English Grammar Tips for a Nice Small Talk

We continue our series of posts on small talk with some useful grammar structures that will help you during conversation.

Present Perfect

If you’re talking about your experience, the Present Perfect is your friend. That’s the structure we use having informal small talk.

• How long have you lived here?
• Have you been here before?

Tag questions

We use these questions to ask for confirmation or thoughts.

• The busses here are never on time, are they?
• It’s very windy today, isn’t it?

Present continuous (or going to) for plans

If you need to talk about your future plans, the most common structures are the present continuous and be + going to.

• What are you doing for the weekend?
• I’m going to catch up on some work tomorrow.