AEE: I Love English! What About You?
21:18 Share

This is an All Ears English podcast. I love English. What about you? Welcome to the All Ears English podcast downloaded more than 200 million times. Are you feeling stuck with your English? We'll show you how to become fearless and fluent by focusing on connection, not perfection with your American host,

Aubrey Carter, the IELTS whiz, and Lindsay McMahon, the English adventurer, coming to you from Arizona and Colorado, USA. And to get your transcripts delivered by email every week, go to allearsenglish.com forward slash subscribe.

When someone asks you for your opinion, how can you tell them what you think and then throw it back to them to make sure the conversation stays lively and dynamic? Listen in today.

Do you struggle with phrasal verbs? They can be confusing. So coming up this week on All Ears English, we'll show you three new phrasal verbs to talk about making a mistake. And then on Saturday, we'll answer the question, should we say I don't care in English? To make sure that you don't miss any of these episodes, go ahead and hit the follow button right now on the All Ears English podcast. And thank you for listening to our show. Hey there, Aubrey. What have you got going on today?

I am taking my daughter to a job fair. It's her first in-person interview. She's only 16. I hope it goes well. She's very nervous. What about you? Oh my gosh, good luck. We're all pulling for her. I love that. Well, yeah, tonight I'm going over to the Botanical Gardens for a, I don't know, an evening walk event or something across the park from my house. Yes, very culture-y. That's fun.

Nice. I love that. Well, you notice I asked Lindsay, what about you? Which is an interesting follow-up, right? If they've asked you an interesting question and you want to know their answer as well, you can say, what about you? We got a great question from a listener about what about you versus how about you that I'm excited to answer today. And I think this possibly could be one of our top 20 most important episodes for Connection, Aubrey.

because you want to make sure you're flipping things back to other people and asking them kind of maybe not always the same question, but a similar question. You're not being a, what do we call in the business English course? What's our favorite phrase? A me monster. So don't be a me monster. You don't want to just talk about yourself, answer questions over and over you want to. Yes. Make it a conversation, make it a back and forth. Yeah, it's true. And now our listeners who come to Open Conversation Club or

Fluency Party also know the term Me Monster because we talk about in our small groups and our breakout rooms how important it is to bring the conversation back to someone else. And this would be a great tool for our students, right? Who come to open conversation. Yes. We want to make sure that you guys get the app.

go to allersenglish.com/app. It is the best way to listen to the podcast. It's also the best way to find episodes in our archive. It might take you forever to scroll back wherever, you know, in your podcast player, but if you're looking for idioms, specific vocabulary, slang, you can search it on the app to find older episodes. Yes, 100%. Any keyword, any particular word, it should come up for the words that are in the title of the episode.

And it's mobile, it's a mobile app. So you don't have to go and sit down at a laptop and comb through our website. You can just go to the mobile app and the mobile app is free to download, right? If you wanna become a premium member, you get other cool benefits, but you can also just download it for free and listen there.

Okay. And if you want to check out those other benefits, we have a seven day free trial. You can listen to the app or the episodes with the transcripts. You can follow along and then save keywords. And we also have these awesome role plays which use important keywords from all of the episodes throughout the week. Those are amazing. Only available on the app for premium users. So guys go over to allersenglish.com/app. Okay.

So we've got a question from a YouTube listener. We're getting a lot of questions lately from YouTube, Aubrey. I love that. Yes. And this one was written in Chinese characters. So I put it in Google Translate and Google Translate said the characters would be Shuya. And then it was R4Z after. So I hope you're out there listening. I hope that's correct. I was like, oh, I wonder what Google Translate would give me for these characters. I love that.

I love that. Yeah, we should try to do that more often so we make sure that we try to say the names of our listeners. I love it. So good. All right. So Aubrey, do you want to read the question? Sure. Oh, and then Sophia is the name. That's similar to Shuiya. So I wonder if it's Shuiya in Chinese. Makes sense to me. We'll have to see. Maybe this listener will write to us and let us know. I know. I want to know. Let us know for sure. How correct is Google Translate? I would like to know. So it said, "Hi, Lindsay and Aubrey. I'm Sophia.

And All Ears English is my favorite podcast. I love that. Thank you for writing in. Love it. I have a quick question about the difference between what about you and how about you? I understand both are used to ask about someone's opinion or situation, but is there a subtle difference in when to use each? Thanks so much for your help.

