Shadowing Practice: Solve this 1 mistake → Solve 34% of English Errors - Learn English Speaking with Video

Creando lección...
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There is only one mistake in this entire text.
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Can you spot it?
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Maybe you can't see any mistakes, or maybe you can see multiple mistakes.
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Advanced English learners will know that there is one big mistake.
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Let me read it to you.
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As I read, listen and read along with me.
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Try to correct the mistake if you know what it is.
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Some of the world's most beloved foods exist thanks to happy accidents.
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In the 1890s, the Kellogg brothers left wheat dough out overnight at their sanatorium.
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Not wanting to waste it, they rolled the stale dough into thin sheets and created cornflakes.
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Worcestershire sauce was born from a failed experiment when two chemists tried to recreate an Indian sauce.
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At first, it smelled foul,
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fishy, sharp, and acrid, but left in a barrel for about 1,5 years, it became delicious.
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It's even used to flavour Bloody Marys.
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Did you spot what the one big mistake is?
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It's incorrect punctuation.
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There are several punctuation mistakes in this text and a couple
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that could be considered quite major they could limit understanding are
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you curious we're going to go through the mistakes in this video but
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if you really want to remember everything you learn i've also
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created a free pdf to go with today's lesson you'll see
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the full text plus explanations of all the punctuation marks
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and of course some activities to really test your understanding
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if you'd like to download that just click on the link in the description box or scan that QR code there.
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You join my mailing list and I'll send the PDF to your email.
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Okay, let's go through the text together sentence by sentence.
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Are there any mistakes here?
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Some of the world's most beloved foods exist thanks to happy accidents.
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Nope, that sentence is fine.
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We have an apostrophe in worlds, world apostrophe s, to show possession.
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A longer form could be the most beloved foods of the people in the world.
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Worlds is much faster to say.
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Next line, in the 1890s,
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with an apostrophe S, the Kellogg brothers left wheat dough out overnight at their sanatorium,
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not wanting to waste comma, they rolled the stale dough into thin sheets and created cornflakes, exclamation mark.
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Okay, there are two mistakes in that part, though the first is a little bit controversial.
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In modern English, most people say that there shouldn't be an apostrophe in 1890s.
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It's a plural s, not a possessive, so we don't use an apostrophe.
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To shorten the decades, like the 90s,
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we use an apostrophe before 90 to indicate that some numbers are missing, but not before the S.
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In the not-too-distant past, it was common to use an apostrophe,
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so people would write 1930s with an apostrophe S, for example.
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For now, especially in exams and formal writing, I recommend not using an apostrophe.
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The second mistake is with the comma between sanatorium and not.
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Those are two independent clauses and we can't join them with a comma.
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We call this mistake a comma splice.
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Commas just aren't strong enough to join two independent clauses so we need something with more muscle.
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Any ideas?
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Well options include a full stop or a semicolon.
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Both can separate independent clauses.
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We could also replace the comma with a conjunction and or but both work in our sentence.
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So comma splices are a no-no in standard English but you'll them used in informal English, in novels, poems and so on.
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Again, I don't recommend joining independent clauses with a comma for now unless you're an author
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or you reach a very high level of English.
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Okay, ready for our next sentence?
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Are there any mistakes?
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Worcestershire sauce was born from a failed experiment when two chemists tried to recreate an Indian sauce.
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No mistakes, this sentence is fine.
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We capitalise Indian as it's an adjective meaning connected with India, the country, just like we capitalise English or Australian.
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We also capitalise Worcestershire because it's the name of a place in England.
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Here it happens to be at the start of a sentence
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and it looks very difficult to pronounce but it's actually quite simple.
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It's usually pronounced with just three syllables.
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Worcestershire, Worcestershire, Worcestershire stresses on the first syllable.
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Okay, next sentence.
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Can you spot the mistakes here?
