Shadowing Practice: Slow English Coffee Chat ☕ My Weekend - Learn English Speaking with Video

Creando lección...
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Hello, everyone, and welcome back to English Cozy Chat,
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a slow English podcast which helps you to learn English in a fun and natural way.
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I am Maria, and it's Monday,
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and I definitely have a Monday feel today.
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In English, sometimes we say, I have a case of the Mondays,
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which simply just means you're really tired from the weekend
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and it's getting hard to get your week started sometimes on Mondays I feel really energized
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and motivated to start the week but other times I just feel really tired
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and it's really hard for me to get going
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so I have the most important thing that you need to have on a Monday
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some coffee this is my favorite coffee cup in spanish it says tu puedes con todo it is la bomba
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and in english that means you can do it you are the bomb
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and it shows a little picture of a bomb and I think that's just so cute.
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So cheers to that.
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And today I thought that I would just talk a little bit about my weekend.
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My husband and I live far away from our families.
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My family lives in the United States and his family lives in Germany and I live in Spain.
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This coffee cup is a little bit hot.
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I'm just gonna put it down.
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So my mother -in -law came to visit us.
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And mother -in -law means the mother of your spouse's.
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A spouse is your husband or wife.
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So it's your husband or wife's mother.
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And a father -in -law is your husband or wife's father
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so my mother -in -law came to visit us from Germany
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and she was here for one week she came on last Monday
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and she just left this morning so over the weekend we had a few fun things planned when she was here.
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I always have a really good time when she's here.
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I really enjoy having her around.
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She's a really big help.
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And it's just really nice for us to have family come visit since we live so far from all of our family.
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So on Friday afternoon, she came with me to pick up my girls from school.
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And then we ate a snack,
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got dressed, and got ready to go to a dance show.
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There was a dance performance in the middle of our town from a local dance school,
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and our plan was to go and watch the show.
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I was so excited about it because I love dance.
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I love to dance and I also love watching dance
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so we went there and parked the car
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and walked to the place where the show was supposed to be
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and it was absolutely empty and then I looked at the tickets for the show and I had gotten the date wrong.
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It was actually the next day.
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So I made all of us get ready and go to this show when really There was no show that night.
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I felt really embarrassed and bad for doing that.
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But my mother -in -law thought it was actually kind of funny.
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And instead, we went to a plaza nearby and just had something to drink and enjoyed the atmosphere.
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Here in Spain there are many plazas where there are also parks for children and restaurants right next to them.
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So it's a really great place for people to go and sit,
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eat something, drink something, and the kids can also play and have a good time.
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And in general, it's just really fun,
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and it's a nice atmosphere so we did
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that on Friday instead of going to the dance show
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and it ended up being really fun so it kind of worked out
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that we went on the wrong day because we ended up having a really good time anyway.
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Then on Saturday we had a really nice day at home.
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My mother -in -law is a very good cook
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and she makes a delicious chicken soup
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and she spent the whole day cooking this chicken soup which she is famous for.
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It's a really long recipe,
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which takes lots of time and has lots of steps.
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So she spent the whole day cooking it.
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And I really loved this because I love to cook myself,
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but I also really love to watch others cook
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and see how they do things and techniques
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that they use to get lots of flavor out of food
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so on saturday i wrote her recipe
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down on a piece of paper
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and it actually felt really good to just sit sit
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and write I really liked this feeling and I realized I never just sit and write
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a lot maybe I write a to -do list or one or two words to remind myself of something or
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a short note to leave for someone,
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but I usually never write a full page of handwritten notes.
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I know that may sound weird.
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I don't know if you guys ever write, but am I the only one that feels like this?
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Anyway, it felt really good to just take a pen
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and write down lots of notes on paper and to write down her entire recipe.
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I usually don't cook recipes that take a long time to make.
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I usually try to make things quickly.
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However, I do try to make food as flavorful as possible.
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That is very important to me.
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But I usually don't spend a lot of time.
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cooking.
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So it was fun for me to see how she did it.
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And I'm going to try to do it kind of in
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my own way to see how maybe I can make the process a little bit easier
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and keep the same delicious flavor that it always has.
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So that night we actually did go to the dance show and it really was on Saturday night.
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So we watched it and I absolutely loved it.
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I love watching dance.
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And in this show, there were many different kinds of dance.
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There was ballet, jazz, contemporary,
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and some of the dances were just really good.
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And it's been a long time since I've watched really good dancing.
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So that was a really nice experience.
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It was in a garden area that is in town
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and it had twinkling lights everywhere and it was just decorated really nice.
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And overall, it was just a really nice experience.
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And then when we came home, we ate the chicken soup that she spent all day cooking.
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And it was absolutely delicious this soup has chicken
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and vegetables and noodles and just the flavor of the broth itself
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which is the liquid in the soup is so flavorful
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and delicious that I don't want to stop eating this soup when I eat it.
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Then on Sunday, we went to a nice restaurant for lunch.
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This was really nice because we have been trying to not go out
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and eat as much and just eat at home more,
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but this was a special occasion having her here so we went to a nice restaurant and had a really good lunch.
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Sometimes it's just really fun to put on nice clothes
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and get out of the house and be in a nice restaurant atmosphere,
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especially if you don't do it that often, it makes it extra special.
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So then when we came home from the lunch,
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I watched a movie with my husband and my kids.
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And the movie is called Coco.
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It is a Disney animated movie.
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And wow, this movie is so good.
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My husband and I were both crying at the end.
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Not a sad cry.
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It was a happy cry because this movie has a really beautiful story and the ending is just really sweet.
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I think it is my favorite Disney movie.
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It's definitely my favorite Disney movie right now, and it may be one of my favorite movies.
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I really love watching movies with my kids because they're really good for adults to watch too.
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They're not just for kids.
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I enjoy them just as much as they do.
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Then for dinner we were still so full after eating this really big lunch
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but we ate just a little bit of soup and then we went to bed.
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Sometimes having a really long lunch in the middle of the day also just makes me really tired.
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So that was it for my weekend.
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It was really fun.
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I did some different things and it was also kind of relaxing.
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What did you do this weekend?
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I would love to hear.
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Please let me know in the comments and I can't wait to see you in the next episode.
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Bye!

