“Hold that thought!”

Katerina was telling me about her week when I remembered that I’d left our drinks behind in the kitchen.

“Hold that thought!” I said, and went off to the kitchen to fetch them.

A few moments later I returned. “Sorry, now, where were we?” I asked, as I put the drinks on the table.

…
Hold that thought is a phrase we sometimes say when we want to tell a friend that we need to go and do something or that we need to interrupt the present thread of conversation.

It’s a way of asking someone to wait a moment and remember what we were talking about, as we’ll come back to it:

– “Hold that thought – I just need to text John back.”

– “Hold that thought, I’ll be right back in a minute.”

– “Hold that thought, let’s just finish with this before we move on..”

Now where were we? is another phrase you hear in conversation where the speaker would like to return to main topic of discussion after a small disruption.

For example, your husband calls you during the lesson, and after a minute or two assuring him that you really are in an English lesson, you then say to your teacher:

“Now, where were we?”

Fetch means simply to go and get something.

Living language

These are just a few of the hundreds upon phrases I’ve used naturally in my own lessons with students this year, and from my point of view, this is an often-forgotten advantage of having individual lessons as opposed to group classes.

For instance, if I’m teaching a class of 10 people, I usually speak a lot less so that students have the chance to interact more.

However, in an individual lesson, it’s nonstop interaction between two people, which means you get exposed to a richer variety of English phrases and collocations.

Get your pen ready

While your teacher is presenting the ‘official’ part of the lesson, such as teaching the present perfect or going over linking words, the whole time you have this interaction they are using a bunch of collocations and phrases which are common in everyday spoken English.

Your teacher will probably ask how your weekend was (“What did you get up to on Sunday?”), or how your job’s going (“How’s business?”), or any number of things which can come up while two people get together and interact.

So while you should definitely take note of the ‘official’ part of the lesson, try to listen out for any special phrases and collocations your teacher naturally uses – they may be gold.

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“We really hit it off”

Photo credits

Image Daniel Zedda – Astragony
Licence CC by 2.0