Are you ready to practice speaking English today?

Let's do it.

Hey, what you up to this weekend?

Yes?

What'd you say?

If I asked you, what you up to this weekend?

Would you freeze and panic because you don't know how to respond to this question easily and naturally?

Never fear.

Today, I'm going to help you to naturally have a conversation about your weekend plans, which is a really common conversation topic.

Maybe you're leaving school or work on a Friday and someone asks you, hey, what you up to this and they ask you about your weekend plans instead of freezing and panicking.

Today, I want to help you learn the most important conversation question that you can use in these situations.

Also, some common vocabulary for talking about your weekend plans.

And then at the end of this lesson, we're going to practice a little exchange back and forth.

I hope that you can get your pronunciation and speaking muscles ready so you can really use what you've learned during today's lesson.

Are you ready to learn the most important conversation question of all time?

At least according to me.

Is that question, what's your name?

No.

Is that question, will you give me money?

No.

Is that question, do you love me?

No, no, no.

The most important conversation question is, there's actually two parts.

What about you?

How about you?

When someone asks you about your weekend plans and you say a little reply, I'm going hiking, I'm not doing much, there might be an incredibly awful, awkward pause.

What happens next?

Well, this is where the most important question comes in.

You can ask them, what about you?

How about you?

You can kind of imagine tossing a ball back and forth.

The other person has asked you a question.

What are you doing this weekend?

They throw you the ball.

Now you reply and you say, okay, I'm going hiking or I'm not doing much.

You need to throw or toss the ball back to that person.

And this question does that.

How about you?

It means you are asking the same question back to them.

What are you doing this weekend?

How about you?

So I want you to remember this wonderful question.

Either of them, actually, they have the exact same meaning.

How about you?

What about you?

Remember these questions because later when we practice this at the end of this lesson, during our conversation speaking time, remember these questions and use them.

All right, let's go some common vocabulary that you can use to talk about weekend plans.

Brunch.

Many Americans love brunch.

The word brunch is a combination of breakfast and lunch.

And that's because we usually eat this on the weekends, maybe a Saturday morning or a Sunday morning between 10 AM and 2 AM.

It's a time when you could eat either breakfast or lunch, and it's usually a long social event.

So you might go out to brunch with your friends or have your friends to your house to eat brunch.

My friends and I are meeting at our favorite brunch spot on Sunday.

Great.

It's a restaurant where you can eat breakfast type foods, usually with some kind of alcoholic drink like a mimosa or something with fruit in it, or maybe some champagne in the morning.

And you can eat this in the company of your friends.

Another common weekend word is social butterfly.

A social butterfly refers to someone who makes a lot of plans.

They are flying around to events, to another event, to another activity.

They're always doing things, usually involving lots of other people.

They are a social butterfly.

If you are a social butterfly, probably the year 2020 with lockdowns and all of these things were probably really difficult for you because you love to get together with other people and always be active.

So we can use this in a sentence like this.

My friend is a social butterfly.

She has invitations to three brunches and four afternoon teas.

Amazing.

What if you are not a social butterfly?

What if you are the opposite?

Are you a unsocial caterpillar?

It means you are a homebody.

Your body likes to stay at home.

I'm a homebody.

She's a homebody.

Someone who enjoys just doing things slowly and staying at home.

They feel most comfortable in a comfortable place at home.

You could say, my friend is a social butterfly, but I'm more of a homebody.

When I get together with friends, I would rather have dinner at my house and then play games here.

I think this is kind of true for me personally, as I get a little bit older, I prefer these kind of intimate group settings.

Instead of lots of people, I prefer just a couple of friends at home, maybe having a bonfire outside, roasting some food or some marshmallows and this kind of intimate setting.

I enjoy doing activities at home more often than when I was a little bit younger.

To stay in.

Unfortunately, that has been probably a lot of our weekend plans for the past year.

And it means that you're just to stay at home.

It doesn't mean you're going to do nothing.

It just means you're not going to go anywhere.

I'm going to stay in.

You might say, it's supposed to be cold and rainy this weekend, so I'm just going to stay in and read a book, or I'm just going to stay in and do some things around the house.

To binge watch.

This means that you watch a lot of movies or TV shows, usually back to back without stopping.

So several hours, maybe you watch four seasons of a TV show in one day.

This is binge watching.

You are watching a lot.

This expression comes from a term we usually use with alcohol, to binge drink.

This means that you drink a lot of alcohol at one time.

It's not a very healthy thing to do.

But when we say to binge drink, that has that same idea as you're doing a lot back to back.

