Mastering Conversation British English Teacher

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BUSINESS ENGLISH · ENGLISH IN VIDEO · ADVANCED (C1-C2)
MASTERING
CONVERSATION
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1 Warm up
Think about which subjects are appropriate to discuss in your country with friends, family, and work
colleagues. Complete the table with a Y if the subject is appropriate, or an N if it is not.
Subject Friends Family Work Colleagues
Politics
Religion
Children
Food
Weather
Health
Which subjects do you mostly talk about with each of the above groups of people?
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ADVANCED (C1-C2)
MASTERING CONVERSATION
2 Vocabulary development
Before you watch, match the following words from the talk to the definitions.
Group 1
1. inspire a. fail to notice something
2. trivial b. of little value or importance
3. devolve c. opposite e.g. points of view
4. polarised d. to change from one thing to another, often to something bad
5. overlooked e. to give somebody the desire, confidence or enthusiasm to do

something creative
Group 2
1. condescending a. behaving as though you are more important and more intelligent
than others
2. balanced b. occupy someone’s attention
3. engaged c. separated into parts
4. pontificate d. to give your opinion in a way that shows you think only your
opinion is correct
5. divided e. when different elements are equal
In pairs, discuss these questions.

1. What subjects do you not enjoy discussing because you think they are too trivial?
2. What subjects in your country tend to polarise people?
3. Can you think of a time when something important in your business was overlooked? What
happened?
4. What do you do to balance your professional and personal life?
5. What activities engage you the most? Why do you think that is?
6. Who or what inspires you most in your work life or your personal life?
7. Have you ever watched someone pontificate about a subject? What was it? How did it make you
feel about them?
8. Have you ever experienced someone being condescending to you? What happened?
3 Watch for main ideas
Watch the first part of the video (00:00-03:30) and complete the following sentences with the words
you hear.
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ADVANCED (C1-C2)
1
• In this world that we live in, every conversation has the to devolve into an
argument.
2 3
• The most of issues have someone fighting for it and against
it.
4
• Pew Research did a study of American adults and found that we are more
5
polarized and than ever before in history.
6 7
• A conversation requires a balance between and . We have lost
that balance.
8
• According to Pew Research, about of American teenagers send more than
9
a day.
10
• A high school teacher named Paul Barnwell realised that conversational might
11
be the single most skill that we fail to teach children.
4 Checking understanding
Before you watch the rest of the video, in pairs, discuss these questions about the rules of conversations.
1. What do you think is meant by "go with the flow"?

2. How would you apply it to future conversations?
3. Why is "don’t worry about the details of the story’"good advice?
4. Can you think of examples of conversations you have had where someone didn’t follow this
advice?
5. Can you write down some examples of open-ended questions that would be useful in the kind of
social situations you find yourself in at work?
6. Have you had an experience where someone was talking about something that they clearly didn’t
know about? What happened?
7. Do you multitask? What things do you do that distract you from conversations you have? What
could you do to ensure you are not distracted in the future?
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ADVANCED (C1-C2)
Now watch the rest of the talk and number the rules in the order that the speaker presents them.
The first one has been done for you.
a. Don’t think your experience is the same as someone else’s.

b. Go with the flow.
c. Don’t multitask. 1
d. Listen.
e. If you don’t know something, be honest about it.
f. Try not to repeat yourself.
g. Use open-ended questions.
h. Be brief.
i. Don’t worry about the details of a story.
j. Don’t pontificate.
5 Talking Point
With your partner or in groups discuss these questions.
1. What was your opinion on the talk?