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There's more than one.
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At first, comma, it smelt foul.
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Square bracket, fishy, comma, sharp, comma, and acrid, close square bracket, comma.
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But left in a barrel for about one, comma, five years, comma, it became delicious.
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Okay, that really doesn't sound very nice, does it?
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And punctuation wise, there is a lot going on.
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First, we have square brackets used in a way that's not standard, though some people might find it acceptable.
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According to most style guides, we should use round brackets to enclose extra information in a sentence or passage.
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Round brackets are often called parentheses in North American English.
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They're just brackets to me here in the UK.
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In speech, we tend to pause slightly before and after reading information in brackets.
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Remove fishy, sharp, and acrid, and the sentence still makes sense grammatically.
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Square brackets are most commonly used in quotations when we add or change a word.
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Let's take our sentence to demonstrate.
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This is the original.
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At first, it smelt foul.
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So what if we think it is unclear and our readers won't know what it is?
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Well, we can use square brackets.
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At first, comma, open square bracket, the source, close square bracket, smelt foul.
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Using the source instead of it would make the reference clear to the readers.
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The square brackets show the reader that the original words have been changed.
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Okay, there's something else inside those brackets.
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fishy, sharp, and acrid.
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Yum.
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In British English, we don't tend to use a comma before and in a list of three or more things.
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It's called the Oxford comma.
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It's used more frequently in North American English, but this isn't a rule, and you will see Brits using it, and you will notice some North American texts do not.
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In general, you can do whatever you feel natural.
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but there was actually a court case in the US that hinged on a missing Oxford comma.
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It cost a company millions of dollars who said the punctuation wasn't important.
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What I think is important for you is that you choose whether to use it or not.
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You choose a style and you're consistent with it.
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We're not finished with that sentence yet.
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There is another mistake.
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left in a barrel for about one comma five years.
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We don't use a comma to show decimals in English.
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Do you know what we use instead?
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A decimal point, which looks exactly the same as a full stop.
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And don't quote me on the 1.5 year timeline, by the way.
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I saw that they left it for anywhere from a few months to two years.
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Anyway, back to the decimal point.
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When talking about halves and quarters, we tend to say one and a half or seven and a quarter and so on.
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But you can say 1.5.
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And when we have a number like this one here, that would usually be 3.14.
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Lovely number.
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We do use commas in numbers, sometimes in English.
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We tend to place a comma before every three digits.
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So 100,000 would have a comma in the middle.
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It makes big numbers easier to read.
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Now, I know that a lot of countries do it the other way around, using a point to separate hundreds and a comma for decimals.
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If you're asked to pay 5,321 in the UK,
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that's £5,000, not £5 and some confusing pennies.
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Okay, in our last sentence, we have another mistake.
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Can you see it?
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It's even used to flavour Bloody Mary's.
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We need an apostrophe in its, I-T apostrophe S, to indicate a missing letter.
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It is becomes it apostrophe S, its.
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So many people make mistakes with this, including native speakers.
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And you can understand why.
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Look here.
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Worcestershire sauce gets its umami flavour from the fermentation process.
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there, its, I-T-S, is a possessive adjective like his, and we don't use an apostrophe.
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It's, it is, very confusing.
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And on that note, I think we're ready to end the video.
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Don't forget to download the PDF that goes with this lesson.
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The link is in the description box, or you can scan that QR code there.
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You have a little bit of homework.
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I would love for you to write in the comments about similar food stories or just accidental inventions in general.
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Try to use some of the punctuation we've covered today.
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I will see you in the next video.
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Bye.

