Shadowing practice: Family Guy: Peter & Stewie Bond (Clip) | TBS

This clip runs 54 lines at 167 words per minute, faster than 31 percent of the catalogue, but it sits at A2, so it is a good match for anyone starting english shadowing for beginners. Peter and Stewie's bonding quickly turns into slapstick chaos in the kitchen, and Lois ends up caught in the middle of it. The American accent throughout is exaggerated for comic effect, which makes the stress pattern easy to hear.

Because it is animated dialogue from a sitcom, this is also a natural pick if you like to learn english with movies and series rather than textbook audio. Long stretches of laughter give you a rest between lines, so you are not repeating continuously for the whole clip, only the spoken lines that carry the story.

In "All I'm saying is that you just need to find an activity that you and Stewie can share." the stress falls on saying, activity and share, and the line is delivered in one breath, a good test of pacing before you try to keep up with the full 167 words per minute speed.

• "I'm binding with Stewie." pairs the contraction I'm with the present participle binding, said flat and fast, the kind of rhythm that trips learners who pronounce every syllable evenly.
• "You're more precious than a baby's laughter." puts the heaviest stress on precious and laughter, not on more, the pattern to copy if you want to improve your english accent instead of sounding flat.
• "Oh, I misjudged you, fat man." is delivered as one sarcastic unit, with misjudged landing hard and the rest trailing off, a good line for practising tone.
• "See if she's got any cash on her." runs she's got together almost as one syllable, the kind of run you only catch by listening closely and repeating out loud.

Work through this clip in order rather than jumping around, since the chaos escalates line by line and each joke depends on the one before it.

• Start at line 1, "All I'm saying is that you just need to find an activity that you and Stewie can share.", and repeat it slowly until you can say it in one breath, this sets the pace for the rest of the scene.
• Move to line 15, "Oh, I misjudged you, fat man.", and copy the sarcastic tone before the words, tone carries this joke more than vocabulary does.
• Shadow line 30, "I'm binding with Stewie.", several times, since the contraction and the ing ending are the two sounds that most often get flattened out in english speaking practice.
• Finish on line 35, "You're more precious than a baby's laughter.", and check that the stress lands on precious and laughter, not on more.
• Skip the repeated "Ha ha ha ha!" lines. They are not text to shadow, they are pacing between the sentences that matter.