2. Were there any rules which you would add?
3. Were there any rules which you didn’t think were useful? If so, why?
4. Which rule did you think was the most useful? Why?
Extension task.
In pairs, choose a topic that you are both comfortable discussing. Imagine you are in a work setting
and work for different companies. Practice discussing the subject and use the rules from the talk as a
guide to help you.
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TEACHER MATERIALS · ADVANCED (C1-C2)
Transcripts
3. Watch for main ideas
Speaker: All right, I want to see a show of hands: how many of you have unfriended someone on
Facebook because they said something offensive about politics or religion, childcare, food?
(Laughter)
Speaker: And how many of you know at least one person that you avoid because you just don’t want
to talk to them? (Laughter)
Speaker: You know, it used to be that in order to have a polite conversation, we just had to follow
the advice of Henry Higgins in "My Fair Lady": Stick to the weather and your health. But
these days, with climate change and anti-vaxxing, those subjects ...
Speaker: ...are not safe either. So this world that we live in, this world in which every conversation has
the potential to devolve into an argument, where our politicians can’t speak to one another
and where even the most trivial of issues have someone fighting both passionately for it
and against it, it’s not normal. Pew Research did a study of 10,000 American adults, and
they found that at this moment, we are more polarised, we are more divided, than we ever
have been in history. We’re less likely to compromise, which means we’re not listening to
each other. And we make decisions about where to live, who to marry and even who our
friends are going to be, based on what we already believe. Again, that means we’re not
listening to each other. A conversation requires a balance between talking and listening,
and somewhere along the way, we lost that balance.
Speaker: Now, part of that is due to technology. The smartphones that you all either have in your
hands or close enough that you could grab them really quickly. According to Pew Research,
about a third of American teenagers send more than a hundred texts a day. And many of
them, almost most of them, are more likely to text their friends than they are to talk to
them face to face. There’s this great piece in The Atlantic. It was written by a high school
teacher named Paul Barnwell. And he gave his kids a communication project. He wanted
to teach them how to speak on a specific subject without using notes. And he said this: "I
came to realise..." (Laughter)
Speaker: "I came to realise that conversational competence might be the single most overlooked
skill we fail to teach. Kids spend hours each day engaging with ideas and each other
through screens, but rarely do they have an opportunity to hone their interpersonal
communications skills. It might sound like a funny question, but we have to ask ourselves: Is
there any 21st-century skill more important than being able to sustain coherent, confident
conversation?"
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Speaker: Now, I make my living talking to people: Nobel Prize winners, truck drivers, billionaires,
kindergarten teachers, heads of state, plumbers. I talk to people that I like. I talk to people
that I don’t like. I talk to some people that I disagree with deeply on a personal level. But
I still have a great conversation with them. So I’d like to spend the next 10 minutes or so
teaching you how to talk and how to listen.
Speaker: Many of you have already heard a lot of advice on this, things like look the person in the
eye, think of interesting topics to discuss in advance, look, nod and smile to show that
you’re paying attention, repeat back what you just heard or summarise it. So I want you to
forget all of that. It is crap.
Speaker: There is no reason to learn how to show you’re paying attention if you are in fact paying
attention.
Speaker: Now, I actually use the exact same skills as a professional interviewer that I do in regular life.
So, I’m going to teach you how to interview people, and that’s actually going to help you
learn how to be better conversationalists. Learn to have a conversation without wasting
your time, without getting bored, and, please God, without offending anybody.
Speaker: We’ve all had really great conversations. We’ve had them before. We know what it’s like.
The kind of conversation where you walk away feeling engaged and inspired, or where you
feel like you’ve made a real connection or you’ve been perfectly understood. There is no
reason why most of your interactions can’t be like that.
Speaker: So I have 10 basic rules. I’m going to walk you through all of them, but honestly, if you just
choose one of them and master it, you’ll already enjoy better conversations.
Speaker: Number one: Don’t multitask. And I don’t mean just set down your cell phone or your tablet
or your car keys or whatever is in your hand. I mean, be present. Be in that moment. Don’t
think about your argument you had with your boss. Don’t think about what you’re going
to have for dinner. If you want to get out of the conversation, get out of the conversation,
but don’t be half in it and half out of it.
Speaker: Number two: Don’t pontificate. If you want to state your opinion without any opportunity
for response or argument or pushback or growth, write a blog.
Speaker: Now, there’s a really good reason why I don’t allow pundits on my show: Because they’re
really boring. If they’re conservative, they’re going to hate Obama and food stamps and
abortion. If they’re liberal, they’re going to hate big banks and oil corporations and Dick
