Shadowing Exercise 1:

Listen to each statement from an American English speaker. Then try to repeat each phrase to practice talking like a native English speaker.

Shadowing Exercise Transcript

• …and that’s a major plus!
• They’re in a league of their own.
• Which company has the greatest ability to deliver?
• And that’s a big downside.
• We have to think about the feasibility of that idea.
• There’s no substitute for that.

Shadowing Exercise 2:

Listen to each statement from an American English speaker. Then try to repeat each phrase to practice talking like a native English speaker.

Shadowing Exercise Transcript

• Let me mull that over for a minute.
• I’m going to let that thought simmer for a bit.
• I’m coming around to the idea, but…
• We could go either way on this.
• I can see advantages to both sides.
• I’m afraid I’m not quite clear what you mean by…
• I’m getting the idea that you think… but what I mean is…

Speaking Exercise 1:

Speaking Exercise Transcript

• James: Welcome back!
• You:
• James: No worries. Emily and I started discussing several different topics so let’s run back through them real quick. First, we talked about how to handle the delayed payment from Example Industries on their project. She proposed we give them another month before drawing a line because the economic situation and because they’ve already paid some. I was thinking that after two months they’ve had plenty of time already and that we should draw the line now and tell them we can’t move forward on their project any longer until we get payment in full. What do you think?
• You:
• James: Sure. Yeah if you’re just learning about it, it makes sense to think about it a little more.
• Emily: We, also, talked about how to deal with the request from company A for frequent visual updates on how we’re progressing on their project. Do you think we should give them that many updates? It’s not our normal policy, but they’re paying a lot.
• You:
• Emily: Of course. They are requesting that we send them daily emails with pictures of every graphic we worked on that day. It seems unnecessary to me. It feels like they don’t trust us to work hard on it every day. I think we should find a middle ground of sending them some things more frequently than a normal client, but not every single graphic every day.
• You:

Speaking Exercise 2:

After reading the article “How to be Emotionally Intelligent”, record a voice message (and send to me in Whatsapp) telling me which 3 qualities from the article seem most helpful to you during a meeting and why. (You don’t have to think about only leaders in the meeting… pick the top 3 qualities that would be valuable to any one in a work meeting.)