Additional Activities

You can use the Shadowing activity explained in the previous part to practice Prominence, too. Explore the adapted activity below.

Step 1

Learn about the powerful shadowing technique through this video:

Step 2

Find a TED Talk or Newsy report you find interesting.

Step 3

Shadow the speaker in terms of one or two of the following that are hardest for you (only one or two because you can’t focus on everything at one time!):

• Pausing (a.k.a., “thought grouping”)
• The specific words the speaker stresses via pronouncing their stressed vowel longer than the average stressed vowel (FYI: By default, English speakers add focus to the last content word of a phrase, i.e., the part of the phrase where new information is usually located. However, this can change if speakers add emphasis focus somewhere else in the phrase.)
• Intonation (rising, falling or fall-rise)
• Words the speaker connects together (e.g., “want to” → “wanna”)

Step 1

Find a TED Talk or Newsy report you find interesting.

Step 2

Listen again to how the speaker says a phrase or two and then pause the video.

Step 3

Say the first phrase 5 times, without any pauses and following the speaker’s phrase stress, intonation, etc. If you do make a mistake when saying the phrase, start over at 1 again when counting your 5 times, for example:

• What you say: “When. . . .you see. . . .”
• What you think: ‘Oh, no! I paused. I need to start over. . .’
• What you say: “When you see. . . , When you see. . ., When you see. . ., When you see. . ., When you see. . . .”
• What you think: ‘Okay, I can go to the next phrase. . . .’

Step 4

Do the same thing with the second phrase 5 times.

Step 5

Now say the first and second phrase together 3 times, pausing only between the phrases:

What you say: “When you see / a diagram like this,. . . .When you see / a diagram like this,. . . . When you see / a diagram like this,. . . .” – Eric Berlow: “Simplifying Complexity” (TED) 

Step 6

Say the third phrase 5 times, as above.

Step 7

Now say the first, second, and third phrase together 3 times.

Step 8

Continuing adding one phrase at a time, listening to the video when needed a few sentences at a time, until you can say an entire paragraph fluently, pausing only where the speaker paused.

Step 9

Start over with the next paragraph at step 3 above. Once you’ve finished practicing the second paragraph, practice saying both the first and second paragraphs 3 times, allowing yourself to pause only where the speaker did.

Step 10

Continue this process until you can give the speaker’s entire speech fluently.