Lesson 2 · English conversation · ~25 minutes
Lesson 1 fixed the middle of your turn. This one fixes the end of it — so the conversation does not die every time you finish a sentence.
Start here, before you read anything new. Produce the eight phrases from lesson 1 from memory — and do not open lesson 1 first. They have partly faded by now. That is not a problem to fix before the drill; it is the whole point of doing it this way. Retrieving something half-forgotten is what makes it stay; re-reading it does almost nothing.
Say each answer out loud before you type it. Whatever you score, write the number down — it is the single most useful thing you can tell me about this lesson.
Lesson 1 was about staying alive inside your own turn. This lesson is about the moment your turn ends.
Someone asks you: "Do you like living here?" You answer: "Yes, I do." Correct English, correct grammar — and the conversation is now dead. The other person has to invent a completely new question out of nothing. After two or three of those, most people quietly stop trying.
This is not an English problem. Your answer was perfect. It was the wrong shape.
Every answer you give in conversation has three parts. Most learners stop after the first.
Three seconds of extra work, and two things happen. The other person now has something to hold on to, so the conversation carries on without them straining. And while they answer, you get twenty free seconds to plan your next turn — which is the real prize here. The Ask is not politeness. It is thinking time, and it is the cheapest thinking time in English.
Do not study these. Say each one out loud twice, now, before you read on.
The rule in one line: never end your turn with a full stop and silence. End it with a question, or with a detail the other person can grab.
Same as before. Read the situation, say your phrase out loud, then type it. Do not scroll up.
Nation's fluency drill again: the same talk three times, with less time each round — 2 minutes, 1½, then 1. Nothing new goes in; only the speed goes up. That is the entire mechanism. — Nation (2007), The Four Strands
Two extra rules this time. Every time you hesitate, use one of lesson 1's eight phrases instead of going silent. And in every round, use especially when and the funny thing is at least once each — force them in, even where they do not quite fit. That is how a phrase moves from the page into your mouth.
In your next English conversation, do the three-part answer once, deliberately: answer, add one detail, ask something back. One time is enough. Watch what happens to the next thirty seconds.
This lesson is designed to produce numbers, not impressions. When you next speak to Igor, tell him:
Your score on the cold recall at the top of this page — X of 8. That number tells me how much of lesson 1 actually survived a week, which decides how fast lesson 3 can move.
And which of the seven new phrases felt strange in your mouth. A phrase that feels unnatural gets replaced, not drilled harder. There is no wrong answer here and you are not criticising the lesson by saying so.
Ten minutes, and worth it: open YouGlish and search "what about you". Listen to five real speakers say it and copy the rhythm out loud — notice that it is much faster and flatter than you expect. Then search "the funny thing is" and do the same.
If you want to check a phrase yourself: SkELL gives you up to forty real sentences containing any phrase you type, from a billion words of ordinary English. If a phrase you invented returns almost nothing there, it is not something people say. This is the tool that settles "is this natural?" without guessing.