Colloquial English

The Complete Course for Beginners

Gareth King

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN:
  9781138949850
• eBook ISBN:
  9781317306276
• Topic: Langues et linguistique
• Subtopic: Langue anglaise

Colloquial English provides a step-by-step course in English as it is written and spoken today. Combining a user-friendly approach with a thorough treatment of the language, it equips learners with the essential skills needed to communicate confidently and effectively in English in a broad range of situations.

Key features include:

• progressive coverage of speaking, listening, reading and writing skills
• structured, jargon-free explanations of grammar
• an extensive range of focused and stimulating exercises
• realistic and entertaining dialogues covering a broad variety of scenarios
• useful explanations of idioms throughout the text
• additional resources available at the back of the book, including a full answer key and lists of irregular verbs.

This second edition has been extensively revised and updated throughout, and includes up-to-date cultural information, an improved reference grammar and revised audio recordings.

Audio material to accompany the course is available to download free in MP3 format from www.routledge.com/cw/colloquials. Recorded by native speakers, the audio material features the dialogues and texts from the book and will help develop your listening and pronunciation skills.

Balanced, comprehensive and rewarding, Colloquial English is a complete English Language course and will be an indispensable resource for independent learners and for instructors and students on TEFL and EFL courses.

By the end of this course, you will be at Level B2 of the Common European Framework for Languages and at the Intermediate-High on the ACTFL proficiency scales.

Unit One

Pleased to meet you!

In this unit you will learn how to

• greet people

• say goodbye to people

• introduce yourself to someone

• introduce someone to someone else

• identify people

Dialogue 1

(Audio 1; 04)

VICKI:	Hello, I’m Vicki.
HELEN:	Hello, Vicki. My name’s Helen.
VICKI:	Pleased to meet you.
HELEN:	And you.

---

Dialogue 2

(Audio 1; 05)

STUART:	I’m Stuart.
JENNY:	Hello Stuart. I’m Jenny.
STUART:	Nice to meet you.
JENNY:	And you.

---

Dialogue 3

(Audio 1; 06)

Paul introduces himself to Mo.

---

PAUL:	Hello – you’re Mo, aren’t you?
MO:	Yes, I am. And what’s your name?
PAUL:	I’m Paul – pleased to meet you.
MO:	Pleased to meet you too.

---

Language point 1

Short forms

Introducing yourself and finding out people’s names always involves the verb be. For example, if Jenny wants to tell someone her name, she can just say I’m Jenny, or she can say My name’s Jenny. To find out someone else’s name, she says What’s your name? All these phrases contain special SHORT FORMS of the verb be. Let’s have a look at how they work.

In colloquial English – when we are speaking in informal situations – we use special SHORT FORMS for some verbs. So, in Dialogue 1, Vicki says:

I’m Vicki

• I’m is the short form for the FULL FORM I am.

And in Dialogue 3, Paul says:

you’re Mo

• you’re is the short form for the full form you are.

With verbs that have short forms (not only be but also have, do and some others that we will meet later) we do not normally use the full form in speaking except when we want to put special emphasis on the verb. ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• English spelling
• IPA symbols
• Grammatical terms used in this book
• 1 Pleased to meet you!
• 2 Where are you from?
• 3 Could you tell me where the bank is?
• 4 Have you got any bread?
• 5 What shall we do today?
• 6 Hello, could I speak to Vicki?
• 7 What date is it today?
• 8 Can I make an appointment?
• 9 I’ve lost my passport!
• 10 Which do you prefer?
• 11 I’ll see you at half past five!
• 12 You can’t be serious!
• 13 The people we met were fantastic!
• 14 What would you do?
• 15 I said you’d phone back later
• Key to exercises
• Reference grammar
• Irregular verbs – alphabetical list
• Irregular verbs by type
• Grammar index