While I’m a big fan of tips on making small talk easier, I’m not a fan of those popular ‘instead’ posts.
Do you know the ones I mean?
They’re posts that tell you to try and avoid using common words such as – ‘like, very, nice’… and use less common words instead.
My thought is – if they’re common words, use them! Don’t learn uncommon words. That doesn’t make sense.
So, have no fear! I’m not going to tell you to completely avoid small talk. That’d be complicated to do. But I am going to tell you how to make small talk in English less scary.
Let me take you back to when I lived in Costa Rica.
I was proud of my Spanish in Costa Rica, but proud or not, small talk – even in your native language – is sometimes just uncomfortable. 😰
(Psst! Sorry I didn’t say this before. Small talk is when you talk about unimportant things like the weather or your hobbies. Usually, it’s with someone you don’t know very well and that’s why it can be difficult at times.)
One day, while I was living with a host family in Costa Rica, my Costa Rican host family’s daughter and grandson came over. My host mom was talking to her daughter and she told me to hang out with her grandson.
What was I going to talk about with this elementary school kid?
I didn’t have any idea!
Thank goodness my parents taught me to always have a set of UNO cards with me.
Yay! No stressful small talk! We can play cards instead.
I got my UNO cards and asked him to play.
There was only one problem – he didn’t know how to play UNO.
What?! 😱 I thought EVERYONE knew how to play UNO because it was so popular with my family.
Culture shock #1! 😂
My first experience avoiding lots of small talk with a card game
I started explaining the rules to him and realized there were many expressions I hadn’t learned in my Spanish studies.
How do you say things like: Draw four. Skip you. Your turn. And UNO!
Ok, the last one was obviously easy. UNO is … UNO in Spanish. 😂
And the other expressions?
I used the cards to help me explain the words I didn’t know and to give examples of their meaning.
We were both motivated to understand because understanding meant we could play the game together and if we played the game then somebody would win.
Everyone wants to win UNO, even people that don’t know how to play the game. 😉
Small Talk VS Card Games
If you’re like me, sometimes you get in your head too much before you speak in a foreign language – thinking a lot, wanting your sentence to be practically perfect.
Finally you end up saying … nothing.
That’s what small talk is like for me sometimes. Has it happened to you too?
That awkward (uncomfortable) silence where you don’t know what to say because you’ve already talked with the other person about the weather…in every country…around the entire world! 😰
With UNO we didn’t have to make small talk. It wasn’t forced on us. Small talk was optional.
In fact, we played the game and small talk occurred on its own.
Guess what? The uncomfortable silence didn’t happen because we had the card game to fill those moments. 👏
In the end, it actually turned into a fun bilingual game for both of us.
So, now when I play UNO with someone we can talk and play (but we also don’t have to – small talk is always optional when you’re playing UNO). 😉
Are you someone who likes cards, even a little? Why not try it yourself?
You don’t have to go into your first game unprepared like I was. Let me give you some tips.
Play your first game in English
- Choose the game (if you can’t think of a game try UNO or Monopoly like I talk about with Blanca in this video.)
- Look up instructions on the internet.
- Put the instructions into your own words. You are the one who is going to explain the game to someone else. You need to understand your explanation too.
- Practice on your own or with a loved one who knows English explaining to them how to play the game.
- Play the game together! 🥳
