Shadowing Practice: How To Improve Your English - Learn English Speaking with Video

Let's talk about how you can improve your English.

This is another video that I'm making in which I'm speaking at normal speed.

So I'm not slowing down.

This is just me talking normally.

You guys really liked the last one that I did.

And I'm not going to guarantee that I'm going to make videos like this all the time.

Like I said before, if you want my material where I speak at normal speed or I speak fast,

make sure to sign up for my advanced podcast episodes.

I release a lot of those.

And so if you want regular practice with this, that's your best bet.

That's the thing you can do to get my material in which I speak fast.

But today I want to make another video in which I speak at normal speed like this.

And I want to talk about how you can improve your English.

This is a really broad topic.

This is very vast.

There are so many things that could be said, of course.

But I just want to talk about three main points.

I want to talk about three things that you can focus on

that will help you improve your English and reach a higher level than what you have right now.

By the way, I'm wearing these sunglasses again because I'm sitting outside

and it's really cold and I want to be in the sun and so I'm not just trying to look cool.

I've got these sunglasses on just so I can record this in the sun.

So let's talk about three different things you can do in order to improve your English

and what I want to do is I want to talk first just about how we improve in any area

because that's really what I'm going to focus on.

Like what three things do we do in order to improve in any domain,

any skill that we have,

anything that we're trying to improve,

what is it that we need to do?

Not just language learning but anything in life.

Well number one, we need repeated practice so that we can get comfortable with that thing that we're doing.

So for example, I think of one of my first jobs that I had,

I worked at a deli.

A deli is a place to sell sandwiches in the US.

And so I remember making sandwiches at a deli,

and that was one of my first jobs.

And the way that I got better at my job was just doing it repeatedly.

At the very beginning, I was terrible at making sandwiches.

I did not know what I was doing.

And if you've listened to me talk in different episodes of mine about this subject,

you know that in general,

I'm not good with my hands.

I have a big weakness when it comes to using my hands to build things,

create things, manipulate things.

I just can't do it well.

That's always been one of my weaknesses and so you can imagine

when I first started making sandwiches it took me a

while to get the hang of it

but with repeated practice I was able to actually get better at making sandwiches

because I just kept doing it over and over again.

And so repeated practice of course is necessary if you want to get better at something.

The second thing is that we want to correct the things that we're doing wrong.

So you need to identify these things,

you need to see what it is that you're not doing right,

and you need to correct that.

Otherwise you're not going to improve.

In order to improve you need to correct the things that you can't do well,

that you're not doing right.

So I can think of another job

that I had where I had to fold a lot of clothes

and I had to stack them in a pile and

And the only way that I was able to get better was my manager had to like take a look and see,

oh, you're not doing this right.

You're not doing that right.

You need to do it more like this.

And that's how I would realize like what my mistakes were.

And so I had to get corrected in order to actually fold the clothes right,

stack them right.

And so if no one had ever told me that I was wrong about the way I was doing something

and the way I was folding those clothes,

then I wouldn't have improved.

And so in order to improve,

we want to make sure that we're correcting the things that we're doing wrong.

And this involves identifying those things,

identifying them and correcting them, right?

And then the third thing is we need to increase the difficulty of the tasks

that we're doing in order to actually improve our skills, right?

If you just do the same thing at the same level,

that's not going to make you reach a higher level

because you actually have to practice with things that are at higher levels than the level that you're at, right?

So I think of like playing tennis for example.

If you play tennis against the same level of opponents,

maybe just the same exact opponent who's just at the same level and you just keep beating them over and over again,

this isn't gonna necessarily make you reach the next level where you can beat an opponent who's harder.

In order to do that,

you actually have to challenge yourself and play harder opponents

and then that'll make you get better so that you can actually beat that opponent.

And so we need to increase the difficulty of what we're doing.

So those are the three things that we need to do.

We need to have repeated practice to get comfortable with what we're doing.

We need to correct the things that we do wrong and we need to increase the difficulty.

Those are the three things that we need to do in order to improve in any area of life.

So now let's talk specifically about language learning.

So how can we do those things?

