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

• I understand what you’re saying, but…
• I see what you’re getting at, but…
• You’ve hit the nail on the head
• I couldn’t have said it better myself.
• I’m with you 100% on this one and here is why…
• We’re on the same page.

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

• So from the sound of it…
• Let me throw something out here.
• Hold on, can we back up a bit?
• Wait, can we rewind for a second?

Speaking Exercise 1:

Imagine you’re in a small meeting with two of your coworkers, James and Emily. You had to step out of the meeting for a couple minutes to take a call, so you missed some of their discussion and now they want to get your opinion before moving on. So they are going to jump from one topic to another quickly to bring you up to speed and get your opinions too. Now you have to say your entire response for each blank. Pick 1 phrase from the lesson to use in each of your responses. There could be multiple correct answers. It’s ok if you need to write out your answers first and read them the first couple times, but repeat the exercise until you can give responses without looking at your written answers.

• James: Welcome back. 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. We propose giving them another month before drawing the line because of the economic situation and because they’ve already paid some. What do you think?
• You:
• Emily: Sounds good. We also talked about how to deal with the request from Company A for daily, visual updates on how we’re progressing on their project. Do you think we should give them that many updates? I don’t think so… there’s a reason it’s not our normal policy.
• You:
• Emily: Thanks. And lastly, we talked about the two remaining options for the new project management system.
• James: Yeah, Emily likes the Example A software because it has a more comprehensive file storage system built into it. I prefer the Example B software because the interface is much more user friendly and it’s easier to drop comments on each other’s projects. Which do you prefer?
• You:

Speaking Exercise 2:

Record a voice message to give your response (the actual words you would say) in each of these situations. Use 1 of the phrases from the lesson in each of your responses. You should have 3 total voice messages when you’re finished.

Situation 1: You’re in a meeting with your creative team and they are brainstorming ideas for how to best communicate the enrollment process to potential customers visiting your website. They have only thought about text and graphic-based instructions so far and you want to suggest a completely different idea… a video showing how the process works.

You:

Situation 2: You’re in a meeting with some coworkers and you want to go back to share an idea about the billing process for customers, a topic that was discussed earlier in the meeting.

You:


Situation 3: You’re in a meeting and you coworker just said: “Our team has been working on this project with the Marketing department for several months, and we still can’t seem to get on the same page. I will send an email and wait over a week for a reply. Sometimes they actually reply quickly but never by email. Sometimes they send a text message which is ok, but sometimes I wait over a week for a reply. One time they sent a reply to an older personal email address (that I don’t check) and didn’t tell me. Another time they started using a new app for communication about all projects in their department and added me to the app, but didn’t tell me that they replied to my email there. Another time they told my friend in accounting to pass the message along to me.”

You:

Speaking Exercise 3:

After reading the Harvard Business Review article “Stop the Meeting Madness”, record a voice message summarizing the article and sharing 1-2 takeaways (things you can remember and use in the future) from the article.