Level: A2 to B1
Practising how to introduce yourself in English
“I have said my name and my job. Now what?”
Introducing yourself is the most rehearsed thirty seconds in anyone's second language, and it is usually the worst thirty seconds too. The reason is that it gets memorised, and memorised speech sounds different from spoken speech. Listeners cannot always say what is wrong, but they can hear that something is.
There is also a structural problem. Most people introduce themselves with facts, name, job, city, and facts do not invite a response. The other person now has to invent a question, and if they do not, the conversation stops before it started.
A better introduction ends on something the other person can pick up: what you are working on, what brought you here, what you are trying to get better at. It does not have to be impressive. It has to be catchable.
10 prompts for this topic
Work through these out loud. Reading them silently does almost nothing, which is the whole difficulty.
- 01Introduce yourself in fifteen seconds.
- 02Now do the same thing in one minute, without repeating any sentence from the first version.
- 03Introduce yourself to a new colleague on your first day.
- 04Introduce yourself at the start of a job interview.
- 05Introduce yourself to someone at a social event who you will probably never see again.
- 06Explain what you do to someone who knows nothing about your industry.
- 07Explain what you do to a child.
- 08Introduce yourself and end on a question.
- 09Describe what you are trying to get better at right now, and why.
- 10Introduce yourself the way a friend would introduce you.
Reading these is the easy half.
The prompts are free and they are all here. What they cannot do is answer back. Ten minutes, voice only, with someone who is practising too.
What it sounds like
One way this can go. Not a script to memorise, just proof that it is shorter and more ordinary than it feels beforehand.
Partner
So, tell me a bit about yourself.
You
I am Marisol. I work in logistics, mostly scheduling for a shipping company in Cebu. I have been there four years.
Partner
Four years is a while. Do you enjoy it?
You
More than I expected to. I took it as a temporary job and then discovered I am unreasonably good at fixing broken schedules. What about you, what do you do?
Partner
I teach maths to teenagers, which is mostly crowd control.
You
That sounds harder than shipping. At least containers do not argue.
Partner
Containers do not have phones either.
You
Now I feel much better about my job.
Phrases worth having ready
Say each one out loud a few times. The goal is that they arrive without being summoned, because under pressure nothing else will.
- “I am ..., I work in ...”
- The neutral opening. Nothing wrong with it, as long as you do not stop there.
- “I have been doing that for about ...”
- Adds shape without adding a whole story.
- “I took it as a temporary job and then...”
- Turns a fact into something the listener can ask about.
- “What about you?”
- Hands the conversation back, which is what most introductions forget to do.
- “Most people have not heard of it, it is basically...”
- Explains a niche job without sounding defensive.
- “The short version is...”
- Useful when you know you tend to over-explain.
- “I am originally from ..., but I have been in ... for ...”
- Handles the where-are-you-from question in one clean sentence.
- “Right now I am trying to get better at ...”
- Ends on something catchable, and is always true.
- “It is nice to finally meet you.”
- For a first call with someone you have only emailed.
- “Sorry, I did not catch your name.”
- Say it early. It gets much harder after two minutes.
Three things to stop doing
A memorised paragraph delivered at speed.
The same information, but stopping when the other person reacts.
Memorised speech has no pauses in the right places, and listeners hear that even when they cannot name it.
My name is X. I am Y years old. I live in Z. I have two sisters.
One or two of those, ending on something askable.
A list of facts gives the listener nothing to grab. An introduction should hand over a thread.
Waiting to be asked a question back.
What about you?
Two people both waiting to be asked is how a conversation dies thirty seconds in.
The first one is the hardest. It is also free.
Ten minutes, voice only, no camera. Your partner is practising too, which is the part that makes it bearable.