Shadowing practice: Moana — You Are Not My Hero

This clip is a short exchange between Moana and Maui, pulled from the movie Moana, so it doubles as a chance to learn english with movies while you practise english speaking. The accent is American, the level is B1, and the whole scene runs to ten lines, short enough to repeat in one sitting without losing the thread.

What's happening is a clash of expectations. Maui expects a fan, and Moana tells him flatly, "You are not my hero." then lays out the real reason she's there. The tone swings from sarcasm to a flat demand across just a few lines, so your voice has to swing with it, not stay flat the whole way through.

A few lines carry the accent and rhythm worth studying for how to pronounce english words in this recording.

• The flat rejection "You are not my hero." puts the stress on "not" and "hero" with no softening, a good drill for delivering a blunt line without smiling through it.
• "And I'm not here so you can sign my oar." holds the rare word "oar", one syllable with a long vowel, easy to stretch into two beats by accident.
• "It almost sounded like you don't like me," carries a sarcastic lilt that rises on "sounded" before the comma pause sets up the next line.
• "which is impossible because I got stuck here for a thousand years" runs long without a break, worth timing to see if you can say it in one breath the way she does.

Work through the scene in order rather than jumping around, since the tone builds line by line and this kind of english speaking practice depends on that order.

• Start on line one, "Eh, I know, not every day you get a chance to meet your hero." to hear Maui's breezy opening before the rejection lands.
• Repeat line two, "You are not my hero." five or six times until the flat delivery feels ordinary, not apologetic.
• Move to lines four and five together, "I'm here because you stole the Heart of Te Fiti." and "And you will board my boat, sail across the sea and put it back!" and let the volume build from statement to command.
• Take line eight, "which is impossible because I got stuck here for a thousand years" in a single breath, that is the real pace test in this clip.
• Finish on line nine, "trying to get the Heart as a gift for you mortals" and say the rare word "mortals" clearly enough for the app to score it well.