How To Talk About Your Interests in English?

So what are you into? Are you into football or basketball? Did you understand what I asked

you? I asked you, “what do you like doing?” Maybe you've heard this statement from people

earlier and it has confused you, what are they asking, what am i into, what does this

even mean? So today we are looking at different ways to talk about your interests, what you

like doing and what you don't like doing and we'll talk in terms of degrees, for example

you're just crazy about football and you're just crazy about Facebook and maybe you're

just into something. So like this we are gonna cover different degrees of your interests.

So keep watching this session with me, my name is Michelle. Now we are going to look

at some very interesting expressions that we have with us on the board and the first

one is what I started the lesson with, this is ,‘into’. So ‘what are you into?’

this means that ‘what do you like doing’. In other words if you want me to put it very

simply it means, ‘what are you interested in’. So ‘into’ means, ‘very interested’.

So if you like listening to jazz, you could say, ‘I'm into jazz’. Which means that

you're very interested in jazz. And sometimes if you really like cooking or if you're very

interested in cooking, you could say, I got into cooking since I left home. So since you

started living outside your home you got into cooking, which means that you started enjoying

cooking. Okay so this is ‘into’ for you, which means, ‘very interested’. You could

use it with ‘got’ as well and you could say, ‘I got into something’ etc. etc.

etc. Now we look at the next one and that is ‘mad about’. So this is a bit stronger

than ‘into’. ‘Into’ is used when you you're interested in something, very interested

for that matter but you use ‘mad about’, when you really enjoy something. What's the

first thing that comes to your mind when I say that you really enjoy? Is it football?

So if you really enjoy football, you could say, ‘I'm mad about football’. This means

you really enjoy it. So football is your interest, a very strong interest and you really enjoy

it, so you could say, ‘I'm mad about football’. And sometimes you could also say, ‘I'm crazy

about football’. So this is another way of saying the same thing, ‘crazy’ is just

another synonym for ‘mad’ which means just another word for ‘mad’. So you could

say they are crazy about football but I'm mad about basketball. Okay now with this we

look at the next one and this is ‘obsessed’. Have you ever heard this word before? So ‘obsessed’

means that you do something to such a degree, that you only think about it. Or maybe you

can't stop thinking about it. So do you have any celebrity crush? I mean that any celebrity

that you just love and you're crazy about and you just can't stop thinking about the

celebrity… Julia Roberts, is that? So if you're really crazy about someone and you

can't stop thinking about them, that's called ‘obsession’. ‘Obsession’ for you.

Can't stop thinking. Sometimes obsession is so much that it goes into the crazy territory.

What I mean is that you're so obsessed with someone that it actually becomes unhealthy

for you. You start becoming anxious and emotionally unstable. So let's say that, someday you see

your celebrity crush face-to-face, how would you feel? You'd probably be awestruck, dumbstruck

and you would not be able to say a word, you'll be like… mum! And you'll be so emotionally

unstable that you'll not know what to say. So it's always good to avoid obsessions you

know you should not go into that unhealthy territory when you talk about interests. It's

okay to be till here, ‘mad about’ but if you go up to the ‘obsession’, it becomes

unhealthy. And what about the next word that we have, ‘passion’. So this is something

even greater than ‘obsession’ or is ‘obsession’ greater than ‘passion’? Well ‘obsession’

is a bit greater than ‘passion’ in terms of the unhealthiness attached to it. ‘Passion’

is not unhealthy. ‘Passion’ is usually very healthy which means that it leads you

to do something, it leads you to action for something. For example, ‘back in the older

days, passion was used for religious martyrs’, which means that people who would die for

their religion. But now it has lost that intensity in terms of you know dying for religion, but

rather it has become dying for your love. So what if you go on a date with a person

for the first time and they get on their knees and tell you that they would die for you,

they are probably passionate about you or maybe just nuts, which means that it might

be just crazy. So passion is basically associated with love, but you can also use to talk about

your interests using the word ‘passion’. For example, you are just crazy about photography

which means that you love doing it, it's really nice and you enjoy it just a lot. So that's

when you can use ‘passion’. But it's less than ‘obsession’ and more than ‘mad

about’. So ‘passion’ is, when you love doing something. To put it in a sentence you

could say that, ‘photography is my passion’ and for ‘obsessed’ you could say, ‘she's

really obsessed with fashion’, which means that she just can't stop thinking about fashion.