Or you could binge watch TV.

So you might say, last weekend, my husband and I binge watched all of the Star Wars movies.

This isn't true.

When you have young children, you do not have time to binge watch TV.

But you might say this about your life.

I binge watched that new TV show that just came out.

Our final expression that you can use to talk about your weekend plans is to catch up on some chores.

This phrasal verb, to catch up on, is a beautiful phrasal verb that you can use to talk about some kind of necessary activity that you haven't done for a while, and now there's more and more and more, and you need to finish all of this.

So we can imagine laundry, dishes, sweeping, cleaning, maybe some home repairs, tidying up, maybe even yard work.

If you don't do those things for one week or two weeks, oh, there's so many you have to do.

So that means you need to catch up.

You need to do what you haven't done for a while.

You need to catch up on some chores.

And chores are just those activities that I mentioned, laundry, dishes, these necessary activities that involve cleaning up, helping to make your home a wonderful place to live.

So maybe this weekend, you just need to catch up on some chores.

You might say, I was so busy all week, and finally, I'm going to catch up on some chores this weekend.

Maybe not very fun, but when your house is clean, it feels good.

All right, now that we have some common vocabulary you can use to talk about your weekend plans, let's talk about some introduction questions that you might hear and that you can also ask other people.

These have varying levels of reductions and fast ways that you will hear them.

So I want to help you understand and recognize what other people are saying and also be able to use it.

So let's talk about our first question.

What are you up to this weekend?

What are you up to this weekend?

You might know the expression, what's up?

This just means, how are you?

So we're using that same word up to talk about, what are you doing this weekend?

What are you up to this weekend?

But do you think that we usually say it like this?

What are you up to this weekend?

So clear, so lovely.

No.

Instead, we're going to reduce this a little bit, and then we can reduce it a lot more.

Let's talk about that first one.

What are you up to?

What are you up to?

What are.

So here the word what and are, are creating a spoken contraction.

Usually when we write, we don't write this type of contraction.

It's only in spoken English, but oftentimes be verbs like are, is, will be contracted with a question word.

What are you up to this weekend?

What are.

What are you up to?

We can reduce this a little bit further.

What's up to?

What's up to?

What's up to this weekend?

There are a lot of reductions happening at the beginning.

What's up to?

So here we have, what are you being reduced to just watch?

The ch is you, and what are has just been smushed together.

And we can say, what's up to?

What's up to?

What's up to?

What's up to?

This is really fast.

If you say this slowly, what's up to?

It sounds really weird.

So we only use this in really fast English.

So if you're going to say this, it needs to be quickly and reduced and linked together.

Most likely you're going to hear this.

So I want to make sure that you can understand when someone says, hey, what's up to this weekend?

What's up to this weekend?

You can say, oh, Vanessa taught me that.

I know what that means.

What are you up to this weekend?

Yes.

So let's go on to our next expression where we're going to also reduce this a bit and help you to understand it.

What have you got going on this weekend?

What have you got going on this weekend?

These all mean the same thing.

What are you doing this weekend?

But you might hear this expression with the word got.

What have you got going on this weekend?

When you actually hear this, we don't say it that clearly.

What have you got going on this weekend?

Wouldn't that be nice though?

Instead, you're going to hear a reduction or a contraction of the first two words, just like we saw with the previous example, what've.

So what and have are going to be pushed together.

What have you got going on?

That final G in the word going is going to be cut off and we'll just say going.

So let's try to say that all together.

You want to try to say it with me?

What have you got going on?

What have you got going on this weekend?

What have you got going on this weekend?

Do you think we can reduce this further?

Oh yes.

What do you got going on this weekend?

What do you got?

Here at the beginning of what have you got is just really like you threw it in a mixing bowl, stirred it up and threw it out on a cookie tray.

Well, let's try to break it down so it's not quite so messy and complicated.

At the beginning, we have what have you got, but it sounds like what'da.

What'da.

This is what have.

What'da ya.

Ya is you.

What'da ya got going.

Again, we're going to drop that G at the end of the word going.

Going on.

What'da ya got going on?

What'da.

Notice what's happening at the end of the word what.

Do you hear a clear T?

What'da ya.

What'da ya.

Nope.

That T at the end of the word what is going to change to a D sound.

This is really typical of American English where a T that's surrounded by vowel sounds is going to change to a D.

It's called a flapped T and it just kind of rolls off your tongue in a smooth way.

What'da ya got going on?

Can you say it with me?

What'da ya got going on this weekend?

What'da ya got going on this weekend?

All right.

Let's go to our last question.