Pratica di Shadowing: I Can't Keep Doing This - Impara a parlare inglese con i video
Creazione lezione...
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Guys, I can't do this anymore.
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Something needs to change.
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I need to make better quality episodes.
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Hello, my lovely learners, and welcome to Easy Stories in English,
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the podcast that will take your English from okay to good and from good to great.
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I am Ariel Goodbody, your host for this show.
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In today's episode, I will tell you about some quite dramatic changes that are coming to the podcast.
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As always, the transcript and PDF are available at easystoriesinenglish.com, and you can find the link in the description.
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So yes, it's true.
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I can't keep going on making episodes like this, but before I reveal the shocking truth,
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I need to tell you the meaning of some words.
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So if you simply can't wait, just skip to the next chapter.
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Binge, B-I-N-G-E, means to consume a lot of one thing at one time, in one sitting.
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Traditionally, it refers to binge drinking, which is when you drink lots of alcohol in one go.
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It's quite common in the UK, especially at universities.
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But these days, binging often refers to watching TV shows or eating lots of food.
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For example, your favourite TV show might drop its new season all in one go
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and you might binge all the episodes at once.
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This was a very popular form of releasing TV episodes years ago before Covid.
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For example, when Orange is the New Black came out, people would binge the whole season.
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Personally, I'm not much of a binger myself, but I can play video games for hours if I'm not careful.
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A leap of faith is when you make a really big decision that could go really well or really badly.
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You're essentially leaping, jumping into the unknown.
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Moving to China was a big leap of faith for me, but fortunately it is going very well.
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Watching paint dry isn't really an activity people do, that's the point.
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It's a phrase we use to talk about something hypothetical that is so so boring.
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For example, you might say that studying English from a textbook is like watching paint dry
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and I would agree with you because I think textbooks are a very boring way to learn.
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When you have a project on the back burner it means you are not actively working on it.
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If you think about a hob in a kitchen you have four burners
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and you might put a saucepan on the back burner simmering a sauce for like 40 minutes while you cook some onions,
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you fry some onions on the front burner.
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So the idea is often that we leave something on the back burner and come back to it later.
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I have a lot of things on the back burner in my creative
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life right now but i'll get to that later when we say
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that something sucks we mean that it's really bad
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and this is very colloquial language it's specifically quite american for example i think
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that public transport in the uk sucks at least outside of london
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but the quality of dairy products so milk
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and yogurt in china also sucks
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so sucking is universal fortnight means two weeks it literally comes from 14 nights we use this in british english
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but they don't use it in american English.
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So when they would say bi-weekly or once every two weeks, we would say fortnightly or once a fortnight.
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When something kicks in, usually a medicine, it starts being effective.
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For example, many painkillers, many medicines that reduce the level of pain,
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take about 30 minutes to kick in.
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We can also talk about an emotion kicking in.
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For example, in today's episode I'm talking about fear kicking in, when suddenly fear rushes through your body,
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a bit like a medicine taking effect.
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Anodyne, A-N-O-D-Y-N-E, which by the way is one of my favorite words,
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words, means boring, specifically in a way where something has been designed to be as inoffensive and bland as possible.
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These days it feels like most media is made to either be really inflammatory,
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to offend as many people as possible, or to be completely anodyne,
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to be uninteresting and friendly to everyone.
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A lot of bad pop music is bad precisely because it's anodyne
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and now with AI anyone can pump out endless anodyne songs,
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stories, images because AI literally just takes the soup of everything
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that exists and mixes it all together and creates very average anodyne work.
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An anecdote, A-N-E-C-D-O-T-E, is a story from real life.
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Anecdotes are usually quite short, it's usually observing a situation.
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We also talk about anecdotal evidence, which is when you don't have scientific studies about something,
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but lots of people talk about experiencing the same thing.
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And usually anecdotal evidence is what inspires scientists to study something in the first place.
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Finally, a preview is when you get to see a bit of something before it's released.
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Later on, I'll be giving you a preview of an upcoming episode, so look forward to that.
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All right, let's get into the episode.
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So I've been doing the podcasting thing for a while now, almost eight years.
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When I started, I was just a newbie teacher taking my first steps of independence out in the world.
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I loved podcasts, I binged them for hours every day, and I was looking for a creative outlet, a way to share my writing,
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and so Easy Stories in English came together.
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I'm no longer that same shy 25 year old.
