Shadowing practice: Mitchell Thinks He Has a Son With His Ex Girlfriend (Clip) | Modern Family | TBS

This clip is a sitcom exchange from Modern Family, rated B1 and clocked at 245 words per minute, faster than 91 percent of the catalogue. It runs 221 lines, so there is real momentum to keep up with. Mitchell and Cameron are scolding their daughter Lily over a stolen harmonica when they run into Mitchell's old high school girlfriend, Tracy. Three speakers trade lines quickly, which makes this a solid pick for daily english conversation practice, since real conversation rarely slows down to wait for you.

The accent is American, and the actors move between short, flat commands to a toddler, like "Stealing is wrong.", and longer, faster small talk between the adults catching up. That contrast is useful for american accent training: you get simple stressed words next to full sentences delivered at conversational speed, so you can hear stress and pace shift with context rather than staying flat the whole way through.

The recording has six instances of "gonna" scattered through it, the kind of fast informal marker you catch by ear during english shadowing practice, not by reading it off a page. A few lines from the opening are worth slowing down on before you try them at full speed.

• "Stealing is wrong." Cameron's line to Lily is flat and evenly stressed, good for practising clean, separated consonants without the speed getting in the way.
• "Now we have to go back and pay for it." a complete sentence at full pace, listen for how quickly "have to" moves past you here.
• "I had girlfriends, quite a few, actually." the tacked on hedge "quite a few, actually" is a defensive, casual habit worth copying, not just the words.
• "That's the only place you could get some privacy on a farm." one long sentence in a single breath, useful for holding pace without a pause in the middle.
• "We got a little drunk, started reminiscing." the dropped subject before "started" is how people actually tell stories out loud.

Work through the scene in the order it happens. The jokes land because one line follows the last one immediately, so drilling lines out of sequence loses the timing that makes them worth practising.

• Start with "Stealing is wrong." and "Now we have to go back and pay for it." Repeat both until the rhythm is automatic, they are short enough to get right in a handful of tries.
• Move to "I had girlfriends, quite a few, actually." Match Mitchell's defensive tone, not only the words themselves.
• Take "That's the only place you could get some privacy on a farm." slowly at first, then push it up toward the clip's own 245 words per minute pace.
• Pair "We got a little drunk, started reminiscing." with "I think I just wanted to see if I could." Tracy delivers these as one confession, so the intonation should carry across both lines, not reset between them.
• Once those five lines are solid, play the full clip again and try to speak english fluently alongside the rest of the dialogue you have not drilled line by line.