There are many ways of greeting people, both formal and informal. The speaker’s task is to choose the appropriate one for the situation. It is also useful to know lots of different ones so as to not repeat yourself when you meet a number of people at the same time. As with any other aspect, you need to be careful about using informal expressions with people who you do not know well or whose rank or status is higher than yours.
General greetings (Formal)
- Hello!
- How are you?
- How are you doing?
- How is everything?
- How’s everything going?
- How have you been keeping?
- I trust that everything is well.
General greetings (Informal)
- Hi.
- What’s up?
- Good to see you.
- How are things (with you)?
- How’s it going?
- How’s life been treating you?
Greeting a person you haven’t seen for a long time (Formal)
- It has been a long time.
- It’s been too long.
- What have you been up to all these years?
- It’s always a pleasure to see you.
- How long has it been?
- I’m so happy to see you again.
Greeting a person you haven’t seen for a long time (Informal)
- How come I never see you?
- It’s been such a long time.
- Long time no see.
- Where have you been hiding?
- It’s been ages since we last met.
To teach and practice spoken English, we offer commonly used English Expressions for daily communication & dialogues We also provide pronunciation materials which help in the teaching and learning of a standard English pronunciation.We provide exercises to study or teach them, like mp3 audio downloads, printable worksheets and self-grading exercises.