Shadowing Practice: 3 Things That Feel Like Progress But Aren't - Learn English Speaking with Video

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right today i want to talk about three things

that feel like learning they feel productive you do them you finish you tick them off

and you feel like you've put the work in

and a lot of the time you haven't

or at least not nearly as much as it felt like at the time

So this video is for you if you've been putting the hours in

and you don't feel like you've moved much in the last year in terms of progressing with your English.

And if that's you, I'd say the problem almost certainly isn't effort.

It's that some of the hours you're counting as study time aren't really doing very much.

So today I want to show you the three biggest culprits that I can think of right now.

I should say up front

that I'm going to have a go at the couple of things that I personally make money from.

So in a way, I'm arguing against my own interests here.

All right.

First one, then don't just watch YouTube.

Now, I'm on YouTube.

I make videos for English learners on YouTube.

I would quite like you to watch my YouTube videos.

So this is a strange place to start.

But here we are.

um the thing i've noticed about youtube is youtube's job is not to improve your english

despite there being just endless resources for you to learn english

when you go on there its primary job is to keep you on the platform that's it

that that's the whole business model right as much time as

i can get this individual on this platform the more ads i can give this person to watch

and therefore we get more money.

And the way you keep somebody on a platform is by giving them things that are easy to watch,

nice to look at and rewarding within about 11 seconds.

So the algorithm watches what you enjoy,

learns it very quickly and then just keeps handing you more of that stuff, which means you end up watching what you want to watch,

not what you need to watch.

And those two things can sit very, very far apart.

What you want is the video where you understand everything, you feel clever.

What you need is probably the one where you follow about 70 to 80 percent, have to concentrate properly on the rest,

and you come away a bit tired.

The algorithm them will never recommend you the tiring one over and over again.

Tiring is bad for business for YouTube, if you think about it.

To think of a metaphor for this, for watching the easy stuff, it's a bit like getting fully kitted out for the gym.

You think, oh, I'm going to go exercise.

And you get all the new stuff to go to the gym, new trainers, the shorts, the water bottle, the little towel, you know,

the lot walking all the way there in maybe the cold weather.

So you've done some sort of challenging things in a way to get to the gym.

And then standing in the lobby, you just watch everyone sweat it out through the glass panel and you don't actually do any exercise.

I feel like that is what watching English lessons on YouTube can be like.

There are some really, really good ones that make you get active as well.

But the vast majority, vast, vast majority are ones that metaphor that going to the gym and just staring at people watching.

And I want to be clear, I'm not I'm not telling you to quit YouTube.

That'd be terrible for my business.

Watching English is genuinely useful.

And it's how a lot of people stay in love with the language.

what I'm saying though is

if you do do this of course um what I'm saying

is stop treating the video as the whole meal it's it's the ingredients we could say

so you watch the thing that's fine but then do something with it

if it is a vocabulary video then write those phrases down actually use them in a sentence

and think strategically am I actually going to use these phrases of those ones I probably won't use those

so I'll use those ones and then go deep with those phrases

so learn the nuance learn the context learn the register learn how a native actually uses those phrases

and then you'll be confident enough to actually give it a go

when those phrases arise

or the opportunity to use those phrases arise I mean you

could get active at the end of the video in many ways.

It's just, I don't think it's good to just treat the video as the end of the process.

Because if you watch something and then immediately click to the next thing, you haven't really studied.

You've been entertained in English, which isn't nothing, but it isn't the same.

And after two years of it, you'll wonder why you're still where you started.

okay so that is the first one i'm gonna say try not to do.

Try not to just treat YouTube as the be all and end all, right?

Have it as the beginning point of your language learning for the day.

Okay, the second point I want to make is me having a go at my own industry.

So conversation classes, they are brilliant.

I've led a lot of them.

I love them personally, if I'm learning Spanish, I want to have conversation classes.

And I love them.

I think most people should have them.

But there is a trap sitting inside them.

And I've watched a lot of people walk straight into it, myself included, when learning Spanish.

