Whaddaya Say?: Guided Practice in Relaxed Spoken English

I've used the First Edition of Whaddaya Say for almost twenty years. Nothing I've used to teach students to understand spoken English has ever been better. I was very pleasantly surprised to use the Second Edition, which was published in 2001, and find that all of the lessons that made listening comprehension easier for my students were included along with an additional ten lessons. The fun conversations are even better, and the tapes are really great. I didn't know tests could be useful as well as funny, but there's a wonderful test at the end of the book that was a lot of fun. I want my students to know how English is really pronounced (*wanna for "want to", *hafta for "have to", *gonna for "going to + verb", etc.). When they don't know the real pronunciations, they have a really hard time understanding spoken English.I'm amazed by one thing in particular -- although the Second Edition of Whaddaya Say has 30% more pages and there are three cassettes now instead of two, the price hasn't gone up. I don't know why the price hasn't increased, but it seems like a great bargain to get a beautifully updated bestselling listening book for the same price as the prior version! I don't see how anyone can really learn listening comprehension without this book.

This is an excellent book - tape for those who want to learn how to understand American/Canadian "everyday" language.It is very clear in the way pronunciation is explained and the practice material is fun!

Whaddya say is a practical book for serious-minded second language learners of English who want to communicate quickly in real world settings. Formal English listening/speaking training in pre-college classrooms prepares students to carefully articulate prepared speeches, but it lacks in preparing English language learners to listen and respond to real world conversations in dynamic domains. Typical examples (although, not included in the present book) might include conversations that take place in the stock market and conversations between pilots and air traffic controllers. In both situations, the verbal component of communications is time sensitive. Nina Weinstein's book and tapes focus on enhancing listening and speaking skills using both slow and relaxed, fast-spoken English.Nina Weinstein outlines the most commonly used reduced forms of English sounds in twenty short chapters, introducing the most simple reduced sounds (like you --> ya) to the more complex reduced sounds that are found in advanced grammatical structures (coulda, woulda, mighta). <p>Whaddaya say incorporates short, yet practical conversational exercises at the end of each chapter. The exercises require the Whaddaya say cassette tape. Completion of this book, accompanied with a professional ESL instructor, will result in an increased situational and linguistic awareness of the ESL learner's surroundings.

This book may finally overcome immigrants' resistance to speak English the way it is actually spoken by the vast majority of Americans, the way English actually sounds. Their first reaction to "Whaddaya wanna do?", "Whacha doin back there?", and "Can't cha find an apartment?", is "No, this is wrong. I don't want to speak like that. Only uneducated peole speak that way." But gradually resistance breaks down and their pronunciation improves drmatically. The book has the further advantage of achieving its goals without the International Phonetic Alphabet, which intimidates most students. Would that Nina Weinstein now wrote a "Whaddaya say" reader with ordinary and "whaddaya say" spelling on facing pages.

Whaddaya Say is in its twenty-fourth printing. This popular book is basic to anyone who wants to understand spoken English. Whaddaya Say teaches the twenty most common reduced forms (*gonna -- going to + verb, *wanna -- want to, etc.), then contextualizes these forms into natural conversations for listening practice. It you're interested in understanding spoken English, and you can only buy one book, this is it.