In this lesson, I will teach you verbs, expressions, and idioms you can use to bring out your unique personality and communication style. For example, there is a lot more you can say other than „I think that…” Using other expressions such as „it looks as if”, „it sounds like”, „I sense that”, or „I feel that” makes your language richer and helps you build relationships with others. Watch this video to discover more about your own personal style and how you can express yourself more like a native speaker. This video goes into the theory of NLP (neuro-linguistic programming). If you want to go even further with the idea of representational systems within NLP, you can then use your knowledge of language and behaviour to build stronger relationships and to influence people. For example, if you observe that your friend is a strongly visual person, you can adapt your language and the expressions you use to be more visual. This will help the two of you connect and interact better. Test your knowledge afterwards by doing the quiz at http://www.engvid.com/expressions-idioms-that-express-your-personality/
TRANSCRIPT
Hi, everyone. I’m Jade. What we’re talking about today is language of the senses, and I made this lesson because I noticed that when you’re using your language prospects and things about… Things like that, to give… To express an opinion, it’s always taught, like, you say: „I think”, „I think this because”, or „I think that because”. When I realized that, in reality, we use… Our language is much broader, and we use a lot of different phrases to express an opinion, basically; and I also realized that a lot of the language we use is based on our senses. So, I’m going to share those phrases with you today, and that will make your language and… When you’re speaking English, it will make your language much more rich and more expressive, basically.
And it also relates to NLP, which is a way of thinking about the communication between us. What is successful communication? How can we be more successful as communicators? And I don’t want to go too much into it, except I’m going to look at the ideas… The idea of communication styles. And according to NLP, each of us has a preferred communication style, and it’s based on our strongest sense, you could say, and that means the way we interpret the world.
So, everybody has a way of interpreting the world, and we do that through our senses. So, if you are somebody who’s a strongly visual person, and that’s your strongest sense, your language will use lots of language that’s visual, and we’ll look at that. We’ll give… I’ll give you some examples in a minute.
You might be an auditory person, this means that your strongest sense is your… What… What comes to your ears, in which case, your language will be using terms that evoke a sense of hearing and what you hear. You may also be a kinesthetic person. This means that you interpret the world through your sense of touch and your feelings. I am a kinesthetic person. If you listen to me speaking normally in my life with my friends and everything, my language is always: „I feel”, „I feel that because”, where, really, I mean the same as: „I think”, but the term I use to express what I mean is „I feel”. So maybe you’re like me, or you might be an auditory digital person. This is the kind of person… I didn’t know what symbol to write, here. This is a kind of person who interprets the world in a logical way, according to systems and things like that, so I put a little mathematical symbol there. I didn’t know what else to put.
So, what we’ll do now is we’ll look at some different phrases people may use to give an opinion. So, remember we can use all these phrases as an alternative just to: „I think”, which is not very imaginative language, not very expressive either.
So, what if you say: „It looks as if…” We can use this phrase to give an indirect opinion. So, let’s imagine a situation. I’m going to use the same situation for all these. Our friend, Tom, he was going to have a party, he’s invited a few people, but he hasn’t really planned anything, and it’s got close to the time of the party and now he’s having second thoughts because he hasn’t organi-… He hasn’t organized anything, and maybe this party’s not going to happen. So, I can say: „It looks as if Tom’s going to cancel his party.” And I can say that, rather than: „I think Tom’s going to cancel his party.” It’s an indirect way of giving an opinion.
The same situation: „It sounds like Tom’s going to cancel his party.” Now, I notice, when I’m… When I’m just speaking naturally in lessons to people, sometimes… Or even friends, people I meet. Sometimes they get really confused by „sounds like”. If you haven’t encountered it before, you might not realize it means the same as „think” or maybe more like „seem”, „It seems like”.
