Pratica di Shadowing: #001 Well, hello there engineers - Impara a parlare inglese con i video

Creazione lezione...
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The ideal engineer is a composite.
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He is not a scientist.
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He is not a mathematician.
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He is not a sociologist or a writer.
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But he may use the knowledge and techniques of any or all of these disciplines in solving engineering problems.
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Quote by Nathan W.
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Daugherty, American civil engineer.
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I am Olivia Augustin and this is English for Engineers.
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Hello and welcome to the English for Engineers podcast.
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I am seriously thrilled to jump into this podcast.
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It might sound odd, but I could talk about language almost all day long.
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Let me tell you a little bit about myself, as this is the very first episode of my new podcast, and maybe we have never met before.
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So who am I, and why should you listen to me at all?
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My name is Olivia Augustin, and I'm a certified English teacher and business English coach.
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But I'm a civil engineer as well.
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Back in the day, I was specialized in infrastructure, and I worked as a project manager for a small but mighty engineering office in Tyrol.
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Mighty means they were highly specialized.
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And one day we ended up with a project in White Russia in Belarus.
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And that was the very first time I was involved in an international project.
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But it was also a project that was done in three different languages.
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And for the first time in my professional life, I could bring my linguistic skills to the table.
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When we got that project in Belarus, I was the one engineer at our office who was fluent in English.
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And I also was the one engineer who studied Russian at the University of Innsbruck at that time.
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You know, for fun.
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Because that's what you do in your spare time.
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So I ended up translating all the project documentation from German to English and from German to Russian.
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Very exciting times.
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And I like to think that was the moment I knew I'm going to work in linguistics one day,
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because if there's some way to combine language with systematic thinking, that's the place where you're gonna find me.
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There's one sentence I have on my website, and that's, my experience is your advantage.
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It sounds very marketing-ish, but what do I wanna say by that?
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So why is my experience your advantage?
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Because I've been part of the engineering world for about 15 years.
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I know your turf.
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I understand how challenging it can sometimes be to communicate with clients or subcontractors efficiently,
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let alone in a foreign language and across various cultures.
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Been there, done that.
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So here we are.
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My company, which is called Markoda, exists because I understand one thing quite clearly,
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and that is that you need to learn business English
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and technical English quickly and you want to do that without boredom
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and without struggle and without stress and without a grammar-induced headache
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because you need this process from start to fluency you need to happen
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that smooth and fast so in 2019 when I finally started purely focusing on helping engineers master business English.
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Back then, I've already been using my language skills for about 12 years.
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And in those 12 years, I helped businesses and organizations to share their brand stories in multiple languages.
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I have translated and interpreted before I started coaching 101.
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And now that I'm specialized in English for engineers, I can serve big companies and individuals all over Europe and Asia.
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And how do I serve them?
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Through what?
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I like to call it quite practical and no-nonsense lessons.
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So while my company, my code is still the new kid on the block, my experience, my passion and definitely my know-how are not.
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So even though I love my engineering jobs, my heart was elsewhere.
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And that's always been helping engineers to become skilled communicators in English.
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That much about me, what are we covering in today's episode besides that super lengthy introduction?
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Today I want to share some tricks with you to get you started, or some tips.
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Things that you can do even before you decide to take business English courses, even before you book your very first professional business English, technical English lesson.
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Because, you know, there are things you can do at home, in your spare time, that will help you tremendously.
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Some of the things that I'm mentioning now, that I'm going to mention, are known as immersion technique, in case you want to Google that later.
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Number one, I want you to change your evening routine.
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Not too much, just slightly.
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Every night, when you're in your bathroom and you're brushing your teeth, in your mind, tell yourself what you did that day.
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Use your target language, in our case that's English.
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use the English you already know and just form the sentences in your mind.
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Use the grammar and the vocabulary you already know.
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And if there's a word or a certain sentence structure that you want to use, but you don't know how to use it in English,
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just substitute that with one word, with one part of the sentence from your mother language.
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Just use that one German, that one Dutch, that one Portuguese, that one Chinese word, whatever your mother language is.
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So, whenever you brush your teeth, just tell yourself what you did all day long.
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And it won't take long and speaking English becomes your second nature.
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Because let me tell you what happens.
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I'll give you a very basic example.
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Let's say you tell yourself, I arrived at the office at 8 a.m.
