Real English Conversation: Vocabulary for Daily Life

Are you ready to learn real English conversation in 2026? I'm ready. All right. Well, you're in the right place. Hi, I'm Vanessa from SpeakEnglishWithVanessa.com, and today I am with my husband, Dan. Hello. And we are going to introduce you to real English conversation. We are about to have a spontaneous, off-the-cuff, not planned conversation, except for a couple questions that I wrote down, and I want you to immerse yourself in English. If this is challenging for you, you're welcome to click CC and view the full subtitles, but I want you to sit back, relax, and enjoy English because that is the number one thing that's going to help you to speak real and confidently when you have English conversations. And like always, I have created a free PDF worksheet over Dan's face here for today's lesson. It's going to include every question, vocabulary phrase that appears here, every sample sentence, everything that you need to be able to speak and express yourself in English. Plus, there's a little bonus inside this worksheet. If you download the worksheet, you will get access to the audio version of today's lesson. That's kind of like a mini podcast episode. You can download that audio version and listen to it wherever you want, in the car, doing the dishes, walking your dog. This is my gift to you. So how can you get the PDF worksheet plus bonus listening version? All you have to do is click on the link in the description, enter your name and email address, and voila, just like that, the worksheet will land in your email inbox. Voila. And do you want to know something cool? What? Well, you never need to sign up for my free PDF worksheets again. You just sign up one time and I'll continue to send them to you every single week. Isn't that great? It's great. So don't miss out on that worksheet. Click on the link in the description to get the worksheet plus the audio version of today's lesson. All right, Dan, are you ready? I'm ready. Finally. Let's do it. Okay. So I have a list of 10 questions and there's a little theme with these questions. So oftentimes around the New Year, people make New Year's resolutions. Are you a New Year's resolution kind of guy? Is that my first question? No, this is just a real question. Yes, I am, but I'm not. Maybe this is true for most people, but I often make New Year's resolutions and then they just kind of fall away or maybe one of them kind of happens. Although last year I made a big New Year's resolution, which was to work out. And I did work out. So there we go. Congratulations. I can feel your strength. She has been too. Check out those guys. Yeah. So you make New Year's resolutions. Sometimes they don't work out. I think that's pretty normal. I'm getting better every year. Once I'm 40, I'm just going to be like nailing every single one. Is that how life works? I think that's how life works. Yeah, definitely. So oftentimes people, when they make New Year's resolutions, will choose to do something or to cut out something from their life. So all of these questions have to do with cutting out something from your life and could you do it? So I'm going to ask you my first question and I want you to just go with your gut and tell me what you think. Number one, could you live without your smartphone for an entire month? Yes, I could. You would survive. Yeah, I'd survive. What would be the difficulties? Can I use a computer or watch TV? Yeah, this is just smartphone. Oh yeah, I could do that. Okay. I'd get a little flip phone, the dumb phone. Yeah, and I'd just call you every day. I'd be like, hey baby. And then you'd be like, hi Dan. I'm in the house with you. You know, when I'm out somewhere. Okay, okay. Lost in the wilderness. So what kind of difficulties would you find if you didn't have a smartphone? Probably if I wanted to text or take a picture or something. Just the little conveniences more than anything else. Listening to music in the car would be probably a little annoying, but it's all like this little stuff that, you know, doesn't really matter that much. And I'd probably, if I were to do this, I would be like, I'm not using my smartphone for a month. I'm on a mission and look at me. This is great. Okay. Well, maybe it's your new New Year's resolution. You never know. Planting ideas. Yeah. How about you? Would it be rough? I think it would probably be more rough than I'm willing to admit. I think I would love to do this, but so we did do this a couple of years ago, we got rid of our smartphones and we bought a flip phone and the hardest thing was texting. It was so annoying. I didn't realize how much I rely on texting my family or my friends, even if it's just like to meet up with somebody else to make plans. Yeah. And to push the same button three times for one letter is so tedious. Kind of hard. Yeah. I will say, I didn't think that, I do use my smartphone at work. There's a lot of work chatter that we have to do. So- Could you use the computer for that? No, because it has to be handy because we're in the forest and there's children everywhere and we got to have instantaneous messaging. But I could just set, I could keep my smartphone over there. It's work related. Oh, like keep it at school. