Part One: Warm Up
Discuss the following questions with your partner(s).
- Who do you talk to when you’re facing problems in your life? What makes you value their opinion?
- How well can you sense what other people are feeling?
- Do you think you’re a good listener? What makes someone a good listener?
Part Two: Getting Ready to Speak
Open the exercise and follow the instructions.
Exercise
Language for talking about unhappiness
In the short conversations you just listened to, you heard several different examples of language that can be used to express and respond to unhappiness. Take a look at those expressions and some others below.
Expressing unhappiness
There are many ways to talk about feeling unhappy.
- I’m feeling down about work lately.
- I’m upset about the way my boss treats me. He’s too hard on me!
- James is down in the dumps about his argument with Jake.
- I’m so depressed / unhappy / miserable / unlucky, etc.
- I’m going to pieces.
- I’m at a loss.
- I’m out of sorts.
Responding—encouraging someone to speak
It might be difficult for people to express their problems, so you might need to encourage them to speak and open up about their feelings.
- What’s the matter?
- Why the long face?
- Tell me about it.
- Is anything the matter?
- What’s wrong?
- What happened?
Responding—encouraging someone to continue
It’s hard to get people to continue to talk about issues that affect them, so as a listener, it’s helpful to let them know that you are listening and would like to know more. Here are some common expressions used to do this.
- What happened?
- And?
- Really?
- And then what?
- And then?
- OK... (with rising intonation)
- And then what happened?
- What else?
Responding—showing concern
To show concern or sympathy about someone else’s problems, you can use the following expressions.
Informal
- Bummer.
- That’s a bummer.
- That sucks.
- Wow, tough luck.
- Oh, no!
- I can’t believe that!
- I'm so sorry.
Formal
- I can see how that would be difficult.
- I’m sorry you’re going through this.
- I'm very sorry to hear that.
- I feel for you.
- My heart goes out to you.
Open the exercise and follow the instructions.
Exercise
Part Four: Your Turn
Using the language that you have learned in this lesson, role-play each of the following situations with your partner(s). Take turns playing the role of the supportive friend and the person that has the problem.
- the break down of a relationship
- a disagreement with a friend
- losing/misplacing an important possession