http://www.engvid.com/ What if you DON’T want to have a conversation? How can you STOP talking with someone annoying? What can you do to AVOID talking with people? Watch this lesson to learn the WORST social conversation skills! If you want to improve your English conversation skills, don’t follow ANY of the tips in this lesson! http://www.engvid.com/how-to-avoid-a-conversation/ TRANSCRIPT Hi. Ronnie. Video. Conversation skills. How to avoid them? So maybe you don’t want to talk to someone. This lesson is called “Conversation Skills: How to avoid a conversation.” “Avoid” means you want to stop having or not have something. So all of your life, probably, when you have been learning English, you’ve learned many lessons about how to have a conversation, how to talk to strangers, how to talk to people on the subway, how to talk to people in a store. Sometimes, I don’t want to talk to anyone. Sometimes, people talk to me. As an example, every morning, when I wake up, I have to walk my dog. It’s cold outside. I’ve not had my coffee yet. I don’t want to walk my dog. I do not want to be outside. And I’m generally not wanting to do anything except go back to bed. It seems that people that have dogs love to have conversations with other people who have dogs. I don’t want to talk to you. I don’t care. They ask me strange questions like, “Is your dog a boy or a girl?” Why? Why do you care if my dog is a boy dog or a girl dog? Do you want to have sex with my dog? Are you concerned if my dog has a penis? No. Stop it. Who cares? “How old is your dog?” Why? Do you want to know his birthday? Are you going to have a party? Is your dog and my dog going to come to my house, and are we going to have a party? No. Shut up. I’m walking my dog. Don’t talk to me. So tips on how to avoid a conversation. Rule No. 1, very easy, don’t ever make eye contact with anyone you do not want to talk to. Number one rule when you want to have a conversation is you must look at the people’s eyes. Don’t look down. Don’t look up. Look at their eyes. So to not have a conversation, don’t look anyone in the eye. I’m not talking to you. The second one is: Don’t ask the speaker any questions. So as an example, “Oh, hi. What kind of dog do you have?”, “It’s a Cairn terrier”. “How old is it?”, “Seven”. “Is it a boy or a girl?”, “Boy”. If you’ve noticed, I did not ask the person about their dog because I don’t care. If you wanted to have a conversation with someone, you could ask the person the same question. As an example, “Hi”, “Hi”, “Good, yeah”. “What kind of dog do you have?”, “It’s a Cairn terrier. How about you? What kind of dog do you have?”, “It’s a Jack Russell”. “Oh, cool. Don’t care. Good”. “How old is your dog?” “Seven. How about you? How old is your dog?”, “four”. “Great”, “Is your dog a boy or a girl?” “My dog’s a boy. How about you? How about your dog? Does your dog have a penis or a vagina?”, “Girl”. “Oh, do you know what? Maybe my dog and your dog should have a party. Maybe they could have puppies. That would be cool. Yeah. Okay. Good to see you. Bye”. Next one: Look at something or someone else. Now, maybe you have the magic of a cell phone. This is a great conversation avoider. You may go as far as to pretend — “Hi, Mom. Yeah, good. No” — that you’re talking to someone on the phone. “Mom. Yeah. Busy. No. No, I got — Mom, hi. Yeah. Good”. This is a great tool. You can pretend that your phone rang, and you’re talking to your mother. You can pretend you got a text message. Or you can just look at your phone. This will indicate to the speaker that you do not want to talk to them. In reverse, if you want to talk to a person and have a real conversation, put your phone down. Do not text or talk on the phone when you are trying to have a conversation with a real live human being. If I’m at a bar and I’m talking to you, if you take out your phone and start texting someone, bye-bye. Ronnie’s gone. She’s getting another beer. So please, if humans want to talk to you, put your phones away. You can text them later. If you talk really, really, really fast and you don’t say your words properly — no one has any idea what you’re talking about — they will not have a conversation with you. So if you speak or talk really, really quickly, or if you mumble — “Mumble?” “Mumble” means you do not say words clearly. Some people will talk like this. They have their hand — they put their hand in front of their mouth, and you can’t really hear anything that they’re saying because [inaudible] So rule No.1, put your hand down, okay? Don’t talk down. When I talk like this, you can’t even hear — okay? “Mumbling” means you don’t say your words clearly, or they’re muffled. It’s like this. [Inaudible] And talking really, really, really quickly. Maybe you are very excited to meet someone. That’s cool. But try and speak a little slowly so that the person can understand you.