Shadowing practice: Real English® 6 - Introducing yourself and introducing others

This clip is an A1 street interview, the easiest level in the catalogue, which makes it a good place to start english shadowing for beginners. A host stops people outside and asks them to say their name, spell it, and introduce the family members standing next to them.

The pace is 141 words per minute, faster than 14 percent of the catalogue, so even though every line is short the turnover between speakers is quick. Several different voices answer the same handful of questions back to back, which makes this good daily english conversation practice: you hear how real Americans greet a stranger, answer with three or four words, and hand the microphone to the next person.

The interview is built around one repeated question, "Can you spell your name?", and the answers are where the accent work actually is: each speaker says their own name's letters out loud one at a time, so you hear how an American voice pronounces the alphabet under pressure, not read from a list.

• "I'm from Milwaukee, Wisconsin." is a full sentence with a real place name in it, useful for practising rhythm on a longer answer instead of a one word reply.
• "This is my husband, Jess Morisco." and "And this is his wife, Kathy Morisco." are the two lines to compare directly: same sentence shape, different family word, said by different speakers seconds apart.
• "You got it wrong." is the host correcting a spelling attempt. It is short and blunt, good for practising a flat, everyday tone rather than a dramatic one.
• "Can you introduce your friends to us?" is the cue line that starts every family introduction in the clip, worth knowing before you shadow the answers that follow it.

Work the clip speaker by speaker rather than start to finish in one pass. There are 56 lines total, but they repeat the same small set of questions, so once you know the pattern you can focus your english speaking practice on the answers, where the actual accent variation lives.

• Start with "Can you spell your name?" and the reply that follows it. Say the letters out loud at the same speed as the recording before moving on.
• Shadow "I'm from Milwaukee, Wisconsin." on its own a few times. It is the longest single answer in the opening stretch and the best test of whether you can keep pace at 141 words per minute.
• Pair up "This is my husband, Jess Morisco." with "And this is his wife, Kathy Morisco." and say them back to back, matching the small shift in stress between husband and wife.
• Practise "You got it wrong." separately from the rest. It is a full stop in tone as well as grammar, and mixing it with the friendlier lines around it will flatten your delivery of both.
• Once single lines feel steady, run two or three consecutive speaker turns together to build up to full conversational speed, since that is closer to how the interview actually plays out.