The Moment Someone Says Tell Me About Yourself in English | 35-Minute English Podcast (B2-C1)

Ethan joined a pottery class in Sheffield on a Tuesday evening, eight people on stools in a circle, and the teacher asked everybody to say a bit about themselves. The woman before him took eleven seconds: her name, her job, and the fact that she had always wanted to make a bowl. Ethan took four minutes and finished by telling eight strangers about a dog his family had in the nineteen nineties. Nobody interrupted him, which turned out to be the worst part. He decided afterwards that he had been nervous and talks too much when he is nervous, which explains nothing, because he is perfectly fine in meetings. A meeting has an agenda and an agenda tells you where your part ends. This episode is about the one question in English that gives you nothing: not a hard question, not a fast question, but a blank space with a full stop after it. Why you do not freeze for lack of material here, why you freeze for lack of a border, and why being fluent makes it worse, because nobody rescues somebody who obviously does not need rescuing. Four rounds, fifteen real lines, none of them about your life and all of them about where the answer starts, what holds it up, and where it ends. THE 15 LINES IN THIS EPISODE - "I'll keep this to the work part." - ...and 14 more, all said out loud in the episode. Every one is said slowly, repeated more than once, and then used in a real situation, so you can say it out loud with us instead of only recognizing it. The Fluency Plateau is for people who already understand English but freeze when it is time to speak. Each episode takes one exact moment where you get stuck and hands you the lines that get you past it. SPEAKING CHALLENGE How long is your answer when somebody says tell me about yourself? Say your answer out loud before you write it. #EnglishPodcast #EnglishConversation #SpeakEnglish #EnglishFluency