Get the app

Shadowing practice: Talking about food πŸ”πŸ₯’πŸ« Real Easy English

Listen to the line, then say it out loud
Line 1

Full transcript

  1. Welcome to Real Easy English from BBC Learning English.0:00
  2. I'm Beth.0:04
  3. And I'm Neil.0:05
  4. In this podcast, we have a real conversation in Easy English.0:06
  5. If you want to read along, you can visit our website, bbclearningenglish .com.0:11
  6. Hi Neil.0:23
  7. Hi Beth.0:24
  8. How are you?0:25
  9. I'm very good, thank you.0:25
  10. How are you?0:27
  11. I'm pretty good, yes.0:28
  12. Good, good.0:28
Show all 96 lines Show fewer lines
  1. What are we talking about today?0:29
  2. Well, today we are talking about food.0:31
  3. In particular, we'll talk about our favourite foods and how often we eat them.0:34
  4. What an amazing topic.0:40
  5. I have so much to say about food.0:42
  6. You said how often.0:45
  7. What do we mean by how often we eat something?0:46
  8. Good question.0:50
  9. How often means how many times we eat our favourite food.0:51
  10. So, we might eat them every week, every day, or if we really like a food, we might eat it0:56
  11. for breakfast, lunch and dinner, every meal.1:05
  12. So, Neil, what is your favourite food?1:09
  13. Well, that's a really difficult question, but I really like fish.1:12
  14. Ah, me too.1:20
  15. I was going to say that, but But actually, I really love seafood.1:21
  16. So I think I'd say any kind of dish with seafood in it, I absolutely love.1:27
  17. So how often do you eat seafood, Beth?1:33
  18. Well, not very often, actually.1:36
  19. I have it when I go on holiday and I have it in restaurants sometimes, but I don't really cook1:39
  20. seafood at home.1:44
  21. What about you?1:46
  22. How often do you have fish?1:47
  23. Oh, probably a few times a week.1:49
  24. Really?1:52
  25. Maybe, yeah.1:53
  26. Yeah, we eat a lot of fish.1:54
  27. We sometimes have fish at home.1:56
  28. I normally have it once or twice a week.1:58
  29. Right.2:01
  30. But yeah, I never have seafood at home actually.2:02
  31. Yeah, OK.2:05
  32. So, what is your least favourite food?2:06
  33. Oh, I absolutely hate baked beans.2:09
  34. You hate baked beans?2:13
  35. I think they're disgusting.2:15
  36. I can't even...2:16
  37. the smell of them even makes me feel a bit sick.2:18
  38. Oh, okay.2:21
  39. So we've talked about the foods that we really like and the foods that we don't like, but in a2:23
  40. general week, what do you normally cook?2:30
  41. Often we'll eat Indian curries, but also Italian pasta dishes or Spanish dishes, and then sometimes more traditional British roast2:34
  42. dinner kind of thing.2:46
  43. Yeah.2:48
  44. I think generally we have the same at home, like we eat a lot of food from different countries, but2:49
  45. I have to say I usually cook quite a lot of pasta and quite a lot of rice at home2:56
  46. in general just because they cook really quickly.3:03
  47. So, Beth, you generally eat rice and pasta dishes.3:06
  48. What does that mean, generally?3:12
  49. generally?3:13
  50. Well, we use generally and usually and normally for habits or things that we do a lot.3:14
  51. So, for example, if I generally cook pasta or rice, that means maybe five times out of the seven in3:22
  52. a week, I would say.3:31
  53. OK, so that's most of the time.3:32
  54. If we use sometimes, we mean that we do it less than generally.3:34
  55. Yeah, sometimes might be two or three times a week.3:40
  56. I guess it depends on what you're talking about.3:45
  57. But for example, with me, I sometimes cook fish.3:48
  58. Like I said, I have it maybe twice a week.3:52
  59. So, I would say that's sometimes.3:54
  60. Beth, you said that you hate baked beans.3:57
  61. So, do you ever eat baked beans?4:01
  62. Never.4:04
  63. No, I can't stand them, so I never ever have baked beans.4:05
  64. Well, never is something that we don't do.4:11
  65. We just don't ever do it.4:14
  66. I can't believe you don't like baked beans.4:22
  67. Beans on toast is a classic.4:25
  68. It is, but no, not for me.4:27
  69. Let's quickly recap the vocabulary we learnt during the conversation.4:30
  70. We learnt often, which means we do something a lot, and we learnt how often, which we use to ask4:34
  71. someone how many times they do something.4:42
  72. Usually, normally and generally, which are all ways to talk about things we do a lot.4:45
  73. Sometimes, which we can use to talk about things we do, but not always or often.4:53
  74. And never.4:59
  75. To talk about things we don't do, like eat beans, Beth.5:00
  76. Yes, just like I never eat baked beans.5:05
  77. Horrible.5:08
  78. Thanks for listening to Real Easy English.5:11
  79. Visit our website for more activities and courses to help you with your English – bbclearningenglish .com.5:15
  80. Next week we'll talk about our friends.5:23
  81. See you then.5:26
  82. Goodbye.5:27
  83. Bye.5:28
  84. Thank you.5:29

Everyday English conversation practice: Beth and Neil talk about food

This clip is BBC Learning English's Real Easy English podcast, an A2 conversation between two hosts, Beth and Neil, talking about their favourite and least favourite foods. It runs at 153 words per minute, faster than most of the catalogue, so it is a good test of whether you can keep pace with natural British speech once you already know the words on the page.

There is no script trick here. Beth asks a question, Neil answers, Beth pushes back with her own opinion, and the topic moves from favourite food to how often they eat it to what they actually cook in a normal week. That back and forth is exactly the shape of daily English conversation practice: short turns, real opinions, nothing read off a page.

British English pronunciation practice in a clear, unscripted chat

British English pronunciation practice works best when the speech is clean but still spontaneous, and this recording has both. Two lines are worth quoting directly. Neil's "I absolutely hate baked beans" is a full, stressed opinion, hit the word "absolutely" hard and let "hate" fall right after it with no pause, that is how the emphasis actually lands in his voice.

Beth's answer about fish, "I normally have it once or twice a week", is the more useful line to shadow for rhythm: "once or twice a week" comes out as one smooth chunk, not four separate words. Neil's earlier line, "How often means how many times we eat our favourite food", is worth a close listen too, notice how "how often" and "how many times" get almost equal weight, which is what makes the explanation clear rather than rushed.

  • "I absolutely hate baked beans": stress on "absolutely", no gap before "hate"
  • "I normally have it once or twice a week": the time phrase runs as a single beat
  • "How often means how many times we eat our favourite food": two matched phrases, evenly weighted

How to shadow this line by line, from greeting to favourite food

This is English speaking practice you build line by line, in the order the conversation actually happens, not at random. The opening five lines are podcast framing, not conversation, so use them only to get used to Beth's and Neil's voices before the real exchange starts.

  • Lines 6 to 12: shadow the greeting first, "Hi Neil", "Hi Beth", "How are you?", it is short enough to repeat five times in under a minute
  • Line 13: isolate "What are we talking about today?" on its own, this question shape reappears constantly in daily English conversation practice
  • Lines 24 to 29: take Neil's turn on his favourite food and Beth's reply about seafood as one unit, then swap and answer as if you were Beth
  • Lines 40 and 45: shadow "I normally have it once or twice a week" and "I absolutely hate baked beans" back to back, they are the two clearest single sentences to practise your own accent on
  • Once those lines feel automatic, run the whole segment straight through at the recording's own pace before moving to the next clip
Download on the App Store