30 questions to help you make GREAT Small Talk in English! ———- TIMESTAMPS ———- 00:00 Introduction 00:30 Why this is …

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  1. Bonne vidéo ! Personnellement, je conseille le livre "CONVERSATION & RÉPARTIE", de Nathan Stone. Y a tout ce qu'il faut savoir, c'est clair, très complet, pas de discours superflu, le top. Tous ceux à qui je l'ai conseillé en sont très contents ! C'est un indispensable.

  2. i have i guess 3 problems with a lot of these questions, and questions similar to them that people ask.

    first and most simply, as others have said, i just don’t care what the answer is. it really doesn’t concern me what you’re doing this weekend unless it somehow involves me.

    second is that a lot of things people consider small talk questions are not things i want to answer about myself from some person i just met or don’t already know well, so i won’t ask those questions to others because i would consider it invasive if they asked me. for example, i would never in a million years ask a random neighbor where they work. why? well first, see #1, but second, if they asked me that question, my immediate reaction would be to think, what business is it of yours? why do you care? what are you going to do with this information? and it’s even worse because it almost never stops at the first question. once they have that information, they then want you to elaborate further. no thank you. it’s really not your business to know where i work, where i live, what i have, about my family, or similar. it just comes across as invasive and in some cases creepy. i had a coworker once just casually ask to know where my mother lives. what are you possibly going to do with that info? why do you need that? so, i just don’t ask people questions like this because i wouldn’t want it asked of me.

    lastly, some of these questions presume a certain amount of privilege that you just cannot presume other people have. up until a couple of months ago i was working 65-70 hours a week at two jobs (legal assistance and medical reception) and living out of my car because the cost of living in my area is so outrageously high. so questions like where i live and what i do in my “spare time” ended up just being extremely awkward and uncomfortable. what am i doing on the weekend? i don’t have a weekend. i work 7 days a week. what neighborhood do i live in? wherever i can park for the night. i still have a friend in this same position. after it happened to me, i came to find out there are more than you’d think. similarly, questions about travel- “i just got back from France, have you ever been?”… that person may never be able to afford dreaming of traveling anywhere let alone having actually been. unless you already know for 100% certain that the individual is in a similar economic class to yourself, this is not a great question to ask. and don’t presume that because you work with them, they must enjoy the same quality of life that you do. again, i was living in my car for almost a year and none of my coworkers had any idea. questions about how your holidays went can be uncomfortable for some people too. the holidays are difficult for a lot of people for a variety of reasons. maybe because they couldn’t afford to buy gifts for their family. maybe because they don’t have any family to celebrate with. maybe because this is their first holiday without their mother, father, husband, wife, grandmother, etc. You can end up doing nothing but upsetting the person by bringing it up. i just wouldn’t ask.

    in summary, a lot of questions people think are fair game for “small talk”, i would consider not small talk. weather is small talk. that’s fine. personal interview type questions are not small talk in my view, i don’t want them asked of me, and i never ask them of other people. i figure if they want me to have that information about them, they will volunteer it.

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