About this ebook
Small talk is the hardest English there is, and almost nobody is taught it. The vocabulary is easy. What makes it hard is that it is fast, unplanned, formulaic - and not about what it appears to be about. When somebody mentions the weather, they are saying: I'm willing to talk to you, if you'd like to.
350 phrases in 25 units of fourteen: meeting people (greetings, introductions, where you're from, what you do, starting with a stranger), the safe subjects (weather, weekends, holidays, food, sport, films, where you live), keeping it going (showing you're listening, reacting to news, follow-up questions, telling a short story, finding things in common), handling it (when you don't understand, awkward moments, changing the subject, disagreeing without arguing), and the practicalities (invitations, the telephone, saying goodbye).
Every phrase is labelled with the job it does - opener, reply, keeps it going, or closer - because the commonest mistake is having plenty of openers and no keepers, which turns a conversation into an interview.
And every entry ends with a conversation repair: a crossed line and a ticked one. The crossed line is not a mistake. It is correct English that ends the conversation.
The essay at the front explains what nobody tells you: that English listeners make a small noise every ten seconds, and that silence is heard as boredom rather than respect.
Each unit ends with a fourteen-question test, 350 in all, with a full answer key and an A-Z index.
British English, with American forms given throughout. For learners at A2-B2.
