Speak Faster    A lot of the times when we speak, we use the short form of certain words to make our speech smoother and faster. These are known as CONTRACTIONS. For example, instead of saying: "I am excited for summer", we could say, "I'm excited for summer."  We shorten two words ( I am) into one word (I'm). We do this by replacing the missing letter by an apostrophe  I am = I'm As you can see, we substitute the 'a' with apostrophe mark. You'll notice the same thing from all the contractions below, all the missing letters are replaced with an apostrophe. 00:28 00:32 Listen and try it yourself! Contractions are definitely more informal and is used more commonly in speaking. However, I've started to see it more and more in writing since we've now become a more informal culture, don't you agree? (Did you notice how many contractions I used in the last sentence?)