This is an All Ears English podcast episode 105.
Three phrases to tell your story in English like a native speaker.
Welcome to the All Ears English podcast where you'll finally get real native English conversation and fluency for business and life.
We believe in connection, not perfection, when it comes to learning English.
Now here are your hosts Lindsay McMahon, the English adventurer, and Aubrey Carter, the IELTS whiz, coming to you from Arizona and Boston, USA.
USA.
When you tell a story, learn how to set up the structure and set the stage, plus signal that you are wrapping up with three natural phrases in English.
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How's it going, Aubrey?
How's everything today in Arizona?
Yeah, it's hot.
It's hot as blazes.
Hot as blazes.
I like that.
It is a really good simile.
You can kind of imagine the fires of hell, right?
Oh my gosh, you might live in the hottest state of the whole country.
Is that true?
Do you think that could be true?
Yeah, there are definitely Death Valley, California, I think has had more record highs.
But as far as like more days of heat, and it just it's, you know Halloween, it's the end of October and it'll still be so hot.
It's ridiculous.
Wow, that's incredible.
So I guess you guys aren't really sitting around campfires telling stories.
Oh, no.
But you do tell stories.
I mean, are you a storyteller?
Oh, yes.
I actually I kind of love when terrible things happen because they make for such good stories.
Right.
Yeah, for sure.
You told us once.
Yeah, right.
Make a good story.
Good story at a party.
I think I asked you this once on the podcast.
Are you that person at a party that everyone's huddled around and you're telling a story?
Right?
Sounds like you might be that person.
I totally am.
Maybe to a fault.
I like it.
There's nothing wrong with that.
That's fantastic.
So then you're an expert storyteller.
So today, what are we talking about, Aubrey?
Yeah, we want to give you three phrases so that you can tell a story in English like a native right.
When you tell a story, you want to keep your listeners very engaged and intrigued.
And there are tips to do just that.
So we're going to share these today.
Yeah, perfect.
So I think the best way to teach you guys is we'll start off with a little example.
Aubrey's going to tell us a story about something funny or strange that happened in your neighborhood right, Aubrey?
And then after that, we'll pull out the exact three phrases that we used and you guys will be able to write them down and use them yourself in your connection stories.
Perfect.
Exactly.
All right.
I'm going to tell you guys a funny story.
All right.
So what happened?
What happened?
So to start off with, we had some neighbors move in a few houses down and they're from the East Coast.
And the dad, right, is just so typical East Coast.
Like he is very outspoken.
It's very funny, usually.
Yeah.
But one day we were about to play pickleball and he just started yelling at me out of the blue.
It just came out of nowhere.
Very confrontational, much more than anyone I've ever met in my life.
And it turned out we had had some drama with our kids where there were some miscommunications.
Oh, God.
And so it didn't end well that day.
He stormed off.
He actually threw his pickleball paddle like a hundred feet in the air.
Oh my gosh.
Stormed off, went home.
But we, my husband and he had a chat and we were able to iron everything out.
And in the end...
We became, you know, we're friends again.
We're actually going to Rocky Point with them this weekend.
It's going to be a great trip.
That's awesome.
Just get ready for a confrontational guy, right?
Yep.
You just got to be ready for it.
Just be ready.
So was it kind of in a passive aggressive sense?
Like there was an underlying festering issue he had, but then it was about a pickleball thing?
Was it that sort of thing that came out?
Like it was...
I didn't want to like have the story go on too long, right?
It didn't end up having anything to do with pickleball.
We were just about to play when because we were both there.
He brought it up because he had just had a conversation with his daughter.
It was all about our kids and And including you know, have making sure kids are including someone else.
And it's hard when sometimes you know we have older kids 15, 16 year olds on the block and then 13 year olds.
And sometimes 16 year olds don't want to include 13 year olds.
And we have to let them do their own thing because they're a little older.
But definitely we want them to be kind in the way they communicate that to the younger kids.
So it was sort of some drama about that and we helped the kids understand you know how you can be kind and and be inclusive whenever possible, but let them know if.
If you're going to go do something else, you know that's okay.
You just have to be kind about how you message that to them, right?
That's such a good message.
I love it, i.
I think your kids are learning good messages out there.
It's the school of hard knocks sometimes, right?
We learn the hard way through trial and error.
We make mistakes.
We learn our lessons.
Oh.
I love it.
I love it.
That's so good.
That's why you got to watch out for those East coasters.
I say that as an East coaster, but I'm not an abrasive East coaster.
But yeah, if you go to places like Boston, New York Philly, I mean, people are, especially when it comes to road rage.
Oh, yeah.
I love the imagery of that, this metaphor of someone sitting on their horn, because you imagine them like sitting up, turning around and sitting literally on their horn.
But really that just means to really push the horn and hold it down for a long time, instead of that courteous little like beep, beep.
Oh, yeah.
No, there's none of that on the East Coast.
No, no, no, no, no.
So it is.
It's interesting.
I mean, that's a side learning for our listeners today.
There really is truly a difference.
Everyone's different.
They have their own personality.
Sure is a cultural difference between the West, the Mountain West Arizona California, even versus the East Coast.
