I use these words every day: English Vocabulary Lesson

Thanks to you, I get to teach English online  and I'm looking forward to being your teacher  

for many years to come. These are  expressions that I use every day,  

and you can too. Today you are going to learn  10 expressions in English that I use every day,  

and I hope that you can add to  your daily life vocabulary too.

Hi, I'm Vanessa from speakenglishwithvanessa.com,  and like always, I have created a free useful PDF  

with all of these daily life expressions,  definitions, sample sentences and some tips  

about when I use them and when you can use them  too. Plus, at the bottom of the free worksheet,  

you can answer Vanessa's Challenge Question so  that you never forget what you've learned. You  

can click on the link in the description to  download that free PDF worksheet. My gift to  

you today. All right, let's get started with  the first expression that I use every day.

Expression number one is "To look forward  to something." This is a great phrasal verb  

and I often say I'm really looking forward to  this weekend because my whole family will be  

together and we can just enjoy a calm family time  together. In reality, it's not always a calm time,  

but it's usually a nice time when we're all  together. This expression "To look forward to  

something," is talking about something that  you're excited about. What are you looking  

forward to? Maybe it's finishing an exam  so that you don't have to study anymore.  

Or maybe you're looking forward to seeing your  cousin who you haven't seen for a long time,  

or maybe you're looking forward to studying  English with Vanessa. Let me know in the comments  

what you're looking forward to and let's go on  to expression number two that I use every day.

Expression number two that I use every day  is kind of two parts. It's "I'm thinking  

about ... What do you think?" When you live with  other people you're probably going to use this  

expression a lot. So for example, I often say  "I'm thinking about going to the gym tonight.  

What do you think?" When I ask my husband this I'm  not asking for his permission. Can I please go to  

the gym? I need your permission. No, instead  I'm asking him, "Hey, while I go to the gym,  

can you watch the kids? Can you make dinner? Can  you put them to bed?" There's a lot going on in  

our house, so when one adult has to do something  away from the home, we need to talk about it. So  

here I'm using this great expression, "I'm  thinking about ... What do you think?" We're  

trying to make sure that we're on the same page  so that our home ideally can be a peaceful place.

Expression number three is one that I say maybe  too many times, and it is "Be careful that you  

don't ..." something. So for example, I often  say to my kids, "Be careful that you don't drop  

that." "Be careful that you don't ..." And here  I'm warning them, I'm worried about something  

because I foresee a problem. When my child  is carrying a plate full of food and they're  

carrying it around the table, down the stairs, I  might say, "Be careful that you don't drop that  

plate of food please." Because this has happened  before. I want to warn them to be careful. If you  

are a parent, I'm sure that you have used  this before, and if you are not a parent,  

you can also warn other people. "Be careful that  you don't drive too fast because it's snowing  

outside." There's a lot of warnings that you can  give to other people and use this great phrase.

Expression number four is one that I  used at the beginning of this lesson,  

and that is "Thanks to ..." Thanks to you, I  can teach English online. Here I am telling you  

thank you, but I'm using the expression  "Thanks to ..." Thanks to my students,  

I can teach English online. Thanks to modern  technology, I can teach English online. "Thanks  

to ..." here is something that you are grateful  for so that you can do something you want.

But just a little note, this can also be  used sarcastically to talk about something  

bad. Sometimes I use this because it's a  little bit funny, it's a little bit silly.  

And when you're having a hard time, sometimes  humor is the best medicine. So you might say,  

"Thanks to my neighbor's dog barking all night,  I couldn't sleep." I'm not really thanking my  

neighbor's dog. I'm pretty annoyed that my  neighbor's dog barked all night and I couldn't  

sleep. But I'm using this expression with a little  bit of a sarcastic tone. So listen to the tone of  

my voice when I say it. "Thanks to my neighbor's  dog who was barking all night, I couldn't sleep.  

My face is not happy, not excited. Thank you,  dog. No, I'm not saying it like that. "Thanks  

to my neighbor's dog ..." so here, if there's  something negative that's affecting your life,  

you can also use this expression. Just  make sure your tone of voice reflects that.

Expression. Number five is a fun one, "As  far as I know ..." So in our house we have  

a lot of things going on. There's  five people who live in our house,  

two adults and three children. So we have a lot of  different moving parts. So when my husband says,  

"Hey, do we have anything planned for Friday  afternoon?" I might say, "No, not as far as I  

know," or "As far as I know, I don't think  so." This means I'm not exactly certain,  

I don't have a perfect calendar in my head.  But for me, and maybe some of you have also  

said this to your husbands, "As far as I know  we don't. But check the calendar." I think this  

is a very stereotypical situation that the  wife tells the husband, I don't know, check  

the calendar. It's on the calendar, and husbands  are notorious for not checking the calendar and  

asking their wife first. So I would probably say,  "Not as far as I know, but check the calendar."

Expression number seven is "Speaking of ..." So  let me give you a little example. My husband is  

a science teacher for elementary school students,  and his project this week was to destroy and break  

apart appliances with the students. So all  of the students had a screwdriver and they  

were taking apart broken radios, broken hair  dryers. They loved this project. So when my  

husband came home and he was telling me about  breaking things with the students, I said,  

"Speaking of breaking things, we broke  three bowls today because the kids were  

running around the house." So here I am kind of  making a connection between one topic, breaking  

things with the students in the classroom,  and a similar thing that happened at home.