And the trap is that you slowly start to believe it's the teacher's job to make you fluent, right?

It happens quietly and

and you know you book your class it's on thursday you

you turn up you have a lovely hour your teacher is

encouraging uh you leave feeling good about yourself well done me

and then for the next six days there's this little voice

in the back of your head going it's fine i've got my class I'm on track

so you you occasionally skip the daily exercise

that you may have done before

because you didn't have those classes um you you might not do

so much reading and you don't do the speaking practice either

because you know I've got the conversation class

because you've already paid you've already paid for the progress and it's scheduled it's scheduled on Thursday and unless

you're wealthy enough to have a one-on-one lesson every single day, which, you know, most of us aren't,

that means you're doing about one hour a week, maybe two hours a week of English,

you know, the lessons, and you're expecting that one to two hours to carry you through to the next level.

And even if you are doing that, even if you've got the money and the time

and you're in there five days a week with this poor

teacher joking i'm sure the teacher would be thrilled to have a lesson with an individual every day um

but there's a second problem underneath that um there are whole skills

that just quietly never come up in a conversation class

because your teacher most most teachers understandably um they feel like

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they need to give you what you want you know you're paying, you've had a long day at work,

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you'd like a nice chat about your weekend and a few corrections at the end.

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So that's what happens.

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And it's lovely, but it's the exact same problem as the YouTube problem I mentioned before,

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but just with a human face on it and you're paying for it, right?

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Because if you think about it, it's actually pretty rare as an adult to have a teacher

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who will make you do the thing you need to do rather than the thing you fancy doing.

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Nobody's forcing you in this.

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There's no exam in September unless you're doing an IELTS or something like that.

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There's no parents evening where you'll be told off by your parents and your teacher.

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Nobody's ringing your mum to tell you off, right?

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You've got a friendly person who wants to enjoy the hour with you

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and a version of yourself who'd quite like to avoid the uncomfortable bit.

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Those two people get on very, very well.

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And between them, they can keep you at the exact same level for years while everyone's just having a nice time.

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So the way I'd put it, if you want to have conversation classes is the lesson is almost like the exam.

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It's not the revision.

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It's where you find out what's working and what isn't.

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The actual learning happens in all the quiet,

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unglamorous bits in between when nobody's watching and nobody's charging you for it.

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And if you want to get more out of the class that you might be paying for, I'd turn up with something specific in mind, not can we just have a chat,

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something you've been struggling with.

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Think about that and focus on that for your lessons.

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Make your teacher's job easier and they'll give you the difficult version, which is the one you need, right?

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Right, so I've now told you that the two most popular ways to study English are both a bit of a trap,

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which is a rude thing to do to you, isn't it?

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But let me explain what's actually going on underneath, because it's the same thing both times.

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If you didn't know, maybe you do, but you know, we're this far in, I'm going to keep going.

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Learning has two modes, consuming and creating.

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You need both.

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And generally, you consume before you can create.

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That bit's fine and normal.

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But almost everybody I meet is wildly overweight on the consuming side with their language learning.

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So, you know, podcasts, videos, Netflix, articles, more podcasts, this podcast,

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another podcast, hours and hours of stuff going in and then almost nothing back out.

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And that's the whole problem with the two things I've just moaned about, though they fail in slightly different ways.

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YouTube is pure consuming.

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It goes in, nothing comes out.

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And it feels like study because English is arriving in your brain at speed

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and it's all jazzed up to look like this is all good for me.

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The class though, the class is different

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and I want to be fair to teachers out there including myself

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because a good one will have you talking far more than

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they do that's the actual job right of a conversation class

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but you can be doing plenty of talking

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and still not be stretched what usually happens is you get

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comfortable same friendly person same friendly small talk same handful of subjects all built out of language you already own.

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So you're creating, absolutely yes you are creating, you're just creating the things you could already say a year ago

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and not getting pushed anywhere near the bits you find genuinely hard.

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I am oversimplifying things to some degree

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but there is a definite valid point in both of these things that I'm telling you.

