How to give your opinion in English talking about the past year
all right i think it’s rolling hi
everybody and welcome back to our weekly
live stream my name is alicia and in
this week’s live lesson we are going to
talk about how to give your opinion
about the past year in this week’s
lesson i’m going to talk about some
expressions you can use for positive
opinions about the year so things you
were happy about i’m going to talk about
ways to express regret about the year
and i’m also going to share some other
expressions that we tend to use as the
year finishes so i hope that you have a
chance to use some of these expressions
and you can even send messages in the
chat and you can use these expressions
to share about your experience of this
year and future years as well too so as
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to today’s lesson flow today’s lesson
topic and if you haven’t please please
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can find today’s lesson okay let’s take
a look at
our
lesson boards for today here is what
we’re going to talk about so
we’re ending the year with some positive
or happy opinions
maybe expressing regret and sadness in
part two and finally we’ll have some
other expressions to talk about in part
three just some other things that we
commonly say to end the year so let’s
get started by talking about some
positive or happy expressions
some kind of
good things maybe happened for you this
year and you want to talk about that we
might use these patterns to do that so
first one it was a good year it was a
good year so this is the most basic way
to express that you feel this year was
pretty okay so it can be for work it can
be for school
anything it’s fine
it was a good year a lot of people will
use this just to finish the conversation
if they don’t have anything special to
share it was a good year you can replace
this word it was a good year you can
replace this with the adjective of your
choice so you could say it was a great
year or it was an awesome year or it was
an okay year yeah so you can use this
pattern right here to express your happy
or i suppose unhappy feeling about the
year so it was a good year
okay the next one is i learned and grew
a lot this year i learned and grew
a lot this year so you’ll notice this i
learned and this and grew a lot this
year so what does this mean i learned
and grew a lot this year means i learned
a lot of information so i got some new
knowledge right that’s a positive thing
i learned and grew so this this is the
past tense form of grow i learned and
grew a lot this year this means that i
grew in terms of knowledge so
i became better so we use the verb to
grow to talk about that so yes we use
grow to talk about our body getting
bigger of course but we also use grow to
talk about improving our mind so when we
say i learned and grew a lot this year
it sounds like we gained some knowledge
and it was really positive for us okay
cool
so i learned and grew a lot this year if
you want to be specific you could say i
learned about blah blah blah this year
or i learned about this thing this year
it was good so you can be specific with
this verb i learned this and it was good
okay awesome all right let’s continue on
to the next one this was a good year for
me professionally or this was a good
year for me personally so i have
these two words here professionally and
personally so if you say this was a good
year for me professionally it means in
my work life this was a good year for me
so maybe i had a lot of success i had
lots of good points in my work life this
year to express that we say this was a
good year for me professionally this was
a good year for me professionally
personally refers to your private life
so this was a good year for me
personally like i got married i had kids
or i had a kid maybe and i moved to a
new house or i changed jobs perhaps
something that was good for your private
life
you can express it with this word at the
end this was a good year for me
personally you could put them together
both of them this was a good year for me
professionally and personally okay
cool all right so this again uh you can
use
great or awesome or okay or whatever but
usually i think we say good this was a
good year for me professionally
okay cool let’s move along to the next
point
the next point is i’m grateful to have
met a lot of new
interesting people this year i’m
grateful to have met a lot of new
interesting people this year so in this
case i’ve put uh
i’m grateful to
and then have and this is my item met a
lot of new interesting people this year
so this is a kind of common maybe one of
i suppose
a more common expression we might use we
talk a little bit about the things we
feel grateful for right
grateful
means i feel
appreciation for this thing so this i
chose met a lot of new interesting
people this year as this is the thing i
feel appreciation for but you can use
i’m grateful to have blah blah blah for
some other situation too like i’m
grateful to have done this or i’m
grateful to have been there i’m grateful
to have traveled to this location so
this pattern i’m grateful to have blah
blah blah is one that you can use to
talk about something you feel
appreciation for i’m grateful to
something something something so i’m
grateful to have whatever
okay cool so in this case i’m grateful
to have met a lot of new interesting
people this year
okay
last one then last one is i achieved my
new year’s resolution this year i
achieved my new year’s resolution this
year so this one i achieved so i was
able to do something right i achieved my
new year’s resolution so new year’s
resolution i’m going to talk about this
at the beginning of next year your new
year’s resolution is your goal for the
new year so it’s very common for people
to set goals for a year so we call this
goal our new year’s resolution so if you
achieved your new year’s resolution your
goal for the year you can say that i
achieved my new year’s resolution this
year i made more money or i changed my
job whatever so i achieved my new year’s
resolution this year
all right cool so these are a few
expressions uh a few ways that you can
express positive or happy opinions about
the past year so you can get creative
with this too but generally these these
are the kinds of expressions we use to
think back on the year
at the end of the year okay cool so
let’s take one super quick break and
then we will go to part two and talk
about how to express our regrets or our
sad feelings about the year so if you
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let’s get into our second part for today
uh if you’re just joining today’s live
lesson is about how
