listened to the natural conversations between Jacob and me
But what were those five interesting questions Jacob and me talked about in this natural conversation?
Remember to tell me in the comments below this video.
Those five interesting questions you learned throughout this video lesson and tell me will you use those
interesting questions when you start a conversation with someone in English. Again, a special
thanks to Jacob from Jacobteacher.com for taking the time to talk to us, to share his Canadian accent with us.
Friends, if you loved this video lesson, don't stop learning here.
Continue listening to natural conversations in English by watching
these video lessons just here to learn more about the using English TP classroom,
and how you can improve your spoken English with us as a using English TP member.
Check out this video lesson here.
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Remember friends to comment below those five interesting questions, and I'll see you in the comments below this video.