Thank you for writing in Sophia. This is a great question. Yeah, it's a question that's really again based in connection. So I'm really excited to answer this before listeners can start using it right away.

All right. So I did a little bit of a deep dive because when I hear them, I feel like there's no difference. They're very interchangeable. I would think they mean the same. But in some forums, there were native speakers saying, oh, I feel like this would imply... And these really complicated things like, I think this would imply that you...

know what I'm going to do. And it seems so confusing. Ignore all of that, you guys. It's not true for everyone. Everything that was written, I'm like, no, I don't really agree. I really feel like you can use them interchangeably without worrying about any kind of subtle nuance. What do you think, Lindsay? Yeah, I agree with you, Aubrey. I mean, on this show, we definitely go into nuances, right? We go into deep, deep nuances, but only when it could help you.

Not when it's going to just confuse you as a listener, right? So we believe for these two, the difference doesn't matter. I 100% agree with you. Absolutely. I agree. And if there is someone that's like, oh, I feel like there is this tiny, it might just be for like their region or how they grew up. It's not going to be the case for everyone. For me and the way I grew up using them and how I hear them used like in podcast TVs or conversations, they're interchangeable.

Exactly. And our whole philosophy of connection, not perfection, is that we make sure we don't get hung up on mistakes or tiny details of the language.

where connection suffers, right? Connection is at the forefront for us. That is the most important thing. So we don't want you to be confused between the differences here. So for this particular episode, these two are interchangeable. Okay. Absolutely. So we'll give you a little examples with both of them. We're going to do a mini role play for each because that's how it's used the most often. Someone asks you a question, you answer, and then you use one of these to ask them the same question back.

Okay. All right. Sounds good. All right. I'll start us with the first role play. Ready? Yes. Hey, Lindsay, what did you do this weekend? Oh my gosh. This weekend, I took a drive up to a town called Nederland and went to a tiny little community brewery where there was a bake sale, there was a rock sale. It was one of those places, Aubrey, where you just see the whole community in one place. What about you? What did you do?

I didn't do anything as fun as that. I'm really jealous. I took kids to lacrosse games and basically driving my kids around. So let's trade. I would rather do that next weekend. Next weekend, we'll trade lives. All right. There you go. Perfect.

All right. Good stuff. And then I want to point out you can also, especially if someone answers the question and it's longer, sometimes it will be more natural to say, what about you? And then sort of repeat the question, right? Yes. You could say like, what about you? What did you do this weekend? I will often do this. And even if it's not long, the way we started the episode, right? When you asked what I have going on today and I shared, I might do the same thing. What about you? What are you doing today?

Exactly. And I think intonation becomes important when we do repeat the question, right? So when I flip it back to you, I would say, you know, what about you? What did you do this weekend? Right? What did you do this weekend? Yes, we hit the you hardest, right? To share like, I'm asking the same question, but I want to know about you. Exactly. Exactly. Love it. And then we're always conscious there of

trying not to dominate the conversation again. You want to avoid being that me monster. Keep it short, keep it sweet, and throw it back to the other person and get a sense of how interesting or interested they are in what you've said. And maybe they'll ask you a follow-up question.

It's a real back and forth. It's a game of badminton, right? Yeah. This is the skill to keep the conversation going. How do we do that? We don't want it to just fade out or someone just kind of walk away, right? We want to keep it going, keep it interesting. And to do that, we avoid monologues, right? We avoid monologues. Yes. Okay. Yes. So same thing with how about you? Let's do a mini role play here. You want to start us, Lindsay? Hey, did you make any New Year's resolutions?

Yes, I have resolved to not drink alcohol with food. I read that it's not good because then your body is burning the alcohol instead of the food and you're going to burn less calories. So I'm working on that. How about you? I like that. Oh, I'm still thinking about my New Year's resolution. Can I decide by February? Yes, right. Give me some time. Give me some time. Give me some time.

I love that. And again, I could have said, how about you? Did you make any resolutions? Right? That's very natural to repeat the question after saying either what about you or how about you? Yes, I love it. So two really good ways to throw it back to the other person. What about you and how about you?

you. Is there a third Aubrey that we could use? Yeah, we're going to share a third here, which is what do you think? This is a little different. What about you and how about you are so general and versatile for anything the other person said. Just like how would you answer this question? What do you think is more specific to use after you share an opinion and you want to know their opinion? You could be like, what do you think?

