Speaking English: How To Express Your Reaction

http://www.engvid.com/ What great news! How sad! Learn how to respond easily and naturally to good or bad news by using easy expressions. What a lesson! http://www.engvid.com/speaking-english-reactions/

TRANSCRIPT

Hi. My name is Rebecca, and in today's lesson, you'll learn two easy ways to express your reaction to something. Now, you can use these to express your reaction to something positive or to something negative. And they're really easy, so follow with me, and before you know it, you'll be able to use them yourself. Okay? Here we go.
So the words that we're going to use are words which are very basic, and you know them. They are "what" and "how". But "what" we use with a noun, and "how" we're going to use with an adjective. Okay? Now, remember: These are all ex -- sorry -- exclamations. They are exclamations. That means normally, we would have an exclamation mark at the end of this expression. Okay? Like this. Right?
So what we can say is something like this, "What a great singer!" Okay? So you see we're using "what" plus a noun, which is the word "singer". You can always use an adjective before that, but you must have a noun there, okay? You could also say, "What a singer!" which means he or she is a very good singer. All right?
"What a talented actor!" "What a kind man!" "What a beautiful view!" "What a gorgeous sunset!" "What an experience!" "What a surprise!" Okay? So as you can see here, we used it to talk about people. Then, we used it to talk about places. And here, we used it to talk about an event or an experience, okay? So you can use it in any kind of context, and you can use it in positive situations to express positive emotions, or we can also use it to express negative emotions. Let's look at some of these.
"What a rude person!" "What horrible weather!" "What bad service!" "What a shame!" "What a disaster!" "What a day!" Or, "What nonsense!" Okay? So all of these are obviously negative situations, but all you're doing is you're using "what" plus a noun somewhere in that entire exclamation, okay? All right.
Now, how do we use "how"? With "how" we have to add an adjective. So we would say something like, "How wonderful!" Okay? So remember, this is your reaction or your response to something that you see or hear, okay? Somebody says -- tells you something, and you answer, "How wonderful!" Perhaps someone says, -"I'm getting married next month." -"How wonderful!" Okay? Or, -"We're going to Bermuda on our honeymoon." -"How romantic!" "How nice!" Okay? Somebody describes something that happened, and you say, "How nice!" Or "How lovely!" It could be about someone's dress. Okay? Or -- very often, we say this when we see a baby or a child doing something very adorable -- we say, "How sweet!" Okay? So that's another little expression that's very common.
As I said, you can also use "how" for negative emotions. So you could say, "How awful!" "How sad!" "How terrible!" "How frustrating!" Or, "How tragic!" Okay? So we can use it in rather serious situations; we can use it in lighter situations. And these are very, very common ways of expressing our reaction to news or to events, okay?
So if you'd like to do a little more practice with this, please go to our website www.engvid.com, and there you'll see a quiz on this subject as well as hundreds of other videos on many other topics in English. Okay? Good luck with your English, and thanks for watching.