So the first one I mentioned is repeating, repetition.

So repeated practice will help us get familiar with different words,

obviously, and phrases and expressions.

It'll help us learn the grammar just intuitively just by seeing it over and over again.

And it'll help us get accustomed to the right sounds.

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We actually will actually start to hear the correct sounds and be able to identify them,

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distinguish them, get used to them.

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You'll just get used to how the language actually sounds, right?

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Then other things as well,

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but those are some of the main things that you can get from repeated practice.

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Things that you get comfortable with when you just repeat the things that you're listening to,

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reading, saying, whatever it may be.

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So repeated practice is really good.

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One thing that I'm doing right now with Greek,

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because I'm learning Greek right now,

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is I'm listening to a series of videos,

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not just one video, like a series of videos.

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There's probably like 50 of them or something like that.

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I'm listening to like this series of 50 videos.

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They're short videos, but I'm listening to them many times.

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Like for example, I think each video I probably listen to like six,

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seven times, sometimes eight times or something like that.

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I'm not just doing it over and over again like the same day.

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I'm just talking about like,

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you know, throughout

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you know my time listening to these videos over time I'll revisit these videos I'll kind of go in order

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or I do it in different ways

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but I'll end up probably listening to each of these videos like seven

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or eight times and then I'll probably move on I'm almost done with

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that I've probably listened to most of them like five

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or six times already and

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so this might sound like that's pretty extreme that's a lot of repetition

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but when you're at a lower level like I am with Greek this is extremely helpful.

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It's so helpful to do this type of repeated practice

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and the good thing is that I'm at a low enough level where it's still just like thrilling,

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it's still exciting just to be able to understand things.

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So I don't get that bored listening to the same thing again and again because I'm just happy I understand it.

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Once you're at a higher level it's a little harder to do this

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because you get bored because you don't have that same thrill of just like,

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whoa, I can understand this.

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That's not as exciting anymore.

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And so it's a little bit harder to do this without getting bored when you're at a higher level.

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But if you're at a lower level, this is great.

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This is a really, really good way of learning a bunch of things.

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Because when I do this,

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listening to this content multiple times,

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I notice so many things,

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phrases that the person is saying just stick in my head because I hear them so much.

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right like I can hear this person's voice on replay in my head

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and that's really good when you're learning a language like hearing their voice the person's voice

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that you're listening to that can really help you just kind of remember phrases

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and words because you're kind of remembering the exact things

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that they say and I've gotten comments from people

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that say like they hear my voice in their head and

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when they read things they read it in my voice

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and that's a great thing I think

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because it kind of helps you just notice things

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that native speakers say more you notice sounds you notice how things sound

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when I say them so that's really good and then

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so what else

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so I talked about you know listening to the same thing

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multiple times like I do with Greek also just frequent practice

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so this is an exact like repetition it's not like you're listening to the same exact thing

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but the fact that you're repeatedly over

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and over again doing this type of practice like you're listening to something like listening to my different videos or podcast episodes.

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This frequent practice even though it's not literal repetition,

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it's repetition in the sense that you're practicing the same things over

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and over again and you're hearing me say a lot of the same things over and over again.

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And so not just literal repetition but very frequent practice of the same type of of activity like listening and reading,

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speaking, you know just doing this a lot is part of that repetition.

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So if you're doing a lot of frequent practice,

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you're doing a lot of listening like every day

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and not just like a lot in terms of quantity but frequent like I said.

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So you're frequently listening, frequently reading, frequently speaking, frequently writing.

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This will help with just everything that repetition helps you with.

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You'll notice words more, you'll be able to notice different grammar things intuitively, right?

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Maybe you don't even like notice them but inside you're like absorbing this grammar.

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Like this repeated practice just like with everything else in our life,

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every other domain, this is a great way to improve your English or any other language that you're learning.

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So let me move on to the next point.

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So correcting your mistakes.

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So this is something that people don't do enough of

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and that's because you probably don't have interaction with a teacher every single day that's correcting your mistakes.

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And so it's understandable that you might not do that much of this.

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But it is something that we should do more of in order to improve.

