Shadowing practice: How to lead in The Infinite Game | THE 5 PRACTICES

This clip is Simon Sinek laying out the idea of the infinite game, at 233 words per minute, faster than 87% of the catalogue. It is rated B2 and runs 16 lines. He opens with the claim itself, stacks four near identical questions on top of it, then drops the line the whole talk turns on. That structure is what makes it good material for english speaking practice: you are matching a speaker who keeps returning to the same shape at speed.

It is also a clean case for american accent training. Sinek enunciates for a room, not for a camera close up, so the words stay separate even at his pace. If you want to hear how to pronounce english words in american accent without the words blurring together, this recording is a fair test of your ear before it becomes a test of your mouth.

Lines 2 to 5 are the same sentence with one word swapped each time: "How do we make our products better this year than they were last year?" then "How do we make our systems better this year than they were last year?" then culture, then hiring. Say them back to back and you drill one intonation pattern four times instead of learning four new ones.

Line 6 is the payoff, built the same way: "The goal is not to beat your competition, the goal is to outlast your competition." The two halves mirror each other, and the real change is beat against outlast, a rarer word that carries the point of the talk. Getting the stress onto outlast, not onto competition, is the actual pronunciation challenge here.

• "How do we make our products better this year than they were last year?" and its three repeats: same shape, different noun, good for locking one intonation pattern into memory.
• "The goal is not to beat your competition, the goal is to outlast your competition.": two mirrored clauses, the stress has to land on outlast.
• "There are five practices that you have to master in order to lead with an infinite mindset.": one long breath group before the list starts.

Sixteen lines is short enough for one sitting, but the pace means you should not start at full speed. Work through it in this order, scoring each line before you move on.

• "In the infinite game, the only competitor you truly have is yourself.": get line 1 clean first, it sets the pace for everything after it.
• Take lines 2 to 5 as one block. Shadow them one after another, without pausing, so the repeated question shape becomes one pattern instead of four separate lines.
• Isolate line 6 on its own. Say the first half at normal pace, slow the second half until outlast carries the stress, then bring it back up to speed.
• Shadow lines 12 to 16, the numbered list of five practices, as a set the same way you did lines 2 to 5, since each opens with the same phrase.
• Run the full 16 lines once through without stopping, to find out if your english shadowing practice holds at 233 words per minute or only in the slower drills.