Learn how to ask and answer "Are you going on vacation this year?"
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| Welcome to EnglishClass101.com’s English in Three Minutes. The fastest, easiest, and most fun way to learn English. |
| Hey everyone, I’m Alisha! |
| 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 vacation plans. |
| Even between native English speakers, talking about vacation 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 vacation. 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 vacation 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 vacation this year?” |
| You can replace “this year” with other season phrases; the most common is “this summer”. |
| So how to 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 (-ing) tense. |
| “Yeah, I’m going to Hawaii in July.” |
| But what if you’re definitely going somewhere on vacation, 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 to talk about once you’ve told where you’re going on vacation? 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 going to stay?” |
| 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 Alisha’s Advice! |
| Depending on where the native speaker of English is from, you might hear the word “holiday” or “holidays” instead of “vacation”. People from Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom generally say “holiday” instead of “vacation”, while Americans generally say “vacation”. They both mean the same thing, though, so just choose which one you like better! |
| In this lesson, we learned 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! what to sy when you want to get in touch with someone, whether by telephone, email, or even newer ways to communicate. What’s your favorite |
| Let us know in the comments, and join us next time for the sixth English in 3 Minutes lesson! See you next time. |
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