Or you know if you want to use it as a noun, you could also say ‘obsession’ and you

could say that, ‘losing weight is my obsession’. So here you use ‘obsession’ as a noun

and ‘passion’ as I told you, ‘photography is my passion’ or ‘history has always

been my passion’ or you could say, I'm passionate about cinema’. Okay, now with this we look

at the next word that we have and this word is pronounced as ‘avid’. So ‘avid’

is a person who really likes to do something as much as they can. What about reading? Do

you really like reading? Then maybe you like to do it almost all the time, whenever you

get an opportunity you pick up a newspaper or pick up a book or maybe just scroll through

your phone through articles and you start reading because you're an avid reader, which

means that you try to do something as much as you can. So a synonym for this would be

‘eager’, which means that you just can't wait to do something. Another word that you

can use for ‘avid’ is ‘keen’ and if you want to use it in a sentence you could

say, ‘I'm an avid reader’ or you could say, ‘I'm a keen cyclist’. So this is

how you use this word before a noun now ‘avid’ can have one more meaning and that is, ‘greedy’,

okay? ‘Avid’ can also mean ‘greedy’. So if someone tells you that, ‘you're avid

for success’, they are not telling you that you're eager for success, they are telling

you that you're greedy for success. So according to the context, you have to understand what

does ‘avid’ mean, whether it means ‘eager’ or it means ‘greedy’. Okay now with that

we look at the next one, ‘lives and breathes’. This is a phrase that you can use to talk

about your interest. We've already looked at some words, but now we'll look at a phrase,

so if you ‘live and breathe’ something, you give all your time to that thing, okay?

‘Live and breathe’ means, give all your time to it. In real life you give all your

time to living and breathing, but sometimes there are certain things which we almost give,

do as if you're breathing. For example if you really love listening to music and that's

what you do all the time then you could say, that I live and breathe music, okay? Now with

this we look at the next phrase that we have and that is, ‘wrapped up’. So do you know

what is a wrapper? A wrapper is a cover with which you cover a gift, you wrap it. So there

is no part of the box that is visible. The same way when you're wrapped up with something,

you only do that thing and you cannot think about doing anything else. There are times

in our lives when we have so much work to do that we're completely loaded and we don't

have time to do anything else, not even pick up a phone call. Those are the times when

you're wrapped up with work. And if such is the case, then you could call up, if you if

you get a call from your friend you could pick up and say, ‘hey, I'm really wrapped

up in work right now, can I get back to you tomorrow?’ So this means that you can only

think about your interest at that time. So when you're wrapped up you can only think

about one thing. The next is, ‘right up my street’. So when something is just the

correct thing for you, you say that, ‘it's, right up my street’. If you love eating

and if you love charity and there's an event, which has both of these things you could say

that, ‘hey, this event is just right up my street because I love eating and I love

raising money for charity’. So this means that, ‘it's just correct for you’. This

is how a Britisher would say, ‘right up my street’ but if an American had to use

the same phrase he would say, ‘it's right up my alley’ which means same as street

in American English. Okay, now we have looked at so many phrases and words to talk about

the things that we like. At the same time there are things that we do not like which

we are not interested in and those kind of things can be expressed using the word, a

phrase, ‘not my thing’. So if you don't enjoy something and you don't usually do it,

‘it's not your thing’. For example, if you don't dance often, you could say, ‘sorry…

dance is not my thing’ if someone asks you to dance, you could say, ‘sorry, dance is

not my thing’, which means I don't like it and I usually don't do it. So, ‘not my

thing’ means you usually don't do it. An alternative to this would be, ‘not my cup

of tea’ this is a British version of this American phrase, ‘not my thing’ and in

British English you'd say, ‘not my cup of tea’. So if you don't like playing board

game, you could say, ‘sorry, I don't like playing board games, it's just not my cup

of tea’. Now we have the last one and that is something that leaves you cold, so feeling

really cold is not a great feeling and if something leaves you cold it actually makes

you feel bad after it finishes like ‘opera’ for me, I really don't like opera, I sort

of get afraid when I hear to it, so it leaves me cold, which means that I feel scared and

I don't feel good after listening to opera, so I don't listen to it. So if ever someone

invites me to listen to opera I say that, ‘sorry it scares me and it leaves me cold’.

So this expression means that something makes you feel rather worse, leaves you feeling

worse. So the next time someone asks you what are you into? Or what's your passion? Or maybe

your obsession? You have various ways to tell them about the things that you are interested

in and the things that you're not interested in. So feel free to use these phrases and

also leave me a comment if any of these works out for you and if you like this lesson please

click the like button and thank you so much for staying with me till now. See you soon

in another lesson bye-bye