to
express your opinions about the new year
or rather about the past year so how do
you express uh your feelings about the
previous year we’re gonna go to part two
now and we’re gonna talk about regrets
okay so if you haven’t please please
please make sure to hit the like button
and share this video so that other
people can find today’s lesson all right
let’s get into our regret patterns ah
okay so these are important to know it’s
important to know how to express regret
and for this lesson i chose two patterns
to talk about
we use them in the same way but the
grammar structure the grammar patterns
are different so even though
these two things
are used to mean
to express the same feeling it’s
important to know the different grammar
structures so let’s practice this so the
first way to express regret so regret a
reminder a regret that’s an emotion when
we feel sad about something in the past
right something that we did and we feel
sad it was a mistake or something we did
not do and we feel sad like oh i wanted
to do that so when we feel sadness about
the past that’s called regret so we
expressed that for the year with these
kinds of patterns we’re going to cover
two today so i wish i had
past participle verb i wish i had past
participle verb for example i wish i had
exercised more i wish i had exercised
more
or i wish i had taken more time off i
wish i’d taken more time off
or i wish i had eaten healthier i wish i
had eaten healthier
so you might notice in this one we are
using these comparatives yeah
exercised more taken more time off
eating healthier we have these
comparative forms here yeah so these
sentences
are expressing a comparison but not so
directly so this sentence is like saying
i wish i had exercised more than i did
this year
but we often remove that end part of the
sentence i wish i had exercised more
because we know from context we know
from the situation we’re talking about
this year right so i wish i had
exercised more than i did this year or i
wish i had taken more time off than i
did this year or i wish i had eaten
healthier than i did this year
but as you can see all of these end with
than i did this year so we typically we
remove it from the end of this sentence
so you can make
a regret expression with this pattern
make sure you use the past participle
verb form here so past participle verb
in this case exercised and taken and
eaten i wish i had exercised more i wish
i had taken not took not took so i wish
i had taken more time off i wish i had
eaten healthier okay so this is one of
the patterns we can use to express
regret okay great so let’s continue on
to the second regret pattern here i
should have past participle verb i
should have past participle verb so the
examples here i should have
spent more time with family i should
have spent more time with family
and
i should have made better decisions i
should have made better decisions
and i should have been more responsible
i should have been more responsible
responsible here this adjective
responsible means you take care of the
things you need to do so your work or
your studies or your tasks around the
house or maybe your relationships with
your friends or other family members and
so on so being responsible means taking
care of everything in your life right or
doing your best to take care of
everything
so this pattern is i should have plus
past participle verb the same verb form
that we used here so this pattern in
this pattern there’s really in this
context not much difference between the
meanings both of these are used to
express regret like ah i should have
spent more time with my family we could
change these we could swap the examples
for the grammar patterns and it would
still be perfectly okay for example i
wish i had spent more time with family
perfectly natural or i should have
exercised more perfectly natural so we
can use both of these
for this for these rig rep patterns but
i wanted to mention these because we use
these two patterns very very commonly
but you’ll notice the grammar is
different yeah i wish i had
blah blah blah right and i should
have
right so we use have in this should
pattern and we use i wish i had
in this pattern so this is a key point
to remember in native speech too this
sounds very quick so not i wish i had
exercised more we reduced this i wish i
had exercised more i wish i’d
this becomes i’d i had and this one i
should have is reduced to i shoulda
i shoulda it sounds like a native speed
it sounds like i should have spent more
time with family or i should have made
better decisions i should have been more
responsible
so these are very small things i know
especially in speech it sounds super
super fast right but it’s really
important to know the differences so
make sure you practice both of these
regret patterns and of course you can
use the negatives too i wish i hadn’t
done something or i shouldn’t have done
something you can use that to talk about
things that did happen and that you
regret too okay so these are our regret
patterns finally i want to end with a
very direct
expression of regret so i regret to make
a negative put not here so i regret ing
verb phrase this is very open so you can
choose the verb phrase here but use this
ing form of your verb yeah so i regret
spending lots of money so here’s my ing
i regret spending lots of money this
year for example so i regret that means
i feel bad about spending lots of money
this year i spent a lot of money i feel
bad about it so i regret spending lots
of money
or i regret not talking with friends
more i regret not talking with friends
more so this uses the negative i regret
not talking so that means i didn’t talk
to my friends so much or maybe only a
little bit and i feel sad about that so
i regret not talking to them
if you say i regret talking with my
friends it sounds like i did talk to my
friends and i feel bad about that
so you want to express that you didn’t
talk enough with your friends you can
use this pattern to express that i
regret not talking with friends more
okay so these are our regret and sadness
patterns some good grammar points to
keep in mind here okay cool all right so
that is part two for today’s lesson in
part three we’re just gonna cover some
other expressions that we use around the
end of the year okay awesome so uh
really really super super quickly if you
missed it just a quick reminder there is
free stuff for you from the link below
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or above the video if you’re watching on
facebook you can find free pdf cheat
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later but time is running out so let’s
get to part three for today so part