Vocabulario y notas de pronunciación para esta lección

Este vídeo tiene 137 frases y 1456 palabras para practicar shadowing. La parte hablada dura 10:38. El hablante mantiene un ritmo constante de unas 137 palabras por minuto, cómodo para el shadowing. Solo el 78 % de las palabras está entre las 3.000 más comunes del inglés, por lo que el vocabulario es exigente.

Vocabulario clave de este vídeo

15 palabras menos comunes del vídeo, con su pronunciación y significado:

  • bracket /ˈbɹækɪt/ (sustantivo) — consola, soporte. A fixture attached to a wall to hold up a shelf.
  • sharp /ʃɑɹp/ (adjetivo) — agudo, afilado. Terminating in a point or edge, especially one that can cut or pierce easily; not dull, obtuse, or rounded.
  • foul /faʊl/ (adjetivo) — inmundo. Covered with, or containing unclean matter; dirty.
  • dough /doʊ/ (sustantivo) — masa, pasta. A thick, malleable substance made by mixing flour with other ingredients such as water, eggs, or butter, that is made into a particular form and then baked.
  • reader /ˈɹi.dɚ/ (sustantivo) — lector, lectora. A person who reads.
  • barrel /ˈbæɹəl/ (sustantivo) — barril, tonel. A round (cylindrical) vessel, such as a cask, of greater length than breadth, and bulging in the middle, made of staves bound with hoops, and having flat ends…
  • beloved /bɪˈlʌvd/ (adjetivo) — amado, querido. Much loved, dearly loved.
  • lesson /ˈlɛs.ən/ (sustantivo) — lección. A section of learning or teaching into which a wider learning content is divided.
  • sheet /ʃit/ (sustantivo) — hoja, folio. A thin bed cloth used as a covering for a mattress or as a layer over the sleeper.
  • experiment /ɪkˈspɛɹ.ə.mənt/ (sustantivo) — experimento. A test under controlled conditions made to either demonstrate a known truth, examine the validity of a hypothesis, or determine the efficacy or likelihood of…
  • indicate /ˈɪndɪˌkeɪt/ (verbo) — indicar. To point out; to discover; to direct to a knowledge of; to show; to make known.
  • delicious /dɪˈlɪ.ʃəs/ (adjetivo) — delicioso, sabroso. Pleasing to the sense of taste; tasty.
  • overnight /əʊvə(ɹ)ˈnaɪt/ (adverbio) — de un día para otro, de la noche a la mañana. During or throughout the night, especially during the evening or night just past.
  • scan /skæn/ (verbo) — escrutar. To examine sequentially, carefully, or critically; to scrutinize; to behold closely.
  • wheat /ˈwiːt/ (sustantivo) — trigo. Any of the several cereal grains, of the genus Triticum, that yields flour as used in bakery.

Phrasal verbs que vas a escuchar

  • go through (verbo) — atravesar. To travel from one end of something to the other.
  • go on /ˈɡoʊˌɒn/ (verbo) — continuar. To continue in extent.
  • talk about (verbo) — hablar de, hablar sobre. Used to draw attention to the speaker's characterization of someone or something.

Pronunciación a tener en cuenta

El hablante usa 28 contracciones y formas reducidas, como don't, we're, you're. Dilas en su forma corta, tal como las oyes.

  • Los sonidos de “th”: thin /ˈθɪn/, parenthesis /pəˈɹɛn.θə.sɪs/
  • Los sonidos de “sh” y “zh”: sharp /ʃɑɹp/, sheet /ʃit/, delicious /dɪˈlɪ.ʃəs/, explanation /ˌɛkspləˈneɪʃən/, possession /pəˈzɛʃn̩/
  • Palabras largas — cuida el acento: experiment /ɪkˈspɛɹ.ə.mənt/, explanation /ˌɛkspləˈneɪʃən/, acceptable /əkˈsɛp.tə.bəl/, controversial /ˌkɑn.tɹəˈvɝ.ʃəl/, apostrophe /əˈpɑs.tɹə.fi/

Cómo practicar con este vídeo

  1. Escucha el vídeo entero una vez sin hablar y anota las palabras que no conoces.
  2. Haz shadowing frase por frase a velocidad normal, repitiendo cada una hasta que tu ritmo coincida con el del hablante.
  3. Grábate y compara con el original, prestando atención a palabras como bracket, sharp, foul.

Gramática en este vídeo

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

EstructuraEn el vídeo
“Used to” used to + verbo — un hábito o estado pasado que ya no es ciertoused to flavour
Voz pasiva be + participio pasado — importa lo que ocurre, no quién lo hacewas born · could be considered · are often called
Present perfect have/has + participio pasado — una acción pasada que sigue importando ahorahave been changed · we've covered

¿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 →