If first impressions really last, then students need to know how to meet people for the first time. However, what they often know even less about is what to do when they meet someone again. Meeting people for the first time and again covers every face-to-face conversation they will have in English, including those in every English class. This article therefore shows how to introduce and practise both. Photocopiable versions of many of the ideas here are available in the e-book Teaching Social English: Interactive Classroom Activities Second Edition, available at: https://www.usingenglish.com/e-books/social-english/. There are also related articles on this site on greetings, starting and ending conversations, small talk, and social English more generally.
What students need to know about meeting people
Different situations in which students might need to meet people and meet people again include:
- in class
- when studying abroad
- in reception
- in meeting rooms
- at trade fairs/ trade shows/ conferences
- bumping into people in the street, elevator, cafeteria, etc
- in transport and places for taking transport (airports, bus stops, etc)
- in places related to food and drink
- at places related to tourism
People they might need to meet include:
- colleagues (including bosses and subordinates)
- clients/ customers
- suppliers/ vendors
- other business partners
- (ex-)classmates and teachers
- friends and friends of friends
- relations (especially distant ones and by marriage)
- fellow attendees/ participants/ members
- fellow diners/ drinkers/ guests/ passengers
The first thing that students will need to know is how to start the conversation. Probably the most useful phrase for meeting the first time is “You must be…”. There will also be situations in which starting the conversation isn’t so easy and so they need to start with more indirect ways like “Is this seat free?”, “Is this the right place for…?” and “It’s really busy, isn’t it?” There may also be occasions for more direct phrases like “I should probably introduce myself” and “Can I introduce myself?” (although these are less common than some textbooks make it seem, and I’m not sure I’ve ever said either of those two phrases in normal life).
Starting conversations when you meet again is much easier, usually just being “Hi!”. In fact, after asking them to have realistic conversations with each other and roleplay meeting again, my prompt to get them speaking without any pausing is just to shout out “Hiiiiiii!”
After opening lines for meeting for the first time, students usually know phrases like “Nice to meet you”, but often aren’t familiar with the way it typically fits into an exchange in English, which is always after names, as in:
A: My name is Alex.
B: Nice to meet you, Alex. I’m Jane.
A: Nice to meet you, too, Jane. (Wh)…?
often shaking hands while saying “Nice to meet you”.
The order of this part of the conversation is so fixed in English that “Pleased to meet you” etc may come much later the conversation when someone finally gives their name with “Sorry, I forgot to introduce myself, I’m…” or “I’m… by the way”.
A nicer version of “Nice to meet you” is “(We’ve emailed many times but/ We’ve spoken on the phone but) it’s so nice to finally meet you (face to face)”. Students will also need to at least recognise other variations like “Pleased to meet you”, “Glad to meet you”, “Great to meet you”, “Delighted to meet you”, and perhaps “How do you do?” Similar to the other expressions, “How do you do?” is simply followed by basically the same phrase, namely “How do you do”.
Students who meet many native speakers in their social lives may also come across situations in which even “Nice to meet you” is too formal, in which case they might hear similar but much more casual exchanges like “How are you?”/ “How are you”, “What’s up?”/ “What’s up” and “Alright?”/ “Alright”.
If the other person forgets to give their name, they might need “And you are?”, as “What’s your name?” and “Who are you?” are very rude, and “Can I have your name?” is for more interactional conversations like checking in to a hotel, and so doesn’t really match meeting people.
If they have already met someone before, similar phrases to “Nice to meet you” include “Great to see you again”, “Long time no see” and “What a nice surprise!” However, these have to be more genuine than “Nice to meet you” (which doesn’t necessarily mean that), so students shouldn’t get into the habit of using “Nice to see you again” in every meeting people again situation. That means it might be worth putting students into roleplay situations where they can use more specific ones like “Wow! Is it really you? What brings you here?”
