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Business English to improve your intonation

May 19th, 2012 | Posted by glenn in Business English - (0 Comments)

This video on whether tax incentives are effective in encouraging innovation is a good example of how people speak in a natural way when they are the only person speaking.  It is useful to listen to the rhythm with which the speaker speaks and which words they stress more than the others.

Intonation

Remember that English is a stress-timed language so if you put the stress on the important (information-bearing) words in the sentence, the rest of the words which are not so important are pushed together.  Think of the sentence:

I went to the park for lunch.

The information is in the words: went (action), park (place) and lunch (reason).   You can probably get my meaning if I just say went, park, lunch.

IWENT      titherPARK          faLUNCH

So we keep the beat:

One                  Two                   Three

IWENT      titherPARK          faLUNCH

Keep this in mind as you listen to the video again.  Then try to repeat the monologue back section by section.  If you think you can say it fluently, try it without the video, just reading the script.  This will help you to sound more like a native English speaker.  Give it a shot!

Business English: Do tax incentives really stimulate innovation?

There’s been a lot of work by economists, ah, looking at the effectiveness of Research and development tax credits and actually they are pretty effective.  This is one area, you know, where economists again, they kind of agree on the notion that, look, the private sector doing this is creating knowledge that can be used by competitors, can be used around the globe, there’s spill-over benefits so let’s give them an incentive.

But then a lot of economist have spent years actually looking at, well, does it work?  If you give them a dollar of credit, do you get more than a dollar of innovation?  The answer is yeah, it does work, it’s one of the tax incentives which has a good track record of performance, now countries around the world are really competing on this now coz I think another thing that’s really important here is that, and we know this, research is becoming much more of a global activity.  Countries want nothing more, as a government, than encouraging, ah, large researchers and large research establishments to come to their country.  It’s part of their soft power right?

So if you can convince Microsoft or Google or GM to come and do frontier research in China, that’s really good for China. So countries are using all kinds of tax incentives to do this, including tax holidays for several years, land grants, everything..

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Asking questions in English

January 21st, 2012 | Posted by glenn in Improving your English - (0 Comments)

Think about how boring your language would be if everyone spoke the same way.  If there were only one way of saying everything and if you didn’t say it that way, you were just plain wrong.  People would not be able to express their personalities and conversations would be a lot more boring.

So, we have a few different ways to ask for or check information.  Here  are a few of the different ways that you can ask questions in English.

1)      Inversion for asking Yes/No questions in English

Inversion means to swap the order of two things in a sentence.  To make a question, we often swap the subject and the auxiliary verb.  This makes a closed question so the answer is likely to be yes or no.

For example, I should go to the party becomes Should I go to the party? when you swap the subject (I) and the auxiliary (should).

If the sentence has no auxiliary such as I work hard, just add the correct form of “do”.  Do I work hard?

2)      Using question words to get the information you want

We use words like who, what, where, when, why, how, whose (+noun), which/what (+noun), how much/many (+noun) with inversion to create open questions.  Open questions are questions that ask for more information than just yes or no.

3)      Using intonation to ask questions in English

You can make just about any sentence into a question just by using the correct intonation.  Try saying, He is a doctor with standard intonation.  Now, try adding extra stress to doctor and raising the pitch at the end of the sentence and it becomes He is a DOCTOR? (sounds like he doesn’t look smart enough to be a doctor).

4)      Using tag questions to check information

We use tag questions to check information.  If I am meeting someone for the second time, I might casually say, Your name is Megan Fox, isn’t it?

To make a tag question, just add the inverse form of the auxiliary verb and the appropriate pronoun (he, she, it, they, etc).  The inverse form of the auxiliary means that if the auxiliary is positive, add the negative, but if it is negative, add the positive.  Don’t forget to use intonation on the tag to make it sound natural.

5)      What are rhetorical questions?

Rhetorical questions are questions that don’t need an answer.  When you stand in front of a large crowd and start your speech with,  Man is truly a remarkable creature. Have you ever seen a monkey programming a computer to fly a space rocket? You don’t actually expect anyone to say, Well, no, I haven’t.

A common example is, What do you think I am, stupid?  Best not to answer this question.  Ever.

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Business English: Chinese cars to enter European markets

January 8th, 2012 | Posted by glenn in Business English - (0 Comments)

 Because I am a car fan, here is a story about the car industry.  Listen to the sentences and fill in the missing words.  The missing words might be new to you but try to guess the word(s) and how to spell them.  This is very good practice to help you deal with new words.
http://www.euronews.net/2011/11/29/china-on-road-to-europe-with-new-car/

Listening practice

China’s Chery Quantam auto has _____1______  the design of its first car which it hopes will ______2_______  in Europe.

The model, Qoros, is the result of a _______3_______  between China’s biggest car manufacturer and investment firm Israel Corp.

The makers aim to ________4________  and export Chinese cars to Western Europe.

It will ________5__________  markets by late 2013.

 

The answers are listed below.

Sounding good

Now, use these sentences to practice your intonation. 