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Then I had a meeting with the, with the, oh man, what's the English word for Baustellenleiter?
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But who cares?
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You just use the German word.
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Then I had a meeting with the Baustellenleiter.
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So that was day one.
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Day two, you do a recap of your day again while you're brushing your teeth
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and you tell yourself this afternoon the Bauleiter called me
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and again you just use the German expression for the word you're looking for in English.
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By day three you're so annoyed with yourself that you look
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that word up that you look up that word in a dictionary.
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The dictionary will give you four alternatives most likely for a Bauleiter.
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There will be construction supervisor, construction manager, site manager or foreman, depending a little bit on the circumstances.
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But there you have it.
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By just talking to yourself and getting angry with yourself because it's such a basic word that you didn't know, you learned four new words.
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Isn't that amazing?
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And that works with almost anything.
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The next tip I'm giving you is actually one of my favorites.
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And it's fun.
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Go to your streaming account, that may be Netflix, that may be Amazon,
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whatever is out there, and change your language settings of your favorite show to English audio and subtitles.
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So what happens?
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You're watching a movie, you're watching a TV series, and you're watching it in English.
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So the language input, it's through your ears, you hear it.
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and because it's your favorite show, you can easily follow the storyline.
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But by having the subtitles in English as well, you also get language input by reading.
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That's like double the trouble, but in a good way.
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Number three, listen to the radio.
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Okay, we're doing that, most of us, when we're sitting in the office, when we're driving home, when we commute home, when we are in a car.
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but listen to music that has lyrics with full sentences.
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That cuts out hip-hop and rap.
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So go for country or singer-songwriter stuff.
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Not because that's my favorite kind of music, but because it has lyrics with full sentences.
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And that helps you getting a grip regarding language, regarding sentence structure and word order.
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So in my case, when we moved to the Netherlands ten years ago, it meant that I was listening to Dutch folklore for half a year.
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It was torture, but it worked.
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It was necessary to get the melody of the language into my brain.
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Tip number four.
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Find a study buddy.
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Someone, for example, you can regularly exchange text messages with.
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And hello, autocorrect?
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Your spelling and vocabulary will improve tremendously.
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Alternatively, if your spouse, your partner, is quite good at speaking English and they are willing to help you out.
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You could agree on 10 to 15 minutes a day where you solely speak English.
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So watching TV and listening to the radio is all about language input.
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Self-talk, getting a study buddy, singing along is called language output.
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Both are equally important because high-quality input produces high-quality output.
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If you prefer to re-read that information on a PDF, then I have a little gift for you.
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If you go to marcoda.org slash 5tipsfluency,
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you can download a free PDF resource with a recap of the tips I just gave you.
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But there's a certain point when those DIY techniques will have reached their limit.
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And you need more structure and a system to further grow your business and technical English skills.
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And that's when you need to change your strategy again.
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And you might want to call me, your trusted word nerd, and then we can develop a strategy to reach your goals.
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What can you expect from this podcast in the future?
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The primary reason for this podcast is that I want to provide you with interesting language input.
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I'm going to share tips and tricks regarding technical English and business English and English business communication across cultures.
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That's for sure.
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But I also want to share scientific research that is backing up language learning techniques.
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But because why, that's logical.
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We are engineers.
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Hello.
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And we like to know the why before we do stuff.
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I also plan on interviewing quite interesting people from all over the place.
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so you can get used to different accents and maybe you get used to different ways of seeing the world.
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That would be nice.
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And they always, those guests, they're always going to have a connection with engineering in general,
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of construction, with technical English or with business communication.
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That was it for today's podcast.
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Looking forward to talking to you soon, my friends.

Informazioni su questa lezione

Cos'è la tecnica dello Shadowing?

Shadowing è una tecnica di apprendimento delle lingue supportata da studi scientifici, originariamente sviluppata per la formazione dei traduttori professionisti e resa popolare dal poliglotta Dr. Alexander Arguelles. Il metodo è semplice ma potente: ascolti un audio in inglese di madrelingua e lo ripeti immediatamente ad alta voce — come un'ombra che segue il parlante con un ritardo di solo 1–2 secondi. A differenza dell'ascolto passivo o degli esercizi di grammatica, lo shadowing costringe il tuo cervello e i muscoli della bocca a elaborare e riprodurre simultaneamente i modelli di discorso reale. La ricerca dimostra che migliora significativamente la precisione della pronuncia, l'intonazione, il ritmo, il discorso connesso, la comprensione dell'ascolto e la fluidità del parlato — rendendolo uno dei metodi più efficaci per la preparazione alla prova di speaking dell'IELTS e per la comunicazione reale in inglese.

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