Intensive English Listening David's Phone sentence Five

January 13, 2026 Episode 472

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Here's today's sentence.

Tell me what you hear.

He walks to her apartment and stands at the door.

If you thought the last part of that sentence was crazy fast.

Stands at the door Well, you're right because there's a lot of consonants and not many vowels, so the sound gets sped up in there kind of let's say the sentence again 3 times slower and then faster.

He walks to her apartment and stands at the door.

English has a heartbeat.

Listen to the beats as I say the sentence.

He walks to her apartment and stands at the door.

Walks apartment stands door.

In apartment, ah is not strong and meant is not strong.

Part is the strong part of that word.

The other words, he, her at.

To the, those are all small words, weakly stressed, they get squished together.

They're not very clear or easy to hear.

Now the reductions.

There's two main reductions to catch.

And and her.

And you've probably studied before becomes um her becomes er.

He walks to her apartment and stands at the door.

Now, there's one more interesting point.

The sentence begins with he.

In Canadian and American English we often say the h on he or her at the beginning of a sentence, but in British English some dialects or some accents, they don't say that he, he becomes he.

He walks to her apartment.

I'm not trying to fake the British accent, but I said it without the H.

Now, I'm Canadian, so I'm gonna use my Canadian accent, but for training, sometimes I'll take the H off just for your training purposes.

Now let's see.

He walks to her apartment, to her apartment, to her apartment, to her apartment.

And stands and stands and stands and stands at the and stands at the walks to her apartment and stands at the door.

There we go.

Liaisons Now there's several liaisons.

Let's go through the sentence.

Walks 2, walks to, walks to, walks to, walks to, and then to her, to her, to her, to her.

Walks to her, walks to her.

It's almost like one chunk there.

How about stands at stands at stands at stands at stands at at the at the at the at the at the stands at the stands at the stands at the another chunk.

The liaisons Kind of squish the words together so that the English rhythm can be maintained.

Consonant clusters.

Now, we have stands at the, and if you look at it written on paper, stands, the last letters NDS.

Those are all consonants and then at has a vowel and a consonant, and that is consonant consonant vowel.

There's a lot of consonants there.

It's a cluster of consonants.

There's only one vowel in at ah.

So we get nzata nzata nzata nzata, stanzaa, stanzaa, stanzaa.

That's our main consonant cluster in this sentence.

Your turn.

Now I want your voice on top of mine.

One He walks to her apartment and stands at the door.

He walks to her apartment and stands at the door.

There, that's 3 times shadowing here on this video.

Of course, for good intensive practice, that's not nearly enough.

In the description below you can find a link on my page, and you can go there and practice shadowing 20 times.

I've got it conveniently set up so that it repeats 20 times.

It's less than a minute and it's excellent practice.

Let's go there now.