  •        Make sure that you say the words correctly and stress the words in the same place as the speaker does.  (pronunciation and word intonation)
  •        Try to stress the same words as the speaker in each sentence.  (sentence intonation)
  •        Try to break the speech in the same places as the speaker in the video does. 
  •        Now, try to match the speed of the speaker.

This is the best way to improve your speaking so don’t give up until you are happy with it and if you need some advice, contact one of our teachers.

  

Answers

  1.        unveiled
  2.        break new ground
  3.        joint venture
  4.        reverse a trend
  5.        hit European and Chinese

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Mastering the TOEFL iBT listening test

January 8th, 2012 | Posted by glenn in English Exams - (0 Comments)

Improving your listening skills will help your ability to have a fun and effective conversation but it is especially important if you plan to undertake the challenge of a listening test like the TOEFL iBT listening test.  The secret to improving your listening skills is active listening and comprehension.

Comprehension

Communication is the sharing of ideas between two people and this goes through three steps.  The first is identifying the sounds into units that you understand.  When you listen, you are hearing sounds and connecting these sounds with words that are already in your vocabulary.  This means that if a word is not in your vocabulary, it is much harder to identify. 

The second step is being able to catch the rhythm of the speech and, in English, the rhythm is created not only by the breaks in between words and parts of sentences but also by the stress that we put on words.  This tells us which parts of the sentence are really important and which parts are just there to satisfy grammatical rules. 

The breaks help us to create blocks of language that are easier to understand than a lot of individual words.  When you do a jigsaw puzzle, it is easier to imagine where the pieces go if you focus on one area (a corner for example) rather than just finding the piece that goes next to this one.

The third part of comprehension is attaching the connotations and context to the words.  When we hear a group of words we bring to our interpretation of those words our thoughts, opinions, feelings and culture.  The same group of words can mean different things to different people.  

Also we need to apply the words that we hear to the situation in order to completely understand it.  The words “it’s your shot” have a completely different meaning if you are standing in front of a pool table than if you are standing in front of a gun.

How this helps with TOEFL iBT listening

If you are studying well already, this should all confirm what you are already doing.  If you are listening to different accents and listening for new vocabulary when you practice, you are helping to build your comprehension. 

If you listen and imitate the rhythm that people use when they speak including the breaks and the stresses, this will help you think in blocks rather than words.

If you understand that words can mean different things and that we need to understand the situation (and sometimes detect what that situation is when there are no visual clues), this will help you to avoid costly misunderstandings that lead to confusion.

Remember, in the TOEFL iBT listening test, you will be listening to identify the situation as well as get the meaning of the words and if you can do this in blocks, it will be much easier for you.  For tips on listening sections for IELTS and TOEIC, click these links.

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Improving your pronunciation

September 12th, 2011 | Posted by glenn in Improving your English - (0 Comments)

Improving your English pronunciation is all about practice.  Most people practice by taking individual sounds that they have trouble with and practicing them in isolation (alone).  If you do this though, it is important to then practice them in real words and sentences.  Do not just do isolation practice or it will not help you to change your habit to the correct way of saying it.

Steps to improving your pronunciation in English

First , you need to find the sounds that give you problems.  Here is a list of the consonant sounds:

b (bad), d (done), f (find), g (give), h (hello), y (yellow), k (cat), l (little), m (man), n (no), ng (sing), p (pen), r (red), s (sun), sh (she), t (tea), ch (check), th (think), th (this), v (voice), w (wet), z (zoo), z (pleasure), j (jug)

Most errors in pronunciation just come from sounds that are different to your first language so the sounds that you have trouble with are probably the sounds that don’t exist in or are different in your mother tongue.If you are unsure about any of these sounds, get your teacher to go through them with you.  Pronunciation is best done with a teacher first.

If you are having trouble distinguishing between two sounds, we usually use what we call minimal pairs to practice the difference.  This is where you take two words and the only difference between the two words is the sound you want to practice.  So if you are having trouble with L and R for example, you would practice saying LIGHT and RIGHT.

Putting the sounds into words

Now that you have the individual sounds right, it is time to practice the words.  You can do this through listening.  Listening is the key to pronunciation but almost as important is practicing making the sounds for yourself.  So listen and note down words that you hear that are different to how you say them.  Take that list to your teacher each week and spend a couple of minutes practicing.  If you do this on a regular basis, you will improve very quickly.

Where’s the stress?

The last thing to note is intonation.  This is where you put the stress in a word.  Every word has one stress (sometimes they have a secondary but it is not as pronounced).  Listen to each word and try to get the stress in the right place but be careful because it often changes.  Look at these words and say them out loud:

  • Photograph
  • Photography
  • Photographer

The first word has the stress on the first syllable – PHO to graph.  The longer words have their stress on the second syllable – pho TOG rapher, pho TOG raphy.  It changes as the word length changes.

Listening for intonation in the word will help you to get that stress in the right place.

Remember, listening is the key, practice is important and the person who has the experience to help you to find the fastest way to change your habits is your native-English teacher.

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