A Hello, this is Amy from Real English Conversations.

Com
Today Curtis and I are gonna be having a conversation, asking each other
some questions, so that you can get to know us a little bit better, and make
sure to stay tuned to the end of the episode, because we’re going to explain a
little bit about some of the sounds that we make while we’re thinking
Intro
A Hi there, everyone, my name is Amy
C And I’m Curtis
A And we wanna welcome you to our recording for Real English Conversations
C This is the first one
A This is the very first one
C It’s exciting
A Yeah
We’ve been talking about this idea for a long time, so it’s nice to finally start
recording and working on this project. But what this project is, we’re trying
to bring you guys a real English conversation, the type of conversations that
people have naturally with the natural “um”s and “a”s and pauses, the
thinking, the natural flow, so everything that you are gonna hear is
completely unscripted completely unrehearsed. We may get off topic from
time to time, so…
C But it’s gonna be a great example to show you how conversations happen,
A how this language works and how two people have a casual conversation, so
we thought that the best way for you guys to get to know us a little bit better
is to maybe pretend to, like, maybe don’t know each other
C Or like we’re meeting for the first time
A Like we’re meeting for the first time, but I’m gonna try to keep it pretty
natural and the type pf questons that I would probably ask somebody that I
don’t know yet, and the type of information that I want to know to try to stir
up a more natural conversation, so that we can talk for a longer period of
time, more than two or three minutes.
So, Curtis, where are you from?
C I’m from Edmonton, Canada, originally. I was born and raised there, and
then, about 16 years ago I moved to where I live now which is Colona
A What made you move here?
C Well, my parents wanted to find a nicer place to retire. They wanted to retire
and settle down, I thought I might as well jump along and go with them. It
was a nice city, because we had visited Colona almost every summer when I
was growing up, as a kid
A Ahhh, so you already liked Colona, you knew it a little bit, so it was a place
you thought ‘I’d like to go there’
C Exactly and I would like to live there and what about you?
A Well, for me, I’m actually from Colona I was born and raised here. I was
lucky enough that my parents decided not to move throughout the whole time
I was growing up, and I guess after..
My parents moved maybe like 5 hours away from me when I was about 18 or
19 years old, but by then I had already established my life. I had a job. I was
moving out on my own anyway, all of my friends were here, a lot of family. I
decided I wanted to stay in Colona and I’m pretty happy I did, it’s a really
nice place here
C Cool, do you have any brothers or sisters?
A Yeah, yeah, I have one brother. I come from a pretty small family, so, you
know I have one brother he has a couple of kids, so I have a niece and a
nephew. And I have a couple of aunts and uncles and my grandparents live
here, so most of my family lives here. My family is kind of a boring subject,
so
What type of hobbies do you have? Or what do you like to do
C I’m a music guy. I’ve always been, you know, into musical forms and genres
of music
A OK, so more like listening
C Yeah, I’ve got a bit of a dick jockey side of me, but
A Disk jockey?
C DJ,
A That’s not a weird… I hear it very often, but DJ would be better
C And I’ve also got a musician part of me: I play drums
Yeah, funny story: I used to line up paint cans in the basement and I used the
end of the paint brushes to play on top of the paint cans, like they were a
drums set
A So they made sort of different noises, so when you tap one pant can and it’s
only half-full it would make a different sound than another paint can that’s
almost empty and…
You probably drove you parents nuts crushing and banging on paint cans
C I drove them so nuts that they bought me real drum set
A Well, that’s even louder
C What kind of things do you like to do?
A I like to hang out with my friends a lot, yeah, I have a lot of friends
sometimes I end up doing sports with my friends. I go snowboarding in the
winter, in the summer we have a lot of barbecues at my house, you know and
you invite some people over you cook some good food, hang out, listen to
music, it’s a really, really nice way of spending a nice summer day, so I like
doing that.
Right now I’m studying Spanish, I have been working with that for a really
long time, but I’m seeing some really good progress with my Spanish so
that’s really exciting
C Niiice, bit of a challenge, though?
A It’s very rewarding at the same time though. I like learning new things, I
really like when I can see progress that I made and I feel like I’m making
progress with my Spanish, so I’m very happy with it
You were talking about music, though, what’s your favourite type of music
C I’m a really big fan of reggae music
A Reggae?
C Reggae music
A Like Bob Marley
C Yeah, like Bob Marley, I guess he’s the most famous one that everybody can
relate reggae music to. There’s quite a few other artists there, that are
A Oh, I’m sure
C That you probably wouldn’t know. I have a very large vinyl record collection
A Vinyl, like you mean like, yeah, records, we’re going back in time here. OK
So you have a lot of music on records and do you like any other types of
music or just Bob Marley?
C I also like a lot of old funk and Motown soul, I like some rock as well.
There’s a few that I don’t like though, including country music, I’m not the
biggest fan of that so
A Country music is one of those things that people either love or hate. I agree
with you, I don’t like country very much either. For me, I really like rock
music, that’s my favorite, I like music with guitar and drums and a little bit
of an edge to it. But I’m finding as I get a little older I’m starting to like some
mellow music, too, so sort of some electronic chill music, you know more
ambient background music, it a little bit more repaxing. But it kind of, it
depends on my mood, it depends what I’m doing. If I’m doing some sort of
sport or an activity that’s a little more energy I like to have faster sort of beat
f music, but I’m just chilling out at home I kinds like
C Something to relax to
A Yeah, just something that matches my mood, so yeah
How about , have you seen any good concerts?
C Yeah, I’ve seen a lot of good concerts, I like concerts, live music is different,
it’s a different kind of feeling
A It’s so exciting
C It is, I would say ove of the best concerts, there’s an artist or a group they’re
called “the john butler trio”
A I know them, a really good band, one of my favorites
C Australian band. John Butler is obviously the front man, lead singer
A Very, very talented, that man has an increadible voice and increadibe guitar
skills, I highly recommend that you guys check him out and give his music a
listen
So what was he like in concert? How was the concert?