I love it. So this could be even more useful potentially talking about just topical items in the news, societal events, current events, that kind of thing. So let's see what our role play looks like here. You ready? Yeah. All right. So what do you think about the changes the city made to its recycling program? Oh, I get why they did it. I guess it was really cost prohibitive. It's too bad though. What do you think?

Yeah, I think it's true. I think a lot of cities are shutting down recycling. Isn't that true? Have you seen that, Aubrey? It's happened in Phoenix. They won't recycle glass anymore. I think the problem was people weren't cleaning it well enough and it was just costing them too much and sorting. And so they've just said, we can't afford to do this, unfortunately. Interesting. Yeah. Wow. Anything we need to know about this role play here?

Well, you can add one of the above, right? How about you? Or what about you before you say, what do you think? So I could have said, you know, I get why they did it. It's too bad though. You know, what about you? What do you think? So we sort of double these up really often. Sure. Absolutely. So you have a little flexibility here and you can use them in conjunction with each other as well, right? Totally. Yep.

You just realized that your business needed to hire someone yesterday. How can you find amazing candidates fast? Easy. Just use Indeed. When it comes to hiring, Indeed is all you need. Stop struggling to get your job posts seen on other sites.

Indeed's sponsored jobs helps you stand out and hire fast. With sponsored jobs, your post jumps to the top of the page for your relevant candidates so you can reach the people you want faster, and it makes a huge difference. According to Indeed data, sponsored jobs posted directly on Indeed have 45% more applications than non-sponsored jobs.

When I post jobs for my business, I need access to dozens of high quality candidates to choose from within just a few days. Speed matters when it comes to building your team. There's no need to wait any longer. Speed up your hiring right now with Indeed. And listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility at Indeed.com slash Indeed.

a e e just go to indeed.com a e e right now and support our show by saying you heard about indeed on this podcast one more time go to indeed.com a e e terms and conditions apply hiring indeed is all you need okay oh there is actually a fourth and i love this one very

Very shorthand, right? Very shorthand. Very short, but actually more formal. As I thought of examples and tried to put in the role play, I realized I use this less. So it's just, and you, two words. You would think that's more informal, more casual because it's shorter, but it's actually sort of a more formal construction to after someone answers, you know, after you answer something to say, and you, feels quite formal. Yeah. Let's see what this looks like then. Here we go. So what are you doing for the holiday?

Oh, I'm flying out east to visit family. And you?

Yeah. Okay. I love that. So you can see how if I said, what about you? How about you? That's a little more casual, a little more friendly. And you feels like maybe we don't know each other as well. Maybe we're co-workers. Maybe you're my boss, right? And you, it's a little more formal. Yeah, it does. It feels a little like there's a little bit more distance there, right? For some reason. Or sometimes what I just say is you, right? I'm flying out east to visit family. You,

Yeah. Do you ever say that or is it just me? I do. I hear it. Absolutely. I'm trying to think if that is more formal or not. I feel like how about you and what about you are the most casual, even though there are more words, which is interesting. Yeah. I'm not sure where just the you stands on the spectrum of casual and formal, actually. It feels a little more casual to me, but it could be used also with someone you don't know, like a barista at the coffee shop.

Totally. I think that one's really flexible. That could work anywhere, probably just you. Yeah, for sure. All right. So in this role play, Aubrey, we are coworkers who see each other at the dog park. All right. So you're a dog owner. Nice. Yes. So it's fictional because I don't really have a dog. Yeah. All right. Here we go. Hey there. I didn't realize you live close to here. I don't really, but it's the best dog park in town. So much shade. What about you? Do you live close to here? Yeah, just around the corner.

Oh, it's such a beautiful neighborhood. Have you gotten to know your neighbors? Oh, yeah. A lot of really great people live close by. I love chatting with everyone who's out walking their dogs. How about you? Good neighbors? Yeah, for sure. We've lived there about 10 years, so we've met most of them. Hey, I've been meaning to ask what you think about that dress code change at work. Oh, I hate it. I miss being able to wear jeans and a t-shirt. What do you think? Same. I'm dreading having to dress up. Yeah.

Yeah, I love this. And this is such a realistic conversation because this is what we do as human beings. We need feedback from other people. We can't just go off and say our opinion. Most people want to have a sense. Do people agree with me? How am I landing? How are my thoughts landing? Right? We don't want to have that situation where we come out really strong with an opinion. The other person's like, oh, I disagree actually. And now we've created this awkward situation. No, it's just how the human mind works, right?