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Especially if you're at a level where you can already understand pretty well and you really need to focus on your speaking,

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you're gonna need correction.

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You're gonna need people to point out to you when you say something that's unnatural,

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that's wrong, or whatever.

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And a lot of times we can identify this ourselves,

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but there are some things that we can't really identify ourselves.

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Like we need a native speaker to show us this and

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so that's why it's actually important to take classes with native speakers

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or to just have some kind of contact with native speakers who can do this.

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And so this will help you identify your mistakes.

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So having a tutor that can help you with your English or whatever other language that you're learning,

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this is going to really help you identify your mistakes like they should give you some correction

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and then you correct your mistakes in different ways.

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There's different ways you can do this.

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You can make flashcards from the different things that you said wrong.

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Some people don't like flashcards, that's okay.

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You might just use other forms of ways to repeat this correct phrase that you said incorrectly.

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You might try to use it in your own sentences,

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writing sentences down with these phrases or these words that you use wrong, whatever.

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so there's different ways you could do that so tutors

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and other native speakers are just great a great way to do this you can do this without a tutor

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if you use a translator and you just like figure out what you're saying wrong

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or what you're not able to say

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so like I used to do this a lot in the

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past where I would translate my own transcripts from like my

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podcast episodes I would translate them from English into French

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and I would do like writing practice like that

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and it would also just help me identify the words

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and phrases that I wasn't saying right

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because I would check them afterwards with the translator like first I would translate it

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and then I would just plug it into Google Translate

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and then look at the difference right

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so that's a great way you can do it on your own

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and it's not just identifying your mistakes

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but you're filling in your gaps like some things you just don't know how to say it's not even like a mistake,

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you just don't know how to say that phrase.

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And so you can identify that on your own using these types of techniques like what I just said,

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using a translator and translating things through writing or speech or whatever.

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So there are different ways you can do this,

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you know, whether it's a tutor,

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whether it's using a translator,

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there's different ways you can do this

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but you definitely want to focus on correcting your mistakes and filling in those gaps of things that you can't say right.

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So especially for those of you that already understand pretty well and you really need to focus on your speaking,

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this is what you're gonna want to do.

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You're gonna want to correct your mistakes.

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Identify them, correct them, fill in your gaps

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and this is a surefire way that you're actually going to improve because you're gonna actually have more words,

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you're gonna have more phrases,

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you can have better grammar or whatever just by correcting yourself.

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And lastly, you want to increase your difficulty,

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increase the difficulty of the content that you're using.

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So you You want to listen to faster English.

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This is an example of that.

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So if you're not used to this speed,

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it's good that you're practicing with this because you want to increase the difficulty of what you're listening to.

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You want to listen to audio instead of video.

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Video is actually easier to understand than audio.

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So right now, this is easier than my advanced episodes.

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My advanced episodes, you don't get to see me.

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It's easier when you see me,

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you see my hands move,

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I sometimes make gestures that kind of help you understand what I'm saying.

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If you're just listening to audio, that's actually more difficult.

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That's why it's harder to talk to people on the phone

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than it is to talk to them through a video call, for example.

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So if you understand me here pretty well right now,

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well, try my advanced episodes in which you can't even see me and that'll be like,

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you know, a level above this, like a slight level.

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It's pretty similar, but it's harder when you can't see me, right?

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Listen to things that are about harder topics, right?

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Not just topics about language learning,

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but maybe other fields where you're going to be exposed to harder language,

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different vocabulary that you're not familiar with,

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etc. Listen to different speakers.

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I'm going to be the easiest person for you to understand probably in English.

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So a way you can increase difficulty is by listening to other people, not just me.

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So a great way you can do that is with my US Conversations podcast.

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If you still want to hear me as part of the conversation but you want to hear someone else speaking as well,

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you can use that resource.

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That link's down below.

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That's a great way for you to kind of get accustomed to listening to other people

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and also listening to more than one person speaking.

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I had this issue when I was learning Spanish is I would only talk to one person,

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usually my wife, and I got really fluent and comfortable just talking one-on-one,

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but then when I moved to Mexico I realized

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that I couldn't function well in groups where there was more than one person there

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because I just couldn't follow everything they were saying and then I had to really practice with this.

