hi my name is Emma and today we are going to talk about conversation
expressions
we're going to talk about three very important conversation expressions that
will help you to organize your conversation as well as help people
listening to what you're saying know where you are going to go with what you
are saying
so these are very good conversation devices that are everyday expressions we
use you will hear them a lot and the other thing to know about these
expressions is they never change
you memorized them as a chunk
so you memorize each of these words and you use it always together
ok so let's get started the first expression we are going to win today is
if you ask me if you ask me
now I quite like this expression because i have a lot of opinions and when you
say if you ask me what you are saying is this is my opinion
I'm so for example i love comic books
I love reading about superheroes like Batman Superman but if you ask me
Wolverine is the greatest superhero of all time
now some of you watching maybe in complete disagreement with me
maybe you think spider-man is cooler or Batman is way better
and so what you could respond is if you ask me
Wolverine isn't the greatest superhero of all time that manages and I would
have to disagree with you if you ask me if you ask me
toronto is a great city to live in
if you ask me the government should spend more money on health care
so this is a very useful expression because anytime you're giving your
opinion you can use it and remember even though it's a ask me
you don't need to be asked your opinion to use this even if somebody doesn't
want to know your opinion
you can still use this in a conversation and say if you ask me
all right number two
speaking up speaking of is very important because in English we really
like to link things we like conversation just to go very smoothly
we like to know where somebody is going in the conversation
so speaking of what it does is it links a new topic to an old topic so i'll give
you an example
we were just talking about Wolverine as a superhero
I said if you ask me I think
Wolverine is the greatest superhero of all time
now maybe I want to talk about something else about worry i have a new topic I
want to talk about
I can use speaking of to link Wolverine as the greatest superhero to a new topic
so here's an example speaking or if you ask me
Wolverine is the greatest superhero of all time
speaking of Wolverine did you know he's canadian interesting back isn't it
so speaking of links the old topic with the new
another example is um maybe I'm at a party and somebody is talking about a
hockey game they just saw the other night
maybe i could say speaking of hockey
did you read about Wayne Gretzky's daughter in the newspaper some
interesting news is just happened with her
so speaking of what it does is it links again and your topic to an old topic
our third example
this one is very useful as well as I was saying as I was saying what this does is
it helps you to go back to an earlier point in the conversation
sometimes maybe you're having a great conversation
you're talking about movies
for example and then suddenly there's an interruption
maybe somebody knocks at the door maybe your phone goes off and you have to
answer it and then your friends are still talking
and when you come back you want to continue talking about what you were
talking before
so what you can say it as I was saying so if I'm talking about movies
the there's a knock at the door
I leave when I come back I can say as i was saying about movies
I really want to see J Edgar Hoover a new a new movie that's just come out
another example
it's not just for interruptions we use it often for interruptions in order to
keep the conversation flowing smoothly but people during presentations use this
a lot as well maybe I'm giving a presentation on government and I'm
talking first about the environment and then I move on my second point might be
economics and then maybe a third . might be education so I talked a lot about
education but now i want to go back I want to go back to environment
I can use as I was saying as I was saying
or as I was saying earlier the environment is very important to Canada
so again this is to go back to an earlier point in the conversation
um I forgot to mention one thing about speaking of this is actually quite an
important point
so as I was saying earlier about speaking of at some people they don't
really get the art of conversation so well and so what they tend to do is
they'll be talking about something like for example UFOs the conversation is
talking about aliens and UFOs and suddenly somebody wants to talk about
shoes
now these two things don't really linked up well in a conversation
so when you use speaking up you want to use something that kind of links to to
the initial thing you were talking about so don't don't say if you're talking
about aliens
oh speaking of aliens I want to go shoe shopping this weekend because it won't
make sense
you really want to link some aspect of what you're talking about
originally to the new topic so a better example would be speaking of aliens
I want to I want to read a book
it's it's all about aliens I want to see The X Files that it's a show about
aliens
so it's good to have a link to keep the the topic consistent
ok so if you ask me every day
expressions such as these are very useful as I was saying earlier we use
these expressions often and it will really help you in terms of both your
speaking and you're listening speaking of speaking and listening
if you want to become a better conversationalist
i highly recommend checking out our website at www.ge.com take care