¿Por qué este video es ideal para practicar el inglés?

Este clip de "Slow English Coffee Chat" es un material excepcional para aprender inglés con videos porque combina una conversación natural, vocabulario cotidiano y una velocidad de habla pausada. Maria comparte detalles de su fin de semana de forma relajada, lo que permite captar la entonación y las conexiones entre palabras, esenciales para mejorar la fluidez. Además, los temas familiares y situaciones cotidianas (como equivocarse de fecha para un espectáculo) son fáciles de relacionar, lo que facilita la memorización y la aplicación práctica.

Desglose: Frases naturales y su explicación

Analicemos algunas frases clave que demuestran la naturalidad del inglés hablado:

  • "I have a case of the Mondays": Esta expresión coloquial se usa para describir la fatiga típica de los lunes. Su uso demuestra cómo el inglés utiliza metáforas sencillas para transmitir emociones, algo que los aprendices deben imitar para sonar más naturales.
  • "She's a really big help": La frase es corta y directa, con un vocabulario básico, pero su impacto radica en la forma de combinar palabras comunes para expresar gratitud. Es un ejemplo perfecto de cómo no se necesitan palabras complejas para comunicar ideas claras.
  • "We went to a plaza nearby and just had something to drink": La estructura "just + verbo" aquí indica simplicidad y espontaneidad, una característica del inglés hablado. Aprender a usar estos adverbios ayuda a suavizar las oraciones y hacerlas más reales.

Rutina de práctica: Técnica de shadowing

Para aprovechar al máximo este video, usa la técnica de shadowing (o "shadowspeak"), que consiste en repetir en voz alta las frases justo después de escucharlas. Sigue estos pasos:

  1. Escucha un fragmento corto (5-10 segundos) del video y presta atención a la entonación y la velocidad.
  2. Pausa y repite la frase inmediatamente, intentando imitar el tono y las pausas. Graba tu voz para compararla.
  3. Repite el proceso hasta que la frase suene fluida y natural. Focus en palabras como "case of the Mondays" o "big help" para interiorizar su uso.

Esta rutina de shadow speak no solo mejora la pronunciación, sino también la comprensión auditiva y la capacidad de responder en situaciones reales. Con práctica, notarás cómo tu inglés suena más natural y confiad.

¿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 →