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I had to get a lot of experience practicing in group settings where I'm listening to more than one person.

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So that's something that you definitely want to make sure that you're practicing with.

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That's another way that you need to increase the difficulty in order to reach the next level.

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So again you can use my US Conversations podcast for that

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or you can use other content where there's two people talking

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and people that are different and not just me talking right

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so that'll help you out but

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if you need something that's a little bit just a little

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more comfortable for you then of course check out my US Conversations podcast.

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If you already talked to yourself make sure you start talking to someone else.

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That's another way you can increase the difficulty.

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You know talking to a person is often harder than just talking to yourself so that's something else.

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Writing like if you already do you know regular writing practice write more complicated texts.

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Write about more complicated topics.

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Not just what you did on the weekend but maybe something else that's a little more complicated.

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Describe more complicated things.

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If you read, which you should,

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reading is a great way to improve your English.

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If you read something or if you read things in general to improve your English,

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if you want to increase the difficulty, read harder things.

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You can do this in anything with your listening,

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your speaking, your writing, your reading.

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You want to make sure that you're increasing the difficulty so that you're actually reaching higher levels.

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If you use the content that's only at this same level that's not going to help you reach the next level.

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Okay so those were the three main points that I wanted to talk about.

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These help us improve in any area of life but particularly in language learning as well.

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It's general advice but I try to give specific examples of this

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and hopefully there was something here that you got

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that might change your language learning routine or the way

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that you're thinking about your progress in English or whatever other language

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that you're learning

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and me as a con English content creator who's trying to help you with these three things I think

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that you can use my material and you know do these three things

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that I just mentioned and so I try to make content

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that you can repeat over and over again like these types of videos and get that repeated practice of course.

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I make content of different levels of difficulty like there's my easier videos and then there's like these types of videos.

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There's my advanced podcast and there's my US conversations podcast.

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So there's like different you know levels of difficulty you can use to increase the difficulty of the content

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that you're listening to or whatever.

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And then of course if you correction you can take a class with those different teachers

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that I talked to on my US Conversations podcast and

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so you can actually find a teacher there who can correct your mistakes,

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help you identify your mistakes and so even with

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that you know I have a resource to kind of help you with that.

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You can find a teacher from my US Conversations podcast because I mostly talk to different English teachers from around the country.

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So hopefully with my content you can do these three things

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that I mentioned but in general

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if you find a way to do these three things you

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will improve your English will improve all right thank you all for watching this video

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and I'll talk to you in the next one

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Vocabulario y notas de pronunciación para esta lección

Esta lección de conversación de nivel C1 se basa en el vídeo “How To Improve Your English”. Las palabras que más se repiten: listening, improve, practice, English, difficulty. Este vídeo tiene 317 frases y 3596 palabras para practicar shadowing. La parte hablada dura 18:53. El hablante habla rápido, unas 190 palabras por minuto, así que espera sonidos enlazados y reducidos. El 89 % de las palabras está entre las 3.000 más comunes del inglés; conviene repasar el resto antes de empezar.

Vocabulario clave de este vídeo

Las 15 palabras más avanzadas del vídeo, con su pronunciación y significado:

Palabra	Pronunciación	Significado
repetition sustantivo	/ˌɹɛp.əˈtɪʃ.ən/	repetición
translate verbo	/tɹænzˈleɪt/	traducir, trasladar
tutor sustantivo	/ˈtjuːtəː/	tutor, protutor
translator sustantivo	/ˈtɹænzleɪtɚ/	traductor, traductora
bore verbo	/boɹ/	aburrir
correction sustantivo	/kəˈɹɛkʃən/	corrección
cloth sustantivo	/klɒθ/	tela
fold verbo	/ˈfəʊld/	plegar, doblar
excite verbo	/ɪkˈsaɪt/	emocionar
flashcard sustantivo	/ˈflæʃˌkɑɹd/	flashcard, tarjeta memorista
intuitively adverbio		intuitivamente
accustomed adjetivo	/əˈkʌs.təmd/	acostumbrado, sólito
thrill verbo	/θɹɪl/	emocionar, excitar
sunglasses sustantivo		gafas de sol
literal adjetivo	/ˈlɪt(ə)ɹəl/	literal

