G'day mate. How's it going? Today, I'm gonna be touching on how you could maintain your conversation in English. Of course, simply speaking, you've just got to be continuing talking; however, not everyone can easily do so unless your first language is English. So, I'd like to give you some tips how you could solve this problem. Let's get into it.
First of all, the best starting point would be like talking about the latest news including today's weather, what you did, what you'll do or current affairs, etc. Any topic would be great to initiate a chat with someone. Without topics, background knowledge at all, it's gonna be extremely difficult for you to kick off chatting in English. As you know, even starting a chat in your first language is also gonna be fairly hard if you don't have any prior knowledge, right? For example, I would say something like:
Me: Hey ya, what's up mate? This arvo is gonna be very windy, and possibly gonna have thunderstorms later today, so make sure you bring an umbrella with ya, ok? By the way, as you are presumably aware, that new variant of COVID-19 in Sydney areas driven by the Northern Breaches Cluster has been deteriorating further, which really sucks, and yeah it was really disappointing, as I had to cancel my Christmas travelling to Sydney due to this dire situation. What about ya? Were you also supposed to travel somewhere during Christmas period? Something like that
Second, I highly suggest starting your conclusive remarks rather than just aimlessly beating about the bush, in which case your chat partner will be bored for sure, and she or he's gonna lose concentration. To avoid this, you just need to follow the CRE conversation method, which comprises Conclusion, followed by Reasoning and Examples/Evidences. If you begin by talking about your conclusion, then your partner will surely listen to your talk carefully, and probably she or he is not gonna lose concentration or even change topics. So, keep an eye on it when you are talking to someone.
Third, you don't just want to be like a robot, which means that you just keep talking and talking without having any fluctuating voice tone, intonation, rhythm, but you're more encouraged to use body languages and facial expressions in order to make your conversation more entertaining or persuasive in some cases. For instance, I often use my hands to express my feeling when I'm talking to someone. This is not gonna have any negative impacts upon your partner, but depending upon circumstances.
Fourth, you wanna try to minimise the number of nodding during your conversation. Nodding too many times might sometimes destroy your conversation, as your partner gets distracted and even irritated. Stopping nodding seems awkward at first for you as Japanese, but as you try to kinda force yourself to stop nodding, you are gonna get used to it sooner or later. In doing so, you won't lose your 100 % concentration, and vice versa.
Last but not least, if you reckon you tend to be shy and nervous during conversation, then you should start talking like talking to yourself, which is at times what I do. This is gonna be one of the best hedges against your persistent shyness and nervousness. You should just imagine like you're talking to no one, or you're not you. What does it mean? It means that your talk is gonna be instigated by someone else. You know what I mean? So, despite yourself talking to someone, you shouldn't think this guy is you, in which case you don't have to get nervous, do you? This is precisely because that it's like a third person is impersonating you, and although this is virtually the imaginative ambience, you could do that for sure. Just make sure you immerse yourself in this.
That's all what I wanted to say to you today. Thanks for reading.
Wish you all a happy Merry Christmas and new year 2021!