Intensive English Listening Sarah's Morning sentence Five

October 21, 2025 Episode 460

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Hi.

Welcome to English Listening World intensive listening podcast.

I'm Les Paris.

I'd like to do sentence 5 from the Sarah's Morning story today.

Let's listen to the sentence first.

The paper is on the front steps.

OK, let's go to the rhythm first.

If we check the rhythm out, we'll go with an equal rhythm.

The paper is on the front steps.

Good.

OK, we've got paper on steps.

So there's basically 3 beats going on here, 3 strong beats, and in between the strong beats there's a number of weak beats.

Let's explore those with the reductions, liaisons, and consonant clusters.

Reductions, I can't find any any significant reductions in this sentence.

Liaison.

OK, a liaison is where one word hooks up sound wise to the next word.

Paper, er, er, that's a kind of a consonant sound.

And then the next word is is.

And they join, or is, paper is paper is paper is paper is, there's no break between them.

Paper is.

The next liaison is is plus on.

is on.

Is on, is on, and all together paper is on, paper is on.

So now that's the liaisons.

Let's move on to the consonant clusters.

OK, let's see.

At the end of on, we have a mm sound, and the next word is the the the the is the is the is the the the.

And we have another consonant cluster with front plus steps.

Front has the two consonants at the end.

And then the next word steps in.

And we get on step, front steps, front steps.

Be careful with those, they can be a bit tricky to hear if you don't get those sounds in your native language.

Now let's see, we've covered all the listening problems that could arise.

It's time to move into shadowing practice.

Once again, I'm going to say this sentence 3 times, and I want your shadowing to be exactly on top of my words.

If you can't do it perfectly, that's OK.

Perfect is the target, and that's where you want to be after you've finished the practice.

Today we'll do it 3 times in the video.

What? The paper is on the front steps.

The papers on the front steps.

The paper is on the front steps.

Good.

That's 3 times shadowing, but that's not nearly enough.

I recommend about 20 times shadowing.

At that point, you're getting into deep skill.

You can shadow 20 times very easily on the English listening world website.

You'll find the link in the description.

Go to that page.

There'll be a button you can press.

It'll play 2 times while you listen, and you can shadow.

If you're shadowing on the train or some other public place, you can shadow without making the noise.

Make your mouth do all the motions of the speaking without making noise.

Let me show you.

The paper is on the front steps.

So shadowing noiselessly is also good practice, especially if you imagine the sound in your head.

That's about all that I have time for today.

Thanks for listening and good luck with your homework.