Repeat-After-Me + Shadowing Practice!

Hello, English learners. My name is Claire, a native speaker from the US and an English teacher. And you keep asking for it, so here it is. More shadowing practice. Shadowing is a really useful tool for working on your pronunciation and sounding more natural in English. Essentially, it is repeating after native speakers or someone you want to sound like in terms of your inflection and rhythm of your English speaking. And by doing so, you create good habits for your own English speaking. So whether that is pronunciation, tone, inflection, rhythm, any or all of those things that you want to improve upon in your own speaking, shadowing practice is really going to help you achieve that and sound more natural. So as I said, I'm a native speaker and I have kind of a standard American Midwest accent. So obviously, I will be doing the American English pronunciation of things. So if you're interested in that, then welcome to today's shadowing practice. Let's jump right in. So first, I'm going to give you plenty of time to repeat after me after each phrase that I will say in this short story. And then I will invite you to shadow a section of the story after me. At the end of the video, we will say the entire story all together. So again, you will have the opportunity to shadow, but this time the entire story. If you're wondering what's the difference between repeating after you and shadowing, well, repeating after me is what it sounds like. I say it and then you repeat on your own. Shadowing is you saying it with me. So once you've had a chance to say it on your own, repeating it after me, then you'll try saying it with me. So you've had time to practice it first and then again with me at the same time to match my tone, inflection, rhythm, pronunciation, all that. So it just reinforces all of those things to help you sound more natural. Okay, so first repeat after me. Yesterday morning, yesterday morning, I was running late for work. I was running late for work. I grabbed my bag. I grabbed my bag, locked the door, locked the door, and rushed to the station, and rushed to the station. Before we shadow this section, say it all together, I want to point out the different pronunciations of the ending ED that we have here. We have three verbs with the ending ED. Grabbed, locked, and rushed. Now, there are three different pronunciations of the ED ending, but here we have two of them. The third pronunciation comes later in the story, so don't worry, I will point that out to you. But between these three verbs, we either pronounce the ED ending as a D or a T. Grabbed, grabbed, that's the D ending, and locked, locked, that one has the T ending. Can you guess which one rushed has? Rushed. Say it yourself. Rushed. Is it D or T? Can you hear? If you said T, you're correct. Now, in very rapid speech, you may not be able to tell the difference between the D and the T, and that's okay, as long as you know which one it is. So, let's take the D ending in grabbed. Because you know you're saying a D, you have the intention of saying the D, and you're thinking D when you speak, but you don't need to over-pronounce this. You don't need to say, I grabbed my bag. I grabbed my bag. No one speaks like that, right? I grabbed my bag. I grabbed my bag. You may even not even hear the D when I speak. I grabbed my bag. It's so subtle that it could just sound like I grab my bag to you. But we need to at least think of the D and have the intention of pronouncing this D sound, so that it doesn't sound like we're speaking in the present tense. I grabbed my bag. We need to be in the past tense, of course, because this story takes place in the past. So, we do need to have the intention of pronouncing the D sound. So, as long as you're thinking that as you speak quickly, then it will come across as grabbed. Grabbed. It's so fast, but I'm not over-pronouncing. Grabbed. Now, the T sound for the ED ending. Locked the door. Locked the door. Again, think T. Make sure you know it's not locked. Locked, right? That's incorrect, but locked. And then as long as you have the intention of the T sound, it will come across. Locked. And rushed to the station. Again, think T, because we know it has the T ending. Rushed to the station. Rushed to the station. It may still even just sound like rush to the station to you, but I am saying rushed, and it will come across that I'm speaking in the past tense, because at least my intention is to have this T ending. Now, that might be a little bit of a different way to be thinking of pronunciation than you're used to. You know, it would be easy for me to say every time, pronounce the D and the T clearly. Grabbed, locked, rushed. But if you really want to work on this native speaker sounding accent, or you really want to sound natural, of course, this is a great way to be able to think of those pronunciations. Okay, now we can shadow this whole section together. So, say it with me. Yesterday morning, I was running late for work. I grabbed my bag, locked the door, and rushed to the station. When I got there, when I got there, I saw the train doors were about to close. I saw the train doors were about to close. I sprinted toward them. I sprinted toward them, but the doors shut right in front of me. But the doors shut right in front of me. Okay, before we shadow, a couple of pronunciation things to point out. The S sound at the end of the word close should be a voiced sound, and not, right? So, is unvoiced. I can't hum on it. For example, but the voiced sound, I can, right? You can hear I can hum on that sound. That's what makes it voiced. So, this one has a voiced ending, close, close. But of course, very quickly, we would just say, I saw the train doors were about to close, close, close. And here we have another ED ending. So, this is the third pronunciation of ED, sprinted, sprinted. So, this ending is not a D or a T sound. It is ED, ED. You could think of it like a short I sound plus a D or the schwa sound plus D. Sprinted, sprinted. I sprinted toward them. Another tricky word that a lot of people have questions about in English pronunciation is the word toward. Now, in American English, most people pronounce this as one