you today it looks like we're gonna be talking  about fishing a little bit today yes this is  

really fun we had a listener write in a very  thoughtful and interesting question and our answer  

we're going to give you guys something that's  very useful which is strategies and questions  

to further engage in a conversation to keep  the conversation going to build that connection  

but yes we're going to end up talking about  fishing a little bit right because fishing is  

the kind of activity where you absolutely need  to be having a conversation it can i mean i've  

never been fishing you're going to tell us  a lot about fishing today aubrey um but i'm  

sure there's a lot of space for conversation wow  that's true if you go fishing with someone you're  

going to end up chatting because there's a lot  of time where you're sort of just sitting waiting  

so it really would actually be a great conversa  or a great activity to do with someone when  

really the goal the purpose is to just have a good  chat i love it i love it and i think that's true  

for sports like golf as well especially in the  business world right it's really for building  

sometimes business relationships going golfing  is not some or even going to a baseball game  

uh going to a red sox game you're sitting there  with your colleague or a friend and you're just  

building the relationship and you know baseball is  the kind of sport where unless you're a crazy fan  

you don't have to be 100 zoomed into it right i  think even crazy fans have plenty of time to chat  

right yes slow parts of an inning so yeah you're  right i think when a colleague invites you to  

go fishing or golf or baseball some of these  activities where you're just sort of sitting  

and watching or not doing much you can count on  having a good conversation plan on building that  

relationship because you're going to have the time  the silence for it yeah so we need the skills for  

this but before we get into it today i want to let  our listeners know go over to alliersenglish.com  

app guys a-p-p that's where you can get the ios or  the android app and you can go a little bit deeper  

with all ears english all right so much good  vocabulary you want you want that app so it's  

easy to add it to your vocab list for sure yeah  aubry you're the one who curates our vocab choices  

for the app she designs for you kind of a little  bit of a learning plan by selecting about seven  

words per week or per episode rather that you guys  are going to go deeper into and learn from the  

episodes so exactly because we have four episodes  every week that ends up being quite a bit of good  

vocabulary and every single episode there are  idioms phrasal verbs words that natives use  

very interestingly so this makes it easy you  don't have to like look it up and then not be sure  

what's the definition we make it very simple for  you you got it all right so should i go ahead and  

just read the question wow we have a long question  maybe yes it's a little bit of a long question but  

it's very interesting yes read it let me read  a few lines and then i'll throw it back to you  

aubry all right here we go hi lindsay and michelle  i've become a huge fan of your podcast i recently  

started following up and found found it very  useful for day-to-day conversations communications  

by the way i am a non-native english speaker born  and brought up in india and i'm living in chicago  

so here's the question i had a conversation with  my colleague who lives in minnesota he's over 50.  

he started describing how ice fishing works  and all the fun activities they do out there  

he mentioned some of his friends who are based out  of florida and have never seen snow before that  

they had visited his place he went on explaining  all those fun things they did like riding a truck  

on a frozen lake ice fishing staying under the  ground in a heated room etc etc it was a lot of  

fun to hear especially how his friends freaked out  but i was not able to ask appropriate questions  

or could not engage in the conversation due to my  lack of communication skills it would be great if  

you guys could bring this up and discuss thank you  i love you guys mahesh fantastic question aubry  

yes it is such an interesting question and i love  the insightfulness where mahesh realized that the  

reason they weren't able to engage wasn't had  nothing to do with the fact that they didn't  

know a lot about ice fishing because you can ask  questions you can engage in a conversation even  

if you don't know much about you know what the  other person is talking about but if you feel  

like you don't have those communication skills  you don't know the questions to ask it doesn't  

matter what the topic is you might struggle so  that's what that's the skill we want to give  

you guys today okay so today we're giving our  listeners the broader skill not the ice fishing  

skills or the driving a car in the lake vocabulary  right it's the broader skill on how to engage in  

that conversation if you really don't know much  about the activity right right but i must admit  

that we get a lot of questions you guys and i was  looking through all these questions and this one  

really caught my eye because i grew up ice fishing  so this i was kind of excited to be able to talk  

about it something i haven't thought about in  a while have you ever gone ice fishing lindsay  

no i do i have a lot of questions for you i mean  it's interesting i always look out at those little  

huts on the ice and i think oh my gosh first of  all are they afraid of falling in second of all  

are they are they freezing cold and third is it  is it boring is it exciting i mean were you ever  

afraid of falling in the eye to spend so much time  on the ice that's a good question yeah i was not  

we went to a lake in montana called hebrew lake so  it was a few hours drive my dad would wake us up  

before the sun rose it would still be dark outside  and then you know us kids would sleep on the way  

but so this lake was frozen over frozen solid and  you'd have to use what's called an auger which um  

rotates like this and digs a hole in the ice and  you would see it would go down a couple of feet  

so you can see how thick the ice was if it  were thin yes i would worry about falling in  

we never drove a truck on the ice i love that um  mahesh's friend did that um we just would walk  

out you know no matter how thick the ice is i  don't know if i would ever drive a truck but  

when you know it's several feet thick you probably  could be confident driving a truck out onto the  

ice but we would just walk out drill our holes in  the ice and we would see those huts you're talking  

about sometimes we would see people in their huts  and be jealous because there was no hut for us out  

in the cold and it would sometimes be very windy  and cold and we're sitting there with our fishing  

