There are stages: first you memorise the words, then you listen to people and learn to speak.
Textbooks on terrorism define its effects in four stages: first the horror, then the publicity, then the political grandstanding, and finally the climactic shift in policy.
They watched Rogelio fall in stages, first to his knees, then forward, clutching his chest, as if trying to reach through his body to the imaginary knife wound.
Negotiations basically divide into two stages: first the member states battle the Secretariat over its spending proposals, then they horse-trade among themselves to divide the agreed costs.
Later on, I wrote in stages, first blocking out the general parameters of my piece, then going back to fill in the details.
The cosmos was formed by mind in two stages: first, by a revolving and mixing process that still continues; and, second, by the development of living things.
Both wings of the RSDWP, Bolshevik and Menshevik, adhered to Plekhanov's view of the revolution in two stages: first, a bourgeois revolution; second, a proletarian revolution (see above).
Sky had held the red jersey after each of the opening two stages, first through Peter Kennaugh and then Michal Kwiatkowski, but Fernández's second place, 21 seconds behind Geniez, was enough for him to take red in his debut Vuelta.
The bullet and some fragments were removed in two stages: first in the emergency room, by an emergency room doctor, and then in the hospital's operating theater, by the neurosurgeon, Dr. Louis G. Cornacchia.
According to Google's Eric Schmidt, the deal is built on two stages: "First, Google has agreed to create a €60m digital publishing innovation fund to help support transformative digital publishing initiatives for French readers.
So do I, but here it's dealt with in a meticulous and thoughtful way, carried out in stages first in the laboratories on actual human skin and then going out to teams of volunteers for live testing.
