Learn how to ask and answer "Are you going on holiday this year?"
Unlock Lesson Notes and Transcripts for every single lesson. Sign Up for a Free Lifetime Account and Get 7 Days of Premium Access.
| Welcome to EnglishClass101.com’s British English in Three Minutes. The fastest, easiest, and most fun way to learn English. |
| Hey everyone, I’m Gina! |
| In this series, we’re going to learn some easy ways to ask and answer common questions in English. It’s really useful, and it only takes three minutes! |
| In this lesson, you’re going to learn how to ask someone about their holiday plans. |
| Even between native English speakers, talking about holiday plans is a really common topic of conversation, because it’s both safe and interesting! |
| So the first question you’ll want to ask is if the other person is going on holiday. This is one of those situations in English where you can use the present continuous tense to have a future meaning. |
| Instead of saying “Are you going to go...?” which is difficult to say, all you need to say is “Are you going...?” It means the same thing, and is shorter and easier! |
| So you could of course ask: “Are you going on holiday this year?” |
| This is fine. But there’s actually another way we ask this question in English that sounds even more natural. |
| “Are you going anywhere on holiday this year?” |
| You can replace “this year” with another season phrases; the most common is “this summer”. |
| So how do you answer this question? If you’re not going anywhere, for the most natural-sounding reply, you can say: |
| “I’m staying at home this year.” |
| If you’ve already decided where you’re going, you can reply with the name of the place and the month you’re going, again using the present continuous or “-ing” tense. |
| “Yeah, I’m going to Hawaii in July.” |
| But what if you’re definitely going somewhere on holiday, but you haven’t yet decided where you’re going? Then you can use useful little phrases like “I’m planning to go~” and “I’m thinking of going~”. If you have two or more places you’re considering, you can use the phrase “or maybe~” as a joining phrase. |
| “I’m planning to go to Hawaii, or maybe Thailand.” |
| “I’m thinking of going to Hawaii, or maybe Thailand.” |
| So what can you talk about once you’ve said where you’re going on holiday? Well, you can say what you’re planning to do there using the phrase “I want to~...” |
| “I’m planning to go to Hawaii. I want to go shopping!” |
| “I’m planning to go to Thailand. I want to sunbathe!” |
| A good follow-up question to this is asking how long the person will stay there for. Asking this is really simple. We often say: |
| “How long are you planning on staying” |
| Or: |
| “How long are you going for?” |
| Answering this question is really easy, too! You don’t need to repeat the question or say “I’m going for...” or “I’m going to stay for...” - all you need to say is the length of time. |
| “How long are you going for?” |
| “A week.” |
| “Ten days.”: |
| “Two weeks.” |
| Now it’s time for Gina’s Tips! |
| British speakers of English will use “holiday” as opposed to the American term “vacation”. Depending on where the native speaker of English is from, you might hear the word “holiday”, “holidays” or even the colloquial terms “jollies” used instead of “holiday”. Please note that people from Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom generally say “holiday” instead of “vacation”, while Americans generally say “vacation”. They both have exactly the same meaning, however. |
| In this lesson, we learnt how to ask and talk about vacation plans. |
| In the next lesson, you’ll learn how to ask about the relationship between two other people, and by doing this make even more friends in English. Do you know how to ask about this? I’ll be waiting with the answer in the next British English in 3 Minutes. See you next time! |
Comments
Hide