Hello. My name is Emma, and in today's video,
I am going to teach you how to tell a story
in English. This is a very important conversation
skill because a lot of the times when we see
our friends or our family or coworkers, we
often tell stories. You might talk about your
weekend and tell a story about something funny
that happened to you, or maybe you want to
talk about something funny from your past or
something scary. So, we often tell stories
in conversation. So, let me teach you how you can tell a story in English. So, let's
There are different ways to introduce a story
in conversation. So, a lot of the times, we
actually will use an expression, and that
shows the listener that we are going to tell
a story. It's almost like a signal. So, when
you hear somebody say these things, you know,
okay, a story is coming. They are about to
say a story. So, let's look at some of these
different ways to start a story in conversation.
This is an example of something my father
says all the time in English. He always says,
"Did I ever tell you about the time when _____
happened?" So, this can be many different
things. "Did I ever tell you about the time
when I got in trouble at school?" "Did I ever
tell you about the time when I met your mother?"
"Did I ever tell you about the time when the
storm of the century happened?" Okay? So,
there's a lot of different ways you can introduce
a story. This is a very common way. "Did I ever tell you about the time when _____?"
You might also hear somebody say this, "Oh,
that reminds me. That reminds me of when _____
happened. That reminds me." We usually use this when someone is telling us something
and it reminds us of a story. So, they're saying something and suddenly we think of
a story from our own experience. So, maybe somebody is talking about maybe something
from their childhood, and maybe they're talking
about soccer, and I go, "Oh, that reminds
me of when I was a child and I used to play
soccer." And then I'll probably tell a story.
So, "that reminds me" is a common way to introduce a story.
You might also hear this, "Let me tell you
about... Let me tell you about the time when
I got really scared. Let me tell you about
the time when I was on a roller coaster. Let
me tell you about the time when I went to
China and my experiences there." So, we often
use "let me tell you about" as an introduction to a story.
You might also say something to somebody like,
"You'll never guess what happened." This is
a great introduction to get the listener interested
in what you are going to say. "You'll never
guess what happened." And then you tell something
interesting that just happened. "You'll never
guess what happened." You might actually
just say something like, "Oh, I have a funny
story for you." This is common, too. Or, "I have a story for you." So, if it's funny,
you might use this. If not, you might just
say, "I have a story for you." So, these are
all common ways to start telling stories in conversation.
Now, let's learn a little bit more about how
to tell stories in English. So, the next thing
I want to tell you about telling a story in English is you need to be careful about
the length of a story. Telling stories is
very cultural. So, in some cultures, we might
tell very long stories, whereas in other cultures,
we might typically tell shorter stories. In
English, people often have a shorter attention
span, so they prefer stories to be on the
shorter side, unless it's a really good story.
So, the reason I'm telling you this is it's
important when you are telling a story to pay attention to the listener. You want to
look at the listener and look at their cues.
Are they yawning? Are they looking at their
watch? That would be rude, but maybe they're
doing that. Are they not even looking at you?
By looking at what the listener is doing, that can actually help you improve your own
storytelling, because you don't want your stories to be too long and you don't want
them to be too short. There's a good amount of
time you might tell a story. So, in English,
again, usually we prefer shorter stories to longer stories.
The next thing I wanted to tell you about
telling stories in English is in conversation,
we often use signal words. So, what are signal
words? Well, they're words that tell us where
the story is going, or maybe they tell us
the sequence of events. What happened first?
What happened next? Then what happened? So, to improve your storytelling, I recommend
using signal words. Here are some examples.
First, then, next, later, finally. These are
just a few signal words, but they're examples.
They really help with the organization of
your story. One other point is I mentioned that it's important to listen... Or to pay
attention to the listener and see how they are responding to your story. One good sign
is if the listener says, "Then what happened?"
"Then what happened?" means they are interested.
Okay? So, while you're telling the story,
the listener might say, "Then what happened?"
So, this is a good thing to hear from a listener.
It means they are interested in what you are
saying. "And then what happened?" Okay, now
let's learn a little bit about the verb tenses
we use when we tell stories in conversation.