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. I feel like the other thing that was difficult when we gave up our smartphones was taking pictures. I just had no way to take pictures and I'm kind of addicted to taking pictures. We got used to taking photos of everything. Yeah. And our kids and all these things. I don't even think we had kids yet. We did. It was when Theo was a baby. Oh, okay. And I think that's what kind of prompted it. We got to take pictures of our baby. Yeah. Yeah. We had a little kid and we're like, oh, we want to teach him to not be on smartphones and all of this. So we should do the same thing. But I didn't have a way to take good pictures and that was really hard. So yeah, now I think we just have like blocks on our phone. We put like blocks so that you can't use social media and stuff like that. But all right, let's go to question number two. We got 10 of these. The second question is, could you live without coffee or tea for the rest of your life? No, no way. Okay. I need, I need something to pick me up in the morning. Okay. Even just out of habit. I suppose I could like change it up to something else. Hot water and honey and lemon. Does that count? I mean, if you're looking for caffeine, that doesn't count. Oh, well, yeah. I mean, I would eventually get weaned off of the caffeine, but if the idea of it is pretty not, not appealing to me, I am a two cup of coffee kind of person a day. Yeah. Yeah. Two cups of coffee a day kind of person. That's it. Yeah. And you? I think I could do it. I think it would be more sad than like physically difficult. I think my body can adjust. I drink a cup of black tea every morning and sometimes a cup of green tea in the afternoon. I think there would probably be like a week or two where I might get headaches and that kind of weaning process where you're trying to not get addicted to caffeine anymore. But I think it's more, I like the ritual. I like the habit of a warm drink. Yeah, it's fun to drink a hot drink in the morning. Yeah. And I don't always like sit down at the kitchen table and drink it. Sometimes I go for a walk and I'm going for a walk while I'm drinking it, but I still like it. I still enjoy that kind of habit. So I think it would be more sad, but if I had to, I would. Yeah. What about you? Could you go without coffee or tea for the rest of your life? That's a pretty long time. Sad, sad day if that happens. Question number three is, could you live without internet if you still had access to books and TV? I don't think so. Not anymore. So many things are digital at this point, probably even down to our, I don't know, legal documents and bank accounts and all kinds of things are online. Plus all of your money comes from the internet. My job is the internet. That's right. And yeah, I use the internet for work all the time. I think we're pretty interconnected now at this point that it would be really tough. Even if you're at the library, you wouldn't use the computers there. That would be tough. Yeah. I think the tricky thing about this question is that it seems like you're the only one without internet. Could you live without internet if everyone else still had it? Now, if the world internet shut down, we'd find a way to survive. But if it's just you, that's a big bummer. I think it would be hard to cut yourself off completely. It'd be kind of fun to try, but then you're just going to end up being that guy who lives alone in the woods and he comes out with a big beard and he's like, get off my lawn. Hey, the government's trying to get you. And he's probably right. But you're like, okay, man, it's okay. We'll be all right. Okay. Let's go to the next question. You're not going to answer that? Oh, did I not answer it? I feel like I probably could not. Yeah. Yeah. I have a very love-hate relationship with the internet and technology. I love how there are positive possibilities with it. You can learn English, you can learn cool stuff online, and it can help me stay connected to the people I love who live far away. I remember when we were starry-eyed about the internet. Now look at us. But I think we're constantly trying to save ourselves from the internet, like trying to stop ourselves from using it too much, stop our kids. It's hard to have balance. Yeah. I think probably a hundred years from now, people will look back and see this era and be like, oh yeah, they had no clue how to protect themselves from the internet. The robots. Hopefully people won't be robots a hundred years from now. No, I'm talking about AI. Oh, AI too. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. I think I could live without the internet, but it would be a big bummer and be a lot trickier, I think, than we imagine. Oh, it would be very hard at this point. All right. I got another question for you. This is very different. Could you live without speaking for a whole week? I thought you were going to say speak English with Vanessa. Could you live without speaking? No, I can't. Can you live without speaking for a whole week? Speaking? So silent. Me? Yeah, no. I am the most verbal person ever. Can I whistle? Can I hum a tune? Speaking. If that is not speaking. I can make noises. Dan is very noisy. I'm a little bit of a noisy guy. Always tapping or whistling or yeah. Yeah. I remember when Theo was really, really little, we heard someone whistling and he said, Oh, Dada. He was whistling all the time, but no, it wasn't you. He was so used to connecting that. Yeah. So some people go on these silent retreats where, yeah, silent meditations where you're quiet. You don't speak for, I don't know, a whole week or something. That just seems like torture to me. Why would you do that? Yeah. I mean, some people have reasons. I would not choose to do it. It would have to be that kind of situation for me to do it. I'd have to be like, all right, this is going to stink, but I'm going to come out the other end a great person. You'd have to be really convinced that it would actually help you too. Because there's like about 150,000 other things I would rather do with my week of vacation than sit and be silent. Go somewhere and not talk. Yeah, that'd be hard. Yeah. I think I would have to be going through. That's the point though. I know. If you don't want to do it, then you need it, right? Yeah. Well, you know, you don't get anywhere without a little pain. Ain't that right? Yeah. I'm not going to do it though. All right. Kind of adjacent to that question is number five. Could you live without music, including background music in stores and movies? So no music. Oh, no. Okay. Why? I love music. It's my life. My lifeblood. Oh, okay. Especially because I got just tunes going on in my head all the time. I know. I mean, at least I'm allowed to hum them now. No, because you can speak. Because I can speak. You can speak again. Yeah. But I would not be happy about that. I think I could. Yeah? I think it would be a bummer. You seem to like silence more than me. But I do like silence. Yeah. I feel like most often when given the choice, I will opt for silence or maybe listening to a podcast in the car. Instead of music. But I think it is true. Like, if we could open a little door inside your brain, it would just be like... Rainbows. Kittens. Sparkles of music. Like this, like, tornado of like... I'm not that crazy. But just a lot more music is in there than for me. Yeah. Which I appreciate music. If anybody's ever seen The Emperor's New Groove, where the guy is like sneaking around and he's doing his own theme music. That's kind of me in a nutshell. Yeah. Yeah. I like music, but I feel like I enjoy it in certain circumstances. And oftentimes right now, especially with little kids, my brain is often overstimulated with noise. Yeah. I always want to put on music in the car and I can always look over and I'm like, she doesn't really want to hear this right now, does she? If anyone else is talking to me, then I can't handle music. And if it's quiet, then I can enjoy music. But if it's just adults, that's fine. But when it's kids, especially kids I'm in charge of, it very quickly gets overwhelming. Kids make all the sounds. A little bit shriller. Yeah. Yeah. I know. What about you? Could you live without music for the rest of your life? It's a big question. All right. The next one is kind of adjacent to previous questions about a smartphone and the internet, but this is more specific. Could you live without using any social media for one year? And we probably need to define what is social media? Because yeah, we think of like Facebook, YouTube, Instagram. That's like typical social media. Wait, YouTube counts? Of course. Yeah. Because there's a way to comment. That's not. No. Absolutely. That is social media. That's a video platform. Oh, that's what they say. There's a way to interact on the platform. It's social media. So like Netflix is not social media because you're just watching it. But if there's a way to interact. Well, what about like just the chat? Like Reddit could be social media. But what about just the chat app? That's the question. Like is a chat app is WhatsApp with our family. Is that social media? That's our little mini social media. I need that. Okay. Okay. So could you live without traditional social media? Yeah, for sure. Oh, that's brave. Yeah. No speak English with Vanessa for the rest of my life. Well, you can have that and you can keep it going. Okay. And I'll be over here happy. Okay. I'll just be depressed on social media. But I don't use a lot of social media anyway. I check Facebook for some stupid reason every now and then. And I get about nothing from it. I do use YouTube quite a bit though. Yeah, that's social media. But I don't really consider it social media. I don't use it like social media. You don't comment? I do sometimes. That's social media. Because it's the social part of it. It's not just media. It's also your input is part of the platform. I can live without that though. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I can do it. I think I could. The hard thing is if we take my job away from it, in my personal life, I could do without social media. But in my professional life, I obviously need social media. I mean, you're watching this on social media right now. And yeah, I think within me personally, I have this ethical dispute constantly going on of, I want to use this platform for good. And I hope that's happening. But I also hope that those of you who are watching this can watch my videos and use YouTube for good. And also live a very rich, real, in-person life. Step away from this sometimes. Yeah, yeah. Watch Vanessa again and again, and then step away. And don't watch anything else. Yeah, well, that's also why I've started to offer some of these downloadable options. Like you can download the audio of this and go out in the real world. Take a walk with your dog and listen to it. Touch grass, as the kids are saying. Yeah, go outside and touch the real world. I spend enough time with children that I know that social media is like toxic. So yeah, if you have teenagers, don't let them use this stuff. It's terrible. Yeah, it's really hard. I'm sure it's hard. We don't have teenagers yet, but... Well, they're not going to use it. Sorry. Yeah, it's totally going to rot your brain. Okay, except for speak English with Vanessa. Yeah, of course. All right, number seven. Could you live without your favorite food forever? So do you have a favorite food? I just like all food. So I don't even know what my favorite food is. Pizza, I guess. It's very stereotypical. Oh, okay. You get a good slice of pizza. It's so good. Okay. Could you live without pizza forever? Do I have to watch other people eat pizza? Oh. It's only you. You're the only one deprived. Oh, yeah, I could do it. I mean, I would hate it. But, you know, if I had a good substitute, I'm like, I can't eat pizza. But dang it, I can eat a calzone. Oh, that's too close. But okay, it's a hypothetical situation. It's not as good as pizza. I can eat toast with melted cheese on it. Really sad. I know when I was thinking about this question, like, what even is my favorite food? I love fruit, like fresh. Fruits. Watermelon. Watermelon, like those types of things. And that always hits the spot for me. Like if I'm hungry, an apple with peanut butter. Perfect. Vanessa's favorite food, apple and peanut butter. Welcome to your kindergarten, student. It was like a simple thing ever. American peanut butter. But like a banana, I put peanut butter on it. And it's so good every time. Fruit, fruit. You can tell we live around children a lot. I like that kind of stuff anyway. But I feel like if I... She especially likes putting the little raisins on it. I mean, I do, though. Ants on a log. I do. I don't think I could live without fruit. That would be really sad to me. I feel like... Yeah, yeah. But you know, some people don't eat that kind of stuff anyway. Like that's very rare in their lives. Like I know when we lived in South Korea, fruit was seen as like an expensive item. It was really special. But fruit is so common and cheap here that I eat it all the time. Yeah, I think I would not be able to live without eating fruit. All right, question number eight is a fun one. Could you live without electric lights if you could still use candles and sunlight? Could you live without... Electric lights. I have electricity, but I don't have light bulbs. Yes. You have no way to turn on a light. That's just annoying. Your neighbors have like a light on too. Everyone else is living the good life and you're stuck in the stowage. Yeah, I think I could only because I know it'd be really healthy. Oh yeah? Yeah. Tell me why you think it'd be healthy. Because you know, well, I've read things. He's read things. A thing or two. And you know, we have our circadian rhythm that goes with the sun. And it's actually the healthiest if you wake up early in the morning and you go to bed when it's dark at night. It seems kind of obvious. But what really prevents us from doing that is all these electronic lights all over the place. I guess I could still have my phone in this scenario. So that kind of defeats the purpose. You just have like a light shining in your face. It's just the worst kind of light in my eyes. Yeah. Anyways, so well, if in theory that meant that I had to go to bed earlier, then it would probably be very healthy. And then if I had a good excuse, like I could tell my neighbors, I'm sorry, I just can't turn on my lights. I have this curse or whatever it is. My wife cursed me with no electric lights. And I can't use electricity. I'm in the doghouse real bad this time. In fact, I live in a doghouse. Then yes, I could do it. Okay. All right. How