A peek into the online dedicated training space Sarah uses with clients
I chose the number “seven” because I’m big on the idea of daily when it comes to working with international speakers of English on their English pronunciation/accent modification skills. I tend to hear the most progress when I listen to my clients who have actively practiced for 15-20 minutes everyday. I base my materials and curriculum on this principal: Better results from daily practice.
You can see this in the screenshot above or to the right (depends on what device you’re using). Well, ok, there aren’t 7 days of practice pages included here. Instead, there are five for a five-day work week. We could add the two newslettery nudge-like reminder emails that I send out weekly. These bring up the count to seven days. Daily practice. That’s what’s key.
Below are 7 practice topics. Go ahead and bookmark this page. Commit to practicing one topic per day. This is a good start to developing a daily speak-practice routine. Talk, record, reflect. The more you make this a part of your daily routine, the more you’ll pay attention to how you and others convey their messages in English.
7 Practice Topics:
- Is there a speaker of English (native or non-native) that you would like to sound like? This could be a colleague, movie star, professor, mentor, etc. What do you like about his or her voice and way of speaking in English?
- How do you prefer to communicate at work? Face-to-face, virtual medium (e.g., videoconference, Slack, Google Hangouts), phone, text, Facebook, etc. Does it matter whether you are speaking in English or your native language?
- Explain what you think a computer might be able to do in the next five years.
- What would you say in this situation to be assertive yet polite? You are at a restaurant and your waiter brought you a coffee that doesn’t taste right. Ask him to take it back and bring you another.
- What was the last movie you saw? Did you like it? Why or why not?
- Some people to prefer to work at home, others in an office. Which do you prefer?
- Explain an everyday process step by step. E.g., How to make coffee, How to organize a presentation, etc…
Interested in receiving topics and more detailed speech-tips/guidance in your email inbox every week? Simply click HERE to sign-up.
