Remember that contractions count as two words.
1 If I’d known about the total costs involved, I wouldn’t have started the business last year.
2 He’s been living in this part of the world for over a quarter of a century, hasn’t he?
3 She’ll be sitting on the beach right now if everything’s gone according to plan.
4 They started their company just over a decade ago and have gone from strength to strength in that time.
5 There were just over a hundred of us at the conference last week and we really learned a lot.
Now that you can read the sentences, why don’t you try saying them? Can you pronounce all of the weak forms correctly and make all of the necessary contactions?
Play the recording again and read aloud, copying the recording. Try to finish at the same time as the recording. In addition, make sure you can identify all of the grammatical structures being used.