In some situations they will then need to say or respond to polite language in exchanges like:
- “Welcome to…” “Thanks. It’s a pleasure to be here”
- “Thanks for coming all this way” “It’s my pleasure. Thanks for inviting me/ Thanks for agreeing to meet me”
After or instead of that, the next stage is usually some friendly chitchat. There is another whole article on this site about small talk, but particularly useful small talk questions when meeting someone for the first time include:
- “Is this your first time here/ here in…/ in…?”
- “What do you do?”
- “What does your company/ department/ section/… do?”
- “Where are you based?”
When meeting again, the most common first small talk question is some kind of “How…?” question. “How are you?” is fine the second or third time that you meet, but usually only gets a short standard response like “I’m fine, thank you. And you?” When they know people better, students should usually use friendlier versions that are answered with more honesty and/ or detail like “How’s it going?”/ “How are you doing?”/ “How’s life?”/ “How are things?” Even better are more specific ones like “How was your weekend?”, “How has your week been?”, “How’s work?” and “How was your trip to…?” Particularly nice is mentioning something that they said before with expressions like “You said that you… How did it go?/ How was it?” Similar common small talk questions include “Did you have a nice…?” and “(Have you) been busy?”
Perhaps the best topic for both meeting for the first time and meeting again is travel, with “Did you have any trouble getting here?”/ “Did you have any problems finding us?”, “Have you come far?”, “How long as you here?”, “How was your flight/ journey/ trip?”, “Was the map that I sent okay?”, etc.
Weather is also said to be a good topic, especially in the UK, but students need to choose questions and comments carefully to not kill the conversation with terrible exchanges like “It’s a nice day” “Yes”. One good option is extreme comments with tag questions like “Beautiful weather/ Awful weather, isn’t it?” Another is questions about the weather which you don’t actually know the answer to like “How’s the weather outside now?” (because you haven’t been out for a while and the other person has) and “How’s the weather in your country now?”
Giving business cards doesn’t necessarily go in such a standard place at the beginning of the conversation as in some other cultures. In fact, it can be a smooth way to finish the conversation, with “I’d love to hear more about that, so why don’t I email you? Do you have a business card?” and “Please do. It would be great to hear from you. My email is here on my business card”.
Talking about future contact is perhaps the best tip at the end of conversations, as in:
- Are you going to…?
- I hope we have the chance to meet again (soon).
- I look forward to hearing from you.
- See you (there/ then)
A very useful phrase at the end is “It was nice to meet you”/ “It was nice meeting you”/ “Nice meeting you”. Meeting again versions include “It was great/ lovely/ so nice to see you again” and “It was really nice to catch up”. This is more generally useful than thanking the other person, but “Thanks again for…” and “Thanks, that was really…” is great after you receive some hospitality.
Being introduced to someone else can happen at any point in the conversation, but I tend to get students to do it as a smooth way of changing partner, with phrases like “Well, I’m really sorry, but I need to get back to my office to take part in a video conference, but can I introduce you to my colleague? This is…” and “If you are interested in that, you really should talk to my colleague…”
Some of the topics mentioned here such as when to exchange business cards include cultural differences. Other cultural differences worth mentioning include shaking hands, use of names, use of titles/ job titles, suitable small talk topics, and gift giving.
As well as teaching how to interact, you can also teach students how to prepare themselves for meeting particular people in the future, discussing tips such as researching sports teams that they might support and famous sights in that person’s country, region and/ or town. They should also be ready to explain their own job, company, town which the other person is visiting, etc.
Typical problems with meeting people
Probably the most typical mistake with the “Nice to meet you” exchange is getting the order wrong, especially saying “Nice to meet you” before names. This can be confusing, so I tend to drill the order above over and over, and correct them when they start with “Nice to meet you” “Nice to meet you” “I’m…”
Students also often mix up “Nice to meet you” with “Nice to see you (again)”, so I tend to impose the (slightly over-simplified) rule that “meet” means the first time and “see” means again.