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So yes one of them barely asks you to produce anything

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and the other asks you in only the comfortable places right i want to

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double down on the fact

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that classes aren't really the villain in this story the problem is

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that we hand it the entire job one hour a week

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and we quietly expect

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that hour to do all the heavy lifting the the stretching

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the correcting the new vocabulary the the confidence the accent the lot No single hour can carry all of that,

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no matter how good that teacher is.

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Just one hour or two hours a week at your level,

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intermediate and above, you're not going to get further with just one to two sessions of English practice a week.

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Sorry to say.

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I feel like with any skill to really progress, you need to be doing it three times a week.

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It doesn't have to be three hours, but minimum, at minimum, three sessions a week.

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So a class works brilliantly sitting on top of a pile of your own stuff that you do.

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It just can't do very much when it is the pile, right?

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Now I want to talk about the active versus passive thing, because a lot of people think that active means speaking.

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it can

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but it doesn't require you to be with a person it

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doesn't need to be in a class with an audience

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or any um it doesn't require courage whatsoever really active just

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means your brain is putting words together into sentences instead of receiving sentences that are already finished

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so it could be just thinking right genuinely just thinking in english on the bus

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that counts just completing a full sentence in your head from

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start to finish it i mean it could be thinking it

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could be writing writing is a really good way to get active it could be talking to yourself

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while you're cooking why not right it could be complaining to a chat bot why your internet provider absolutely sucks.

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It could be a language partner or your teacher

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or small talk in a shop or a voice note to a friend or explaining your job to somebody at a party.

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The list goes on, right?

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My point here is that a lot of people think, oh, I've got to pay for a speaking class to be able to get active with my English.

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There are many ways to do it.

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Those are a few.

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So I'd say consuming English feels like learning, but creating with English is the actual learning.

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It's the bit where you're actually in the gym and you're sweating it out.

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Right.

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And the rule I'd give you is a small one, but it changes things quite substantially if you actually do it.

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So consume, then create.

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Consume, then create.

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Don't consume, then consume, then consume.

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After the podcast, say something out loud.

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After the article, write three sentences.

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After the video, use four of the expressions.

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It doesn't need to be long.

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It just needs to be fairly immediate and it needs to happen every single time.

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so quickly um don't let the algorithm on youtube pick your homework also i should add

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if you're using short form like youtube shorts instagram reels tiktoks you're asking for for trouble there

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because what they're doing is over stimulating you with dopamine

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so you're getting addicted to the learning videos

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and really you're not giving yourself enough time to process the actual education

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and you're certainly going from consumption to consumption to consumption when

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if you are able to watch a very highly stimulating and rewarding TikTok and then,

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you know, at the end of it, not just swipe up and go to the next one.

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You're a better person than me.

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I would struggle to stop that video and then do the active thing and then come back and do the active thing.

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If you can, that's good.

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It's like bite sized learning.

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but yeah don't let your algorithm pick your homework

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because it's optimizing for your attention and not for your english

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and don't hand the whole job to one class

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or one conversation class a week

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because no single hour can carry all of the progress needed

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and underneath both watch the balance between what's going in

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and what's coming out because for most people out there there is far too much going in

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and almost nothing coming back so those are the three

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and the thing about all of them is

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that they're free you don't need anyone else for any of it you can close this app right now

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and um yeah start doing every single one of those three this afternoon and if you can do that honestly,

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off you go with my blessing.

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If you've got the patience

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and the willpower to keep finding new ways to get active

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with your English on a hot sticky Tuesday in August when work's been rubbish and nobody's checking in on you,

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then you're genuinely a brilliant learner and you'll be absolutely fine.

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But if you're sat there going,

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yes, lovely, but I cannot see myself inventing active exercises learning exercises for myself every day

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and if you know deep down that your motivation turns up in bursts

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and then vanishes for three weeks at a time

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which is true for most people by the way including myself

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um then i really think you should try my academy at least try it okay

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because those tips i've mentioned aren't separate from what i've built they're the reason it exists.

