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INTRODUCTION

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Talk business

The aim of this Talk business section is to make you morę aware of some of the main features of English pronunciation. This will help you understand spoken English morę easily. Hopefully, it will also help you discover areas you may need to work on for your spoken English to sound morę natural.

Consonants
1 Contrastingvoicetess and voiced	consonants
Voiceless	Voiced
/p/ pay	/b/ buy
/f/ file	/v/ value
/t/ tax	/cl/ deal
W think	/ó/ this
/tj/ cheap	/d3/job
/s/ sell	/z/ zero
/k/ card	/g/ gain
/J/ option	73/ decision

■<») 1 Look, listen and repeat.

Vowel sounds	Diphthongs
/i/ quickfix	/ei/ playsafe
/i:/ clean sheet	/ai/ myprice
Id sell well	/oi/ choice oil
/<s! bad bank	/au/ downtown
/a:/ smart card	hi)/ go slow
/d/ top job	hd nearhere
hj shortcourse /u/ good books /u:/ school rules /a/ much luck /3:/ firstterm h! a'bout 'Canada	/es/ fair share

2 Other consonants
/m/ minę	/n/ net	h)/ branding
71/ loss	7r/ rise	/w/ win

/h/ high 1)1 year

Tips

•    Identify the sounds that you have difficulty recognising or producing and focus mainly on these.

•    Add your own key words in the tables above for the sounds you wish to focus on.

•    Using the pause button on your CD player will give you time to spenk or wrlte wlion you do the exercises.

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TALK BUSINESS

Any notmI tlit il. .11,11 v forloy glves you useful 'Information on the pronunciation of individual wiiiils Willi iii.' help of the Longman Business English Dictionaryorthe Longman tWi/.hwu. Dii Honory, lor example, you will be able to work out the pronunciation of any I nnlh.ll word mi yom own once you are familiar with the phonetic symbols above.

In nddlflon, the didionary also gives you essential inforination about word stress. Whcn ,t word h,u. morę than one syllable, we always put morę stress on one of the syllables, i.i•., we speak that syllable morę strongly. Look at the dictionary entry for compete:

com-pete /kom'pi:t/y[l]to try to win something orto be morę successful than someone else:

•    The ' sign shows you that the syllable immediately after it should be stressed: comPETE. You will find various exercises on word stress in Units 4, 8,11 and 12.

•    The: sign shows you that the vowel is long. The contrast between long and short vowels is very important for mutual understanding. In Unit 1, for example, you will find an exercise on /[/ and /i:/.

in English,

a)    the same sound can be spelt in different ways,

b)    the same letters can be pronounced in different ways.

a)    Consider for example/oo/, the sound of go slow. It can be spelt o as in open,

oa as in loan, oe as in toe, ough as in although, ow as in know, or eou as in Seoul.

b)    Take the letter u for instance. It can be pronounced IrJ as in cut, /u/ as in fuli, hJ as in tum, /o:/ as in surę, /jur/ as in tune, or/i/ as in busy.

Put the following words under the correct sound in the table below (the letters in bold show the sound).

break	Europę	insurance	advice	train
buyer	friendship	knowledge	said	want
chair	heart	laugh	scientific	their
conscious		million		height

TALK BUSINESS

Sound-spelling relationships are explored in Unit 8, for example.

Shadowing is a very effective way to make the most of the recorded materiał.

1    Play a short section, i.e. a few words or one linę of a dialogue, then pause.

2    Without speaking, repeat internally what you heard.

3    Play the same section again. Pause and speak the words in exactly the same way and at the same speed. Repeat this step until you are completely satisfied with your performance.

4    Play the same section again and speak along with the voice on the recording. This is shadowing.

5    Move on to the next short section of the recording and repeat the same procedurę.