Phrasal verbs que vas a escuchar

Palabra	Significado
check out verbo	investigar, chequear
end up verbo	terminar, ir a parar
figure out verbo	averiguar, captar
slow down verbo	desacelerar, decelerar

Frases que vale la pena repetir

Frases cortas y completas del vídeo que puedes reutilizar en la conversación diaria:

I'm not good with my hands.
I just can't do it well.
Otherwise you're not going to improve.
You're not doing that right.
There's different ways you can do this.

Gramática en este vídeo

Las estructuras que más usa el hablante, con las palabras exactas del vídeo:

Estructura	En el vídeo
“Used to” used to + verbo — un hábito o estado pasado que ya no es cierto	used to do · used to this
Present perfect have/has + participio pasado — una acción pasada que sigue importando ahora	you've listened · I've probably listened · I've gotten
Voz pasiva be + participio pasado — importa lo que ocurre, no quién lo hace	could be said · be exposed

Pronunciación a tener en cuenta

El hablante usa 125 contracciones y formas reducidas, como you're, I'm, don't. Dilas en su forma corta, tal como las oyes.

Los sonidos de “th”: cloth /klɒθ/, thrill /θɹɪl/
Los sonidos de “sh” y “zh”: repetition /ˌɹɛp.əˈtɪʃ.ən/, correction /kəˈɹɛkʃən/, flashcard /ˈflæʃˌkɑɹd/, distinguish /dɪˈstɪŋ.ɡwɪʃ/
Palabras largas — cuida el acento: repetition /ˌɹɛp.əˈtɪʃ.ən/, incorrectly /ˌɪnkəˈɹɛk(t).li/, manipulate /məˈnɪp.jʊ.leɪt/, vocabulary /vəˈkæb.jə.lə.ɹi/

Sonidos difíciles para hispanohablantes:

/v/ — no es /b/: los dientes tocan el labio inferior: revisit /ɹiːˈvɪzɪt/, vocabulary /vəˈkæb.jə.lə.ɹi/
/z/ — sonora, no /s/: translate /tɹænzˈleɪt/, translator /ˈtɹænzleɪtɚ/, revisit /ɹiːˈvɪzɪt/, expose /ɪkˈspoʊz/

Cómo practicar con este vídeo

Escucha el vídeo entero una vez sin hablar y anota las palabras que no conoces.
Empieza a velocidad 0,75×, haz shadowing frase por frase y vuelve a la velocidad normal cuando te resulte fácil.
Grábate y compara con el original, prestando atención a palabras como repetition, translate, tutor.

¿Qué es la Técnica de Shadowing?

Shadowing es una técnica de aprendizaje de idiomas respaldada por la ciencia, desarrollada originalmente para la formación de intérpretes profesionales y popularizada por el políglota Dr. Alexander Arguelles. El método es simple pero poderoso: escuchas audio en inglés nativo y lo repites en voz alta de inmediato, como una sombra que sigue al hablante con solo 1-2 segundos de retraso. A diferencia de la escucha pasiva o los ejercicios de gramática, el shadowing obliga a tu cerebro y músculos de la boca a procesar y reproducir simultáneamente patrones de habla reales. Las investigaciones muestran que mejora significativamente la precisión de la pronunciación, la entonación, el ritmo, el habla conectada, la comprensión auditiva y la fluidez al hablar, convirtiéndola en una de las metodologías más efectivas para la preparación del IELTS Speaking y la comunicación en inglés en el mundo real.

Técnica de shadowing: lee la guía completa paso a paso →

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Vocabulario y notas de pronunciación para esta lección

Vocabulario clave de este vídeo

Phrasal verbs que vas a escuchar

Frases que vale la pena repetir

Gramática en este vídeo

Pronunciación a tener en cuenta

Cómo practicar con este vídeo

¿Qué es la Técnica de Shadowing?