STUDY WITH ME

Be my Homie: Join this channel to get access to perks

Daily English Vocabulary Email: Take your vocabulary to the next level with these daily vocabulary lessons in your email inbox

English With Tiffani App: Improve your English with my English App

Free English Newsletter: Receive English tips via email

Daily English Lessons Membership: Stop being stuck and finally go from the intermediate to the advanced English level with these daily English lessons

Speak English Like A Native Membership: Join this community and start speaking English more naturally

English Books & Resources: These resources will help you improve your vocabulary, sentence structures, interview skills, and much more.

---

7 Parts

PART 1: The Question

“How was your day?”

You might also hear it as: “Can you tell me about your day?”

PART 2: Two Responses

A. Learner Response

“My day was good. I woke up at seven o’clock. I went to work. I had meetings. I ate lunch. I went home. I ate dinner. I watched TV. Then I went to sleep. That’s all.”

B. Fluent Speaker Response

“Oh, it was actually a pretty good day! So, this morning was kind of rough. I overslept, so I was rushing around trying to get my daughter ready for school, and by the time I got to the office, I was totally frazzled.

Things got better in the afternoon, though. My coworker Aiko and I had back-to-back meetings, but instead of eating at our desks like we usually do, we grabbed lunch at this little ramen place near the river. It was a nice change of pace, and honestly, it was great to talk about something other than work for once. She told me she’s moving to Canada next year, which I totally didn’t see coming.

And then this evening, I just stayed home with my wife and daughter. We made curry together and watched a movie, and by like nine o’clock, I was wiped out, so I decided to call it a day. I felt really relaxed. So yeah, that was my day.”

PART 3: Why They’re Different

1. A Schedule vs. a Story

Kenji’s first answer sounds like he’s reading his calendar: seven o’clock, work, lunch, home. The fluent answer tells you what the day was actually like.

2. An Empty Day vs. a Full One

In the learner’s answer, nobody else is there. In the fluent answer, you meet his daughter, his coworker Aiko, and his wife. People make a day feel real.

3. Facts vs. Feelings

The learner says “good” once and never says how he felt again. The fluent answer goes up and down: frazzled in the morning, refreshed at lunch, relaxed at night. And Aiko moving to Canada gives the listener something to ask about.

PARTS 4 & 5: The Method Overview + Method Deep Dive

Intro

Look at those three differences again. What happened, who was there, and how it felt. That’s the whole secret, and it has a name: the Around the Clock Daily Life Method. Picture a clock. Your day moves around it in three parts: morning, afternoon, and evening. And in every part, you ask yourself the same three questions:

• What? What did you do?
• Who? Who were you with?
• How? How did you feel about it?

The Starting Point: The Question

Before you walk through your day, answer the question in one quick line. This tells the listener where your story is going.

Question: “How was your day?”

Kenji: “Oh, it was actually a pretty good day!”

Morning

Your morning sets the tone. It’s usually where the day’s first little problem or first good moment shows up, so it pulls the listener in right away.

Kenji: “So, this morning was kind of rough. I overslept, so I was rushing around trying to get my daughter ready for school, and by the time I got to the office, I was totally frazzled.”

• What: He overslept and rushed to get ready
• Who: His daughter
• How: Frazzled

Advanced Vocabulary: frazzled (adjective)

Definition: Stressed, worn out, and a little scattered because too many things are happening at once

Example: “Three calls, two emails, and a broken printer, and it wasn’t even ten o’clock. I was completely frazzled.”

Afternoon

The afternoon is the middle of your story. This is a great place for a change, something that surprised you, or a moment worth talking about.

Kenji: “Things got better in the afternoon, though. My coworker Aiko and I had back-to-back meetings, but instead of eating at our desks like we usually do, we grabbed lunch at this little ramen place near the river. It was a nice change of pace, and honestly, it was great to talk about something other than work for once. She told me she’s moving to Canada next year, which I totally didn’t see coming.”

• What: Meetings, then lunch at a ramen place
• Who: His coworker Aiko
• How: Refreshed, and surprised by her news

English Expression: a change of pace

Definition: Something different from your normal routine that feels refreshing

Example: “We usually cook at home, so going out for tacos last night was a nice change of pace.”

