Expressions for Catching Up With Someone

Lesson Transcript

Hi, everybody! My name is Alisha. In this lesson, we’re going to look at some expressions you can use for catching up with someone. We’re going to take a look at some questions and responses and we’re going to break down the different grammar points we’ll use in these situations and see how they work together.

So, let’s get started!

First, let’s take a look at this first set of questions. These are very common questions we use to start a catch-up conversation. So this is a conversation with a person you probably haven’t seen for some time. We typically use present perfect tense to start these conversations.

So, the first question we commonly use is:

“How have you been?”

So, this question means since the last time we saw each other in the past until now, what was your condition? So, this period of time in which we did not meet, we did not see each other, we did not contact each other, in that time, how were you or how were you from that point until now? So, we ask this “How have you been?” question generally at the beginning of a catch-up session.

To respond to that, we usually use “I’ve been [adjective].”

“I’ve been [adjective].”

Some very common ones are “good.”

“Ive been good.”

“I’ve been okay.”

“I’ve been all right.”

“I’ve been busy.”

“I’ve been tired.”

And one more - “I’ve been swamped.”

You might hear this one used too. Swamped means very, very busy and kind of overwhelmed. It’s too much. Generally, we just say “good,” good. And you’ll notice here, I have parenthesis around (I’ve been). Sometimes, we just respond to this question with the adjective.

“How have you been?”

“Good.”

“How have you been?”

“Okay.”

“How have you been?”

“Busy.”

And so on.

So you can use “I’ve been…” if you want to create a full sentence, but generally because it’s just quick and easy, we just say the adjective to respond.

“How have you been?”

“Good.”

Okay. Let’s look at the next present perfect question. Next is:

“What have you been up to?”

So, again, we’re using the present perfect tense in this question. That means, again, since the last point in time that we met to now, what were you doing? What were your activities? That’s what this question is asking, but in a very casual way.

“What have you been up to?”

At native speed, this sounds very fast. It sounds like “What have you been up to?” Or maybe even “What you’ve been up to?”

So, how do we respond to this question? To respond to this question, we use “I’ve been” [verb] + -ing ending here.

So, some examples of these are:

“I’ve been working.”

“I’ve been studying.”

“I’ve been hanging out.”

So this means nothing special, really. Just hanging out, spending time with my friends.\

“I’ve been hanging out.”

“I’ve been sitting at my computer.”

Or “I’ve been taking care of my kids.”

Or “I’ve been visiting family.”

So again, we’re using this present perfect grammar structure here. I’ve been -ing form. And yes, you’ll notice, this is present perfect continuous we’re using to respond to this.

“What have you been up to?”

“I’ve been -ing form.”

So, we use this -ing form to show that the action started in the past and has been continuing for some time. That’s why we’re using the continuous to respond to this question, as opposed to just basic present perfect tense, something else. So, this continuous form sounds very natural to reply.

“What have you been up to?”

“Ah, working.”

So, you can also just drop the “I’ve been” here too. It’s very natural to do that.

“What have you been up to?”

“Studying! Studying a lot!”

Or “What have you been up to?”

“Taking care of my kids. I’ve been so busy.”

And so on…

So, you can use these two together. It’s very natural to use these two together.

All right, let’s move on to the next one. The next question is a little bit more specific then.

So, “How has [noun phrase] been going?”

“How has [noun phrase] been going?”

In this sentence, the noun phrase is something you know about the other person, something they were working on, something they were struggling with, something they were interested in, something you remember about your past conversations with that person. You want to ask about an update with that.

So, for example, these are very, very common ones.

“How has work been going?”

“How has school been going?”

“How has business been going?”

And you’ll notice with these two, “How has work/How was school/How has business been going?” these are all kind of ongoing things and they’re also activities, right? So, we don’t use a person here, like we don’t say “How has your wife been going?” something like that. We don’t use that. We use activities, activities and things that we do on a daily basis here. So maybe there’s like a sport or a hobby or something like that the other person does, you could use that here, like “How has your photography class been going?” and so on. These three are probably the most common.

So, how do we respond to this question? We can respond, again with a very similar pattern.

“It’s been [adjective].”

This is almost the same as the first one here, but the key difference is we’re using “It’s” here, the subject - “It’s been [adjective].” Here, we said “I’ve been [adjective]” to talk about your condition. This uses “It’s been” to talk about this thing, the condition of this thing.