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I've been through COVID, as we all have, had a rather complicated health and gender journey,
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and last year I moved halfway across the world to China.
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I'm not the only one who's changed.
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The podcast market, or content landscape as people like to call it,
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is completely different now in 2026 than it was in 2019.
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I talked about binging your favourite shows before, but this is becoming less and less common worldwide.
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Increasingly, rather than diving deep into one creator's content,
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people are watching what the algorithm serves them, and the algorithm offers a buffet of endless variety.
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Never before have more people been competing for your ears.
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Production standards have changed too.
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I originally started a podcast because it required less effort than video,
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but these days podcasts are expected to have video too, And not just any video,
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but tightly edited, well-shot feasts for the eyes.
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Well, I don't know.
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You decide whether I fit that bill.
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Finally, tastes have changed.
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I remember the days when a 10-minute YouTube video was considered long.
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Now I'll happily sit down to watch a five-hour documentary about the history of North Korean pop culture.
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Not in one sitting.
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Although if you do want to watch that video, I'll link it in the description.
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It's fascinating.
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But I digress.
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These days I come home from work, sit down on the sofa, and hungrily wait for videos from my favourite YouTubers.
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And when those videos arrive, I eat them up.
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ContraPoints is one such example.
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A brilliant YouTuber who releases videos about once a year now.
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But they're not just any videos.
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They're well-researched, they're beautifully shot, and most importantly, in my opinion, masterfully written.
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So where does this put me and my little show?
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Well, first of all, I've never really been like the other English learning podcasts.
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Hello everyone and welcome to the BBC Boring British Club,
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where you can learn English by listening to the most tedious, dull conversations possible.
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Did you know that tedious and dull are synonyms of boring?
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If you haven't shot yourself from boredom yet, congratulations!
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You just raised your IELTS level by 0.1.
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Today we're talking about boring things in the past tense.
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Sandra, what did you do on the weekend?
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Well, Ariel, on the weekend, I watched paint dry.
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I counted the number of fridges in my house.
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I have just one fridge.
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And I thought about rabbits.
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Thinking about rabbits?
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Do you have any pets, Sandra?
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Oh, sorry.
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We're using the past tense.
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Did you go to the pet shop on the weekend, Sandra?
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No, I didn't.
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But I thought about rabbits anyway.
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Careful, Sandra.
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That sounds a bit too into...
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Oh, crap.
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Past tense.
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Sandra, I once thought about rabbits and it was very interesting,
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but I was part of a show called Boring British Club,
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which had only the dullest and most tedious conversations.
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And it was a bit too interesting so i got into trouble
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did your boss tell you off in this story it's not a story sandra it's real
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and yes my boss told me off and I almost lost my job.
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Well then, I suppose I should tell you about the other thing I did on the weekend.
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On the weekend, I looked for a new job.
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I wish they were like that.
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Unfortunately, they're more like five words for walking down the stairs.
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You know, not my thing.
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My thing is a bit more...
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We're learning English with a real good buddy.
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Woo!
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Woo!
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Woo!
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Learning English with a real good buddy.
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But as I've said, times are changing and I'm kind of getting bored of my own style.
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For a long time now, I've been wanting to work on deeper projects,
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longer stories with music and sound effects and just a general higher quality of production value.
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I've done some of these episodes in the past few years.
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The Juniper Tree, Hamburg, The City of Water, and Doing Evil are the three episodes that come to mind,
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but these took me a long time to make.
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The first two I did while I was working full-time on the podcast,
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and I started writing The Juniper Tree in October 2022,
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which means it took me almost three years to go from start to finish.
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And I work full-time now, so if I started that episode now, I don't even know how long it would take.
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I've fallen into this pattern where I have these big, juicy projects on the back burner,
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but because I'm always rushing to get the next episode out on schedule, I can never finish them.
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Or for example, when I'm going on a holiday, I don't want to be working,
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so I'm in this mad rush to batch a bunch of episodes before I go away
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and I can just never take those things off the back burner.
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The juniper tree is not an exception.
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I have many projects, both episodes and other things related to the podcast, that I've been trying to do for years.
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It's not an exaggeration.
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The last straw for me, the thing that made me say, okay, enough is enough, was the Cambodia episode.
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Because the Cambodia episode sucked.
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Like, I'm sorry, it just sucked.
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It was bad.
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I only talked about Cambodia for half of the episode, and I didn't even go into the actually interesting stuff because I didn't want to cry.
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Honestly, it was emotionally, intellectually, and artistically lazy.