about you? I think it would be really hard. I could do it. Do you live in the doghouse too? I don't want to live in a doghouse. I think the only way I could make no lights work in a sustainable, like I could actually do it and not be too bothered is if I didn't live in a house. If I lived like in a tent or a yurt or like something. A doghouse. Like something that let in more sunlight. Because have you ever like, you know, in the evenings where like the sun has set, but it's not, if you go outside, it's not dark yet. Your eyes adjust to it. But then when you come inside, has that ever happened to you? Like you come inside and you look back outside and you're like, it's so dark out there. How was I seeing things? But like, it's actually not that dark when you go out there. I feel like if I didn't live in a house, then my body would adjust more. I would use sunlight more. But in the house, it blocks so much of the sunlight that it's darker inside. So you have to live in a well-lit area. That's what you're saying. Yeah, or at least like not in a house. Largely. Yeah. Still want to live in a house anymore. If I had to do this, if I was cursed with no electric lights. It's a curse. But sometimes I do think like, I want to give it a try. I feel like that would be a very interesting New Year's resolution. I don't think you can have a phone in this scenario. No, no. That's just like, I'm just shining my light. Maybe it needs to be a summer thing when there's a lot of sunlight. And the curse is only in summer. You don't turn on the lights. And I mean, we had this during the hurricane in September 2024. There was a really bad hurricane. No lights. Hurricane Helene. We still had our phones though. We had flashlights. We couldn't plug in our phones. Like, there's no way to charge them. Are flashlights cursed too? I don't know. But it was. This question is getting too real. It was challenging and it really shaped, like the end of the day came so fast. Like night came so much faster because you're so used to just turning on a light. Yeah, yeah, definitely. Yeah, I'd like to try it sometime. I feel like whenever I go camping, I feel so different because I am just using the sun. That's one of the benefits of camping. It's like, all right, it's dark now. What are we going to do? I'd be curious to try it out. Rewild ourselves for a little bit. Rawr. Okay, all right. Question number nine. Could you live without spending money for a whole weekend? Yeah. Just one weekend? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Hang out. Do I have enough food in my house? Yeah, just like right now. You're not allowed to spend money for the whole weekend. No problem. I feel like we do that like every other weekend. Yeah, yeah. I think where we live, you don't have to spend money to do activities. You can go to a friend's house. You can go hiking. You can go to the park. We've certainly put a lot of money into our home area. It's like we have enough stuff here already that we don't have to spend more money. Yeah, we don't go out to eat that often. It wouldn't be like, oh, how are we going to eat? Because we can't go out to a restaurant. We cook food at home all the time. So if we had the food that we have now, we could last through the weekend for sure. Five or four days or so. Yeah, probably more than that. We might not be eating your favorite food, pizza. Calzones. We'll be fine. Yeah. Could you go for the whole weekend without spending money? Is that normal for you? I know a lot of people do paid activities on the weekend. Or like go out to brunch or go out to a cafe or stuff like that. I think because- Some people probably look forward to that more than maybe we do. I think because we have little kids, those things are not fun. And so why would I pay to do something not fun? But if it's just me, like this weekend, I'm going out with some other women. And we're going to this champagne bar. It's going to be very cool. And it's like a holiday book exchange. We're all bringing a book to share with each other. And I'm going to buy a glass of champagne or a glass of wine or something there. And if I were cursed this weekend to not buy anything and I had to go there and everyone else was drinking something fun, that would be a bummer. That's true. Yeah. I'd also have to find free parking. Like I have to pay for parking. You got to walk. From here? It's only 11 miles or so, 15. Down the highway. Danger. I would never survive. Okay. Let's go to our final question. And I think this is a fun one to end on. Number 10, could you live without wearing shoes for an entire summer? Sure. I haven't really thought about it. Yeah. I mean, it wouldn't... I do like to have my feet covered. I know. A little bit more probably than you do. Yeah. But I could do it. Yeah. It's summer. Well... Okay. Let's say at our... I don't want to walk into the grocery store on therapy. That's the problem. What if it was just our house and our property? Well, that's easy. Yeah? Sure. Every time