Cheney. Totally predictable. And you don’t want to be like that. You need to enter every
conversation assuming that you have something to learn. The famed therapist M. Scott
Peck said that true listening requires a setting aside of oneself. And sometimes that means
setting aside your personal opinion. He said that sensing this acceptance, the speaker will
become less and less vulnerable and more and more likely to open up the inner recesses
of his or her mind to the listener. Again, assume that you have something to learn.
Speaker: Bill Nye: "Everyone you will ever meet knows something that you don’t." I put it this way:
Everybody is an expert in something.
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Speaker: Number three: Use open-ended questions. In this case, take a cue from journalists. Start
your questions with who, what, when, where, why or how. If you put in a complicated
question, you’re going to get a simple answer out. If I ask you, "Were you terrified?" you’re
going to respond to the most powerful word in that sentence, which is "terrified", and the
answer is "Yes, I was" or "No, I wasn’t." "Were you angry?" "Yes, I was very angry." Let them
describe it. They’re the ones that know. Try asking them things like, "What was that like?"
"How did that feel?" Because then they might have to stop for a moment and think about
it, and you’re going to get a much more interesting response.
Speaker: Number four: Go with the flow. That means thoughts will come into your mind and
you need to let them go out of your mind. We’ve heard interviews often in which a
guest is talking for several minutes and then the host comes back in and asks a question
which seems like it comes out of nowhere, or it’s already been answered. That means the
host probably stopped listening two minutes ago because he thought of this really clever
question, and he was just bound and determined to say that. And we do the exact same
thing. We’re sitting there having a conversation with someone, and then we remember
that time that we met Hugh Jackman in a coffee shop.
Speaker: And we stop listening. Stories and ideas are going to come to you. You need to let them
come and let them go.
Speaker: Number five: If you don’t know, say that you don’t know. Now, people on the radio,
especially on NPR, are much more aware that they’re going on the record, and so they’re
more careful about what they claim to be an expert in and what they claim to know for
sure. Do that. Err on the side of caution. Talk should not be cheap.
Speaker: Number six: Don’t equate your experience with theirs. If they’re talking about having lost
a family member, don’t start talking about the time you lost a family member. If they’re
talking about the trouble they’re having at work, don’t tell them about how much you hate
your job. It’s not the same. It is never the same. All experiences are individual. And, more
importantly, it is not about you. You don’t need to take that moment to prove how amazing
you are or how much you’ve suffered. Somebody asked Stephen Hawking once what his
IQ was, and he said, "I have no idea. People who brag about their IQs are losers."
Speaker: Conversations are not a promotional opportunity.
Speaker: Number seven: Try not to repeat yourself. It’s condescending, and it’s really boring, and we
tend to do it a lot. Especially in work conversations or in conversations with our kids, we
have a point to make, so we just keep rephrasing it over and over. Don’t do that.
Speaker: Number eight: Stay out of the weeds. Frankly, people don’t care about the years, the
names, the dates, all those details that you’re struggling to come up with in your mind.
They don’t care. What they care about is you. They care about what you’re like, what you
have in common. So forget the details. Leave them out.
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Speaker: Number nine: This is not the last one, but it is the most important one. Listen. I cannot
tell you how many really important people have said that listening is perhaps the most,
the number one most important skill that you could develop. Buddha said, and I’m
paraphrasing, "If your mouth is open, you’re not learning." And Calvin Coolidge said, "No
man ever listened his way out of a job."
Speaker: Why do we not listen to each other? Number one, we’d rather talk. When I’m talking, I’m
in control. I don’t have to hear anything I’m not interested in. I’m the center of attention. I
can bolster my own identity. But there’s another reason: We get distracted. The average
person talks at about 225 word per minute, but we can listen at up to 500 words per
minute. So our minds are filling in those other 275 words. And look, I know, it takes effort
and energy to actually pay attention to someone, but if you can’t do that, you’re not in a
conversation. You’re just two people shouting out barely related sentences in the same
place.
Speaker: You have to listen to one another. Stephen Covey said it very beautifully. He said, "Most
of us don’t listen with the intent to understand. We listen with the intent to reply."
Speaker: One more rule, number 10, and it’s this one: Be brief.
Speaker: A good conversation is like a miniskirt; short enough to retain interest, but long enough to
cover the subject. -My Sister
Speaker: (Applause) All of this boils down to the same basic concept, and it is this one: Be interested
in other people.
Speaker: You know, I grew up with a very famous grandfather, and there was kind of a ritual in my
home. People would come over to talk to my grandparents, and after they would leave, my
mother would come over to us, and she’d say, "Do you know who that was? She was the
runner-up to Miss America. He was the mayor of Sacramento. She won a Pulitzer Prize.