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So here's the deal.
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I need more time to work on episodes.
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That's it.
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That's the big leap of faith I've been building up to this whole time.
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Because here's the thing, in 2019 it made sense to do one episode a week
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because it was the era of quantity over quality.
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When I came back from my hiatus in 2022, it made sense to switch to Once a Fortnight for my own mental health.
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But now I really need to do something that I feel creatively proud of and that actually fits the content landscape.
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And that is bigger, juicier episodes, but fewer episodes.
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Really, the only reason I didn't do this before is I was scared.
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The longer you do one project online, the more fear kicks in.
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Because you have an audience now, and audiences have expectations.
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You've got to always come up with new and better content.
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Every year there's more competition.
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And finally, the geniuses at YouTube and Spotify could just roll out of bed one day,
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change the algorithm and make you disappear like that.
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I would also be lying if I said money wasn't a factor in this decision.
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When I was self-employed working on the podcast, I was terrified of making any changes that might affect my income.
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But now I have a full-time teaching job that leaves me very comfortable, so I have no reason not to experiment.
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Because I have big plans.
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At the start, I thought I was just a teacher and just a writer.
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But over time i began to realize you know what i'm not half bad at this voice acting thing
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and now i'm like screw it let's go for it music sound effects epic stories
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so much content online is lazy anodyne simplistic i want to make art i want to make deep real art
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that shakes the mind and stirs the soul And I want you to learn English at the same time.
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So yes, easy stories in English is changing.
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There won't be a regular schedule anymore.
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Just saying that terrifies me.
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But don't worry, I'm not going to leave you waiting eight months between episodes.
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I'll find little ways to fill in the gaps.
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Actually, that's where I think the unscripted content, the little anecdotes, the shorter stories will be perfect.
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And I'll also be giving you previews of those big juicy stories that are to come.
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Speaking of which, here's a preview of what I'm working on at the moment.
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When the ten suns rose, it was like a fireworks display going off in Houyi's face.
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It took all his strength not to turn away.
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You nine suns who have joined the sky, Houyi cried.
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I come to ask you, why?
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Our people suffer, our rivers dry.
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Won't you leave and let us be?
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Three of the sons circled around towards Houyi, as if curious about his message.
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But they remained silent.
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He could not tell if they understood. So Houyi spoke again.
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you nine sons who have joined the sky hoi cried i
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come to ask you why our people suffer our rivers dry won't you leave
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and let us be another three of the sons came forward but these three did not stay quiet.
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The moment Houyi's words came out, their laughter boomed.
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It thundered in Houyi's ears and made the back of his eyes itch.
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But still, the young man did not give up.
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You nine suns who have joined the sky, Huyi cried.
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I come to ask you why our people suffer, our rivers dry.
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Won't you leave and let us be?
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The next three suns came and these three did not find Huyi's words amusing.
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In fact, they began to boil, deepening in colour until they were as red as a lobster's tail
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and before Hou Yi knew what was happening one of the sons was shooting towards him.
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Hou Yi leapt for his bow and arrow.
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He readied the arrow and fired, striking the sun mere meters from his face.
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The sun let out an animal scream,
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breaking into strips of red silk which caught fire, burning Hoi's face.
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But no sooner had the first sun gone than the second one threw itself at Hoi
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and again he let off an arrow, tearing the creature apart and showering the mountain top in fire.
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The battle continued in this way.
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One by one, the suns rained down on him and Hou Yi shot so fast he thought his fingers might break.
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Three, four, five, six, seven.
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He soon lost count.
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The ground around him was transformed to magma, covered with the remains of the once powerful suns.
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Finally, one sun remained on the horizon, shining like a fresh bruise.
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Huyi raised his bow, ready to fire, when...
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Wait!
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He almost fell over.
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Behind him stood a Taoist monk, his blue robes flapping in the wind.
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Young man, that is our original sun.
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If you shoot it down, you will throw the world into darkness.
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As an artist, you always have to change.
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Also, I don't know if you've noticed, but the world is changing quite a lot right now.
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We need powerful stories more than ever.
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I kind of hate saying that like, oh, stories are going to change the world.
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But it's kind of true.
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It's like when you learn a language and you say, oh, I'm learning English for travel or for work.
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But really, the biggest change
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that comes from learning a language is the deep connections you form because you were able to speak it.
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And that is something we simply cannot predict.
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So, before we finish, let's just recap all the new words I've taught you this episode.