So, for example:

“How has work been going?”

“It’s been good!”

Or “It’s been the same.”

Or “It’s been crazy.”

Or “It’s been busy.”

“It’s been hard.”

“It’s been interesting.”

“It’s been weird.”

And “It’s been amazing.”

So, you can choose lots and lots of different adjectives here to give some information about the status, the recent status of that activity. So keep in mind, if you choose something like weird or hard or something like that, you should probably be prepared to explain a little bit more in detail about that. But generally, you can just use an adjective or you can use the full sentence, “It’s been busy.” “It’s been good.”

Okay, let’s look at our last question that uses present perfect tense. So, the last one is:

“Have you been [verbing]ing lately?”

So, this is another type of question you can use to ask about someone else’s activities. So, this question is different from this question because this one is a simple yes-or-no question. Have you been doing that thing I know that you used to do lately?

For example:

“Have you been working out lately?”

“Have you been cooking lately?”

“Have you been traveling lately?”

“Have you been working a lot lately?”

And so on…

So, you can use these little keypoints you remember from the last conversation and ask if they are still doing those things.

So, to respond to this, what should we say? This is a yes-or-no question, right? So we can respond with yes, a little bit, and no and the different spectrum. There’s a different group of- or rather, there are different types of answers we can use here.

So, “Have you been working out lately?” (for example)

“Yes, all the time!” All the time!

So, “all the time,” this is something that we use to mean “yes,” very often, very often, but all the time sounds more casual and more friendly than yes, often. Often sounds a little formal here.

Or you could say:

“Here and there.”

“Here and there,” which is a casual way to say sometimes. Same thing with now and then, now and then.

So, “Have you been traveling lately?”

“Ah, now and then.”

So, this means sometimes. Both of these mean sometimes.

Then, if you are not doing something very much, you can say “I haven’t been [verb]ing much lately.”

“I haven’t been [verb]ing much lately.”

So, “Have you been cooking lately?”

“Mm, I haven’t been cooking much lately, no.”

Or one more, “No, I stopped [verbing]ing at a past point in time.”

So, for example:

“Have you been working out lately?”

No, I stopped working out about 3 months ago. I got really busy.”

So, you can express that something stopped as well with this pattern.

“No, I stopped -ing [past point in time].”

Okay. So, these are generally some of the most common questions that we use to start these catch-up conversation and these are typically the responses that you can use. So they’re very quick and very short, right?

And then after you finish this thing, there’s your first opportunity for a “How about you?” question. So, you can go:

“How have you been?”

“Yeah, I’ve been good. How about you?”

“I’ve been good.”

And then continue on to the next part of the conversation.

So, after one of these, generally, this question is the first one that you can finish with “How about you?” You can follow that up with just asking the same question to the other person.

And then for more detailed follow-up question, we will change grammar point, so let’s get into this next. So, I have a couple of different groups, a couple of different categories of follow-up questions.

First, let’s take a look at follow-ups that use simple past tense.

So, the first one is “Did you [verb]?” or “Did you ever [verb]? So, this “ever” is useful when you know the other person had some plan. You knew about some plan they had like to change job, to move to another house, something like that and you want to ask if they did that thing. So, “Did you ever [verb]?”

For example:

“Did you ever move to a new house?”

Or “Did you ever change jobs?”

Or “Did you ever sell your car?”

So, this seems like “ever” also is typically used after a long time, like you haven’t seen someone for a very long time, maybe a year or more. You have a lot to talk about. If you saw the person like last month, it sounds too short, like that’s too short of a time period to use “ever.” We typically use this over a long period of time.

So, if you just want to ask if the person did something, just drop “ever” from the sentence. It’s still 100% correct.

So, “Did you move to a new house?”

Or “Did you change jobs?”

Or “Did you sell your car?”

That’s just a simple basic past tense structure and that’s totally fine to use. For more emphasis on the long period of time, include “ever” here.

So, simple past tense question, how do we respond to this?

We respond with “Yes, I [past tense verb].”

So, “Yes, I moved.”

Or “Yes, I changed jobs.”

Or “Yes, I sold my car.”

So that’s a very simple, straightforward, clear answer. “Yes, I did” in other words.

We can also say:

“Not yet...” “Not yet, I’m planning to.”

So this shows that although there is no change at this point in time, there will be a change in the future.

And finally, “No, I decided not to.”

“No, I decided not to.”

