Shadowing Practice: how i stopped existing and started actually living - Learn English Speaking with Video
Les maken...
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There is a distinct difference between existing and living.
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And for the past few years, I have just been existing.
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you - The story starts two Fridays ago, midnight in the Lower East Side with two of my friends.
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It was the kind of night where you say one more drink four times
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and you somehow end up at a rave in Brooklyn.
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Someone's talking to a stranger about Nietzsche or their ex or both, and somehow we stayed out until 5 :00 AM and decided to see the sunrise on the East River.
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So we walked and sat there on a bench, half drunk, fully running on whatever chemical your body releases when it's given up on sleep, and started talking about how bizarre it is
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that you can live in the most overstimulating city on the planet and still feel like you're on autopilot.
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What word do you want to define this summer?
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One of them said "alive." So I'm stealing it.
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Because honestly, that's exactly it.
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See, here's the thing that no one warns you about adulthood.
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Not the taxes, not the weird need -paying that shows up once every three months.
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Those are pretty well documented.
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What no one tells you is that time changes texture.
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excitement, then there was the midterms, the midterm crisis, and then there was the finale.
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Every few months the cast would rotate, the setting would shift, and you would get a soft reset.
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And then you graduate.
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And suddenly a Tuesday in March and a Tuesday in October are the same episode.
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There are no more semesters, no more syllabi dictating the start of a new season.
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You're just renewed for infinite seasons with no writer's room.
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So what do you do?
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You build a routine because that's what everyone does.
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You wake up, coffee, work, eat, run, scroll, sleep.
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And the routine is fine.
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The routine is responsible.
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The routine is what your parents describe as having your life together.
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But feel like sadness.
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It feels like Wednesday.
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You're not unhappy.
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That's the tricky part.
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You're functioning.
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You're going to the gym.
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You have a skincare routine down and yet you're existing adjacent to your own life.
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You're watching it through glass.
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I've been thinking a lot about what alive actually means
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because it's very easy to hear that word and picture something from a tourism ad, skydiving, spontaneous road trip with the windows down, running through an airport, a boy.
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But I don't think that's it.
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I think feeling alive is much less cinematic and much more It's the moment right before you say the honest thing,
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when the real sentence is just sitting in your throat and you haven't decided if you should let it out.
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That's alive.
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It's walking home the long way because the air feels a certain way and you're just not ready to be inside yet, even though your feet hurt and you have a perfectly good metro card.
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It's being in a conversation where you lose track of time, not because it's entertaining, but because someone is actually seeing you.
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I think what alive really means is presence.
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The moment where the distance between you and your experience just collapses.
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just in it.
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No internal commentary, no content ideas.
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You're just there.
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And the reason those moments feel so real is because most of the time there is a distance.
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You are one step removed.
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You're the protagonist and the audience simultaneously.
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You're living your life and also watching you live it as well.
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Here's a part that I wasn't really sure how to say, but I think sometimes we don't feel alive because we're quietly, privately afraid to.
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Because sometimes being fully present means being fully exposed, and exposure is a terrible business model for someone who spent years building a very functional emotional firewall.
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If you let yourself get swept up in a perfect night, you also have to feel a very specific type of loneliness of getting home at 3am and taking your makeup off alone.
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If you let yourself fall for someone, you have to sit with the possibility that it might end.
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they rebuild routines that are comfortable and predictable and require very little emotional risk, we get really really good at being fine.
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And fine is the most dangerous word in the English language because no one checks on you when you're fine, including yourself.
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I have this theory about summer, specifically summer in New York.
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A pigeon is probably gonna shit on you at some point.
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Your apartment shrinks.
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You develop a relationship with your AC unit That's more intimate than most of your friendships.
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Everything is sticky, stinky, loud, and because everything is too much people stop hiding.
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They sit on stoops, they stay out too late on a Tuesday, they talk to the person next to them at the bar because it's too hot to maintain normal social boundaries.
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People fall in love on fire escapes, the air is heavy and slow and golden.
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The city smells like sweat and ambition, which for the record is a terrible combination, but somehow the most romantic thing in the world.
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There's this shared urgency in summer.
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Even though everyone's tired, even though everyone's overstimulated, there's this unspoken agreement that these months count.
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This is proximity.
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And proximity, it turns out, is where aliveness lives.
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That's why the best nights of your life are ones that you never planned.
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They're the ones that just happened because you said yes
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when your friend called you at midnight and you were already in bed.
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Because you stayed one more hour, because you went to the third location, because you walked 40 blocks instead of taking the train, and somewhere around block 22, the city did that thing where it feels like it's yours.
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Thank you.
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I want to be clear, I have not figured this out.
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But what I will say is that I've started to notice the gap, the distance between me and my own life.
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And noticing it isn't the same as fixing it, but I think it's a prerequisite.
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I've been saying yes to things that scare me a little.
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When I want to cancel, I try not to.
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I try to just say yes more often.
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But I think these small moments of choosing presence over comfort, they compound.
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And sometimes in the middle of doing whatever, I get a small flash of that feeling.
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The feeling of being alive.
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That morning on the East River after my friend said "alive" we didn't really talk about it after that.
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We just sat there and the sky was doing its whole performance.
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Pink, then gold, then the shade of blue that makes you briefly religious.
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The city was waking up behind us and none of us reached for our phones.
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And I think that was the most alive I felt in months.
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Not because it was something really different, but because I wasn't trying to be anywhere else.
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I wasn't optimizing the moment.
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I was just in it.
