I need to tell you a funny story.⁠
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A couple of weeks ago, I met with a new client for the first time.

Let’s call him JJ—because he’s one cool dude.

We talked about his background in engineering and his motivation to take additional English for Engineers classes. He told me that his technical English was actually sufficient:

“I’ve been to the States to tech conventions, and I was OK talking to other engineers. I had absolutely no problems discussing technical matters. But I definitely need to learn how to do Trash Talk.”⁠

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There it was—trash talk. I thought, “Why does he wanna learn how to talk trash? Does he actually know what talking trash means? Does he eventually mean ‘tech talk’, but the audio connection’s bad?”.⁠
⁠
Finally, it was dawning on me, and I asked him: “JJ, when you say trash talk, do you eventually mean small talk?”.

“Yes! Small Talk! That’s the word I was looking for!”⁠

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From now on, I’ll officially refer to small talk as trash talk. ⁠
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Wondering what he really wanted me to teach him? That’s simple: English idioms, expressions, and colloquialisms.⁠

Want to improve your technical conversational skills as well? Read more about THE 25 MINUTES here.