Boost Your English Listening | Daily Fluency Podcast

Hello and welcome to another shadowing practice video with me, Claire, a native speaker from the U.S. I'm also a trained opera singer, so I've studied the International Phonetic Alphabet, or IPA, so I've studied the correct pronunciation of sounds in multiple languages. In this video, we're going to practice shadowing with a professional business presentation. Even if English is not your native language, you may need to use English at work or even give presentations in English if you work for an international or U.S. company. You want to be understood, so even though you don't need to sound just like a native speaker, pronunciation and intonation are crucial. And, of course, knowing some key phrases or common business English terms are also important to build confidence and overall fluency at work. So I'll first read through the presentation at a natural pace, then we'll go through some of the key phrases and, of course, pronunciation tips. Finally, we'll shadow it together so you can sound more natural and confident at work. Let's go. Good morning, everyone. Thanks for being here today. I want to walk you through our latest project and what the next steps are. As you know, our team has been working on optimizing the user experience on our website. Over the past month, we've run several tests and gathered valuable feedback from our customers. One key improvement is our new checkout process. We've reduced the number of steps from five to three, which has already increased conversions by 20%. Looking ahead, we're planning to roll out these updates globally by next quarter. That means we need to finalize testing and prepare our teams for the launch. If you have any questions, feel free to reach out, and I'd be happy to discuss this further. Thanks again for your time. All right. So that was the initial read-through at a normal speaking pace. Let's go through it slowly together. So we'll take the first section. Good morning, everyone. Thanks for being here today. Thanks for being here today. That whole phrase can really be connected. So individually, we, of course, have the pronunciation of words like for, being, and today. But in natural, quick speech, we, in American English, tend to close down some of the vowels or turn these vowels into the schwa sound. So the schwa sound is the uh sound, like in the word banana. There's two schwas in banana. And that happens in today. Today. Not today, but today. Today. So very rapid speech, those vowels get dropped or, you know, changed into this schwa sound. And for becomes for in rapid speech. Thanks for. Thanks for being here today. For the words that end in ing, we don't need to completely drop the g every time so that it's thanks for being here today. That might come with certain dialects. But what we want to do is connect the ing sounds to the next word, like with this connected speech. Being here. Being here. Otherwise, we have being here. And many native speakers don't speak like that. We don't have to separate each word, but have this really connected speech, which often then modifies the vowels like for, today, or you can allied sounds at the ends of words that squish on to the following word. So shadowing practice is really helpful for learning full phrases that you might use. And this is a really common one. Thanks for being here today. Because if you start a business presentation, that's a really polite way to start the meeting. Okay, let's keep going. I want to walk you through our latest project and what the next steps are. So again, I wanna. That isn't just reserved for casual speech. You could be giving a business presentation and instead of saying want to, say wanna. And most native speakers speak like that all the time. I want to walk you through our latest project. So that's completely acceptable. Now, walk you through. Walk through is a phrasal verb, which means to explain something step by step. And this is a great one to know for business English. I wanna walk you through our latest project and what the next steps are. Okay, moving on. As you know, our team has been working on optimizing the user experience on our website. Now, really important, when you have a comma, you always want to pause. Don't just plow through the commas. As you know, our team has been working, right? It implies a pause there. As you know, and then further. And you'll notice that my intonation goes up a little bit when there's a phrase with a comma. And there's more phrases like this to come, and I'll point them out as well. As you know, our team has been working on optimizing the user experience on our website. So every time you have a comma, you can imagine the intonation going up at the, once you get to the end of the comma phrase. And then for the next phrase that ends in a period, the intonation goes back down. It happens again in the next sentence. Over the past month, pause, we've run several tests and gathered valuable feedback from our customers. Intonation goes down right before the period, and it goes up right before the comma. And this makes it really clear the structure of your sentence. So even though we can't see what you're saying when you're giving a presentation, we understand the structure of the sentence because of your intonation. So even if you don't pronounce all of the words exactly like me, intonation is really, really important for this, for being understood. Now in the previous sentence, we had a word ending in ing with the same concept of aligning with the word after it. Our team has been working on, working on. So we don't need to drop the G completely, working on, but we do align the