I’ve created a short reformulation exercise to help you work on your English – whether it’s a passive language in your combination, a retour language, or your mother tongue.
I’ve given a short speech about Shell and the windfall tax (see video below), but left gaps (silences) in the sentences.
- if English is your mother tongue, pause the video when there’s a gap, and see if you can find 3 or 4 possible solutions.
- If English is your B language, try shadowing the speech, repeating what you hear, and filling in the blanks as you go along (you’ll need a decalage of a few words in order to do this).
- If English is one of your C languages, interpret the speech in simultaneous into your A language. Can you compensate for all the gaps and deduce what I must have said?
This is an exercise I created for members of my Rock your Retour group for English retourists. They have access to the original text of my speech, as well as suggestions for filling in the blanks in different ways (and in different registers).