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I built the whole thing around exactly this problem,

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which is that people know they should be getting active and they don't because they're tired and it's boring and nobody's

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asked them to, right?

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So inside my academy, everything runs on this loop.

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You take something in, you do something with it, you find out what went wrong, then you use it with actual human beings and my point being is

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that you don't have to design any of these exercises each day you just show up

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and the active bit happens to you

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and you can try the whole thing for a whole month for five pounds

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if it clicks with you you'll you'll know within that month and if it doesn't you've Spent about what?

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The amount you get from a coffee and a pastry, if you're lucky.

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My coffee the other day was close to five pounds.

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So, yes, I do want to stress, though, it's ideally a place for upper intermediate to lower advanced learners.

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But there are plenty of B1 and C2 learners who get a lot out of it, too. So, yeah, that's it.

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I know you might be thinking, I like to listen to this podcast for my listening practice.

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Why has he spent that episode telling me what I should be doing

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and then encouraging me to sign up to his paid membership?

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And I obviously get that.

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I really do.

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But from my side of things, I want to see you improve your English.

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Like, yes, I do need paying members to be able to afford my life.

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but I've taught one-to-one lessons created a bunch of self-study courses held immersion courses in person

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and really the the quickest and best solution

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that I am seeing people get results from is my academy

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so I think

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if you are wanting to improve your English then give the trial a go to see

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if you like it and I'll say one more thing um this trial I'm offering it actually it actually impacts me negatively.

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Like I do a lot of individual marking for each student.

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So if I was paid five pounds for a month of that, I think it's like I'm getting paid one pound an hour.

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Yeah, not much.

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So the trial is very much putting me out.

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And if you stay, it's because you found a community that is helping you improve your English faster. So

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it's a win-win for both of us there we have it

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i'll um be releasing a conversational interview with emma from pronunciation

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with emma next week it was good fun recording it

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so yeah look out for that one for your listening practice

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but yeah if you're interested in the trial to the academy head to the britishenglishpodcast.com slash academy trial

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or click the link in the show notes description box

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or comments all right you've been listening to me charlie the host of the british english podcast see you next time

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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson

This video has 268 sentences and 3331 words to shadow. The speech runs for 21:43. The speaker talks at a natural 153 words per minute, close to everyday conversation. 87% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English, so the vocabulary is easy to follow.

Key vocabulary in this video

15 words from the video worth learning, with pronunciation and meaning:

Word	Pronunciation	Meaning
consume verb	/kənˈsum/	To use up.
lesson noun	/ˈlɛs.ən/	A section of learning or teaching into which a wider learning content is divided.
podcast noun	/ˈpɑdˌkæst/	A program, especially an audio program, produced on a regular basis, delivered over the Internet in a compressed digital format and designed for playback on…
phrase noun	/ˈfɹeɪ̯z/	A short written or spoken expression.
pound noun	/ˈpaʊ̯nd/	A unit of weight in various measurement systems.
genuinely adverb	/ˈd͡ʒɛn.ju.ɪn.li/	In a genuine manner; truthfully, truly.
algorithm noun	/ˈælɡəɹɪðm̩/	A collection of ordered steps that solve a mathematical problem. A precise step-by-step plan for a computational procedure that possibly begins with an input…
vast adjective	/væst/	Very large or wide (literally or figuratively).
consumption noun	/kənˈsʌmp.ʃən/	The act of eating, drinking or using.
trap noun	/tɹæp/	A machine or other device designed to catch (and sometimes kill) animals, either by holding them in a container, or by catching hold of part of the body.
quietly adverb	/ˈkwaɪ.ɪt.li/	Producing little or no noise.
underneath adverb	/ˌʌndɚˈniθ/	Below; in a place beneath.
encourage verb	/ɪnˈkʌɹ.ɪd͡ʒ/	To mentally support; to motivate, give courage, hope or spirit.
stretch verb	/stɹɛt͡ʃ/	To lengthen by pulling.
reward noun	/ɹɪˈwɔɹd/	Something of value given in return for an act.

