Shadowing Practice: My Dad's Terrible Jokes - Learn English Speaking with Video
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24 sentences
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1
My dad tells the worst jokes in the world!
2
Every morning at breakfast, he has a new one.
3
What do you call a sleeping dinosaur? A dino-snore!
4
Ugh. And then he laughs for a whole minute.
5
Last year, my friends came to our house for dinner.
6
And Dad told them ten jokes in one hour!
7
I just wanted to hide under the table...
8
But guess what? My friends loved him!
9
Then in March, Dad went to Canada for work.
10
He was away for three whole months.
11
Breakfast was so quiet. No jokes, no silly laugh.
12
And... I missed them. I really did.
13
So, one evening, I called him on a video call.
14
Now it was my turn to tell a joke!
15
Dad, why did the cow go to the cinema?
16
He looked so surprised! I don't know. Why?
17
To see a moo-vie!
18
He laughed so much, he almost fell off his chair.
19
Last week, Dad finally came home!
20
At breakfast, he looked at me and smiled.
21
Why are teddy bears never hungry? They're always stuffed!
22
I rolled my eyes, but I laughed too.
23
Okay, his jokes are still terrible.
24
But now, they're my favourite part of the day.
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This A2 speaking lesson is built on the video “My Dad's Terrible Jokes”. The speaker keeps coming back to these words: joke, dad, breakfast. This video has 24 sentences and 200 words to shadow. The speech runs for 1:42. The speaker talks at a steady 118 words per minute, a comfortable pace for shadowing. 82% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English; the rest is worth studying before you start. 5 of its 24 sentences are questions, so it is good practice for question intonation and short answers.
Key vocabulary in this video
12 words from the video worth learning, with pronunciation and meaning:
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| hungry adjective | /ˈhʌŋ.ɡɹi/ | Affected by hunger; having the physical need for food. |
| silly adjective | /ˈsɪl.i/ | Laughable or amusing through foolishness or a foolish appearance. |
| cinema noun | /ˈsɪn.ə.mə/ | A movie theatre, a movie house. |
| dinosaur noun | /ˈdaɪnəsoɹ/ | Those animals of the clade Dinosauria that existed during the Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous periods and are now extinct. |
| snore verb | /snoɹ/ | To breathe during sleep with harsh, snorting noises caused by vibration of the soft palate. |
| joke noun | /ˈd͡ʒoʊ̯k/ | An amusing story. |
| laugh verb | /læf/ | To show mirth, satisfaction, or derision, by peculiar movement of the muscles of the face, particularly of the mouth, causing a lighting up of the face and… |
| breakfast noun | /ˈbɹeɪkˌfæst/ | The first meal of the day, usually eaten in the morning. |
| quiet adjective | /ˈkwaɪ̯.ət/ | With little or no sound; free of disturbing noise. |
| smile verb | /ˈsmaɪl/ | To have (a smile) on one's face. |
| typically adverb | /ˈtɪp.ɪ.kli/ | In a typical or common manner. |
| favourite adjective | /ˈfeɪv.ɹɪt/ | Most-liked. (In other words, [person]'s favorite [noun] = the [noun] that [person] likes the most.) |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Meaning |
|---|---|
| fall off verb | To become detached or to drop from. |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 3 contractions and reduced forms, such as they're, don't. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
How to practise with this video
- Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
- Shadow it sentence by sentence at normal speed, repeating each one until your rhythm matches the speaker.
- Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like hungry, silly, cinema.
What is the Shadowing Technique?
Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.