 10 Informal English Phrases in Conversation from EspressoEnglish.net For this lesson, I took some small pieces of conversations that I've heard in the past week, which have interesting informal expressions, and I'll be using them to teach you today. Let's look at the first one. Sorry I'm late, guys. I overslept. No worries. Let me bring you up to speed. You can say, I overslept when you accidentally sleep later than you had intended to. For example, if you didn't hear your alarm clock. There's a different expression, sleep in, when you intentionally sleep later than usual. For example, on weekends or on holidays when you don't have to go to work or school. Now let's look at the next line in the conversation. No worries. Let me bring you up to speed. The expression, no worries, means no problem, or it's okay. To bring someone up to speed means to give that person updates. Tell them the information that they are missing so that they can have a current understanding of the situation. Another way to say this is, let me fill you in. Here's another bit of conversation that I heard recently. What are you up to next week? We might go to the beach, but our plans aren't set in stone. What are you up to is an informal way to say, what are you doing? You can use it to ask about someone's current activities or about their future plans, as in this example. What are you up to next week? You can also say, what have you been up to lately to ask about what the person has been doing in the recent past? The response is, we might go to the beach, but our plans aren't set in stone. If something is not set in stone, it means it is not yet confirmed or final and could be open to change. Here's another bit of conversation I heard when talking about a book. One person said, I didn't read the book, I just skimmed it. And the other person replied, okay, but you got the gist, right? To skim a book or article means to look over it quickly. When you skim, you don't read every word carefully, you just try to get an overall idea. To get the gist of something means to understand the central or the essential idea, even if you don't know all the details. This was a conversation I heard after attending a presentation. That presentation was way over my head. Yeah, I found it kind of hard to follow. If something is over your head, it means it was too difficult for you to understand. The word way can be used informally to mean very or much. For example, if something is way too expensive, that means it is much too expensive, not just a little bit, a lot. So this person is saying that the presentation was much too difficult for them to understand. The other person responded, yeah, I found it kind of hard to follow. The expression I found it in this context means I thought it was, or my opinion is that it was. And hard to follow means it was difficult to accompany the flow of ideas. The speaker is implying that the presentation was rather disorganized and unclear. Here's our final conversation. It's two people who are talking about a new employee. The third time he screwed up, I almost lost it. You've got to cut him some slack. He's still new. The phrasal verb screw up means to make a mistake or do something incorrectly. Another way to say this is mess up. The expression I almost lost it means I almost lost my temper, meaning to get very angry, visibly angry. The other person said, you've got to cut him some slack. This means you need to give him some extra freedom or extra patience or treat him less severely than normal because this employee is still new. Learning English from conversations is a great way to improve your speaking. In the everyday English speaking course, you'll learn the phrases that native English speakers use in daily life. The lessons are based on dialogues. Visit espressoenglish.net, click on courses, and look for the everyday English speaking course.