“Thank you all for coming. Wow, what a great turnout.”

You organized an event for people who want to practice giving speeches in English. A lot of people came to the event. Now you're going to welcome everyone and introduce the first speaker. This is the first thing you say.

Thank you all for coming. Wow, what a great turnout.

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Thank you all for coming.

You can say this at the beginning of a meeting, a business party, a wedding, etc. if you are the leader or organizer of the event.

what a (something)

What a ___" communicates the idea "That's really ___" or "You're really ___." Here are some examples:

If you have to throw away food that's still good, you can say:

What a waste, huh?

Here's something a woman can say when a man opens a door for her:

What a gentleman! Thank you very much.

If a lot of people show up to your event or party:

What a great turnout!

a (good/great/nice) turnout

The "turnout" to an event means the number of people that come to it. Here are some examples:

Are you coming tonight? We're expecting a decent turnout.

Voter turnout for the last election was the highest it's been since the mid-'60s.

You can use "turnout" to refer to the number of people who come to:

  • a conference
  • an election
  • a charity event

But you wouldn't talk about how many people came to work or to a regular class with the word "turnout". For things that happen regularly like that, you'd talk about "attendance" instead:

Attendance has been down for the past couple of weeks because of that flu that's been going around.