Overusing “Nice to meet you” can also be seen as a mistake, because native speakers will say “Nice to meet you. It’s a pleasure to meet you. So nice to finally meet you” etc as they go around meeting a group of people, because otherwise it seems like you are not concentrating on meeting those people but instead thinking about something else.
Some of my students overuse formal expressions like “How do you do?” or even “It’s an honour to meet you”. I tell them that I’ve never used the latter and rarely choose to use the former, even though both are correct.
“How do you do?” obviously looks a lot like “How are you?” and so you might get exchanges like “How do you do?” “I’m fine, thanks. And you?” This even occasionally happens among native speakers, but again a simple rule that “How do you do?” means “Nice to meet you” and so gets the same response as in the question seems to be easy to remember and use.
With small talk, students often use “How are you?” in every situation. However, once they realise that the “I’m fine, thanks. And you?” response that they learnt at school is normal in response to that question, it should be clear that this question hardly counts as small talk. Dividing questions into “Good for meeting for the first time”, “Good for meeting again, e.g. colleagues” and “Good for both” is a good first step towards getting them to use more suitable questions.
If the actual small talk doesn’t go smoothly, that tends to be because of too short answers, not asking questions back, always asking the same question as you received back, getting stuck on one topic for too long, or randomly switching between topics. A good general rule is “Basic answer; add extra information, then ask a similar (but not the same) question back”. I often call this “the volleyball rule”, with receiving the ball, bouncing the ball and return the ball representing the answer, extra info, and then a different question back.
With introducing people, the most common mistake is saying “He is John”, which is a bit rude, even though “He is head of…” is fine after “This is John”.
How to present meeting people
As should be obvious from above, the biggest distinction is between meeting someone for the first time and meeting someone again. Identifying that is therefore a great initial activity, for example as they listen to the beginnings and endings of dialogues.
Identifying if people are meeting for the first time or again can also be made into a game. In the Meeting People Simplest Responses Game, the teacher gives each student two cards saying “1st time” and “Again” and they racing to raise the correct card as they hear “Pleased to meet you”, “Long time no see”, “John? It’s Alex. We met…”, etc. You can also add phrases which can be used in both like “How was your journey?”, in which case they raise both cards. After they write “1st” and “Again” on the worksheet and check their answers, they can play the same game in groups, and then try to remember the phrases that they were just saying and hearing.
To introduce smoothly putting a whole conversation together, you could cut up and mix up two jigsaw texts, one with people meeting for the first time and one with people meeting again, making sure that almost all lines are clearly from one situation or the other, and few if any lines can be used in both. Students divide the cards up and then put them in order to make two conversations. Each conversation should only have about 12 cards, so if you feel that would make the conversations unrealistically short, you might want to replace the body of the conversation with a big card just saying “Body of the… conversation”. You could also just do the beginning of both conversations, but that would mean missing out useful things like “It was nice meeting you”.
A much simpler and more realistic approach is simply to use this kind of language in the first class. This is easiest if no one has ever met each other. After introducing myself to one or more students with a conversation as similar to their real-life conversations as possible, I then usually elicit the conversation that we just had onto the board. Students then have similar conversations as they meet each other. I give feedback on those conversations, including contrasting it with meeting again. They then roleplay meeting again (say one week later) as they talk to everyone for a second time.
Basically the same approach works when the class is a mix of students who have and haven’t met each other. This is easiest if I have met some and not others, as I can then model both situations realistically before eliciting both onto the board. If I haven’t met anyone but they have met each other, I ask them to remember the conversation that I just had with them, then elicit a meeting again conversation, emphasizing the similarities and differences. In both situations, students then go around the class using the language which matches their situation with each other student.
After or instead of using and expanding on conversations with the teacher, you can get students to explain the most realistic present or future meeting people in English conversations to their partner, then roleplay that with them. This could start with a more general needs analysis interview in pairs, finishing with them choosing one typical example from lists of situations like those at the beginning of this article.