pole we did have of course thick coats and warm  gloves we were prepared for the weather but no  

matter what it was still cold and i'm surprised my  dad got us to do that as kids i think we were just  

so excited to spend time with him doing anything  and what was really fun is when you did get a fish  

they were always huge it was always like as big as  the hole so to pull it out was so exciting and fun

wow of crazy it's kind of a crazy thing to do but  it was fun we would go a couple times every winter  

growing up i love it i love it i feel like you  know what you're doing now is you're telling a  

story about something you used to do that means  something to you right when you were a kid right  

and this could be another episode that we could  go into how to ask someone about an important  

childhood ritual something that they used to do  a lot yeah and why it's meaningful why did they  

enjoy it for sure because you're right when it's  something connected to your childhood there's so  

much nostalgia yes and we could learn a lot  about our you know if we're talking with our  

colleagues on that about their values like are  they close to their family are they active all  

these good things that we need to do in business  right we need to build that relationship so  

i think another day we could go into this more  you know what were the things you did as a kid  

and what did it mean to you and as a business  colleague how could you ask about that stuff  

very cool yes definitely right a way to go even  deeper the questions we're going to give you today  

are a way to extend the conversation so that you  can keep building that relationship so that it's  

not you know someone tells you i went ice  fishing and the conversation stops there  

you do want to go into it more but you're right  lindsay you can go even deeper to ask them like  

why do you think you enjoyed that as a child  if it's something they did when they were a kid  

to tap into that why was it meaningful how did it  help them become who they are yeah absolutely so  

maybe that will be a part two of today's episode  right but let's get into today's lesson right so  

four questions to engage in this conversation your  colleague comes in they say hey i went ice fishing  

over the weekend it was so amazing what do you  say yes so our first strategy you guys have heard  

us talk about this here before is remember those  question words right who what when where why there  

are so many things that you can ask that start  with these questions so we're going to give you  

four that are very useful no matter what the topic  whether they're talking about ice fishing whatever  

they've been doing four questions that you can  likely apply to whatever someone is telling you  

right yes all right so what's number one aubrey  so number one is how long have you been doing that  

so this of course if someone is telling you that  they just did something for the first time this  

is not one you will use this is for something  that someone is letting you know they've either  

done since they were a kid maybe or that you can  tell they've done it more than once it's something  

they're familiar with this is a great question to  ask how long they've been doing that right if it's  

ice fishing or practicing a sport or a hobby it's  interesting to know how long and this gets into  

what you were saying have you been doing this  since you were a child or is it pretty new yeah  

and this is kind of your lowest hanging fruit here  right it's the most obvious one it's the easiest  

one in a way right um and it allows the person if  they're proud of the fact that they've been ice  

fishing their whole lives they can show that they  can tell you that or maybe they've been playing a  

sport and they're quite good by now they can let  you know right and like it's a bit of an ego thing  

for people sometimes which can be good right let  them show off a little bit why not right exactly  

right and often this is not or should not be faked  or forced like you really will be interested you  

know what i mean you want to be interested you  want to show them you're interested and what's  

really tragic is like mahesh's situation where  this person was interested and didn't just know  

didn't know exactly how to ask exactly what to say  to find out more to keep the conversation going  

so these like you said it's kind of low-hanging  fruit they're pretty basic questions but all of  

these are perfect for continuing the conversation  diving a little deeper exactly i mean we never  

want you guys to feel that language is standing  in your way of that connection that could have  

been a really awesome connection moment right  that's what all is english is all about it's  

that exact moment for mahesh where he saw that he  could engage but he didn't quite have the words  

so we are here to help you with that today so  first one how long have you been doing that  

perfect what would be the second one then aubry  yes so to ask how they got started you can say  

what got you started with that and again this you  have to you have to be flexible right because when  

you ask that first conversation there's a chance  they'll go into it more and they'll tell you this  

they'll tell you how they got started but maybe  not right if they just tell you how long they've  

been doing it this would be a really interesting  follow-up question to ask what got them started  

was it a parent that loved doing it was it a  friend that they did it with or did they you  

know see a youtube video and want to start doing  something it's interesting to know how people got  

started with things yeah there's always going to  be a reason right there's a reason we do things  

for a reason and they're going to want to tell  you that it's interesting the word choice here you  

know you didn't say why did you start that because  that would present a slightly different i guess  

attitude toward it maybe depending on your time  but this is unique choice of words right what got  

you started it's quite native and natural  the way we say that what got you started  

i agree right it's a little more formal to say why  did you start doing that and depending on the tone  

it might almost sound like you're judging them  like you think maybe it's not a wise thing to do  

exactly so being careful there so i like the word  choice here right guys write this down right what  

got you started with that okay and number three  is where do you do it where where did you go right  

this past weekend to your co-worker mahesh where  did you go ice fishing or where do you usually go  

right now yep so no matter what it is that  people are talking about where they went  

that weekend they're usually not from the outset  going to give you all the details right and this  

is something interesting to find out if they're  talking about hiking or skiing or ice fishing  

where where do they go is it somewhere close by  maybe somewhere beautiful that you haven't seen  

or do they travel quite a ways to do it it  would be interesting if they haven't already  

told you exactly where they go ask them about  that i love it i love it and then the last one  

aubrey what's that it's to ask when are you  doing it next if this is something they do  

often they likely have a plan at some point to  do it again and it's interesting to ask about