Shadowing Practice: Stop Start in Love - Learn English Speaking with Video

Creando lección...
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Let's try to understand one of the oddest, most painful, most widespread phenomena in love.
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It's going on right this moment between a couple, let's say he a dentist, she a nutritionist in Rio de Janeiro.
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Two teenagers are at it in Canberra, there's a pair involved in the rigmarole in downtown Dakar, another in Svalbard, another still in Winnipeg.
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If every time it happened a light went on, most of the earth would be a glow from space.
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We can refer to the phenomenon as push-pull or stop-start or sometimes distance management.
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The structure is identical and fairly predictable.
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Growing intimacy, then retreat.
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Altitude, then a drop.
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Two good days, then a fight.
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Five warm messages, then silence.
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A weekend away, then a call for time alone.
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It can seem like a horrible, but ultimately mysterious curse.
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It is, in fact, an almost logical phenomenon with a singular purpose – to protect one
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or both of the parties from a generally unconscious but violent fear that love might work out, that happiness might become real,
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that a true partnership could build, that vulnerability might be created and then, when the shield was lowered, when one had grown to depend on someone completely,
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that everything might go catastrophically wrong.
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The other party could change their mind, they might abscond, they could die.
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To prevent such worries, the mind of the stop-start lover looks around for ingenious solutions
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and finds one in a committedly dispiriting game.
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Older than chess, more harmful than poker, this game would have been played in ancient Egypt.
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The Aztecs were at it.
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The rules state that love can happen, but that it must never pick up velocity.
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There can be intimacy, but always within bounds.
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The exits must remain forever open.
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can't be too much security that would paradoxically generate an untenable impression of danger.
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In practice, the game requires a vigilant monitoring of every exchange and repeated quiet injections of disappointment.
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If last night was beautiful, this morning has to be moody.
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Tuesday was good, Wednesday must be awful.
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If the dialogue is getting very cosy, there has to be some disappearance.
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What cannot be allowed to occur was what almost certainly once occurred a very long time ago.
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An unprocessed, unexplored letdown, in which cosiness was achieved and then torn away.
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Mummy was the best mummy in the world, before the doctor said she wasn't well.
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Daddy was the sweetest, then Jill came on the scene.
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The holidays were nice, except for when the drinking began.
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Let's believe that someone interested in stop-start love isn't doing it on purpose.
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The lover who keeps needing to pause isn't aware, as they put down the phone and decides not to answer a message for four hours,
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that they are interrupting the flow of affection in the name of self-protection and along the way, devastating a fellow human being.
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The most potent players of this stop-start game have no real insight into their tactics.
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They just register an overwhelming need not to type anything back, not to be free tonight
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and not to say I love you too at the end of a call or evening in bed.
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What can we, the victims of stop-start, do?
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For a start, feel extremely sorry for ourselves in our misery.
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We don't need to compound our pain by making light of it, or indeed hoping it can ever easily end.
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It would be hard to explain all this to a group of six-year-olds.
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When you're older, you're going to form something called relationships.
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You'll meet a nice person, a special friend.
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Some days your special friend will call you and on others they'll just vanish.
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One might not want to make it to adulthood after a class like that.
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The sole effective weapon we have against stop-start game playing is knowledge.
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To describe the phenomenon accurately the moment it appears, to provide a succinct explanation as to why it might be doing so,
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to give the other party a few chances at reform, and then to walk away, because we know what we're up against,
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and we recognise that lonely calm truly is better than continually agitated togetherness.

Vocabulario y notas de pronunciación para esta lección

Esta lección de conversación de nivel C1 se basa en el vídeo “Stop Start in Love”. Este vídeo tiene 52 frases y 707 palabras para practicar shadowing. La parte hablada dura 4:24. El hablante habla a un ritmo natural de unas 160 palabras por minuto, cercano a una conversación cotidiana. Solo el 81 % de las palabras está entre las 3.000 más comunes del inglés, por lo que el vocabulario es exigente.

Vocabulario clave de este vídeo

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

PalabraPronunciaciónSignificado
mummy sustantivo/ˈmʌm.i/momia, chullpa
intimacy sustantivo/ˈɪn.tɪ.mə.si/intimidad
abscond verbo/əbˈskɑnd/absconderse, asconderse
agitate verbo/ˈæ.d͡ʒɪ.teɪt/alborotar
devastate verbo/ˈdɛv.ə.steɪt/devastar
ingenious adjetivo/ɪnˈd͡ʒiːnjəs/ingenioso
nutritionist sustantivo/njuːˈtɹɪʃ.ənɪst/nutricionista
overwhelm verbo/ˌoʊ.vɚˈwɛlm/apabullar, arrollar
paradoxically adverbio/ˌpɛɹəˈdɑksɪkli/paradójicamente
rigmarole sustantivo/ˈɹɪɡməɹoʊl/embrollo
togetherness sustantivounión
untenable adjetivoinsostenible, indefendible
vanish verbo/ˈvænɪʃ/desvanecerse, esfumarse
vigilant adjetivo/ˈvɪd͡ʒɪlənt/vigilante
adulthood sustantivoedad adulta, adultez

Phrasal verbs que vas a escuchar

PalabraSignificado
pick up verbocoger, asir
put down verbomenospreciar

Pronunciación a tener en cuenta

El hablante usa 10 contracciones y formas reducidas, como isn't, you're, can't. Dilas en su forma corta, tal como las oyes.

  • Los sonidos de “sh” y “zh”: nutritionist /njuːˈtɹɪʃ.ənɪst/, vanish /ˈvænɪʃ/, affection /əˈfɛk.ʃən/, unconscious /ˌʌnˈkɑnʃəs/, injection /ɪnˈd͡ʒɛk.ʃən/
  • Palabras largas — cuida el acento: intimacy /ˈɪn.tɪ.mə.si/, nutritionist /njuːˈtɹɪʃ.ənɪst/, paradoxically /ˌpɛɹəˈdɑksɪkli/, vulnerability /ˌvʌln(ə)ɹəˈbɪlɪti/, disappearance /dɪsəˈpɪəɹəns/

Sonidos difíciles para hispanohablantes:

  • /v/ — no es /b/: los dientes tocan el labio inferior: devastate /ˈdɛv.ə.steɪt/, overwhelm /ˌoʊ.vɚˈwɛlm/, vanish /ˈvænɪʃ/, vigilant /ˈvɪd͡ʒɪlənt/, vulnerability /ˌvʌln(ə)ɹəˈbɪlɪti/
  • /z/ — sonora, no /s/: misery /ˈmɪz(ə)ɹi/, pause /pɔːz/
  • /dʒ/ — no es la “y” ni la “ch”: agitate /ˈæ.d͡ʒɪ.teɪt/, ingenious /ɪnˈd͡ʒiːnjəs/, vigilant /ˈvɪd͡ʒɪlənt/, injection /ɪnˈd͡ʒɛk.ʃən/, teenager /ˈtiːnˌeɪ̯d͡ʒə/

Cómo practicar con este vídeo

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

¿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 →