Fluency Practice

AUDIO Fluency Practice

Here are six quick activities for you to improve your pronunciation and fluency. Answer the questions as quickly as possible, and try not to think too much. Later, you can check your answers. You need to study the phrasal verbs and idioms before attempting these exercises. Answers on page 38

A: Tongue Twister Try repeating this ten times as quickly as you can. “The sixth sick Sheik’s sixth sheep is sick.”

B: Pronunciation: connected speech, fish idioms Listen to these sentences and see if you can write down the words that you hear. Remember, some words are weak sounds and are unstressed, and as a result they are very difficult to hear. 1. ______________________________________________ 2. ______________________________________________ 3. ______________________________________________ 4. ______________________________________________ 5. ______________________________________________ 6. ______________________________________________

C: Rapid response – Football Answer these questions as quickly as you can. Try not to think too much and just invent the answers if you need to. 1. What football team do you support? 2. Have you ever been to see a football game? Where? When? 3. Who is your favourite player? 4. Who did you want to win the last World Cup? Why?

D: Sentence transformation – Football Listen to these sentences and try to make a question for each one. Do it as quickly as you can. Use the question words in brackets ( ). 1. About six months ago in an office team. (When) __________________________________________? 2. Yeah, I used to play with my friends in the park. (Did / use) ________________________________________? 3. Manchester United. I can’t stand them. (Which) __________________________________________? 4. Liverpool. I’ve been supporting them since I was a kid. (Which / support) __________________________________?

E: Phrasal Verbs with “take” Listen to each sentence then repeat it with an appropriate phrasal verb. You should try to be as quick as possible. 1. He is the same as his father. 2. Apologise for that. 3. That reminds me of my time in Africa. 4. They wrote down what he said. 5. I’m going to have a two-day holiday from work. 6. The plane left the ground and went into the air at 6 pm.

F: Revision Drills – prepositions of time This drill is designed to practise using prepositions of time (in, during, at, by, on, for, from, since, etc). Listen to the list of words (1 to 20), and say the correct preposition. 1. May ___in ___________ 2. The 1970s ___________ 3. The exam ___________ 4. Christmas Day _______ 5. Three weeks _________ 6. Saturdays ___________ 7. The future___________ 8. Wednesday _________ 9. Monday ____________ 10. Valentine’s Day _______ 11. The holidays _________ 12. July ________________ 13. Ten minutes _________ 14. The moment ________ 15. 7 o’clock ____________ 16. The summer _________ 17. Bedtime ____________ 18. Fifteen days _________ 19. Three years __________ 20. 2001 _______________