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July 30, 2008 11:39 PM PDT

Fluency - setting up a conversation

Hello everybody. Today I want to talk about how to make your spoken English flow better and to help you with making it a little easier to talk to people, particularly native speakers.

To have a good conversation you need to start well, enjoy the conversation and make it a two way thing and to find a good way to finish. This is useful and has nothing to do with the length of time you speak for.

To start off a conversation, try to remember some good opening sentences:

If you know somebody already… (informal)

“How are you today?”
“Nice to see you, how’s it going?”
“What’s new? How are things?”
“It’s good to see you”

If you are meeting someone for the first time (formal)

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, my name is…..”
“Nice to meet you, my name is, how are you?”
“Let me introduce myself, I’m……(name)”

The next part is to let the other person do something similar and then you have names. If they use first names, then you can also use first names.

The next stage is to give yourself time to think. The small pauses seem to be a long time, but they will only be a few seconds.

“I’m learning English and…………. I’m finding it so interesting”

“It’s great to be able to speak with you in English………………, I’m enjoying learning it”

“I would like to improve my English…..I do have a few problems now and then, so forgive me if I am a little slow at times….”

“What a pleasure it is to be able to speak some English…… I like learning it and I’m hoping to improve it”

Then you can follow my advice about keeping the conversation going by letting the other person speak more, asking questions, saying phrases like:

“ah really?”

“that’s interesting”

“I see”

“hmmm, well you make a good point there”

“I agree with you…” (if you do agree)

“That’s right!”

If you are uncertain, or you don’t understand so well

“Oh, I’m not sure what you mean there…”

“Could you repeat that please?”

“That’s interesting, but I’m not sure what you meant by……”

“Really? Well, it’s certainly something to think about”

Many of these sorts of sentences can be used to keep conversations going and also give you time to relax and enjoy the conversation because most of the work will be on the other person.

The more time you can give yourself in a conversation, the more time you have to think of the right words you want to say .

If they ask you what you think about something and you are not sure what to say, then you can use these sorts of phrases:

“Oh, I’m not sure about that, tell me what you think again please?”

“Well, I would think it is something to consider yes,”

“I think it’s not easy to answer that, what’s your opinion?”

All the time, these sentences and pauses give you more time without the other person realising that you are doing this because they are also answering your questions.

Enjoy your conversations….

Bye for now