Shadowing practice: My Day Without A Phone | Easy English Listening Practice (A2 Level)

This clip is a narration that turns into a two person conversation: Emma wakes up to a dead phone, and her friend Anna walks her to the repair shop and out into the morning instead. It sits at A2 level, so the sentences stay short and the grammar stays simple.

The pace is 140 words per minute, on the slow side of the catalogue, which matters more than the level tag. Slow audio in a clear American accent is exactly what makes a line repeatable enough to shadow, rather than something you rewind three times just to catch. That repeatability is the point of english speaking practice at this level: you are not decoding new grammar, you are training your mouth to produce sentences you already understand.

Most of the clip runs on two or three word reactions. Lines like "No music." and "No messages." are not fragments by accident, that is how people actually talk when something has gone wrong and they are listing symptoms out loud.

• "The phone is dead." A flat statement, no rising pitch, said the way you announce a fact you already accept.
• "Why do you look so stressed?" A real question with the stress on "stressed", useful for practising rising then falling intonation in one breath.
• "Fresh bread is always better than food on a screen." The one long line in this stretch, and the clearest target for pronunciation work because you have to keep the rhythm even across nine words.
• "You can learn new things by looking around." Anna's small lesson to Emma, worth repeating for the linking between "learn" and "new".

Do not start with the dialogue. Start with lines 1 to 10, Emma's solo reactions to the black screen: "No, the screen is black.", "Come on, start.", "Still no power." These are short enough to repeat five times each before you move on, and they are good daily english conversation practice because you will say lines exactly like them the next time your own phone dies.

• Shadow lines 1 to 10 alone first, Emma talking to herself, so you get used to the American accent without a second speaker to track.
• Move to lines 11 to 22, the first Anna and Emma exchange, and say each side once as Emma and once as Anna, since the two roles carry different intonation.
• Slow down on line 27, "Don't panic.", and line 39, "Don't worry.", two short commands that land on the stressed word, not the first word.
• Once you reach the bakery section around lines 47 to 56, read "Fresh bread is always better than food on a screen." on its own three times before folding it back into the exchange.
• Finish the shown stretch with line 68, "You can learn new things by looking around.", and try to say it at the same speed as the recording, not slower.