Phrases5 min read
Five chunks your textbook never taught you
Native speakers build sentences from fixed chunks, not word by word. Learn these and you sound natural immediately.
The classic beginner problem is translating word by word. The result is grammatically correct and sounds oddly stiff. Native speakers lean on fixed chunks instead.
- A transition meaning by the way, for keeping a conversation alive
- A soft way to say you did not follow, far politer than I did not understand
- A hedging phrase meaning roughly like, which appears constantly in real speech
- A short agreement marker that takes almost no space in the sentence
- A stalling pattern meaning let me check, buying yourself thinking time
These share three traits: short, content-neutral, and far more frequent in real conversation than a learner expects. Once they are in place, your sentences start linking together on their own.