Okay, so when you tell a story in English,
one of the most common tenses we use is the
past tense. It's possible to use the present
tense, but in general, we usually use the
past tense when we tell stories. So, I'm going
to talk a little bit about the past tense and how we use this when we tell stories.
So, there are different forms of the past tense in English. Two examples are we have
the simple past tense, and we also have the
past continuous tense. These are both popular
to use when we tell stories. So, I'm going to give you an example of the simple past
tense. "I saw a bear." So, in a story, this is true. One time, I saw a bear. Notice the
verb I used. The verb is in the simple past tense. The verb is "to see", I've changed
the verb into the past tense, and now it is the verb "saw". "I saw a bear." So, a lot
of the times when we tell stories, we just
use the simple past tense. Simple past tense,
regular verbs in the simple past tense often
have -ed endings, so if that helps you to
remember. So, for example, you might talk
about how you worked yesterday, or you visited
your grandmother. So, we use the simple past a lot when we tell stories.
We also use the past continuous. So, you might
wonder, what is the past continuous? Well,
whenever you see grammar with the word "continuous"
in it, or "progressive", that usually means
there's an -ing ending somewhere. So, here
is an example of the past continuous. "I was
walking down the street when I saw a bear."
So, "walking" has our -ing in it, it's a verb
with -ing, and we also have the "be" verb, "was". So, "I was walking down the street.
It was raining. It was snowing. It was...
The sun was shining." These are all examples
So when do we use the past continuous, or
how do we use it when we tell stories? Well,
we use it to talk about either the background,
so what was the weather like? What was happening
when something happened? So, we use it to talk about the background description, or
we can use it to talk about an activity that
is in progress at the time of your story.
So, just a clear example, here is what is
happening. This is the activity in progress.
"I was walking down the street." So, that is happening when I saw a bear. So, this is
an interruption of that activity.
So, we have videos on the past continuous. I
recommend if you don't know how to use this
tense to watch some of these videos, they
can be very helpful. But again, when we tell
stories in conversation, we often use the
simple past tense or the past continuous tense.
Now, let's learn what else we use when we tell stories in English.
So, you've told your story now, and the question
is, "How do you end it?" We like to signal
to the listener that the story is finished.
So, what can we say to show our story is over?
Well, there's a couple of things we can say.
At the end of a story, we can say, "Can you
believe that?" So, this is a way to show my
story is finished, and it's a surprising story.
"Can you believe that?" Or you might say something like, "I'll never forget it. I'll
never forget it. I'll never forget what happened."
You might say something like, "I can't believe
that happened. I can't believe it. I can't
believe that happened." So, we often use these,
especially if there's a surprise in the story.
Now, sometimes when we tell a story, we think
it's a great story, and we look at the listener,
and they are like this. They don't find the story
funny. They don't find the story interesting.
They're not really showing any emotion. So,
after we tell a story, if the listener looks
like this, you can say, "I guess you had to be there." This means in order to like
the story, you needed to experience it. "I guess you had to be there." This is a very
common thing people say at the end of stories
when the reaction to the story is not good.
So, if the listener looks like this, you can say, "I guess you had to be there."
Okay, so we've covered a little bit about how to
tell stories in English. There is a lot more to
say on this subject. One thing I recommend my
students do is listen to people tell stories.
The best way to improve is to actually hear models of what you want to do.
So, the way you can listen to native speakers
tell stories is watch English talk shows.
If you ever watch an English talk show, you
will notice that the celebrity on the talk show
always tells a story, and it's usually a funny
story or an interesting story, and they're short.
So, I recommend you watch talk shows if you want
to improve your storytelling. You can watch The
Late Show, The Tonight Show, The Colbert Report.
There are many different talk shows in English.
You can watch them on YouTube, but I highly
recommend doing this to improve your storytelling.
So, thank you so much for watching. You can practice what you learned today by visiting
our website at www.engvid.com. There, you can
actually take a quiz on some of what we talked
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So, thank you so much for watching, and until next time, take care.