The Lowdown

Improve Your Speech - British English

By: David Gwillam, Deirdre Morris

Narrated by: Jamie Glover

Length: 59 mins

Publisher's summary

Useful tips to help achieve a more professional level of speech.

The way we speak can say as much about us as the clothes we wear, the car we drive, or even the newspapers and magazines we read.

We live and work in a global market - but English is still regarded as the international language of business. Clear speech will help you to maximise your potential, making you a greater asset to your company and your profession.

'Improve Your Speech' is ideal for those who are long on ambition, but short on time. In an effective but light-hearted talk, you will be taken through easy exercises and given helpful hints and top tips on how best to use your voice and tidy up your speech, giving you confidence and helping you to make the best impression possible - whether at work or when socialising.

It is aimed primarily at those who have British English as their first language, but it is also useful for those with English as their second language.

Topics covered include:

Bad vocal habits and how to correct them
The importance of consonants
Give value to the vowel
Doing a 'batman'
Developing fluency

©2008 Creative Content (P)2008 Creative Content

Useful for presentations

It would be perfect like a video seeing people talking in wrong and right way.

Intended for British Speakers but Good for Anyone

It was short and sweet but I got some good pointers from it. The most common regional anomalies were covered as well as some exercises to improve voice quality. Written in an entertaining way and read very nicely. I will listen to it again!

Review

The voice exercises are highly effective and very helpful, just like having your own personal and professional voice coach! I would recommend this for anyone wanting to improve their vocal skills or public speaking as it will give them more confidence and enable them to be clearly understood.

Fascinating and effective if rushed

I really enjoyed listening to this title and it does go into great detail about current and correct pronunciation of words and sentences, and the linguistics and muscle movements behind speech. I really think anyone could benefit from listening to this no matter how advanced their spoken English.

What was a little disappointing for me was that the recording covers a huge amount of ground in an hour and I felt it would have been better if presented more slowly, repeating the various points in different ways to help you digest them. It felt very rushed with 2-3 hours being more realistic to deal with all the exercises and lessons - like having an hour to eat a five course meal.

You do need a quiet place to practice several of the exercises, definitely not one for the tube!

just the thing!

For german speakers looking to better their speech generally as well as improve their clarity in the english language, this is a wonderful tool. Highly recommendable for foreign language teachers to back up English lessons in a very entertaining manner!

Not only for native English speakers

This is a useful book even if English is not your first language. I am not a native English speaker but found it very helpful for improving my accent. I also have downloaded the Level 2 which is very good and goes at a little bit slower pace. This first book is excellent but you will have to stop and start your player for the exercises I think! The narrator has a very good voice. I would like level 3 now!

A handy little "How to"

'This was easy to listen to, easy to follow. Straightforward tips that really helped me.'

Highly recommended

I found "Improve Your Speech - British English (unabridged)" to be an invaluable tool for improving my pronunciation. It is clear, easy to use and well organized and I would highly recommended to my fellow Chinese speakers as well as anybody interested in polishing their spoken British English.

Amazing

This audiobook has worked wonders for my speech. I spent an hour in the early morning listening to it and practising some of the exercises. At work everybody was impressed by me speaking so clearly, clients as well as colleagues.

This audiobook can work wonders in so little time. My sister has spent over £300 on elecution lessons. I'm surpsrised I can now speak much better than her.

I liked it enough to get part 2

In George Orwell's 1984 there is a certain scene where Winston Smith notes one of the colleagues in the Newspeak department of Minitrue is talking at lunch in a way that resembles the quacking if a duck. Well, here that technique is actually taught in the bit that deals with "twang" in order to speak with authority. Well I never!

I wanted a but more about intonation as in the rise and fall or the variation of pitch, but this is only mentioned in passing.

There is a good overview with some but not too many technical terms like soft palate and alveolar ridge.

good book

thought this wos a gud book, it as really helped me english talkin. ya know I wud recommend it cos it is bril

British Speech by Lomdown

fantastic audio, full of many useful clues not only for Brits various witty remarks. I can't wait for part 2.