And so this is incredibly useful for our listeners. So first you said Aubrey, I don't live close to here, but it's the best dog park in town. So much shade, right? And here again, you dropped the pronoun and the verb. So instead of saying there is so much shade, you say so much shade. - So much shade, yes. - What about you?

And this is where I added the question again, right? I said, what about you? Do you live close to here? And I could just say, what about you? But this is very natural to repeat the question often to make sure they know what question you're asking. Because honestly, here, I've said enough that they might think I'm asking, do you think this is the best dog park in town? Right? Yes. What about you? I kind of need to clarify.

Yep. You need to recenter the conversation and that's your responsibility as the one asking the question. Make it clear. Absolutely. And then I said, you said it's a beautiful, have you gotten to know your neighbors? And I said, yeah, a lot of really great people live here. I love chatting with everyone. And then I said, how about you? And I again, repeated the question because it could have been

another question right do you love chatting with everyone with people here with their dogs right so then you said how about you good neighbors and this will often shorten it too you don't need to repeat do you have good neighbors if you say how about you good neighbors we know what you mean yeah and that's incredibly native and natural the way we ask that how about you good neighbors right it also sounds kind of positive kind of uplifting it's a good exchange here

Yeah, right. We're assuming. We're assuming they're good neighbors. You are. You're hedging in that direction. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Then what did I say, Aubrey? Then you were saying, oh, I hate this new dress code policy. I miss being able to wear jeans and a t-shirt. What do you think? And this is, like you said, there's an opportunity here to be honest if I'm like...

Actually, I'm excited about it. But I think when I asked the question, there's probably a little bit of an implication that I don't love it. Otherwise, why would I ask about it, right? Oh, for sure. For sure. And then you replied by saying, same.

I'm dreading having to dress up. So we're kind of just commiserating a little bit here, empathizing with how we feel about this new dress code, this change at work. Yeah. And it's interesting to think about how the conversation would change depending on your answer, right? I asked you about the dress code. If you're like, I'm actually really excited to dress up, I probably would just be like, yeah, it'll be different and change the subject. If I'm not confrontational, I'm probably not going to say, oh, well, I hate it. Yeah. Most people are going to...

agree in some ways and find a way to agree like yeah it'll be different right with that uplifting tone of voice and then just pivot to something else and we have done other episodes on allers english about how to pivot the conversation right we did one about how to pivot away from politics and this could be another thing to pivot away from which i'll break maybe we should visit in a new episode someday yeah that would be great because this is such an important skill you don't want to

or emphasize the awkwardness if you disagree. Pivot away. Find something else that you do have in common. I love it. Now there's another episode we want to recommend that you guys go to right away as soon as you finish. This is 1061. Continue the English conversation with today's phrases. You'll want to go over to the app to type that in and find that one.

because that's pretty far back Aubrey, right? Yes, just type in the number 1061 in the app to find it. We have had a lot of students ask us like, how do I continue the conversation? We have a little bit of a back and forth and then there's this moment where like, what more can I say? So check out that episode. We gave you a lot of great phrases depending for a lot of different situations of how you can keep the conversation going. Yes, I love that. What's our takeaway for today?

Again, don't be a me monster, right? Today's phrases are all vital to throw it back to the other person. You want to know their answer as well to the question that they asked you.

Oh, for sure. And I want to see our listeners who are students in our courses. If you're in our courses nowadays, you get invited to our Open Conversation Club. I want to see our students using these phrases from today's episode live in conversation with each other and in conversation with us, Aubrey. Absolutely. That's my favorite. We go to Open Conversation Club and I hear them use the vocabulary, the idioms, the phrases, strategies from the podcast. The best place to practice it.

It's amazing. It's amazing. So we're excited to meet you. And this month, we'll have a lot of new students coming into our courses. So we're looking forward to meeting you in Open Conversation Club. All right. Good stuff. Awesome. I will see you there, Lindsay. Yes. Sounds good. I'll talk to you soon, Aubrey. Have a good one. You too. Bye.

Thanks for listening to All Ears English. Would you like to know your English level? Take our two-minute quiz. Go to allearsenglish.com forward slash fluency score. And if you believe in connection, not perfection, then hit subscribe now to make sure you don't miss anything. See you next time.