sounds. Just, it's a little bit softer than working, working on. That helps with giving it a flow as well. Our team has been working on, our team has been working on. So it all kind of flows together. Okay, next section. One key improvement is our new checkout process. I want to point out the word key here, which I think I've used quite a lot in this video already. And key as an adjective means important or major. So one important improvement is this, one key improvement, a word that we use a lot in business English. We've reduced the number of steps from five to three. Again, my intonation just went up because there was a comma. So there's more to come. I'm not done with my sentence, which has already increased conversions by 20%. And then my intonation goes back down. Again, we have the linking of the words, which is already, which is already increased. And this happens a lot with the word has. If we are speaking in the present perfect, has increased, which is, which is already, which has. So because which ends with the CH sound, we can align that with the beginning H of has, which is, and has the vowel modifies to is. It's more of a clipped vowel modification due to rapid speech. Again, so which is already increased conversions by 20%. It's kind of like when we have contractions anyway, like we've reduced. We don't always have to say we have reduced. We don't tend to write out these contractions that we would say in rapid speech, like, which is increased, but we do speak like that. So the same principle, we've reduced, that's all squished together with this contraction. There is an unwritten contraction for which is increased. Looking ahead, we're planning to roll out these updates globally by next quarter. Looking ahead, that is connected speech as well. Looking ahead, and we pause after the comma, we're planning to roll out these updates. Roll out means to introduce something new and is often used in a business context. That means we need to finalize testing and prepare our teams for the launch. So again, in American English, a lot of the smaller words, the vowels are dropped or modified. We need to finalize, to finalize, prepare our teams. Often the word our can sound like our in rapid speech, prepare our teams. That's also very connected for the launch. So for instead of for. Again, those aren't really necessary for being understood, but that's for those of you who would like to work on the American app. And the word here, launch, means the beginning of something, usually a campaign or a product in the marketing world. If you have any questions, feel free to reach out, and I'd be happy to discuss this further. Thanks again for your time. So we have the phrase, feel free to, feel free to, feel free to reach out, feel free to contact me, feel free to write me an email. And it's a casual way to say, don't hesitate to do something. So if you wanted to be more formal, you could say, don't hesitate to reach out. But feel free is a nice phrase to have. And right at the end, another great business phrase we have, thanks for your time. And that's used to acknowledge people's time. And it's a polite business phrase to use at either the beginning or the end of a meeting or presentation. Okay. So a lot of what we covered in today's was the concept of connected speech and maybe learning phrases, not as individual words, but together in a phrase where you can connect the speech to sound a little more natural and fluent. We also talked about linking the ends of words with the beginning of the next word. Like we do this very often for words that end in I N G. Or if the sounds are similar at the beginning, at the end and the beginning of the next word, like which and has, which is. And we also covered a few business phrases and phrasal verbs that are really useful to know, especially when speaking. So now let's shadow the full presentation together. Try to match my rhythm and intonation, word stress, as well as pronunciation as best you can. If you want, you can pause the video after each section or sentence and repeat after me. Or better yet, say the words with me at the same time and try and shadow how I say it. Or maybe both work well. First repeat after me and then afterwards try and shadow with me. Good morning, everyone. Thanks for being here today. I want to walk you through our latest project and what the next steps are. As you know, our team has been working on optimizing the user experience on our website. Over the past month, we've run several tests and gathered valuable feedback from our customers. One key improvement is our new checkout process. We've reduced the number of steps from five to three, which has already increased conversions by 20%. Looking ahead, we're planning to roll out these updates globally by next quarter. That means we need to finalize testing and prepare our teams for the launch. If you have any questions, feel free to reach out and I'd be happy to discuss this further. Thanks again for your time. I hope this video was helpful. And even if your goal is not to perfect the American accent or try and change your own accent, it's still really important to practice the correct stress of a word or the stressed word within a sentence or the intonation of that sentence so that the structure is clear. All of these things are really important for being understood. So take what you want from the video and leave what you don't. But hopefully you learned something new and it was helpful. Of course, if you did think so, give it a like and subscribe to my channel if you want more videos like this. I have a playlist for shadowing videos and I'll be in your feeds with another video next week. So bye for now.