Shadowing Practice: 290. Let's Wrap it Up! My Final Key Takeaways for This Season - Learn English Speaking with Video
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Hello, how are you doing today?
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This is the final episode of this season of Confident Business English, so let's wrap it up with a bang.
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On today's list, I'm going to talk to you about how to communicate more clearly, feel more confident and understand common business words.
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Let's crack on.
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Nice to see you again, as always.
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In case this is one of your first times joining Confident Business English, my name is Anna and I'm your host and I'm a neuro language coach.
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Before I jump into all of the stuff that I prepared for you today, I thought it would be a great time just to say a really big thing.
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Thank you.
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Thank you for tuning in to Confident Business English every week.
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Thank you for trusting me to help you.
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It really is a privilege.
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I can't wait as well to bring you brand new stuff in the new season, which will be starting again on the 17th of September.
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Lots of new ideas, lots of plans and onwards and upwards as they say.
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Don't panic either if you're thinking, "Oh my goodness, what am I going to do for the next eight weeks?"
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Stick around to the end of the episode where I'm going
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to be telling you how I can help you over summer learn some of the most common business raises on autopilot.
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And I'm going to tell you how you can have a coaching session with me.
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So make sure you stick around for that.
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Alrighty then, let's get on with it.
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I'm going to start with some points around speaking more clearly.
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I imagine this is probably one of the top things that you're aiming for.
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Always your objective is probably...
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I want to make sure that I'm really clear and people can understand what I'm saying.
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The problem that I've seen recently though with certain clients is You wanna sound clearer, but you also want to sound better But in order to sound better,
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you're like, oh, I should probably use this kind of fancy word or expression or phrase.
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And the irony is that actually if you do that, you risk overcomplicating and actually being more unclear rather than clearer.
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Let me give you an example.
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I was in a session with a client this week
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and they were giving a presentation about why a certain project would bring more risk to the company.
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This was the first thing they said.
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If we do this project, we are going to reinforce the relevance of bad practice.
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In the feedback, I was like, OK, I get it from the context, but what is it exactly that you mean?
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Do you mean that there's going to be more risk of bad practice?
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Are you trying to say something else?
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The other reason it was confusing is because reinforce relevance has quite a positive connotation.
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And they were getting across something negative.
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So something about it didn't quite match.
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In the end, what we came to was Doing this project is going to increase the likelihood of bad practice.
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And I was like, see, that...
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Just tells me exactly what I need to know.
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Reinforce the relevance.
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Sounds great.
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It's a little bit fancy, but actually sometimes you just have to say it like it is.
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Plain and simple.
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And I know there might be some of you that are listening to this and like, yeah, okay, but it's still basic.
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I need to sound more advanced, more elevated.
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That was a word that one of my clients said today, which I actually really liked.
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It's true that sometimes there are ways to be more elevated, but sometimes simple is best.
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And actually, if you feel uncomfortable with that, if you're like, no, I need to sound more advanced, maybe a question to ask yourself is why?
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Why do you think you need to sound more advanced?
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Is it because you think it's going to help your audience?
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Or is it because it's going to make you feel better
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because you're going to think that people are going to think that you're better?
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Food for thought, right?
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And I'm not saying that one's right or one's wrong, and maybe you disagree with me or whatever, but it's my job to try and challenge your perceptions about how you speak in English.
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I wouldn't be doing my job otherwise.
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What I'm not saying is that you shouldn't aim to improve and use different vocabulary and blah, blah, blah, but sometimes You just have to say it like it is.
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Does that make sense?
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Next, let's stick with clarity As a senior manager, it's probably really likely that at some point you're going to have to ask people to do things.
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The important thing here is you, of course, want to make sure that everybody knows what's expected of them.
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But one problem that can come up with vocabulary, which I've noticed with some clients recently, is what I call vague -itis.
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Just in case you didn't pick up on that, what I'm doing is I'm doing a play on words.
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and saying that being vague is like an illness, like bronchitis.
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I know it's not always funny when you have to explain a joke, but just in case you didn't understand.
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Let me give you an example.
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The other day, a client was giving a presentation, which they were delivering to some executives.
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And at the end, their ask, the thing that they wanted them to do was, I need your support.
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I was like, okay, because we did a role play and I'm imagining that I'm the executives there.
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I was like, wonderful sentence, straight to the point, short and sweet.
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But what is it exactly you want me to do?
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Because I Need Your Support could be interpreted in different ways.
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Maybe it is something general or maybe is actually a little bit more specific.
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I think in the end we decided it was I need
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you to speak directly with your managers to explain the benefits of the project and let me know their feedback.
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That's way more specific than, I need your support.
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What's the solution here then?
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I recommend whenever you're making an ask to people, especially executives or your peers, to develop a vague radar.
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If you're thinking about your messaging, is there a way that you could be more specific?
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Maybe not.
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Maybe you want to keep it general.
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But just ask yourself that question.
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Could I be more specific with my vocabulary here?
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Next, this is not necessarily about clarity, it's kind of just about making your life easier.
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The goal, of course, is always when you're speaking in a meeting or presentation, you want to do a really good job.