Oh, yeah, definitely.
I witnessed that too when we were living in New York.
I had always lived in the West.
People are pretty laid back and for the most part, not very confrontational.
And then we went to New York and you know, people constantly would be telling me you need to put a hat on your kid.
They're going to freeze.
Just like a very, you know, sharing advice very liberally.
And yeah, very confrontational, very blunt.
Right.
If you park somewhere where they don't want you, they are going to tell you about it.
Whereas in the West, you probably wouldn't hear anything.
They would just be upset.
Maybe we talked about this before.
Did you ever get yelled at by the subway lady, the lady in the subway that sits in the little house?
You know what I'm talking about?
I don't think she ever yelled at me.
I definitely had people yell at me on the subway, but it would be like if I bumped someone's shoe with a stroller, with my baby stroller.
That happened a couple of times and they would just... yell at me.
I'm like, I'm so sorry.
But you know, I think in the end, I don't think New Yorkers are mean.
I think they're just busy and abrasive, because that's kind of how the culture is, because it's such a big city.
So I think they just speak that way out of habit.
I don't think they mean to hurt you.
You know, And they don't see it as mean.
It's more, like you know, we should inform people if they do something they shouldn't, so that it doesn't happen again.
Whereas we're much more passive aggressive in the West.
We'd be like, I'm just going to be silently angry that happened.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I do know someone, though, who grew up in the Mountain West around here.
And when the first couple times she visited New York, she was making too much eye contact to people, like people who are on the street or the subway, and people became confrontational to her because she was really into much eye contact.
It's really interesting.
That's a good point to mention, too.
We really don't make eye contact, right?
You have your headphones in, you look away.
If you're going to look people right in the eye on the street, that seems confrontational to them.
Yeah, it's.
Really interesting.
Anyway, side point, right?
So let's go through.
You told a great story, Aubrey, and we've got cultural differences here.
But let's go through the vocab for our listeners to tell a story.
Yeah, the first phrase I used is to start off with.
Right.
This means to begin something, to start something.
So I said to start off with, we had some neighbors move in a couple houses down.
So I'm sort of introducing who I'm going to talk about setting the scene for you a little bit.
Yeah, this is perfect.
And guys, these are setting up sequentially as you would use them in the context of a story.
Okay.
So just make note of that.
This is great.
And then the next one you used was to be about to do something.
So I think you said we were about to play pickleball.
Is that right?
Yep, exactly.
We were about to play pickleball when he started yelling at me out of the blue.
Think about how much more interesting and engaging it is to say it that way instead of saying you know, one day we were outside and he started yelling at me, right.
When you say we were about to do...
Whatever that is, you're setting the stage.
Now you guys are imagining us about to play a sport.
You can see the scene.
Exactly.
I can see the pickleball racket in your hand, the paddle.
Do they call it a paddle or a racket?
I wasn't going to correct you, but that's okay.
It's good to know, because I'm a tennis player but I've never played pickleball real, maybe once or twice.
That's good to know.
So, okay.
So you were about to play pickleball.
And then what's the last phrase that you used?
In the end.
Right.
So you you do want to share, you know, how things turned out, what happened in the end.
This is a great phrase to say what finally happened.
So I was saying in the end, we're all friends.
We worked it out.
You got to provide a conclusion to a story.
In the end, I love it.
So that really and that kind of closes it up.
And this also signals to the group listening to you that you're done and that someone else could jump in.
It's important to give those signals, isn't it, Aubrey?
Exactly right.
And then the next person in the group knows like they could share a story or even just comment and say that was crazy.
I can't believe that happened.
I love it.
Well, I'm glad that you were able to make up with the guy and that things are good.
And you're having a you know, you have a plan for dinner.
You said this weekend, right?
That's fantastic.
A trip.
We're actually because we had had this planned ahead of time that we were going to go with a couple neighbor families to Mexico.
And so when this all happened, it kind of created some bad blood.
We didn't know, like, are we still going to go?
But everyone had like non-refundable VRBO reservations.
But yeah, we've been able to sort of iron things out and we've got peace.
So we're going to be okay to go on this trip.
Luckily, can you imagine going on vacation with people you weren't getting along with?
No, I mean, it's already a big risk scheduling a trip with people that you kind of just met, but I admire the boldness.
We have no, we've known them.
I mean, they really didn't move in that long ago, but they're the kind of people that you feel like you've known forever because they're so you know, just big and loud and outgoing right.
I love it.
So they were brought into the group very quickly.
All right.
Well, hopefully you'll have more stories for us, but good ones.
Good ones.
So enjoy the trip.
And thanks for coming on the show, Aubrey.
Let's see.
So next week guys, you want to make sure you go ahead and hit follow on All Ears English, because in the next episode we're going to talk about, you know, life in the United States and going home back to the United States if you have been abroad.
Okay.
So Aubrey, what should our listeners do?
Yeah.
Be sure to follow All Ears English wherever you find your podcasts so that you never miss one.
Four episodes every week.
Awesome.
Fantastic.
I'll see you in the next one.
Take care.
Bye.
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