Practise Speaking With Me Daily Routines

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Well hey there I’m Emma from mmmEnglish and it’s time

to practise speaking with me.

We’re going to practise talking about daily routines using

my daily routine as an example.

So we’ll get to talk about my morning routine,

what I do before I go to work,

my workday routine, what I do at work during the day

and my evening routine.

So maybe

you like to watch Netflix or read a book or clean the house

or go out for dinner.

I’m going to talk about my evening routine as an example.

I’ll give you lots of chances to speak out loud and to practise with

me and the cool thing is we’re also going to brush up on

a little bit of grammar that you might need to use to talk about 

how regularly you do things in your daily routine.

When talking about our daily routines,

we use the present simple tense.

I eat breakfast at 7am.

But adverbs of frequency can add more detail. They work

perfectly to this and I can choose any of these ones

to talk about how often I do something

and that’s why they’re called adverbs of frequency. They show

how often something happens or how often you do something.

Now for me, I would say

No. I never eat breakfast at 7am.

That’s a little too early for me. You try it.

I always have my coffee before breakfast.

So if you use always it means that you’re doing that activity

a hundred percent of the time, every time

but as that frequency gets less and less, your adverb can change

to usually,

sometimes,

rarely,

hardly ever

until you get to never which is

zero per cent of the time.

Can you think of something you always do in the morning,

what about something that you hardly ever do?

I want to hear about it down in the comments.

Now it’s time for the fun part.

Here is a list of activities that you might do in the morning.

I’ve marked the ones that I do and you can do the same

or you can note down a few different ideas if you like.

Now some of these activities are really common,

most of us do them every morning

like wake up, brush our teeth

get dressed, go to work.

These are all things that happen pretty consistently.

So we’ll practise using some adverbs that help to explain that.

I usually wake up at 6.30am.

Try it.

You can also say 6.30 or half-past six.

There are lots of different ways to express time in English,

aren’t there?

But pay attention to the way that I said usually

with that sound and the

Usually.

Try it.

I always brush my teeth as soon as I wake up.

I sit down at my desk and start working by 8am,

but I’m often a little late.

Notice that I didn’t pronounce the T in often.

Often. It’s silent.

Though not for every native English speaker but  

I don’t pronounce it.

Often.

Sometimes I go for a swim before work

but usually only when it’s warm.

I hardly ever check my emails first thing in the morning.

Now to show the order of your routine you can use sequences

like before,

after, then, next.

All of these words are useful to help you

organise your thoughts in order.

I usually walk my dog before I go for a swim.

After I get home, I make my coffee.

Then I start work for the day.

So even though I’m not giving you exact times,

you still have an idea about the order of these events,

which one happened first as soon as I woke up

and what was I doing just before I started work.

Our work routine is probably quite different.

Maybe your day at work is really dynamic and it’s always changing

or perhaps it’s pretty consistent and you do the same thing

every day so you’ll have to adapt this section to make it

suit your workday.

We’re going to use mine as an example to practise with.

I always have a meeting first thing in the morning

when I start work.

I usually work best in the morning.

That’s when I’m most productive.

Sometimes, if I’m really focused on my work,

I won’t even stop to eat lunch.

Well, until around 3pm when I get really hungry.

You try it.

I often take a break around 4.30pm and go to the gym.

I hardly ever go for a walk outside,

but when I do, it boosts my energy levels.

I rarely finish my workday by 5pm.

The evenings are probably my favourite time of day.

I try to use that time to wind down and to relax

as long as I’m not working late.

What types of things do you do in the evenings?

I usually take my dog, Frankie, for a walk.

Often, we go to the park but sometimes we go to the beach.

I hardly ever cook. Shah usually does the cooking in our house

but sometimes we go out for dinner.

After dinner, sometimes we watch Netflix but

often we’ll go back to work for an hour or two.

I never go to bed before 10pm

but I always try to wind down

by reading a book and drinking herbal tea.

So now that we’ve been through my daily routine,

I want you to share yours. I want you to write a few sentences

down, maybe in the comments below using the adverbs

that we’ve been practising with but don’t forget to practise

saying these things out loud too, okay?

Practise each morning this week,

the repetition is going to help you to remember

the different ideas but also get comfortable

saying these things and talking about them with ease.

This is speaking practice after all.

I hope you enjoyed today’s speaking practice. I’m looking forward

to hearing about your daily routines.

I’m wondering if it’s similar to mine or maybe quite different.

Now if you’re looking for some more speaking practice with me

then check out this lesson right here. It’s all about telling

great stories in English.

So check it out and I’ll see you next week with another video.