Of course, memorising passages as in the examples above (e.g. 1 1.3 or 1 1.8) and practising them alone, perhaps in front of the mirror, is great as well. It is even more useful, however, to be able to speak without a script, off-the-cuff1. This is also known as ad-libbing2, and it is a very useful skill in a lot of situations. Therefore, it is definitely worth practicing. Talking to other people in English – your classmates, siblings, parents, cousins, etc. – is just as important. Nonetheless, don’t forget about that one person who always understands you, who will always be there for you, in all circumstances, no matter what: You yourself. Faking a phone call Of all the possible places to talk to yourself, a busy street is clearly the worst option, right? Everyone will think you are crazy. They won’t, however, if you are holding your phone to your ear and making it look and sound as though you are in the middle of an important conversation. ■■ Read the Key Aspects section above (1 5.1). Translate unknown words and learn how to pronounce them (1 5.4). Look up concepts you do not understand. ■■ Walk down a busy street, holding your phone to your ear. ■■ Pretend you’re talking to a fictional business partner – in English, of course. The two of you are discussing two weighty questions: 1 How should you explain to your customer that promotional activities are crucial to any business, but can only be efficient once the other three P’s have been taken care of? 2 Should you advise your customer to focus on short-term or long-term advertising effects? ■■ Give your imaginary business partner time to answer. Then react to his imaginary answers, using some of the phrases above to agree (1 4.11) and disagree (1 2.7, 1 2.8). After a particularly long statement on your part, use one of the phrases from section 1 3.13. ■■ If you are not comfortable doing this exercise in public, do it at home. It’s fun to try it downtown, though. Methods & strategies: How to improve your pronunciation Sound like the real deal If your pronunciation is already excellent, you will not have to do the following exercises. However, it usually doesn’t hurt to get some extra practice in this area. The first and most important step to improve is to focus on your pronunciation and possible deficiencies – to become aware of the way you say sounds, words, and sentences. The second step is to listen to the way they should be pronounced and imitate this pronunciation. That’s it. To listen to native speakers pronouncing words and sounds, the best place to go to is a good online dictionary. Some of them, e.g. the Cambridge Dictionary (dictionary.cambridge.org) or the Oxford Learner’s Dictionaries (www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com), have two audio recordings of most words, a British and an American version. Merriam-Webster (www.m-w.com) only offers the American variety. Amazingly, they are all free. Use them as often as possible. Simply click on the loudspeaker icon to listen to a word and then repeat it. Do this at least three to five times for every word you are trying to learn. When it comes to pronunciation, there is often room for improvement at different levels. To do [A] [E] 5.3 How-to [K] 5.4 JUST FOR FUN Why did the ghost’s marketing campaign fail? You could see right through it. 1 off-the-cuff: aus dem Stegreif 2 to ad-lib: improvisieren 48 Key aspects Strategies Sample task 5 Marketing & advertising Nur zu Prüfzwecken – Eigentum des Verlags öbv
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