A much more involved presentation activity is Meeting People Cultural Differences and Useful Phrases. Students read descriptions of meeting people in one place with accompanying example phrases, such as “In the UK, you often shake hands while you say ‘Pleased to meet you’”. As they do so, they write the names of other countries such as their own which they know to be the same, leaving any which seem unique blank. After discussing as a class, they can then be tested on whether they can think of and/ or remember phrases to do those things in English.
How to practise meeting people
Once they have met their classmates, classroom practice of meeting for the first time will have to be roleplays, roleplays and more roleplays. Roleplays can be made more fun with the use of randomness, a dice, a coin, cards, a board, and/ or tricky situations.
Meeting people meeting criteria games
The most useful games are ones in which they try to perform well and listen carefully to how other people are doing. You can just get them to give each other points from 1 for “okay” to 5 for “perfect”. It’s generally better if they listen out for specific criteria like “smooth start”, “good use of names”, “smooth small talk” and “smooth ending”, with one point for each thing that they achieve. They can then get one roleplay card for each point, to have more choice next time, or move that many squares around a board.
Meeting people coin games
A coin can decide if:
- they are having a real conversation with their partner (heads) or pretend to be someone else (tails)
- they are meeting for the first time (heads) or meeting again (tails)
- they have arranged to meet (heads) or not (tails)
- they will exchange business cards (heads) or not (tails)
- the conversation will be formal (heads) or casual (tails)
- they have to choose one of the tricky situations on the worksheet (heads) or just have a basic conversation (tails)
Meeting people dice games
If you prepare up to six options, a dice can decide:
- which situation they are in (first time, second time, met many times before, after a long time, etc)
- who they are meeting
- where they are meeting
- small talk conversation topics
- how many conversation topics
- how long the conversation is
- reason for ending the conversation, etc.
If you have fewer than six options for any of those, one or more of the options can be “free choice”.
Choosing meeting people roleplays games
As well as the use of a dice and a coin above, roleplays can be chosen with cards (taken one by one at random or chosen from the options in their hands) or just by choosing numbers and then having to roleplay the situation next to that number in a big list.
Meeting people first lines practice
Students take a card, choose a number or roll a dice and have to start with the phrase which comes up such as “You must be…”, “Is this the right place for…?” or “Sorry, do you…?”
Meeting people problem roleplays
Interesting and challenging situations to roleplay include:
- one person not remembering the other
- the person who is there not being who you expected
- meeting again unexpectedly
- the conversation needing to be very short
- the conversation being quite long
- having run out of business cards
Meeting people mimes
Miming is a good way of tackling body language such as shaking hands and handing over business cards, but also just of making the language more memorable. Students could work together to think of suitable gestures for phrases like “Is this seat free?”, “Really humid, isn’t it?” and “Can I introduce my colleague?”, see if their partner can remember a suitable gesture when they read one out, then see if their partner can remember a suitable phrase when they make a gesture.
Meeting people disappearing text game
The beginning and endings of typical meeting people conversations are sufficiently fixed that it is well worth students memorising a model conversation or two. This can be turned into a game by putting a model dialogue into an A4 table with one word per box, and cutting up scraps of paper which can be put over each word/ box. Students take turns putting a card over one word and repeating the whole conversation, including all the covered words.
This is obviously easier with the use of technology, perhaps with students changing the script in each box to white instead of covering it.
Meeting people line by line brainstorming
Another good use of a model dialogue is for students to cover the whole thing and brainstorm line by line what might be said, each time only checking when they have discussed what is most likely to be said next each. This works best if each line also has a hint like “The host asks about the guest’s journey”, with students only looking at the hint after they guess the next line, brainstorming again if they had the wrong idea. You can then make a copy with just the hints for students to write suitable phrases for each function into. Especially if you will use this brainstorming into gaps afterwards, the initial oral line by line brainstorming can also work at the presentation stage.