Lesson 15 – I’ll never go there again

To ask others if they had any bad holiday experience, we could say:

[Have you ever …]

e.g Have you ever had a flight delayed by more than 6 hours? If so , do you know that you may have right to request an insurance claim, for more details please look at your terms and conditions of your contract.

Indeed, people may complain about the flight as well as the room where they are staying in the hotel. Or they may also grumble to you about the hotel facilities or location and even the food of the room service.

Anyway, we should show our sympathy as a good listener.

In the lesson, our tutor guided us to practice the direct and reporting speech.

Example 1:

Direct – We’ll meet you at arrivals hall.

Reporting – They told us (that) they would meet us at arrivals hall.

(p.s – sb. + told + pronoun (i.e us/them/him/her)  + (that) …)

Reporting – They said (that) they would meet us at arrivals hall.

(p.s – sb. + said + (that) + pronoun (i.e he/she/it/they) + …)

Example 2:

Direct – We won’t give you any compensation.

Reporting – They refused to give us any compensation.

(p.s – sb. + refused + to + v. …)

Example 3:

Direct – Could you give us a twin bed, please? (a couple standing in front of me and the male asking)

Reporting – He asked us to give them a twin bed.

(p.s – sb. + asked + pronoun (us/them/him/her) + to + v. …)

Example 4:

Direct – If you ask us to tip again, I’ll report it to your manager!

Reporting – I threatened the cleaner to speak to his manager if he asked tipping again.

Example 5:

Direct – We’ll sort it out in the morning, so sorry for your inconvenience.

Reporting – The manager promised to sort that out in the morning and gave an earnest apology to us.

Example 6:

Direct – We could change it for you upon your requesting.

Reporting – He offered us a change if we requested it.

Example 7:

Direct – Why don’t you try our latest lunch set?

Reporting – The waiter suggested we try the latest lunch set.

As a good listener, we could start the conversation like these:

• What kind of problems did you have then, Peter?
• Have you even had …?

If they don’t know where to start, they may say something like:

• Well, I don’t know where to start …

Then we could guide them to raise the problem:

• Was it (price) or …?
• How was it?
• Tell me about it.

As a people who want to grumble about bad experience, we could make it bit-by-bit – we should use past tense and could use reporting speech:

Example

1. It all started before … We had …
2. But actually it wasn’t what we wanted/expected…
3. In the end we had to …
4. but that wasn’t all. When we… We realised…
5. Anyway, we told …

Then, to show our sympathy to others, we could say:

• That is not a good start, is it?
• Oh, you must have been really annoyed (/disappointed/upset/depressed/frustrated) .
• Aha, I understand.
• Oh, how awful!
• Golly gosh, I’m so sorry to hear that, Peter.
• Poor you.
• Why did it take so long?
• Why did it happen to you?
• You should not suffer from this!
• I see.
• It sounds quite stressful, Peter.
• I’d advise you to…

TAG:  #Managing situations