Evening

The evening is how your day ends. This is where you slow down, and where your answer starts coming in for a landing.

Kenji: “And then this evening, I just stayed home with my wife and daughter. We made curry together and watched a movie, and by like nine o’clock, I was wiped out, so I decided to call it a day. I felt really relaxed.”

• What: Made curry, watched a movie, went to bed early
• Who: His wife and daughter
• How: Relaxed

English Idiom: call it a day

Definition: To stop working or stop an activity because you’ve done enough for now (when you “call” something, you announce it officially, so you’re announcing that the day is done)

Example: “We’ve been painting since noon. Let’s call it a day and finish tomorrow.”

Wrap

Morning, afternoon, evening. What, who, how. Three parts, three questions each. And notice how Kenji finishes: “So yeah, that was my day.” He brings it right back to the question. That’s the Around the Clock Daily Life Method.

PART 6: Call to Action

The Around the Clock Daily Life Method is just one of six fluency methods I use to help you speak English with confidence. If you want to learn the other five and master every one of them, grab my Fluency Handbook. The link is right here on the screen and in the description below. Go get it, and let’s keep building your fluency together.

PART 7: Bonus Story Time

“The Woman Who Wrote Before the Sun Came Up”

Imagine your day is already full.

Every hour belongs to someone else.

Your job. Your boss. Your children.

Where would you find time for your dream?

This is a true story. And the woman in this story became one of the most celebrated writers in the world.

But I’m not going to tell you her name. Not yet.

She grew up in a small steel town in Ohio. Her father was a welder. Her mother cleaned other people’s homes.

They didn’t have much money. But they had stories. Folktales. Songs. Family stories told around the kitchen table.

And she fell in love with words.

That love followed her all the way to college. She studied literature at Howard University, then earned a master’s degree at Cornell. After that, she went back to Howard, this time as a teacher.

It was there that she met the man she would marry. Together, they had two sons.

But the marriage didn’t last. By 1964, it was over, and she was raising her two young boys on her own.

She needed a steady paycheck. So she took a job editing textbooks in Syracuse, New York. Two years later, she moved to New York City, where she became the first Black woman senior editor in the fiction department at Random House.

So picture her day.

Morning: two little boys to wake up, feed, and get to school.

Afternoon: a demanding office job, reading and fixing other people’s books.

Evening: dinner, homework, bedtime.

That kind of schedule would leave anyone frazzled.

But all day long, she was surrounded by books. And she kept noticing something missing. She had never read a book where a young Black girl was the center of the story. Not a background character. The center.

So she decided to write that book herself.

But when?

She tried writing at night. But after a full day of work and kids, she had nothing left. Most people would have looked at that schedule and called it a day. For good.

She didn’t.

She found the one part of the day nobody else wanted.

The quiet hours before sunrise.

She would get up at four or five in the morning, quietly, so she wouldn’t wake her boys.

She made a cup of coffee while it was still dark outside. And she sat there and waited, so she could, in her words, “watch the light come.”

And then she wrote.

For her, that quiet hour was a change of pace from everything else. No boss. No phone. No little voices calling her name. Just her, the coffee, and the words.

Day after day. Morning after morning.

She started that first book in 1965. It was published in 1970, when she was 39 years old.

And here’s my favorite part. She kept it so quiet that her own coworkers found out about her novel from a review in the New York Times.

She kept going. More early mornings. More books.

And one of those books won the Pulitzer Prize.

Then, in 1993, she won the Nobel Prize in Literature. The first Black woman in history to win it.

The single mom who wrote before the sun came up…

was Toni Morrison.

Toni Morrison passed away in 2019, at 88 years old. In 2023, the United States Postal Service put her face on a stamp.

She never had a perfect day. She never had extra time. She just took one small piece of her day, the piece nobody else wanted, and she used it. Again and again.

So what does this mean for you?

Maybe you think your day is too ordinary to talk about. Maybe you think, “Nothing happened. There’s nothing to say.”

That’s not true.

Your mornings. Your afternoons. Your evenings. The people in them. The way they made you feel. That’s a story.

And just like Toni Morrison, you don’t need a perfect day to begin. You just need to use the one you have.

So the next time someone asks, “How was your day?”

Don’t say, “Good.”

Tell them.