DON'T BE NASTY: How to Give CRITICISM POLITELY and Constructively without being RUDE
Today on LetThemTalkTV you'll learn some
polite and creative ways on how to tell someone
that they are doing something wrong and how to suggest changes that will
help them. you'll learn how to express yourself in
english in a subtle and diplomatic way. Yes at times we want to
shout and scream at someone for doing something
wrongly, foolishly, stupidly but no, don't do that - always show kindness,
always show kindness and in this video we'll show
you different structures and expressions to criticize without
Hi steve dear friend hast thou read my new play
"Bob and Doris" set in Milton Keynes?
Billy, Billy, billy yes I read it.
What do you think, friend? did it not please thee
wonderfully written with such passion however
you might want to change a few things
instead of Milton Keynes you could set it in
Italy it's more exotic say Verona for example and "Bob and
Doris"? Don't think you should use names that are a bit more
familiar to a modern 16th century audience?
Romeo and Juliette? I'll certainly think about it
and this scene on the balcony where Doris calls out
"Oi Bob, what the hell are you waiting for? come over here and let's do it!"
It has passion but if i were you i'd phrase it a little
differently to express the longing within her. For example,
Romeo, Romeo wherefore art thou Romeo?
That's great! Let me show you the ending
where the lovers get married and live happily ever after.
Yeah you might want to change that.
a horrible death maybe suicide poison for example
A pox upon thee. What's wrong with you man?
So imagine you're on a street, any street,
with a lot of traffic. Your friend is impatient and wants to
cross the road you say to him "no, no, no, you should cross at the lights"
He doesn't listen he runs across the road and gets hit by
a car. You visit him in hospital and tell him;
"you should have crossed at the lights,
at the zebra crossing my friend"
In English to recommend behaviour in the present
use SHOULD and to criticize past behavior
use SHOULD HAVE plus past participle This
works a lot of the time but not always and we'll look at why in
a minute. I'll just give you some more examples
Your friend wants to buy a pet crocodile
and you say to him, "you know, you shouldn't get a pet
crocodile. When it grows up it'll be dangerous.
you should get a cat or a rabbit." He doesn't listen and, of course, the
crocodile gets bigger and he gets bitten (your friend not the crocodile) and
you visit him in hospital and you say to him
"you know you shouldn't have got a pet crocodile, you should have got
a cat. Notice the pronunciation SHOULDN'T HAVE becomes SHOULDN'T 'EV
SHOULD HAVE becomes SHOULD'VE SHOULD HAVE, SHOULDN'T HAVE,
SHOULD, SHOULD HAVE works fine in many situations. However
sometimes SHOULD and SHOULD HAVE sound a bit bossy and
that is when we want to criticize someone's personality
or their creative output or personal choices that we feel are
incorrect or inappropriate. In these cases you need to speak more
gently without causing offense. And here are a few ways to do that:
Sometimes you can use COULD or COULD HAVE instead of SHOULD
or SHOULD HAVE now SHOULD is a form of obligation or criticism in the past.
however, COULD is a modal verb used for possibility.
it's a subtle difference but it can be more gentle because we're talking
about alternative possibilities without being
critical. your friend says to you he's got a date
and he's taking her to Mcdonald's you might say
"Mcdonald's, that's nice but isn't she a vegetarian? You know you could take her
to The Happy Cabbage, for example, that great
vegan restaurant." with COULD I'm not telling you what to do,
I'm informing the listener of other possibilities.
It works in the past too. If your friend failed an exam you could say "you know
you could have studied a bit harder." So in many cases SHOULD and COULD are
possible. If you want a stronger obligation use
SHOULD to sound softer and less bossy use COULD.
When you think that your listener will be interested in how you would
act in a situation you can use "if i were you" or "if i were you i would." "What!
you called Geraldine a stupid cow that's very rude
and offensive and sexist. She's not a cow
if i were you i'd phone up immediately and apologize"
"You've had 15 cups of coffee today, if i were you i'd cut down
or you'll have problems sleeping." You can put the
"if i were you" clause at the beginning or the end of a sentence. In these cases,
I WOULD or I WOULDN'T begins the sentence.
and the "if i were you" part is at the end.
"I wouldn't have a picnic on the railway tracks, if i were you"
"I wouldn't eat the banana peel if i were you, just the banana."
"A pair of jeans and a jean jacket. Really? if i were you, I wouldn't wear
double-denim on a first date. It's a fashion faux pas"
An alternative to "if i were you" is "if i were in your shoes"
"If i were in your shoes I would tell her the bad news face to face
and not by sending a text." By the way you, might hear
some native speakers saying "if i WAS you" but "if i WERE you is more
standard" ok. The grammar all is always put
" You might want to" this is a polite
and gentle way of suggesting different behavior.
For example if my student at our school in Paris makes a mistake
I try not to say "no, no, no, you're wrong that's wrong you idiot you should learn
your irregular verbs FORBID, FORBADE, FORBIDDEN." you've made
the mistake many times before." Instead i would say something like "very
good but you might want to learn your
irregular verbs." or you could tell a teenage child
"You know you might want to spend less time on your phone
and more time doing your studies."
You don't think it would be better" or "Don't you think
it would be better?" In English speaking indirectly is usually
more polite and here we have a very indirect phrase with a negative and a
conditional and that's very polite so let's see how
to use it. "What! You're taking your nine-year-old
niece to see Hamlet by william shakespeare. You don't
think it would be better to take her to the zoo?"
"For valentine's day you bought your girlfriend
an ironing board. Don't you think it would be better to buy her some flowers
Finally, we need to correct repeated mistakes when somebody makes
the same mistake again and again and again for this you
can use the structure: TRY + verb + ING or in the
negative use TRY NOT + verb + ING
So for example imagine that your friend is
gradually be getting fatter and fatter you might say to him
"Hey mate! I've noticed you been putting a lot of weight recently
try not eating so much fatty food, try eating some vegetables try
doing some exercise, try having your lunch at the
happy cabbage." You're you're talking about someone's presentation
"Yes it was good but you spoke rather softly try raising your voice, also try
making eye contact more with the audience."
You can use this TRY + verb + ING also to talk about fixing problems
with technology so for example. "My computer keeps freezing."
"Have you tried rebooting? Have you tried deleting that dodgy
malware you installed?" Remember we use TRY + infinitive to talk about an
attempt "i tried to call her but she didn't
answer." We use TRY + verb plus ING
if you want to know more about this then we have a video
just on this subject so check it out up here somewhere
friend a close friend, let's call her Susan and she has a good
job in a bank say but her passion is for
writing. She loves the works of Proust and Umberto Eco
and one day she says to you "I want to give up my job
at the bank and become a full-time writer."
Then from her bag she pulls out this large
chunk of paper and says "this is the first draft
of my novel. Can you read it for me and tell me
"OK" you say So you go back home you start reading
but, from the very first page, you realize that it's
terrible. It stinks, it's the worst thing you've
ever read. it has no literary merit whatsoever!
It's full of trite observations, badly written dialogue and the story doesn't
even make any sense. She has no talent. My question is
What do you tell your friend? Are you honest
and try to stop her giving up her job in the bank?
or are you polite and encourage her to follow her dream? Because
that's what they say "follow your dreams" and no one wants to be
a dream killer but telling her the truth risks
harming your friendship but, if you don't, if you don't tell her the truth you're