He’s a Russian ballet dancer." And I kind of grew up assuming everyone has some hidden,
amazing thing about them. And honestly, I think it’s what makes me a better host. I keep
my mouth shut as often as I possibly can, I keep my mind open, and I’m always prepared
to be amazed, and I’m never disappointed.
Speaker: You do the same thing. Go out, talk to people, listen to people, and, most importantly, be
prepared to be amazed.
Speaker: Thanks.
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Key
1. Warm up
10 mins.
In this section, students will consider various topics and how appropriate they are to talk about with different
social groups. You may want to point out that as a general rule in the West, people avoid discussing politics and
religion with people they don’t know well as they can be very divisive topics. However, with family and friends,
they may well discuss these topics in detail. It will differ from person to person. Ask students to work individually
on their answers and then compare. If it is a mixed classroom of multiple nationalities, you may want to group
students into different nationalities. However, even within a monolingual class, answers may well vary. Following
this, encourage students to think of topics they do talk about with each group of people. You may also want to
get them to think of topics that they would never discuss with each group of people.
2. Vocabulary development
15 – 20 mins.
Allow the students to match the vocabulary either as individuals or in pairs. You may want to encourage students
to put the target vocabulary into a sentence for extra practice. Following this, ask the students to discuss the
questions in pairs. You may want to circulate and listen to any anecdotes which you could highlight to the class
afterwards.
Answers Group 1:
1. e 2. b 3. d 4. c 5. a
Answers Group 2:
1. a 2. e 3. b 4. d 5. c
Discussion point: Students’ own answers.
3. Watch for main ideas
5 – 10 mins.
Briefly point out that in the world of business, connections with people within a company and from other companies
are very important. In this global economy, they may well be dealing with people from a variety of cultural,
religious, social, and racial backgrounds. Therefore, being able to have a positive and meaningful conversation
with a wide variety of people is a particularly useful skill.
Now ask the students to read the gapped text and perhaps guess at the words which may fill the gaps. You may
want to ask them to guess at whether they expect to hear a number or a word. When you have done this, play
00:00-03:30 minutes of the talk and ask the students to identify the missing words.
When you have finished, you may want to ask students if they agree with Paul Barnwell that conversational
competence is the most overlooked skill that we fail to teach children, or not?
1. potential
2. trivial
3. passionately
4. 10,000
5. divided
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6. talking
7. listening
8. one-third
9. 100 texts
10. competence
11. overlooked
4. Checking understanding
10 - 15 mins.
Play the remainder of the talk. You may want to pause it after a few minutes and review with the class the rules
she has given so far. Ask the students to focus on picking out the rules she is giving rather than focusing on every
word of the talk. Point out that the first answer is done for them. You may like to elicit what is meant by "multi-
task" in this context (be entirely focused on the conversation, don’t be half doing or thinking about something
else).
a. 6 b. 4 c. 1 d. 9 e. 5 f. 7 g. 3 h. 10 i. 8 j. 2
5. Talking Point
10 mins.
You may want to ask students to do this for homework and record the results on either video or on audio. Ask
students to react to the talk using the questions. You can ask them to discuss in groups or pairs and then feedback
to the class.
Following this, you should ask the students to pick a topic and discuss it using the rules to guide them. You may
want to prepare topics in advance, use the topics from the warm up activity, or allow the students to choose their
own topic. Ensure that students are able to fully engage in the conversations and electronic devices are all out of
reach.
When they have finished, you may want to ask them for feedback about their conversations. Did they find them
easier or more engaging as a result of thinking about it? Do they think that this is something they could apply to
future professional conversations?
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Mastering Conversation British English Teacher

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HEAAADERLOGORIGHT

BUSINESS ENGLISH · ENGLISH IN VIDEO · ADVANCED (C1-C2)

QrrkoD Scan to review worksheet

Subject Friends Family Work Colleagues

FOOOOTERRIGHT Learn without forgetting! 1/4

1. inspire a. fail to notice something

2. trivial b. of little value or importance

3. devolve c. opposite e.g. points of view

4. polarised d. to change from one thing to another, often to something bad

5. overlooked e. to give somebody the desire, conﬁdence or enthusiasm to do

3. engaged c. separated into parts

In pairs, discuss these questions.

3 Watch for main ideas

FOOOOTERLEFT Learn without forgetting! 2/4

1. What do you think is meant by "go with the ﬂow"?

FOOOOTERRIGHT Learn without forgetting! 3/4

a. Don’t think your experience is the same as someone else’s.

With your partner or in groups discuss these questions.

1. What was your opinion on the talk?

FOOOOTERLEFT Learn without forgetting! 4/4

3. Watch for main ideas

Speaker: Conversations are not a promotional opportunity.

3. Watch for main ideas

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