Shadowing Practice: 01-4New Concept English e01 Finding fossil man - Learn English Speaking with Video

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We can read of things that happened 5 ,000 years ago in the Near East, where people first learned to write.

But there are some parts of the world where even now people cannot write.

The only way that they can preserve their history is to recount it as sagas,

legends handed down from one generation of storytellers to another.

These legends are useful because they can tell us something about migrations of people who lived long ago.

But none could write down what they did.

Anthropologists wondered where the remote ancestors of the Polynesian peoples now living in the Pacific Islands came from.

The sagas of these people explain that some of them came from Indonesia about 2 ,000 years ago.

But the first people who were like ourselves lived so long ago that even their sagas, if they had any, are forgotten.

So archaeologists have neither history nor legends to help them to find out where the first modern men came from.

Fortunately, however, ancient men made tools of stone, especially flint, because this is easier to shape than other kinds.

They may also have used wood and skins, but these have rotted away.

Stone does not decay.

And so the tools of long ago have remained, when even the bones of the men who made them have disappeared without trace.

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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson

This speaking lesson is built on the video “01-4New Concept English e01 Finding fossil man”. The speaker keeps coming back to these words: sagas, legends, write. This video has 14 sentences and 219 words to shadow. The speech runs for 1:51. The speaker talks at a steady 118 words per minute, a comfortable pace for shadowing. 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
legend noun	/ˈlɛd͡ʒ.ənd/	The life story of a saint (such stories are often embellished, but any kind is called a legend).
saga noun	/ˈsɑɡə/	An Old Norse (Icelandic) prose narrative, especially one dealing with family or social histories and legends.
bone noun	/boʊn/	A composite material consisting largely of calcium phosphate and collagen and making up the skeleton of most vertebrates.
remote adjective	/ɹəˈməʊt̞/	At a distance; disconnected.
preserve verb	/pɹəˈzɝv/	To protect; to keep from harm or injury.
trace noun	/tɹeɪs/	An act of tracing.
migration noun	/maɪˈɡɹeɪʃ(ə)n/	An instance of moving to live in another place for a while.
disappear verb	/dɪsəˈpɪɹ/	To vanish.
fortunately adverb	/ˈfɔɹ.t͡ʃə.nɪt.li/	In a fortunate manner.
decay noun	/diˈkeɪ/	Rot; any processes or result of organic matter being gradually decomposed, especially by microbial action.
flint noun	/flɪnt/	A hard, fine-grained quartz that fractures conchoidally and generates sparks when struck against a material such as steel, because tiny chips of the steel are…
rot verb	/ɹɑt/	To suffer decomposition due to biological action, especially by fungi or bacteria.
ancestor noun	/ˈæn.sɛs.tɚ/	One from whom a person is descended, whether on the father's or mother's side, at any distance of time; a progenitor; a forefather; a forebear.
anthropologist noun	/ˌæn.θɹoʊˈpɑl.ə.d͡ʒɪst/	An expert in anthropology.
archaeologist noun	/ˌɑɹ.kiˈɑ.lə.d͡ʒɪst/	Someone who studies or practises archaeology.

Phrasal verbs you will hear

Word	Meaning
find out verb	To discover, as by asking or investigating.
write down verb	To produce or set (something) down in writing; to record something.

Grammar in this video

The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:

Structure	In the video
Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing	people who lived · people who were · men who made
Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now	have rotted · have remained
Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it	are forgotten

Pronunciation to watch

Long words — get the stress right: fortunately /ˈfɔɹ.t͡ʃə.nɪt.li/, anthropologist /ˌæn.θɹoʊˈpɑl.ə.d͡ʒɪst/, archaeologist /ˌɑɹ.kiˈɑ.lə.d͡ʒɪst/

How to practise with this video

Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
Shadow it sentence by sentence at normal speed, repeating each one until your rhythm matches the speaker.
Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like legend, saga, bone.

What is the Shadowing Technique?

Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.

Shadowing technique: read the full step-by-step guide →

Shadowing Practice: 01-4New Concept English e01 Finding fossil man - Learn English Speaking with Video

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