C It was amazing, one of the longest concerts I’ve ever been to, it seemed like
he
A That’s the best
C He played on forever, I don’t know he’d done 2 or 3 encores, they, you
know, the crowd whants them to come back
A Play just one more song, one more! One more!
C Yeah the crowd was, it was in this nice little bar
A More of a intimate environment for seeing someone play live
C Yeah, compared to, like, a large stadium
A It’s less personal
C Yes, yeah, which is great, makes for a different kind of feeling, you feel a
little closer to the group so to speak. The place was sold outl, it was a year or
two ago and I’m still talking about how it was probably one of the best
concerts I’ve seen
A It’s nice when you get the opportunity to have something like that
C Unforgettable
A I think everybody should see one of their favorite bands live, it’s one of the
most incredible experiences. It’s hard to duplicate, you know, and you wish
at the time it’s like ‘I hope this never ends’ and it always does, until the next
big show
Well, Curtis, I’ve gotta get going on with the rest of my day here, but it was
nice meeting with you
C It was nice metting you as well. I’m going to go listen to some music or play
some drums here, so
A So well, talk to you a little later
C Alright, catch you later
A OK, bye

So that’s kind of how I feel a typical conversation might start when you’re
trying to get to know somebody
C Or even relate to at times
A Yeah, you can relate to and you want to go one a little bit longer, you know,
like the music and the converts that was a topic that I felt like I could talk a
little bit more about rather than
C Almost like common interests , you can relate to with someone else and you
might have similar interests
A It’s an easy way to start a conversation talking about the weather and family,
but it doesn’t last very long, so you need to have a few more tricks up your
sleeve
C Yeah, what do you really wanna get to know about the person you’re talking
to and talking with
A How are you going to come up with a topic that’s interesting enough, that
you can maintain it for quite a few minutes
C Yeah, you don’t want to put a person asleep
A Now, cause then you’re gonna wanna try to find someone else to talk to
that’s a little bit more interesting
 So anyway, I hope you enjoyed our first podcast , leave us a comment on our
page let us know what you think about it and we’ll see you guys next time
C Catch you later
A Bye
Conversational tip
A Ok, so for this English conversation tip we’re gonna be talking about the
classic thinking sounds of a native English speaker from North America
anyway
So whenever we’re thinking about anything what are the two sounds that we
typically make?
C Eeeeem
Or
uuuuuh

A Yeah, so one is like “eeem” with an ‘m’ sound

And the other one is ‘uuuuuhhhh’ with a more like an ‘h’ sound with your
mouth open?
C yeah
A Yeah, so when we’re thinking about something for just a small moment what
this sound does is it’s indicating to the other person that we’re thinking about
it, so they don’t interrupt us
C true
A So, Curtis, what’s your work schedule like for next week?
C Let me see …. Eeemmm … looks like I’m free Tuesday and Wednesday
A Aaahh Ok perfect
So what we recommend is you guys go back an listen to this episode there’s
a ton of Ems, and UHs in it, cause it was the first one that we have ever
recorded, so we hadn’t learned to control our thinking sounds yet, while on
the microphone. but it just umm, yeah, if you enjoyed this tip and you’d like
to have more like it be sure to come to our website and sigh up for our e-mail
list, because what we’re going to do is we’re actually gonna send you access
to a free lesson that we did with 31 sounds that natives use. English speaker
natives use during conversation all the time and you’re also gonna get
unlimited access to our 3 most popular lessons with the transcript and the
slower version of the audio and things like that. So you can some to real
English conversations.Com we’ll see you guys next time
outro