Improve fluency and pronunciation

Improve Fluency and Pronunciation

I PART 1 Watch the video and fill in the gaps with the words from the list. There are some words you don’t need to use.

accounting; doctors; middle; educated; technological; career; generation; security; value; affected; listening; working; scrutiny; price; prized; mind; accountants; 

eradicated; Internet; technology; destroys; listen; destruction; carer; professions;

economic; industries

Technology 1)_______ jobs. We know this. It has the potential to make entire 2)_______ obsolete faster than you can say ‘Xerox’. Oh, well, people thought: “Never 3)_______. It’s the 4)_______ of progress.” But that was because it was largely unskilled manual labour jobs that were 5)_______, working-class jobs. And as long as you were 6)_______, you’d be alright. But then came the 7)_______.

 Sure, the 8)_______ classes are still losing jobs to 9)_______, but now it’s hitting 10)_______ classes too. And within a 11)_______ we may find that there’s no such thing as a 12)_______ or at least not one with any 13)_______. For a vision of the future look at the creative 14)_______. We’ve become so used to watching films, 15)_______ to music or getting information for free, that their 16)_______ has shrunk drastically. That same 17)_______ model is now poised to disrupt all sorts of industries that were typically the preserve of the middle class, such as 18)_______, lawyers, teachers, and to some degree 19)_______.

II Watch PART 1  again. In the script (see the text above) underline the words and phrases that are stressed. Listen again and then read the text aloud following the pattern of strong and weak stress. Try to copy the rhythm as exactly as possible. Get ready to create your voiceover of the video (read the text with the natural rhythm and speed). Make sure your reading speed matches the video sequence. You may record your reading and listen to it in order to improve the speed and accuracy (stress, rhythm, pronunciation). In class the part of the video will be shown to other students with sound turned off, you’ll provide the voiceover (read the text instead of the journalist).

III  PART 2 Watch the video and fill in the gaps with the words from the list. There are some words you don’t need to use.

prospects; snuff; web; lack; benefits; crowd; population; industrial; program; 

industry; likes; competing; enough; competitive; programmer; freelancers;

particular;  flack

  

So what 1)_______ do we have for finding secure work, work that pays well 2)_______ to cover our new 3)_______ of formal employee 4)_______ in this new informal economy? After all, you can’t get paid in 5)_______. And what about the 6)_______ that will make up the majority of the working 7)_______ now migrating to the 8)_______? Well, the trick may be to stand out from the 9)_______ by carving your own niche, an area of your 10)_______ which is suitably specialist but which isn’t lucrative enough that you’ll be 11)_______ with billions of freelancers or one giant monopoly. And go global, pitch yourself to the world and become renowned for your 12)_______ field of expertise. Or if that doesn’t work, you could become a 13)_______.  

IV Watch PART 2 again. In the script (see the text above) underline the words and phrases that are stressed. Listen again and then read the text aloud following the pattern of strong and weak stress. Try to copy the rhythm as exactly as possible. Get ready to create your voiceover of the video (read the text with the natural rhythm and speed). Make sure your reading speed matches the video sequence. You may record your reading and listen to it in order to improve the speed and accuracy (stress, rhythm, pronunciation). In class the part of the video will be shown to other students with sound turned off, you’ll provide the voiceover (read the text instead of the journalist).