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Shadowing practice: The City Mouse and the Country Mouse (UK English accent)

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

Full transcript

  1. The City Mouse and the Country Mouse A version of the tale by thefablecottage .com This is a city mouse.0:00
  2. He lives in a big city with tall buildings and lots of shops and restaurants.0:15
  3. But today he is visiting his friend, a country mouse.0:21
  4. The Country Mouse lives in a cozy nest at the bottom of a tree.0:27
  5. Her home is small, but it is warm and comfortable.0:32
  6. The Country Mouse cooks a dinner of food from her garden.0:38
  7. Corn, carrots, acorns and a cold glass of water from the stream.0:43
  8. Meanwhile, the City Mouse talks and talks.0:51
  9. The city is amazing.0:57
  10. I go to the theatre and the museum.1:01
  11. My house has 20 rooms.1:04
  12. You absolutely must visit.1:07
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  1. Have you ever tried Chinese food?1:10
  2. The Country Mouse dreams that she lives in the city.1:12
  3. She dreams that she eats at fancy restaurants, says fancy things and buys fancy hats from fancy stores.1:22
  4. She dreams about eating Chinese food.1:31
  5. How wonderful!1:35
  6. She thinks.1:37
  7. I want to live in the city too.1:38
  8. The next morning, the Country Mouse agrees to visit the City Mouse.1:45
  9. She packs her bag and follows the City Mouse back to his big house in the city.1:50
  10. The house is enormous.1:56
  11. There are 20 rooms full of beautiful furniture.1:59
  12. The Country Mouse is amazed.2:04
  13. Which room is mine?2:07
  14. She asks.2:09
  15. Um, we actually live down here, says the City Mouse.2:11
  16. He leads her down some stairs to the basement.2:16
  17. In the darkness, the Country Mouse sees many families of mice.2:20
  18. These are my housemates, explains the City Mouse.2:24
  19. The City Mouse leads the Country Mouse back upstairs for dinner.2:28
  20. In the dining room, there is a feast of delicious foods on the table.2:33
  21. Cheese, bread, cookies, cakes and lemonade.2:38
  22. There is also Chinese food.2:43
  23. But just as they start to eat, CRASH!2:46
  24. A cat with sharp teeth and sharp claws jumps up on the table.2:51
  25. The City Cat chases the two mice off the table and across the floor.2:57
  26. The mice hide in a hole in the wall.3:03
  27. They are trapped.3:07
  28. They wait silently until the cat leaves.3:10
  29. Then they quietly creep back to the dining room.3:13
  30. But all the food is gone.3:17
  31. The City Humans ate everything.3:20
  32. The Country Mouse hurries back to the basement and packs her bag.3:24
  33. Where are you going?3:29
  34. asks the City Mouse.3:31
  35. Home, she says.3:33
  36. I want to go back to the Country.3:35
  37. Your city life isn't so wonderful after all.3:38
  38. Now please help me call a taxi.3:41
  39. Moral, sometimes other people's lives are not as great as they make you believe.3:45

A2 level british narration for beginner english speaking practice

This clip is a narrated retelling of The City Mouse and the Country Mouse from The Fable Cottage, read in a british accent at an A2 level. The narrator carries the whole story alone, with short direct sentences and a few lines of dialogue dropped in as the two mice speak, so you get both plain narration and quoted speech to copy in one recording.

At 148 words per minute it moves faster than most of the catalogue, which is exactly why it is useful for english speaking practice: the sentences themselves stay short, so the speed comes from how quickly one clean sentence follows another, not from long clauses. That combination, simple grammar at a brisk pace, is good training for saying full sentences without stalling between them, and a solid step if you are looking for british english pronunciation practice with a narrator who enunciates clearly.

The lines worth shadowing in this fable

A few lines in the transcript are worth slowing down on before you shadow the full clip, because of what they ask your mouth and your ear to do.

  • "I go to the theatre and the museum." is the City Mouse boasting in present simple. Watch the rhythm: theatre and museum both carry stress on the first syllable, and the narrator does not pause between the two nouns, so the line reads as one breath, not two lists.
  • "Have you ever tried Chinese food?" is a present perfect question, and the pitch climbs across the whole line rather than jumping only at the end. Say it a few times aiming for that gradual rise, not a flat run followed by a spike on food.
  • "Um, we actually live down here, says the City Mouse." mixes a hesitation, um, with an ordinary declarative sentence and a reporting tag. It is a good line for practising natural spoken english, since real speakers pause exactly like this before admitting something awkward, here that the City Mouse actually lives in a basement, not the grand house he described.

How to work through the mouse story scene by scene

Do not start with the whole clip. Work the story in the order it actually unfolds.

  • Start with line 1, the title sentence and This is a city mouse, twice slowly, once at speed, until the opening rhythm feels automatic.
  • Move to the City Mouse's boasting run, lines 9 to 13: The city is amazing through You absolutely must visit. Shadow these as one connected block, since the narrator reads them without a break between sentences.
  • Slow down on Have you ever tried Chinese food? on its own and repeat it five times, watching only the rising pitch across the line.
  • Practise the reveal at line 27, Um, we actually live down here, says the City Mouse, focusing on the pause after um before the sentence continues.
  • Take the action sequence, lines 35 to 41, CRASH through until they wait silently, as a single fast block, since this is where the pace of 148 words per minute is felt most, and repeating it is real english shadowing practice for beginners moving from single sentences to a fast connected passage.
  • Finish with lines 44 to 48, the Country Mouse packing her bag and saying Home, and compare your own recording to the narrator's line by line to check where your pace still drops.
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