Week 3 · Session 3
Buying yourself two seconds
The repair kit: asking for the piece you missed.
~35 minWarm up
3 minutes
How many syllables in “asked”?
Watch: questions flying in a real conversation
12 minutes
This one is out in the world — outdoors, real, unrehearsed. Listen for the reduced forms of can, do, does, to and you, and for n't contractions. Those five carry most of the questions in English.
Your repair kit
6 minutes
Learn these by heart. They are the most useful sentences in this whole course, because they buy you the two seconds you need — and they make you sound engaged, not lost.
| Say | It means |
|---|---|
| Sorry? | Please repeat all of it.must rise ↗ |
| Say that again? | Same, slightly warmer. |
| The what, sorry? | Repeat one specific word.far better than repeating everything |
| You mean … ? | Here is my guess — confirm it.shows you were listening |
| Hang on — who left? | Naming the exact gap.the most useful one of all |
One thing to get right: “I'm sorry?” with the pitch going up means “please repeat that.” “I'm sorry.” with the pitch going down is an apology. Same three words. Get the pitch wrong and the conversation goes sideways.
Ask for the piece you missed, not the whole thing
5 minutes
“Sorry, can you repeat that?” gets you the same sentence at the same speed. That rarely helps.
Asking for the specific gap works far better:
- “Sorry — you went where?”
- “Wait, who called?”
- “On Tuesday, did you say?”
- “Sorry, the last word?”
This also proves you followed the rest, which changes how people talk to you for the rest of the conversation.
Record your voice note
3 minutes
“Someone has just asked you a question and you caught only half of it. Say out loud, three different ways, how you would ask for the missing part.”
Save it as “Week 3 — Voice Note 2”.
Couldn't-Catch List
ongoing
Add every question you missed this week. Note whether you used a repair phrase, and what happened.