syllable, toward. It's almost like that first O doesn't exist, toward. It's like a TW sound at the beginning, toward. Now, some people might pronounce it toward. That is a little bit more British English. So, if you've heard that before, toward, that would be that pronunciation. If you did pronounce this word as toward in American English, it wouldn't be that strange. But if you are aiming for an American English pronunciation, toward, toward. And the final phrase in front of me, instead of pronouncing each word in front of me, individually, in rapid speech, we would squish these sounds together so that it's in front of me, in front of me, in front of me. So, you kind of drop the T at the end of front, and you don't pronounce the V sound at the end of of, but drop that as well. In front of me, in front of me. Okay, let's shadow this whole section together. When I got there, I saw the train doors were about to close. I sprinted toward them, but the doors shut right in front of me. I thought, I thought, great, now I got to wait another 10 minutes. Great, now I got to wait another 10 minutes. Let's repeat the word thought together one more time because that's a tricky one for pronunciation. Thought, thought. We have the unvoiced T at the beginning, which you can think of as blowing air between your teeth with your tongue. And if you've seen some of my other shadowing videos, I have pointed out before that if you see a T at the end of a word in American English, we often stop that T, or we drop the sound. So, it's thought. Got to becomes gotta, gotta. Similar to when we squish together in front of, we have gotta. So again, that stop T sound because we have the T at the end of got, but it's a stop T. So, it kind of sounds like a D when we say it quickly. Gotta, gotta. Also, wait another. The T also becomes a stop T and kind of aligns with the next word because it starts with a vowel. So again, it sounds like a D or it has this stopped T sound. Wait another, wait another. Okay, let's shadow this sentence together. I thought, great, now I got to wait another 10 minutes. That's when I realized, that's when I realized I'd left my phone at home anyway. I'd left my phone at home anyway. I guess missing that train, I guess missing that train wasn't such a bad thing after all. Wasn't such a bad thing after all. The silver lining, the silver lining was that I had time to go back home, was that I had time to go back home, grab my phone, grab my phone, and let my boss know I'd be late, and let my boss know I'd be late. Realized, that one has, which ending? If you said D, you're correct. Realized. And in rapid speech, realized, realized. And in the last sentence, we have a kind of list separated by commas. So I'll just point out the inflection here. Whenever we have a list like this, before each comma, the inflection stays raised, and you lower your inflection only at the end of the sentence. And this makes it really clear that you are listing things. So here, listen to me say the whole sentence, and listen to my inflection. The silver lining was that I had time to go back home, grab my phone, and let my boss know I'd be late. So we had, before the comma, go back home, inflection went up, grab my phone, the inflection went up again, and let my boss know I'd be late. I'd be late goes down in inflection. So if you're ever listing something separated by commas, remember this inflection rule because it will make it really clear that you are listing something. So that's why mastering inflection like this in overall sentences, so not just the inflection or the stress of individual words in English, but the overall stress and inflection throughout in a sentence is even more important than getting the accent correct. So even if your goal is not to sound exactly like me or a native speaker, you can keep whatever accent you have when you speak in English, but you want to be understood, right? You want to be able to communicate. So getting the inflection and the stress both in individual words and in an entire sentence is so important for your overall English speaking and learning and communication so that others can understand you. Okay, back to shadowing. Let's say this whole section together. That's when I realized I'd left my phone at home anyway. I guess missing that train wasn't such a bad thing after all. The silver lining was that I had time to go back home, grab my phone, and let my boss know I'd be late. Okay, awesome work so far. Let's say the whole thing together. So I'm going to read through the entire story and you are going to shadow me. Yesterday morning, I was running late for work. I grabbed my bag, locked the door, and rushed to the station. When I got there, I saw the train doors were about to close. I sprinted toward them, but the doors shut right in front of me. I thought, great, now I gotta wait another 10 minutes. That's when I realized I'd left my phone at home anyway. I guess missing that train wasn't such a bad thing after all. The silver lining was that I had time to go back home, grab my phone, and let my boss know I'd be late. Guys, thank you so much for sticking around to the end of this video. I hope you found this shadowing practice useful. I will continue to put out more shadowing videos because you guys request them so much. Go check out my shadowing playlist which I'm building all the time. More shadowing videos definitely to come. So let me know in the comments what you'd like me to focus on. Maybe there's a specific word or group of words that you struggle with in terms of pronunciation or when you are speaking very quickly. Or maybe it's an inflection or a tone. Or maybe you want me to add more idioms or phrasal verbs in a shadowing practice. I can also go over some of those so that we can kill two birds with one stone and have a shadowing practice while also learning new vocabulary. So let me know what you guys want to see from me next, particularly my members. You guys get priority reply in the comment section. If you're interested in joining my channel as a member, click the join button below and you'll get to see more information about that. I'm so grateful for the support. Happy shadowing, guys, and I'll see you next time. Bye for now.