American English Imitation Exercise What did you do today
In this American English pronunciation exercise,
we’re going to study some conversation. Today
it’s going to be an imitation exercise, where
we listen to speech on a loop, like this:
today I woke up…[3x]
Today’s topic: what did you do today?
For imitation exercises, I loop a sentence
or a sentence fragment three times, then give
you time to repeat. It’s more important to
focus on imitating than what you’re saying.
By looping it three times, I hope you’ll hear
the speech in a different way: more as rhythm
and pitch than as words and sounds. In fact,
sometimes, you might want to repeat back only
the rhythm and the pitch, no text at all.
For example,
How are you? [3x]
Uhhh– instead of trying to say ‘how are you?’,
just going with the rhythm and the pitch.
Uhh. Other times, repeat the text. But don’t
worry about how you think the words should
be pronounced. Just think about what you’re
hearing, and reproducing it exactly.
Great. Let’s get started.
Tom, what did you do today?
Today? » Today.
Today I woke up…
…and I went for a run.
And, um, then I just worked.
So, where do you run?
I run in Fort Greene Park.
In Brooklyn.
0:02:30.790,0:02:27.159
That’s a nice park.
It is a nice park.
But, isn’t it really small?
It’s a very small park.
So, how, how do you run there?
Well, first of all, it’s on a hill,
Fort Greene is on a hill.
So, it’s very hilly terrain to run.
And you run around this dirt track around
the outside.
So you just run loops.
Right. And you do, like, 50 loops?
I do 50-100
depending on how I’m feeling.
Right.
So, what are you doing after this?
After this,
Nothing.
No plans.
Should we get dinner?
Yeah.
Where should we get dinner?
I don’t know, somewhere in the neighborhood.
There’s good stuff around here.
Ok.
I’ll find us something.
We’re in Chelsea.
right now.
We are in Chelsea.
But we’re really close to the Union Square
area.
Flatiron…
That’s true.
We have lots of options.
Rachel knows a lot about the Union Square
area.
I used to live there.
She used to live there, for?
Like, four years.
Four years.
Yeah.
There’s a Barnes and Noble there.
And a very strange sculpture.
On the side of a building…
that used to be a Circuit City.
Wait, what sculpture?
There’s a sculpture,
A round sculpture spews smoke.
Oh right, right.
Or steam.
So that used to be a Circuit City?
It did.
What is it now?
Is it a Best Buy?
I’m not quite sure why we’re talking about
this!
And now the whole conversation:
Tom, what did you do today?
Today?
Today.
Today I woke up and I went for a run.
And, um, then I just worked.
So, where do you run?
I run in Fort Greene Park, in Brooklyn.
That’s a nice park.
It is a nice park.
But, isn’t it really small?
It’s a very small park.
So, how, how do you run there?
Well, first of all, it’s on a hill, Fort
Greene is on a hill. So, it’s very hilly terrain
to run. And you run around this dirt track
around the outside.
So you just run loops.
Right. And you do, like, 50 loops?
I do 50-100 depending on how I’m feeling.
Right.
So, what are you doing after this?
After this, nothing.
No plans.
No plans.
Should we get dinner?
Yeah.
Where should we get dinner?
I don’t know, somewhere in the neighborhood.
There’s good stuff around here.
Ok.
I’ll find us something.
We’re in Chelsea right now.
We are in Chelsea. But we’re really close to
the Union Square area, Flatiron…
That’s true.
We have lots of options.
Rachel knows a lot about the Union Square
area.
I used to live there.
She used to live there, for?
Like, four years.
Four years.
Yeah.
There’s a Barnes and Noble there. And a
very strange sculpture on the side of a building
that used to be a Circuit City.
Wait, what sculpture?
There’s a sculpture, a round sculpture
that spews smoke
Oh right, right.
Or steam.
So that used to be a Circuit City?
It did.
What is it now?
Is it a Best Buy? I’m not quite sure
why we’re talking about this!
That’s it, and thanks so much
for using Rachel’s English.