Listen and repeat English practice

Real sentences, from short to long

Start with the first line and move on only when you can say it whole without looking at the caption. Each line opens in Sada, ready to practise.

Next: short sentence

“Everyone needs a coach.”

Bill Gates · Practise this line →

Then: longer sentence

“We live in an incredibly busy world.”

Andy Puddicombe · Practise this line →

Then: a question

“Doesn't it feel good to say it out loud?”

Derek Sivers · Practise this line →

“What keeps us healthy and happy as we go through life?”

Robert Waldinger · Practise this line →

“Imagine telling someone that you meet today what you're going to do.”

Derek Sivers · Practise this line →

Listen and repeat by level: beginner to advanced

• Beginner (A1–A2): start with the five very short lines for beginners, each under three seconds, then come back to the first line above. Teaching a child? Start with listen and repeat for kids, short lines from Sesame Street.
• Intermediate (B1): the lines above, in order. Move on only when you can say a line whole without the caption.
• Advanced (B2–C1): the three long lines below, 18 to 26 words each at the speaker’s natural pace. Hold the whole sentence in your head before you speak. If you lose the middle, repeat each half, then the whole line. Then say the same line along with the speaker in Shadow mode, and go on to the fastest talks.

Advanced: long sentences

“If you can't do the little things right, you'll never be able to do the big things right.”

William McRaven · Practise this line →

“And the reason you're scared to do it is because you think you will fail horribly and everything will go wrong.”

Derek Sivers · Practise this line →

“The point of the fish story is merely that the most obvious, important realities are often the ones that are hardest to see and talk about.”

David Foster Wallace · Practise this line →

Which tool fits which need?

• Hear how one word is pronounced: a dictionary with reference audio, such as Cambridge’s pronunciation dictionary.
• Hear a word in many real sentences: YouGlish plays it in clips from YouTube videos.
• Hear any sentence you type read aloud: a text-to-speech tool. Sada does not read typed text aloud; its models are real speakers in captioned videos.
• Repeat real sentences and hear yourself beside them: Sada, in Repeat mode, with the words it recognised and a timing comparison.
• Find out whether a particular sound is right: Sada does not assess sounds one by one; that needs a teacher or a tool that scores individual sounds.

How to practise

One line at a time, from hearing it to recording it to comparing:

1. Open an exercise from this guide. Choose a short line from a captioned video and read its caption once so you know what it means.
2. Listen to the whole line without speaking, then listen again.
3. In Repeat mode, say the line in the pause after the speaker, copying its stress and pauses.
4. Record a take, then open Compare and play your recording and the original. Review words and timing; Sada does not grade individual sounds.
5. Change one difference you heard, record again, then move to a longer line.

Listen and repeat, or shadowing?

Prefer instructions in Indonesian? Try Teknik Shadowing Bahasa Inggris: Coba Langsung, with five more short English lines.

In listen and repeat you wait until the speaker finishes, then say the line in the silence after it: Sada’s Repeat mode. In shadowing you speak along with the speaker, a moment behind: Shadow mode. Repeating gives you time to remember the line and form each word; shadowing makes you keep the speaker’s pace. Start by repeating, then shadow the same line. How shadowing works.

The TOEFL Listen and Repeat task

The TOEFL iBT Speaking section includes a Listen and Repeat task: ETS describes it as listening to short sentences and repeating them “exactly as you hear them”. Repeating real sentences in Sada trains the same skill: holding a spoken sentence in memory and saying it back accurately and clearly.

Sada is not connected with ETS, its lines are not test items, and its word match is not a TOEFL score and does not predict one. For the test format itself, use ETS’s official practice materials. For seven campus sentences to repeat from short to long, and how the task works, see TOEFL Listen and Repeat practice.

The PTE Repeat Sentence task

PTE Academic has a similar task, Repeat Sentence: you hear a sentence of 3 to 9 seconds once and repeat it exactly. Sada is not connected with Pearson and its result is not a PTE score. For seven real sentences of that length to repeat from short to long, see PTE Repeat Sentence practice. If an employer asks you to take the Versant English test, its Repeat task works the same way: see Versant Repeat practice. PTE also asks you to read a text of up to 60 words aloud; for real sentences to read, hear and record, see PTE Read Aloud practice. Which tests have a repeat or read-aloud task, and which have none, side by side: speaking tests with a repeat task.

What Sada’s feedback tells you

After each take, Sada marks the words it recognised and the ones it missed, and compares your timing with the speaker’s. A missed word can come from noise or a distant microphone rather than your pronunciation, so listen to your take before judging it. For how to read the result in detail, see the pronunciation checker. To make this a daily habit, see how to practise speaking English alone. For everyday sentences such as greetings, thanks and simple questions, see daily use English sentences. If you grew up speaking an Indian language, the sounds and rhythms to listen for in each line, with two real lines for each, are in English pronunciation for Indian speakers; if your first language is Spanish, in English pronunciation for Spanish speakers. To repeat lines built around one pair of sounds, such as walk and work, see minimal pairs practice.

More questions learners ask

• How can I improve my English listening?
• Why can I understand English but not speak it?