Shadowing practice: Asking for information → on the street | Learn English with Mark Kulek ESL

This clip is an english speaking practice drill built around one everyday situation: stopping a stranger on the street to ask for directions. Mark Kulek runs through ten separate exchanges, from finding the bus stop to locating the nearest ATM, each built on the same question frame at a measured 179 words per minute. The CEFR level is A1, so the vocabulary stays close to what you actually need outside a hotel or a train station rather than anything abstract.

What makes it useful for speaking, not just listening, is the structure itself. Each question is said in full, then broken into its core phrase, then said in full again, for example "Can you tell me how to get to the train station?" followed by "How to get to the train station?" and then the full question a third time. That built in repeat gives you three passes at each line before the answer arrives, which suits an american accent training routine for a beginner who still needs the extra repeat to catch the shape of a spoken question.

The clip is really two patterns stitched together: a fixed question shape and a set of short, natural answers. Three lines show what to listen for.

• "Can you tell me where the bus stop is?" is the frame the whole clip is built on, repeated with small swaps across all ten exchanges, so once you can say it evenly you already own most of the clip.
• "It's just around the corner." is a genuine short answer, contracted and said with a falling pitch at the end, the way a real person on the street would actually say it rather than a textbook full sentence.
• "Go straight and turn left at the light." chains two instructions with "and" in one breath, a good line for practising how to pronounce english words as a run rather than one at a time.

Work the clip in the order it was built rather than skipping to the end, since each block trains one question before the next one starts.

• Start at "Can you tell me where the bus stop is?", then say the stripped down version "Where the bus stop is?" and the full question again before letting Mark move on.
• Shadow the answer the instant it lands, matching the fall in "It's just around the corner." and later "It's about a 10 minute walk.", copying pitch, not just words.
• At "Say the sentences yourself and speak out loud." treat it as your own cue: pause and produce the whole question and answer pair from memory before resuming.
• Use the four repeated restroom lines near the end, "Can you tell me where the restroom is?" said four times in a row, as a short english shadowing practice loop to smooth out the frame until it comes out even and improves your english speaking without you having to think about the words.