Shadowing practice: The Pursuit of Happyness — You Gotta Protect It

This clip is a short, direct speech: a father telling his son not to let anyone say he can't do something. It is rated A2, which makes it a good entry point if longer film dialogue still moves too fast for you. There is one voice, one register, and no crosstalk to follow.

The pace is slow and deliberate. Each line lands as its own beat, with a pause before the next, which is exactly the rhythm you need when you are still mapping English sounds to the words you already know. It is a native speaker with an American accent, so it also works as american accent training if that is the sound you are aiming for.

With only 10 lines, every one carries weight, which makes this a compact case study in how to pronounce English words when the sentence itself is simple but the delivery is not.

• "Don't ever let somebody tell you you can't do something." is the longest line and the hardest to shadow. Notice the double "you": the first is unstressed and fast, the second gets the weight before "can't".
• "You got a dream," is followed straight away by "you got to protect it." Say the two lines as one breath group, with a small rise at the end of the first and a fall on the second, the way the speaker does.
• "You want something? Go get it." is a question followed by a command. Practising the shift in tone between the two is more useful here than the words themselves.

With only 10 lines this clip suits a full pass rather than picking one out. Work through it in order, since the speech builds.

• Start with line 1, "Hey.", just to catch the opening tone before the content starts.
• Shadow line 2 on its own three or four times before adding line 3, "Not even me.", since 2 is the line most learners rush.
• Take lines 5 and 6 together, "You got a dream," then "you got to protect it.", as a single unit: they are meant to be heard as one thought.
• Repeat lines 7 and 8 slowly first, then at full speed, to get the contrast between "can't do something themselves" and "tell you you can't do it".
• Close with line 9 and the one word line 10, "Period.", and notice how much weight a single word can carry when the pace slows right down.
• Once you can say all 10 lines without checking the text, run the whole clip again and let the app score it, so you can see which line still needs another pass.