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If you're new to the show, maybe this has inspired you to go back and binge all the previous episodes.
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And if you're a long-time listener, please support me in this leap of faith.
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You will have to wait more than a fortnight for the next episode.
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Hopefully it won't feel like watching paint dry.
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But if the loneliness starts to kick in, you can always follow me on social media where I'll be posting previews of upcoming episodes.
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Finally, if this idea sucks, if these bigger, juicier episodes end up being uninspired and anodyne,
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I guess I can always go back to telling little anecdotes from my everyday life.
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The only word I haven't used is on the back burner, which is fitting because things left on the back burner often gets ignored.
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So, comment and let me know what is one leap of faith you've been considering but have been too scared to make.
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Who knows, maybe I can help give you a little push.
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Thanks for listening and may you learn English happily ever after.
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Bye!
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Obiettivi di parlato per questo clip
Questo video aiuta a raggiungere un traguardo chiave nella fluency: l'uso di espressioni colloquiali e idiomatiche in contesti reali. Attraverso il dialogo, gli apprendenti imparano a integrare frasi come "a leap of faith" o "on the back burner" nella propria conversazione, migliorando la naturalità e la capacità di comunicare situazioni complesse con semplicità. È perfetto per chi vuole passare da un inglese "ok" a uno più fluido e spontaneo, ideale per la pratica di conversazione in inglese.
Banca di frasi riutilizzabili
- Binge: "Ho bingato tutta la stagione di quel film in un weekend" (consumare molto di qualcosa in poco tempo).
- A leap of faith: "Spostarmi in Italia è stato un leap of faith, ma è valsa la pena" (una decisione coraggiosa nel ignoto).
- Watching paint dry: "Studiare con i libri di testo è come watching paint dry" (qualcosa di estremamente noioso).
- On the back burner: "Quel progetto è sul back burner, ma lo riprenderò presto" (non attivo, ma non abbandonato).
- Kick in: "Il farmaco ha iniziato a kick in dopo 20 minuti" (divenire efficace).
Correggi i tuoi punti deboli
Il video è eccellente per lavorare sulla shadowing in inglese (tecnica del "shadow speak"), cioè ripetere immediatamente le frasi dopo il parlante per migliorare intonazione, ritmo e pronuncia. Le espressioni colloquiali come "sucks" o "fortnight" hanno un accento e una melodica specifiche: la shadowing aiuta a capirne il flusso naturale. Presta attenzione alla differenza tra "fortnight" (due settimane, inglese britannico) e "bi-weekly" (inglese americano), e alla pronuncia di "anodyne" (A-N-O-D-Y-N-E), una parola lessicale che richiede chiarezza nella sillabazione. Con la pratica costante di shadow speech, le frasi diventeranno più fluide e meno "forzate", rendendo la conversazione più autentica.
La grammatica di questo video
Le strutture che chi parla usa di più, con le parole esatte del video:
| Struttura | Nel video |
|---|---|
| Present perfect continuous have/has been + -ing — un’azione iniziata prima e ancora in corso | I've been doing · I've been wanting · I've been trying |
| Frasi condizionali if + frase, will/would + verbo — una condizione e il suo risultato | If you shoot it down, you will throw |
| Present perfect have/has + participio passato — un’azione passata che conta ancora adesso | has been designed · I've been · have changed |
| Forma passiva be + participio passato — conta ciò che accade, non chi lo fa | has been designed · is made · are expected |
Cos'è la tecnica dello Shadowing?
Shadowing è una tecnica di apprendimento delle lingue supportata da studi scientifici, originariamente sviluppata per la formazione dei traduttori professionisti e resa popolare dal poliglotta Dr. Alexander Arguelles. Il metodo è semplice ma potente: ascolti un audio in inglese di madrelingua e lo ripeti immediatamente ad alta voce — come un'ombra che segue il parlante con un ritardo di solo 1–2 secondi. A differenza dell'ascolto passivo o degli esercizi di grammatica, lo shadowing costringe il tuo cervello e i muscoli della bocca a elaborare e riprodurre simultaneamente i modelli di discorso reale. La ricerca dimostra che migliora significativamente la precisione della pronuncia, l'intonazione, il ritmo, il discorso connesso, la comprensione dell'ascolto e la fluidità del parlato — rendendolo uno dei metodi più efficaci per la preparazione alla prova di speaking dell'IELTS e per la comunicazione reale in inglese.