you walked outside. Wow. You'd have pretty tough feet. I know, but I feel like... No offense. You're kind of a wimp when it comes to bare feet. I'm overestimating my feet. Yeah. Maybe. Like our kids are barefoot all summer, except when we go in the car. They're pretty tough. I get used to it. Go to the store or something. Of course they wear shoes, but they're barefoot all the time. Also, I could be like crazy shoe lady. Anti-shoe lady. What was her name? I'm not going to say that on YouTube. There's a woman we know who doesn't wear shoes ever, ever. She called shoes foot coffins. Yeah. Which there's a whole movement like that. It's not just her. I'm sure if those people exist on the internet, they'll find this video. Well, she took it to another level. Yeah. Snow, grocery store, everywhere. No shoes. I think in the... She seemed really normal. So normal. Like really normal. I think in the natural world, the grass, the forest, like on land like that. I could do it. It would be hard. I think it would take probably like... I wouldn't want to drive barefoot either, honestly. No, no. I think it would take a couple months, but every day in the summer, I try to be barefoot outside for like 10, 15 minutes at least. And if I need to go outside to get something quickly and then come back in, I try to do it barefoot because I think it's good for you. And I feel good. You can touch the earth. And sometimes there's like dew on the ground. Getting grounded, as they say. And sometimes I step on a rock and it really hurts. It's good to feel pain. We've covered that already. I need to like force myself to feel pain. Don't get too comfortable. All of that is good. If you lived in a city... Well... Pretty impossible. I would never do this at a park. At like a city park. You just don't know. Is there glass? Are there needles? Yeah, it's because of where we live. I mean, if we lived back in South Korea... No, thank you. I would never do that. No, it's a big city and it's, when I say concrete jungle. But if you're in the woods, maybe hiking. Like there's a lot of hiking trails and stuff. It depends. It depends on the trail. A lot of shoes going on those trails too. Yeah, it depends on that. But I remember sometimes when we went on hikes. It was a while ago. Here, not in Korea. We went barefoot for a while. Like we would go barefoot for a section. I did? Yeah, you did too. It's been a while. But it was so fun because you felt almost like you're rebelling. Like, oh, I'm going to walk barefoot on this trail. And it felt good. If your feet are not used to it, you'll be surprised how tender and sensitive your feet are. But it's good for your feet. Yeah, you're right. I was a bit of a, ooh, ah, ugh, ah kind of guy. Yeah, yeah. I wear, what do they call that? Wide toe box shoes, like flat shoes. So my feet are used to that type of walking. You still got cushioning. And they're very thin on the bottom though. Like I feel rocks. I feel pebbles and stuff when I walk, even with my shoes. But I would... Fancy shoes. You can feel the rocks under your feet. You feel the rocks. You too should buy them. Okay, well, that is the end of our conversation lesson today. Very random. Well, thank you so much, Dan, for joining me today. You're welcome. Thank you. Insight was very appreciated. It was fun. I hope you enjoyed our conversation. I hope you have a wonderful beginning to 2026. And I hope that you'll join me to speak English with Vanessa over this year and Dan. And Dan sometimes. So how you can do that is you can click subscribe and you will, if you click the bell, you will never miss one of my lessons. I post a new real life English lesson here on my YouTube channel every Friday. So I hope that you can join me throughout this year. And don't forget to download the free PDF worksheet. It includes all of today's questions, plus any vocabulary that popped up here on the screen. We're going to have that vocabulary definitions, multiple sample sentences to help you be able to use that yourself so that you can chit chat and have a great real life conversation in English too. Plus within that worksheet is the audio version of today's lesson. Take it out into the real world. Maybe even take your shoes off and walk around barefoot while you're listening to it. Wow. Turn off your lights. You're getting healthier every day if you do these things. Amazing. So to get this worksheet and the bonus listening, the audio version, all you have to do is click on the link in the description, enter your name and email address and voila, just like that, it will land in your email inbox. This is my gift to you. So thanks so much for joining me, Dan. Thank you. Thanks so much for watching. And I'll see you again next Friday for a new lesson here on my YouTube channel. Bye. But wait, do you want more? I recommend watching this video next where you will see Dan and I talking about travel, including some embarrassing things that we have done while traveling abroad. I hope to see you there.