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I don't know if you can chase that feeling.
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I think the whole cruel joke is the moment you try to hold on to it, it becomes a thing you're performing and you're watching yourself feel alive, which is a completely different thing than actually feeling alive.
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But I think you can build a life with more room
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for it more gaps more yeses less insulation more why the fuck not a little less fine and a little more
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Awake, I'm trying.
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I don't know if it's a hundred percent working yet, but I think trying is the point or at least that's what I'm telling myself I And right now, that's enough.
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Woordenschat en spreektips bij deze les
Deze video bevat 98 zinnen en 1291 woorden om na te spreken. Het gesproken deel duurt 6:53. De spreker praat snel, ongeveer 187 woorden per minuut, dus reken op verbonden en ingeslikte klanken. 86% van de woorden hoort bij de 3.000 meest gebruikte Engelse woorden; de rest kun je beter vooraf bekijken.
Belangrijke woorden in deze video
15 woorden uit de video die het leren waard zijn, met uitspraak en betekenis:
| Woord | Uitspraak | Betekenis |
|---|---|---|
| midnight zelfstandig naamwoord | /ˈmɪd(ˌ)naɪt/ | middernacht |
| proximity zelfstandig naamwoord | /pɹɒkˈsɪm.ɪ.ti/ | nabijheid |
| gap zelfstandig naamwoord | /ɡæp/ | reet, spleet |
| chase werkwoord | /t͡ʃeɪs/ | achtervolgen, achternazitten |
| exposure zelfstandig naamwoord | /ɪkˈspəʊ.ʒə(ɹ)/ | blootstelling, contact |
| comfort zelfstandig naamwoord | /ˈkʌm.fət/ | comfort, gemak |
| steal werkwoord | /stiːl/ | stelen, ontvreemden |
| bench zelfstandig naamwoord | /ˈbɛnt͡ʃ/ | bank, zitbank |
| friendship zelfstandig naamwoord | /ˈfɹɛn(d)ʃɪp/ | vriendschap |
| define werkwoord | /dɪˈfaɪn/ | bepalen, determineren |
| throat zelfstandig naamwoord | /ˈθɹoʊt/ | keel |
| tourism zelfstandig naamwoord | /ˈtʊɹɪzəm/ | toerisme |
| functional bijvoeglijk naamwoord | /ˈfʌŋkt͡ʃənəl/ | functionerend, operationeel |
| briefly bijwoord | /ˈbɹiːfli/ | kortweg |
| commentary zelfstandig naamwoord | /ˈkɑ.mənˌtɛ.ɹi/ | commentaar, voice-over |
Phrasal verbs die je zult horen
| Woord | Uitspraak | Betekenis |
|---|---|---|
| wake up werkwoord | /ˌweɪk ˈʌp/ | wakker worden, ontwaken |
| show up werkwoord | tentoonstellen | |
| turn out werkwoord | uitvallen, resulteren |
Grammatica in deze video
De structuren die de spreker het meest gebruikt, met de exacte woorden uit de video:
| Structuur | In de video |
|---|---|
| Present perfect continuous have/has been + -ing — iets dat eerder begon en nog bezig is | have just been existing · I've been thinking · I've been saying |
| Present perfect have/has + voltooid deelwoord — iets uit het verleden dat nu nog telt | haven't decided · have not figured · I've started |
| Betrekkelijke bijzinnen who / which + zin — extra informatie over een persoon of ding | someone who spent · alive, which is |
Uitspraak om op te letten
De spreker gebruikt 33 samentrekkingen en verkorte vormen, zoals you're, don't, I'm. Spreek ze kort uit, zoals je ze hoort.
- De klanken “sh” en “zh”: flash /flæʃ/, exposure /ɪkˈspəʊ.ʒə(ɹ)/, friendship /ˈfɹɛn(d)ʃɪp/, shade /ʃeɪd/, ambition /æmˈbɪʃ.ən/
- Lange woorden — let op de klemtoon: proximity /pɹɒkˈsɪm.ɪ.ti/, commentary /ˈkɑ.mənˌtɛ.ɹi/, simultaneously /ˌsaɪmlˈteɪnɪəsli/, predictable /pɹəˈdɪktəbləl/, spontaneous /spɑnˈteɪ.ni.əs/
Zo oefen je met deze video
- Luister de hele video één keer zonder te spreken en noteer de woorden die je niet kent.
- Begin op 0,75× snelheid, spreek zin voor zin na en ga terug naar normale snelheid zodra het makkelijk gaat.
- Neem jezelf op en vergelijk met het origineel; let daarbij op woorden als midnight, proximity, gap.
Wat is de Shadowing-techniek?
Shadowing is een wetenschappelijk onderbouwde taalleermethode die oorspronkelijk is ontwikkeld voor professionele tolkentraining en gepopulariseerd door polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. De methode is eenvoudig maar krachtig: je luistert naar native Engelse audio en herhaalt het onmiddellijk hardop — als een schaduw die de spreker volgt met slechts 1–2 seconden vertraging. In tegenstelling tot passief luisteren of grammaticadrills, dwingt shadowing je hersenen en mondspieren om echte spraakpatronen tegelijkertijd te verwerken en te reproduceren. Onderzoek toont aan dat het de uitspraaknauwkeurigheid, intonatie, ritme, verbonden spraak, luisterbegrip en spreekvaardigheid aanzienlijk verbetert — waardoor het een van de meest effectieve methoden is voor IELTS Speaking-voorbereiding en echte Engelse communicatie.