02Chatting with Friends 英语沟通技巧

2. Chatting with friends

Today we‟ll talk about chatting with friends. Many students ask me this question: what do Americans talk about with their friends? That‟s a hard question because it‟s so broad. What do we talk? We talk about many many many differen t things. As I listen to Chinese conversation there are many topics too. But there seems to be a broader numbers of topics we talk about. Part of understanding our culture is a world difference. So natural our conversation is what all the difference too. So what do we talk about everything and anything? We talk about all kinds of things. So when my students sometimes even say: what do you generally talk about and I have to say: well, generally we talk about different things. We really can‟t narrow down to one or two or a few things we talk about. I‟ll give you a few examples though. Some people like to talk about the news. Some people think the news is very boring. Some people like to take a talk about sports or their favorite sports. Whether they are talking about playing football or watching on TV, we like to talk about sports. Some people talk about work. Other people when they are not working they prefer to just forget about the work. Some people talk about boyfriends, girlfriends, husbands, wives, kids, things like that is a very common topic. It‟s difference in the real life than the class because in class teacher will say: OK, talk about this topic. But in real life we never do that. We don‟t just get together with our friends and say: OK, let‟s been 30 minutes talking about sports. That‟ll be strange and you don‟t do that in Chinese either. So, it‟ll be a little strange in real life. In class it‟s OK to do that because you can practice the topic. Some people like to talk about very deep topics. For example, personalPhilosophy, Religion, politics, world peace, how can we have world peace, how can we solve all of the world problems. Some like to these topics, some people are very good at these topics. If you talk about that many English it will be a real challenge because it‟s very deep. You have to express people meaning. But some people enjoy talking about these things. Other people prefer life topics. It also depends on who were talking with. When I talk with my wife and children I may talk about what happened in my work and work that day in my class with something to do with my students. My wife will talk about what my sun did that day. But when I talk to friends outside, I may talk about my family. So who we talk to also has a lot to do with what we talk about. Some people when they talk it are very common in my country to talk about problem solving. For example, marriage problems, money problems. How to repair something. Computer problems are very common thing. My computer works too slow. What can I do. I know you know more about computer than I do. And so a lot of time it comes down to asking for advice or giving advice. Whatever we talk about the most important thing is that it has to be natural. When we talk to friends and we talk to new friends. Some times talking to a new friend is different. Talking to old friend is very easy because we…ve been talking for a long time for many years. We know each other. But know suddenly you are introduced to a new friend and sometimes you just look at each other and say what should we say? But there are normally, there are, if they are real friendship, there will be some topics that will natural for you. If you want to make friends with new People, one thing is more important is you don‟t spend all of your life just in a book or watching TV. And that‟s hard for students because you have to spend a lot of time in books. In our culture, sometimes we say “gentle life”. “gentle life” means you really basically with your boring person. It means you don‟t do anything. Reall y go out and do anything. It doesn‟t mean that you go out for drinking and dancing but do something with your life when you meet people. Some people that I‟ve met they say I don‟t have many friends. I‟d like to have more friends. Then I say what do you do. Well, I work in my office alone. I go home; I watch TV and the do the same thing every day. And that explains what we don‟t have a lot of friends. Friendships usually don‟t happen when we looking for friends. You can join like a single group or go to a club and try to be friends. Sometimes I found that in my life most of my friends are just people I met. I get to know them naturally in natural situations. For example, I took a class in …. It was several years. I really enjoy that. And because something I e njoyed and the other students enjoyed. It was natural. We didn‟t just come together and say let‟s make friends. Or you know what we can talk about or what your topic is today. When