Speak With Me! Conversation Practice | Friends Catch Up

Video Transcript
Section 1
Hey there I’m Emma from mmmEnglish! Today you and I are going to do some conversation practice.

You’re going to speak with me. We’re going to practise speaking together using a dialogue and it’s going to be a conversation between two friends, two friends who haven’t seen each other in a little while so it’s about catching up.

This is such a great conversation topic to practise. I feel like it happens so often these days. Inside my English speaking community, I have this conversation all the time with friends that I haven’t spoken to in a few weeks or even a few months. It’s actually one of those conversations inside that community that sparked the idea for this lesson.

But before we get into it, I want to teach you five useful English expressions first and you can listen out for them in the dialogue that we’ll practise together, all right?

This lesson is going to be short and sweet so let’s dive straight in!

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Hey Lady! is an online community for women. We’ll help you to meet new speaking partners and practise real conversations in English.

We offer a free trial so that you can experience everything on offer in a full membership and it’s free for 10 days. I’ve put the link down in the description below so that you can start your free trial today.

There are five really common English expressions that I’m going to teach you first before we practise speaking together in our dialogue and I want you to listen out for them because they’re used in context and we’re going to talk together using them later on. Are you ready?

Long time no see

So this is an informal greeting, one that’s used when you haven’t seen someone for a long time, it’s been a long time since you last met. So you use it when you greet someone. You say their name, you say hello and then you use this expression.

• Hi Steve! Long time no see!

Fancy seeing you here

This is another really useful expression especially when you’re surprised to see someone but it’s a pleasant surprise like you’ve run into them in a place where you didn’t expect to see them.

Now it is important to note that this expression can be used with a sarcastic tone and then it can mean the exact opposite. Listen out, compare.

• Fancy seeing you here!

So a friendly greeting would signal a genuine expression of surprise when you meet someone and that sarcastic tone is really to sort of humiliate or mock someone or suggest that you’re actually not very excited to see them at all.

It’s much more common to use it in the positive way and that is how you’ll hear it in today’s conversation as well.

Listen out for the adjective promising. If someone or something is promising, it seems likely that it will be very good or very successful and it’s often used with some of these verbs like look, seem, sounds and feel.

So a situation feels or seems promising. An idea sounds promising. And the result looks promising.

A blessing in disguise

This is a very useful idiom to know. If you say that something is a blessing in disguise then something that seems bad or unlucky at first actually results in something being good or something good happening later.

So it can be a really good one to use when someone shares bad news like they just lost their job.

Then you can use this expression to suggest that even though the situation is bad right now, it might become better in the future.

What’s been happening in your world?

So this is just a really informal question to find out the latest news about someone else’s life and it’s usually used with someone who is a friend, they’re very familiar to you. It’s not used in professional contacts at all.

Okay, it’s time for you to speak with me out loud, okay? We’re gonna pretend that we are two friends catching up. You’ll say one line and then I’ll say the next, just like we would if we were having a real conversation together. You and me.

So I’ll start and you’ll see your part of the conversation appear up on screen and once we get through it, once we complete the conversation, we’ll swap places and we’ll practise it through one more time.

Make sure you listen up for those five natural English expressions during our conversation too.

Ready?

DIALOGUE TRANSCRIPT

Emma: Lauren? Long time no see!

Lauren: Emma! Fancy seeing you here! It’s been such a long time since we last caught up!

Emma: Too long! Do you have a minute to grab a coffee?

Lauren: Sure, I’d love to.

Emma: So what’s news? What’s been happening?

Lauren: Well, actually the last few months have been pretty tough because I lost my job late last year.

Emma: I’m so sorry to hear that.

Lauren: Thank you. I was really discouraged for a while. It was hard to be optimistic because there were so many lockdowns and many people lost their jobs.

Emma: It’s been a really tough time, hasn’t it?

Lauren: Yeah. But it’s not all bad news.

Emma: No? This sounds promising!

Lauren: Well, after a month of feeling really sorry for myself, I knew I had to change my mindset. I needed to look for the positives.

Emma: Don’t tell me it turned out to be a blessing in disguise?

Lauren: Kind of! I’ve been training to be a life coach.

Emma: Oh, Lauren! That’s fantastic news!

Lauren: Thanks! I know what it’s like to feel stuck or like important decisions in your life are being made by others. I just want to help people take back control of their life.

Emma: Incredible! I’m so happy for you!

Lauren: Anyway, enough about me. What’s been happening in your world?

I hope that you enjoyed practising with me like this today. If you want to grab the full transcript of this dialogue so that you can practise with your friends at another time head over to the mmmEnglish website.

The link is in the description below or if you’re inside the Hey Lady! community and you’re watching this video, the transcript is right below. You can click on it, open it and get started in your study groups.

Make sure you let me know if you enjoyed speaking with me today. Say hello down in the comments. I love popping down there reading your comments, catching up with what’s happening in your world.

Make sure you’re subscribed to the channel and check out this lesson next!