It’s been a while… (Starting a conversation with an old friend)

People often ask teachers to learn phrases that they can use to chat informally with friends. One thing that we all need from time to time is the language for starting a conversation with a friend that we haven’t seen for a while.

The following are all used as friendly, informal questions between friends who have just met again, having not seen each other recently:

How are you doing? / How’s it going? / How are things (with you)? / How have you been?

– The positive reply is usually Good, thanks, often followed by a similar question. In the UK people may say Yeah, good, thanks, and in the US people may say Real good, thanks.

If the two people haven’t seen each other for a long time, one of them often mentions this next. They say I haven’t seen you for ages, I feel I haven’t seen you for ages, or It seems like ages since I last saw you. The friend might reply Yes, it’s been a while.

A natural next step is to show interest by asking What have you been doing recently?

A more informal question with the same meaning is So what have you been up to recently?

So what have you been up to recently?

Not much, actually. I’ve been too busy studying.

– The person replying often asks the same question, sometimes with the shorter, How about you?

It is natural to follow this with a question about that situation:

So how’s the course/job going? / So is the course/job going well?

– Another question for asking about a particular situation is How are things at…?:

So how are things at home/ work? How are your parents?

By now, the two friends have caught up (=heard each other’s news) and they may move on to other subjects.

SOURCE Cambridge Dictionary

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