three i just chose some other
expressions we use we like to use at the
end of the year this is the time i know
for many people to think about the year
to reflect like what did i do
how did i change and so on so these are
some other expressions
we might use at the end of the year of
course there are many others depending
on the person so here’s one um for to
express a happy event when you want to
talk about a specific happy event like
if you have a new year’s party with your
friends or your family members and you
want to remember a happy event you can
use this pattern i’m so glad happy event
for example i’m so glad we met i’m so
glad we met or i’m so glad i moved to a
new apartment i’m so glad i moved to a
new apartment you might also hear people
say things like i’m so glad we’re
friends i’m so glad we’re friends so
that’s a good way to express
appreciation for your friendship so i’m
so glad plus the happy event
so you can use a lot of different events
here so i’m so glad
my child was born healthy this year for
example so you can use happy events in
this pattern
okay next one is this expression this is
a good one people use this one when they
feel kind of motivated for the next year
coming up so this pattern is i want to
make next year even better i want to
make next year even better so even is in
parentheses these marks sometimes we use
it sometimes we don’t so
if you had a so-so year or maybe a bad
year it wasn’t a good year for you don’t
use even so i want to make next year
better
this better you’ll see again this
comparative form yeah i want to make
next year better so this better it means
i want to make next year better than
this year so this year was here i want
to make next year here better right so
we can use this pattern
even is used for emphasis this is an
emphasis word so if your year was really
good this year and you want to express
you want to make next year better than
this year this year was already really
good but you want to express you want to
emphasize next year should be way up
here so
use even even so we use this for an
emphasis word so we cannot use this if
if the previous year if this year was
bad for you we would not say i want to
make next year even better we use it if
it’s already good and we want to make
the next year better than our very good
year already was so emphasis word for
even i want to make next year even
better so a very positive expression
okay all right our last two for the year
then so this first one is a very common
expression um some people some people
don’t want to think about the year
they’re just ready to be done with work
or school they want to relax for the
holidays so they use this i’m just glad
the year is finally over
i’m just glad the year is finally over
so you can see this just i’m just glad
so when someone uses this pattern it’s
like saying i don’t care
this is all i care about i’m just glad
it’s finished that’s all i have to say
it’s just a quick comment really i’m
just glad the year is finally over
so finally over over means finished yeah
and finally means at last i’ve waited
for so long that’s the feeling here i’m
just glad the year is finally over so
maybe the last few years we we all feel
this way a little bit oh my gosh this
year is finally over what’s gonna happen
next year so you can use this if you
have no special comments about the year
but you’re just glad it’s done it’s time
for the holidays okay and finally the
last expression for this lesson another
year has come and gone another year has
come and gone you might have heard this
expression in like songs or in media
yeah this is uh just
it’s just a kind of neutral expression
it’s not good or bad
it’s just like saying okay one year has
finished one year has finished but we
just say has come so the year started
and gone and finished so this is kind of
a little bit old-fashioned a little bit
old-fashioned way to say this but you
might hear expressions like this around
this time of year so
another year has come and gone time
passes so quickly so you might hear
someone use that it’s a little a little
bit old-fashioned but at this time of
the year around the holidays and the new
year time we tend to use a little bit of
kind of these old-fashioned words yeah
they feel kind of comfortable i think so
you might hear this another year has
come and gone all right so uh that is
about it for our opinions about the past
year i hope that you found something
useful and i hope that you can find
something positive uh about the year
something that you learned or something
that helped you to grow as well as maybe
you can express some things that you
want to change about the year as well
too okay so
i will share the lesson boards with you
again one more time if you want to take
a screenshot get ready because here they
come all right there we are so in
today’s lesson we talked about uh how to
express your positive or happy opinions
about the year we talked about two
patterns for expressing regret and
sadness
keep in mind the grammar differences
with this one and then we also talked
about some other expressions we commonly
use at the end of the year so i hope
that this lesson was helpful for you and
i hope that you found something you can
use here at the end of the year uh to
talk about your own experiences
uh all right so i have to wrap it up now
time is always going quickly but i have
to wrap up this lesson our last lesson
for the year uh but i’ll be back next
week of course so here is the next
lesson information where is it okay next
week’s lesson information i’ll be back
next week uh january 5th that is january
5th wednesday at 10 p.m eastern standard
time that is new york city time if you
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below in the next lesson i’m going to
talk about how to talk about your goals
for the year how to talk about your
goals for the year so i mentioned uh in
today’s lesson about
new year’s resolutions so that will be
kind of the theme for the first live
stream for next year so join me again
next time for some ideas for how to talk
about your goals for the year always
a good one to think about all right uh
so i will wrap up today’s lesson thanks
everybody for joining that’s super super
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say goodbye for this week’s live lesson
thank you so so so so much for everybody
who joined us live this year thank you
so much to everybody who sent comments
and questions and participated and liked
and shared all of that it was super
super great uh and i wish you a happy
holiday and a happy new year and i will
see you again next time so have a good
day have a good week have a good holiday
and i will see you again soon bye