So, we still have this past tense in our response, “I decided not to.” So, this “not to” means I decided not to do this thing.

“I decided not to move to a new house.”

“I decided not to change jobs.”

And so on…

But we finish with this “to.” This is okay in casual conversations.

Okay, let’s take a look at one more simple past tense question then.

“When did you start [verb]ing?”

So, this is a simple past tense question - When did you start that new activity?

So, “When did you start working at your new job?”

“When did you start taking classes?”

“When did you start working out?”

So, we use this -ing form after the verb “start,” start. So, we’re connecting these two verbs together, start plus the other activity. “When did you start…?”

The answer for this is very simple:

“I started at [past point in time].”

“I started [past point in time].”

“I started last summer.”

“I started 2 weeks ago.”

“I started about a year ago.”

So, we can use a very, very simple past tense answer here and just put the point in time at which we started the activity there.

All right, let’s move on to the next kind of category, grammar category, which is present progressive or present continuous questions and responses.

So, when you want to move the conversation to the things that are happening now, you can use this question.

So, “What are you [verb]ing on now?”

“What are you [verb]ing on now?”

For example:

“What are you working on now?”

Or “What are you making now?”

“What are you doing now?”

We have this “on” here because we tend to use “working on” a lot in this question to mean generally, what kinds of projects or what kinds of activities. So, (on) is in parenthesis here. We don’t need to use it with making or doing though.

So, “What are you [verb]ing now?”

The answer also uses this same progressive form.

“I’m working on new software.”

Or “I’m making a website.”

Or “I’m taking language classes.”

So again, we’re using the progressive form to show that that activity is continuing. We’ve asked with the progressive form as well to show that we expect there’s a continuing action happening too. Okay, great!

So, finally, I want to take a look at this category at this question too.

“Are you (still) [verb]ing?”

This is extremely similar to this one that we talked about earlier, “Have you been [verb]ing lately?” So this is one that we use to talk about past activities or activities that started in the past and continued to the present. This one, “Are you still [verb]ing?” is asking, is that a present activity for you? And this “still” shows that you remember that was the other person’s activity in the past.

So, for example, if you know your friend really liked cooking, you might say to them, “Are you still cooking a lot?” which means today, at this point in time, is that an activity you are doing? Using “still” shows you remember that that was their favorite activity or something like that. So, “still” can help you to express that you remember something about the other person.

“Are you still cooking?”

“Are you still traveling a lot?”

“Are you still working a lot?”

And so on…

So, this question, actually, we can respond to it with the same answers that we practiced earlier.

“Yes, all the time.”

“Here and there.”

“Now and then.”

And other adverbs of frequency.

“Yeah, sometimes,” and so on.

So, this is very straightforward, easy yes-or-no question.

All right, let’s go to the last point for today’s lesson, future tense questions. So, when you’re catching up with someone, maybe you tend to start with the past, right? What did you do? What have you been doing? And so on. How is this? How is that? And then you talk about what’s coming up next, right?

So, how do you ask about someone’s future plans? Here’s a very general question you can use.

“What are you going to do next?”

So, we use “going to” here because we’re asking the other person about the plans they have already decided for themselves. We do not use “What will you do next?” We don’t use this because that doesn’t sound like a plan the other person made. We use “will,” those grammar points, when you’re not sure about something or when we just decided that thing.

So, if you ask this question, “What are you going to do next?” it’s going to prompt or they’re probably going to reply with their next planned activity.

For example:

“I’m going to start a new company.”

“I’m gonna start a new company.”

Or “I’m going to relax.”

“I’m going to relax.”

Or, if they’re not sure, you might get a response like this:

“I’m not sure yet… I’ll probably do some research.”

Here, you’ll notice, I’ve used “will,” I will. This is the reduced form of “I will.”

“I will probably do some research.”

We like to use “I will probably do” this and this and this when we’re not 100% sure, but we have an idea. I’ll probably do this.

So, we might see “will” used in response to this question when someone is not 100% sure about their activities. Okay, great!

So, we’ve covered a lot of different grammar points, but we use all of these together to catch up with someone. So, as I said, we typically start from the past. We catch up on the things we missed and then we talk about what’s happening now and then we talk about what they’re going to do in the future. So I hope that this lesson helps you to see how these different grammar points work together and helps you to understand some of the small key differences in the questions and in the responses that we look at in this lesson.

Thanks very much for watching this lesson and I will see you again soon. Bye!

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