Shadowing practice: Family Guy: The Incredible Hulk Intro (Clip) | TBS

This clip parodies the Incredible Hulk television intro inside Family Guy, mixing a narrator's voiceover with two short lines of dialogue between Stewie Griffin and a reporter named Tucker. At 188 words per minute it moves quickly, faster than half the clips in the catalogue, so it suits English speaking practice once you can already follow a B2 recording without pausing every few seconds.

What makes it useful for speaking practice is the contrast packed into 13 lines: a narrator building tension with sentences like "The creature is driven by rage and pursued by an investigative reporter", then two characters cutting in with plain, aggressive dialogue. Working through it is a solid piece of English shadowing practice and doubles as a way to learn english with movies and series, because the register keeps shifting and your mouth has to shift with it too.

This clip is also a useful test of how to pronounce english words in american accent, because the narrator and Stewie use the accent differently: one stretches vowels for drama, the other clips them short for menace.

• "Searching for a way to tap into the hidden strengths that all humans have." is one long breath group. Say it as a single continuous phrase rather than word by word, and let the voice fall on "strengths" before the pause.
• "And now whenever Stewie Griffin grows angry or outraged, a startling metamorphosis occurs." packs four stressed content words, angry, outraged, startling, metamorphosis, each needing its own small pitch jump. Flatten any one of them and the ominous narrator tone collapses.
• "You wouldn't like me when I'm angry." is the payoff line, said low and slow, with "angry" landing almost a full beat after "when I'm", the opposite rhythm from the narrator's rush.

Work through this clip in three passes rather than one. At 13 lines it is short enough to shadow the whole thing in a single sitting once you know where the hard turns sit.

• Start with line 4, the longest narrator sentence in the clip, and say it twice before moving on: once slowly to place all four stressed words, once at the recording's own 188 words per minute.
• Isolate lines 8 and 9, "Tucker, don't make me angry." and "You wouldn't like me when I'm angry.", and shadow this line pair back to back until the drop in pitch on "angry" feels automatic rather than read.
• Finish on line 5, "Oh, I heard myself changing this tire!", the one line that breaks character into surprise. Recording yourself here is the fastest way to hear whether your own english speaking practice still sounds narrated instead of reacted.