Phrasal verbs you will hear

Word	Pronunciation	Meaning
come back verb		To return to a place.
come out verb	/ˌkʌm ˈaʊt/	To be discovered; to be revealed.
find out verb		To discover, as by asking or investigating.
back out verb		To reverse (a vehicle) from a confined space.
check in on verb		To pay a visit in order to monitor the health, security or safety of (someone or something).
come away verb		To become separated from something.
end up verb		To bring to a conclusion.
show up verb		To appear, arrive, or attend, especially suddenly or erratically.

Pronunciation to watch

The speaker uses 123 contractions and reduced forms, such as you're, I'm, you've. Say them the short way, as you hear them.

The “th” sounds: algorithm /ˈælɡəɹɪðm̩/, underneath /ˌʌndɚˈniθ/, wealthy /ˈwɛl.θi/, thrill /θɹɪl/
The “sh” and “zh” sounds: consumption /kənˈsʌmp.ʃən/, examination /ɪɡˌzæm.ɪˈneɪ.ʃən/, occasionally /əˈkeɪʒənəli/, motivation /ˈmoʊ.tə.veɪ.ʃən/, patience /ˈpeɪ̯.ʃəns/
Long words — get the stress right: genuinely /ˈd͡ʒɛn.ju.ɪn.li/, examination /ɪɡˌzæm.ɪˈneɪ.ʃən/, intermediate /ɪn.tə(ɹ)ˈmi.di.ət/, vocabulary /vəˈkæb.jə.lə.ɹi/, occasionally /əˈkeɪʒənəli/

How to practise with this video

Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
Start at 0.75× speed, shadow it sentence by sentence, then go back to normal speed once it feels easy.
Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like consume, lesson, podcast.

דקדוק בסרטון הזה

המבנים שהדובר משתמש בהם הכי הרבה, עם המילים המדויקות מהסרטון:

מבנה	בסרטון
הווה מושלם ממושך (Present perfect continuous) have/has been + -ing — פעולה שהתחילה בעבר ועדיין נמשכת עכשיו	you've been putting · you've been struggling · you've been listening
משפטי תנאי (Conditional sentences) if + clause, will/would + verb — תנאי ותוצאה שלו	if that's you, I'd say · if it clicks with you you'll you · if you like it and I'll say
הווה מושלם (Present perfect) have/has + past participle — פעולה שקרתה בעבר ועדיין יש לה חשיבות או השפעה עכשיו	you've put · you've moved · i've noticed
סביל (Passive voice) be + past participle — הדגש הוא על מה שקורה, לא על מי שעושה את הפעולה	You've been entertained · would be thrilled · be told

מהי טכניקת השאדואינג?

שאדואינג היא טכניקת למידת שפה מבוססת מדע שפותחה במקור להכשרת מתורגמנים מקצועיים ופופולרית על ידי הפוליגלוט ד"ר אלכסנדר ארגואלס. השיטה פשוטה אך עוצמתית: אתה מקשיב לאודיו באנגלית ילידית וחוזר עליו בקול רם מיד — כמו צל העוקב אחרי הדובר עם עיכוב של 1–2 שניות בלבד. בניגוד להאזנה פסיבית או תרגילי דקדוק, שאדואינג מכריח את המוח והשרירים בפה לעבד ולשחזר דפוסי דיבור אמיתיים בו זמנית. מחקרים מראים שזה משפר משמעותית את דיוק ההגייה, האינטונציה, הקצב, הדיבור המחובר, הבנת השמיעה ושטף הדיבור — מה שהופך אותו לאחת השיטות היעילות ביותר להכנה לIELTS Speaking ולתקשורת באנגלית בעולם האמיתי.

טכניקת Shadowing: קרא את המדריך המלא שלב אחר שלב →

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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson

Key vocabulary in this video

Phrasal verbs you will hear

Pronunciation to watch

How to practise with this video

דקדוק בסרטון הזה

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