Speaking in Social Contexts

This text was written for students who want to live, study, and/or work in an English-speaking setting or are already doing so. Its goal is to help students survive interactional English in a variety of social, academic, and professional settings—for example, how to make small talk with recruiters at a job fair or when invited to dinner at their advisor’s house.

The text provides language to use for a variety of functions as they might related to life on a university campus: offering greetings and goodbyes, making introductions, giving opinions, agreeing and disagreeing, using the phone, offering assistance, asking for advice, accepting and declining invitations, giving and receiving compliments, complaining, giving congratulations, expressing condolences, and making small talk. Users are also taught to think beyond the words and to interpret intonation and stress (how things sound).

Each of the 10 units includes discussion prompts, language lessons, practice activities, get acquainted tasks (interacting with native speakers), and analysis opportunities (what did they discover and what can they apply?).