Making Small Talk

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Hello, welcome to another class. I’m Robin and today our topic is making small talk. So what is small talk? Small talk is a conversation about things that are not important often with people who we do not know or we do not know well. So this isn’t a conversation with our close friends, it’s with someone who we just met, for example. Okay we also call this chit-chat. You can chit-chat with someone or breaking the ice. So that’s like to start a conversation with someone is to break the ice.

So when do we use or when do we make small talk? We can do it when we’re waiting in line like at the post office, for example, at the bus stop or at subway, metro. At a conference, like a business conference, there might be some people there you don’t know so you might want to start a conversation with them. Or at a party or a dinner where you don’t necessarily know everyone there. Okay so i’m going to give you some kind of neutral conversation topics and then I’m going to tell you things that you should not talk about when making small talk with someone.

Okay so let’s say you are at a party and you see some people you don’t know. So you might want to first introduce yourself. You can say “Hi, I’m Robin” or “I don’t think we’ve met. I’m Robin” for example. “Nice to meet you.” Okay so what are some different conversation topics for making small talk? You can talk about all kinds of different things. The most common ones are, for example, the weather. Everybody talks about the weather. You can talk about the weather with someone you don’t know. It’s very easy. So you can say things like “Did you hear the rain last night?” or “It’s a nice day, isn’t it?”. So you’ll notice in this last example “It’s a nice day, isn’t it?” I’m using a question tag. This “isn’t it” so this invites the other person to answer to agree or disagree or to add something. “Yes, it’s a very nice day” for example. So question tags are helpful when making small talk because you’re inviting the other person to continue the conversation with you.

Okay other topics, news and current events. Now, obviously, the main topic right now with current events is the pandemic, but maybe something else happened. For example, you can ask someone “Did you watch the news today?” or “Did you hear about…” and then mention the story. “Did you hear about the volcano eruption in Iceland? for example. Okay something different, something new that has happened, you can mention that to someone to start a conversation.

All right, what if you are at a doctor’s office, for example, you’re waiting and you see someone reading a book or a magazine. You can start a conversation with them by mentioning what they are reading or asking what they’re reading. So you can say “What are you reading?” or if you see what it is, “I see you’re reading Harry Potter” for example, “Do you like it?” Okay, so you can ask what they’re reading, ask for their opinion. “Do you like it?” “I’ve also read it” etc. So this is a great way to start a conversation with someone, to ask what they are reading.

You can also talk about sports, everybody likes to talk about sports. Well not everyone. If you don’t like sports, you probably won’t start a conversation this way. But if there’s a big event going on, a big sporting event, you can say “Did you see the game last night?” or if there’s a game coming up, “Who do you think will win?” “Who are you rooting for?” etc. So you can talk about sports.

If you’re at a business conference, for example, or if you are at the office and maybe there’s someone new who you haven’t met before you can say “How long have you worked here?” or “It’s a busy day today, isn’t it?” Okay, so these are what we call water cooler conversations because maybe you go to get a glass of water and you start a conversation with someone who is there that you might not know very well.

Okay you can talk about personal connection, so this is, especially if you’re at a party or a dinner with someone with a group of people that you don’t know very well, you can ask about how they know this person who invited you or the host. “So how do you know John?” or “Are you having a nice time?” You can ask at a party, but you can mention these personal connections. “Oh, we work together.” “Oh, we studied together”, for example. So you can establish these connections that you have in common.

Okay, what if you’re waiting in a long line? Like I said before, at the post office, a long line at the post office, you can ask “How long have you been waiting?” So maybe you, you’re the last person in line, you ask the person in front of you “How long have you been waiting?” or you can just say “It’s really busy today” or “This line is really long”, etc.

Okay. You can ask someone about their weekend plans. So this could be at a party with a group of friends or people that you don’t know, well, etc, you can say “What are you up to this weekend?” or “What are your plans for the weekend?” and maybe they could give you a suggestion, they’re going somewhere you haven’t heard before or doing something that you haven’t done. So that’s a good way to discover new things in your city.

Okay, so as I said, these are topics, these are neutral topics, very easy to talk about with people. They are not controversial, let’s say. But there are some topics, which we call an English taboo topics, which are topics that you probably don’t want to discuss with someone that you don’t know. Now, if it’s your family, your friends, then it’s fine. But you do not want to make small talk or chit-chat with someone about politics, about religion, or about money because those topics are very personal, normally, and people may not be comfortable talking with someone they don’t know about this. And also, maybe you have opposing views, maybe you support one party and they support another and they don’t really want to talk about that with you. And that’s okay. So it’s good to avoid these topics with people until you know them a little bit better. And then it’s fine.

Okay, so I want to know, tell me in the comments, when was the last time that you made small talk with someone? So tell me about the situation. Where were you? In an elevator, in a doctor’s office, on a train? So when was the last time you had to make small talk? And was it a good or bad experience? So did you have a good conversation? Did the person not want to talk to you? Sometimes that happens, you might try to make small talk with someone and they kind of don’t want to talk to you. And that’s okay, it happens. But tell me about your experience. And tell me also what’s a taboo topic in your country? So I mentioned things like politics, religion, money. Is there anything else in your country that you would say don’t mention, don’t make small talk about this topic? Tell us that in the comments as well. And I want to challenge you, if you want, in the comments, you can start conversations with each other. You can make small talk with each other. So that’s a good way to practice. So I hope I have given you some good recommendations today of ways to make small talk. I hope that you will start. I hope that you will do this soon with someone, start a conversation. That’s how we practice our English is by speaking to people. So good luck, and I will see you next week for another class. Take care, Bye!