So if you are reminded of a topic and you want to  connect those topics together, this is the perfect  

expression. You could say, "Oh yes, speaking  of food, what are we going to eat for dinner?"  

"Speaking of ..." plus the topic, it's a great  way to connect things that you're talking about.

Expression number eight has two options. It's "We  may as well," or "We might as well." They both  

mean the same thing. It's just your personal  preference. We often use this when there's  

some kind of change of plans that you have to  make, that you can't avoid. So for example,  

my oldest son got invited to a birthday party  of one of his friends, but when my son woke up,  

he was not feeling well, and I thought,  "You know what? Maybe he'll feel better  

throughout the day and he can go to the party  tonight. No, you know what? We might as well  

cancel now." This is talking about a change  of plans that you can't avoid. He's probably  

not going to feel better later today to go to  that party. So what's the conclusion? Well,  

we may as well cancel our plans now,  or we might as well cancel our plans.

Now there's kind of a reluctance like, I don't  really want to, but I probably should. I don't  

know 100% what's the right thing to do?  We may as well just do whatever it is,  

cancel our plans. This is a great expression to  use because in life plans are always changing.

Expression number nine that I use every day is  a good follow-up to expression number eight. It  

is "This doesn't mean that ... It just means  that ..." so let's take that example of my  

son missing his friend's birthday party  because he wasn't feeling well. Well,  

can you imagine when I told him, "Sorry, I  don't think we're going to be able to go to  

her birthday party. You just aren't  feeling well." How do you think he  

reacted to that? Do you think he said, "great!  Yay!" No. Even though he wasn't feeling well,  

he was really disappointed. His reaction  was not positive. Poor guy. He felt really  

disappointed to miss that birthday party. So I  used this expression to help him feel better.

I wanted to explain a little bit. Sometimes  it works, sometimes it doesn't with children,  

but this is a great expression to use. I  said, "This doesn't mean that we can never  

play with your friend. It just means that  we can't see her today." Okay. Sometimes  

we jump to the biggest conclusion "I'll  never play with my friends ever again. Oh,  

no!" And we want to kind of tone it down a  bit. You can say, "This doesn't mean that  

you'll never see her again. It just  means that we won't see her today."

Here we're trying to kind of make some realistic  expectations to help us deal with disappointment.  

You can even use this in the workplace.  Let's say that you're really working on  

a big project and all of the team has to work  overtime in order to finish the project. Well,  

your manager might say something like  this, "This doesn't mean that you'll  

always be working overtime. It just  means that for this project, this week,  

I'm going to need you to work a little bit extra  so that we can finish." Great. They're trying to  

make the expectations realistic, help to deal with  some disappointment and just set out the facts.

The final 10th expression is a great one  for expressing your preferences. It is,  

"I would rather ... than ..." And we often make a  contraction out of, I would, and say, "I'd." "I'd  

rather ... than ..." "I'd rather learn English  with Vanessa online than drive 30 minutes to learn  

in a classroom." We're talking about preferences,  and this is something that we do all the time.

Just a little note, there is a verb, to prefer.  "I prefer learning English online." Well, you  

know what? This is okay, but in the US, we don't  really use the verb prefer that much. Instead,  

we're more likely to say, rather. "I'd rather  learn English online because my life is just too  

busy. I don't have time to go into the classroom."  "I'd rather something than something else."

Let me give you another example from my daily  life. Every week, my family has certain meals that  

we make a lot. For example, every Monday we make  miso soup. We call it "Miso Mondays." And there's  

different types of miso soup that we make. But  this past Monday, it was just such a busy day and  

all of the steps for making miso soup felt really  overwhelming. So I told my family, I know that  

you guys like to eat miso soup, but I'd rather eat  something quick and easy than spend a lot of time  

in the kitchen making miso soup. This doesn't mean  that we'll never eat miso soup. It just means that  

we'll eat it tomorrow when we have a less busy  day. Great way to use both of these expressions.

So here I'm talking about my preference.  I'd rather eat something easy today. Let's  

just toast some bread, make some eggs,  cook a little vegetable or something,  

and have an easy dinner because I'd rather have  an easy dinner than a more complicated dinner.  

Today has already been too much. This is a great  way to just naturally express your preferences.

Well, thank you for joining me for all of these 10  expressions that I use every day. I'm curious in  

the comments, do you use any of these expressions  or are any of these new for you? Let me know. And  

don't forget to download the free PDF worksheet,  which includes all of these daily expressions,  

definitions, sample sentences, and some extra  tips about when you can use them so that you can  

easily integrate them into your vocabulary when  you're speaking and express yourself completely.

You can click on the link in the description to  download that free PDF worksheet today. Well,  

thank you so much for learning English with me,  

and I'll see you again next Friday for a  new lesson here on my YouTube channel. Bye.

But wait, do you want more? I  recommend watching this video  

next to learn more words that I  use every day, including whipping  

something. What? Every day? Yes. Check  out this video and I'll see you there.