Speaking Practice with a dialogue

Here we bring to you an important exercise: a Speaking Practice with a dialogue! With this activity, you will improve your speaking skills, your pronunciation, and of course we’ll teach you a technique you can apply in your day in order to speak even better. 

To do this training, you better work with  a small text that comes with an audio. That’s why I chose a small dialogue. Below you will find the transcript and the audio.

To do a speaking practice with a dialogue, do the following:

1. Listen to the dialogue 3 times:

You need to get your ears used to the sounds. Pay attention only to the sounds. Don’t worry about understanding right now.

2. Listen and read in low voice:

Read the dialogue while you listen to it again. Pay attention to the sounds and how they are written. Don’t worry about the meaning now.

3. Play, pause and repeat:

Play the audio, listen to one sentence, then pause and repeat the sentence. Always try to imitate what you listen to, the pronunciation and the intonation.

4. Play and repeat (without pausing):

Now, while you listen to the audio, repeat each sentence without pausing. This is a technique called “shadowing”. You will do like a shadow with the audio.

5. Just read, copying the original intonation and pronunciation

Without the audio now, just read the dialogue, but try to be like an actor, copying the original intonation.

6. Now, let’s understand some patterns and grammatical structures.

Good job! Let’s understand the meaning of this dialogue and learn some vocabulary and expressions!

Now, let’s apply these 6 topics to the actual speaking practice with the dialogue below:

A: Oi, como foi sua semana?

B: Foi boa. Um pouco cansativa. Trabalhei muito. E estudei muito também.

A: Eu também tive muitas coisas pra fazer. Fiquei bem cansada.

B: Mas me diz, o que você tá planejando para o fim de semana?

A: Hum. Eu tô querendo ir para uma cachoeira no sábado. E você?

B: Eu vou viajar amanhã cedinho. Vou pra praia.

A: Ai, que delícia. E você vai ficar até que dia lá?

B: Fico até terça-feira. Tirei uns dias de folga.

A: Muito bom! Aproveite!

Understanding the grammatical structures from the dialogue:

In the dialogue above, let’s take a look at the verbs. In the beginning of the conversation they are using verbs in the past. Then the conversation changes and they start talking about their plans for the weekend. 

Let’s make a list of the verbs in the past first:

Foi = Verb IR (irregular)

Trabalhei = verb TRABALHAR (regular)

Estudei = verb ESTUDAR (regular)

Tive = verb TER (irregular)

Fiquei = verb FICAR (irregular)

Let’s conjugate them now in the Simple Past (Pretérito Perfeito) for all pronouns:

Verb IR:

Eu fui
Você/Ele/Ela/A gente foi
Nós fomos
Vocês/Eles/Elas foram

Verb TRABALHAR:

Eu trabalhei
Você/Ele/Ela/A gente trabalhou
Nós trabalhamos
Vocês/Eles/Elas trabalharam

Verb ESTUDAR:

Eu estudei
Você/Ele/Ela/A gente estudou
Nós estudamos
Vocês/Eles/Elas estudaram

Verb TER:

Eu tive
Você/Ele/Ela/A gente teve
Nós tivemos
Vocês/Eles/Elas tiveram

Verb FICAR:

Eu fiquei
Você/Ele/Ela/A gente ficou
Nós ficamos
Vocês/Eles/Elas ficaram

Now, check the structures used to talk about the weekend plans:

O que você tá planejando para o fim de semana?
Tô querendo ir para uma cachoeira.
Eu vou viajar amanhã…
Você vai ficar até que dia lá?

ESTAR (in the present) + gerund => progressive tense

O que você tá planejando para o fim de semana? 
(What are you planning for the weekend?)

Tô querendo ir para uma cachoeira.
(Lit: I’m wanting to go to a waterfall).

IR (in the present) + infinitive => compound future

Eu vou viajar amanhã…
(I’m going to travel tomorrow…)

Você vai ficar até que dia lá?
(How many days are you going to stay there?)

Now go back to the dialogue and practice your speaking again. Follow the instructions in the beginning and improve your pronunciation!

Do you want to study with more dialogues? Check this other post here. Also you can learn how to study with dialogues in this video from our Youtube Channel. Have fun!