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You want everyone to understand you and everyone's like, oh, yes, brilliant job, blah, blah, blah.
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The problem comes when you write something You're like, oh, that sounds great.
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And then in practice, you try it and you're like, God, there's just this word that I keep tripping up on.
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It doesn't flow.
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For example, I had a client the other day who was preparing for a board meeting.
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We were running through the content.
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They were doing really well.
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They prepare in sections.
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It was snappy.
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It was good.
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But then there were just a couple of words, I think deprioritize was one of them.
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And they were getting stuck, so they were like, "Depry, depry, They couldn't quite get the word out.
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my first reaction there is always, can we change this and make your life a bit easier?
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In the end, we decided rather than using deprioritize, just to say it's not going to be a priority anymore or something along those lines.
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My advice always is if you can change it, Change it.
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Don't try and suffer.
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Because in that moment...
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If it's a difficult meeting or an intimidating meeting, you're going to be a little bit nervous anyway or very nervous.
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Make your life as easy as possible.
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That doesn't mean that, of course, you might want to focus on that word and learn it
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so it's more fluent and But if you've got a meeting tomorrow with 15 executives, just change the word.
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And yes, it might be a simple, basic word, but it gets the job done.
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And we're in the business of getting the job done, not being perfect, just in case you didn't know that already.
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Next, let's move on.
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Bit of a topic shift.
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I want to talk about business words that loads of people have asked me about recently.
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First one, Anna, what's the difference between helpful and useful.
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High level, really easy, split it up, humans are helpful, things are useful.
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For example, if John comes along and gives you a little bit of help, you can be like, cheers, John.
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That was really helpful.
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But if somebody gives you some information in advance, you could say, thanks very much for that data.
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That was really useful to have before the meeting.
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Having said that, it's really not the end of the world if you mix them up.
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If you said, "Thanks, John.
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Your guidance was really useful." Nobody's gonna die.
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It's absolutely fine.
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But if you want the rule, that's the rule.
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Next.
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Actually, this wasn't a question, but this was something that I had on my list.
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And I did notice that there was kind of a bit of a lack of vocabulary around negative emotions.
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It was like either my boss is angry or my boss is upset.
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And there wasn't really much in between there.
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But there's loads of different shades.
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in between those two emotions.
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And first of all, just to distinguish, angry is intense, outward, Shouting.
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Not good.
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Upset is more like emotional and internal.
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Did you see in the news recently that there was a woman in Parliament that was upset and she was visibly emotional?
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Well, we would call somebody like that upset, not upset.
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Angry.
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But also don't forget to use the other things that are available to you like annoyed.
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God, John seemed really annoyed in that meeting, don't you think?
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There are some other ruder versions which I won't share, but we'll go with annoyed.
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Or imagine you are just feeling overwhelmed.
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You've had enough.
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You're just like, I'm completely fed up.
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So make sure that you distinguish between angry and upset, they're not the same, and use some of those other adjectives in the middle.
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Okay, let's move on.
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One last thing on my list, which is about building your confidence.
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And of course, I'm going to talk about this because this is what it's all about.
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That is why I called the podcast Confident Business English.
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I wasn't just like, oh, just going to pluck it out of thin air.
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Sounds good.
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Whip it together.
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This is what I really want to help you develop.
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The vocabulary and the phrases are great.
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Yes, they're the technical elements and they're the vehicle to get you to a place where you're feeling more confident.
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Because I really think that you do deserve to walk into the room pick up the phone, whatever it is, you deserve to feel confident doing that.
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Confidence takes work.
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But you deserve that.
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I listened to this video the other day which is by a lady called Leila Hormozy, you may have heard of her, she's very big in the business space.
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And she had this video, it was just 15 minutes, don't worry, I'm going to link it.
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And it was about building confidence.
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I thought I have to share these key takeaways with you because I just thought it was such a good summary.
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One of her key messages is confidence is the output, not the input.
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Often people want to feel confident before they do something, but she's like, "No, no, no, no." You have to do things when you don't feel confident,
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And that's how you build confidence.
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Hopefully that helps you if you're ever in a moment where you're like, I don't know if I want to say something.
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I don't know if I want to ask the question.
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That's when you should ask the question.
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or say the comment in the meeting.
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The second key takeaway I think from me that I wanted to share with you is tracking progress.
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When you're doing a task, your brain is looking for evidence.
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It's like, have I done this before?
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Did I do a good job last time?
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And it kind of surveys, okay, yeah, did that last time, more or less, I was fine.
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That's why when you do your everyday tasks, you don't even think twice about it because you're like, I've done this so many times.
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Yeah.
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But sometimes, and I find this with my clients, even though they are making progress, They kind of get distracted from that and they can't remember the progress
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when they're having a bad day and they go back to those negative thoughts.
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Tracking progress helps you to counter those thoughts when you're feeling like you're not making progress.
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writing it down, making a log.
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Today had a phone call with somebody, it was okay, negotiated the deadline.
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Yesterday, spoke to somebody in the cafeteria, asked them about their day.
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Last week, had a successful meeting with a client.
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Whatever it is, tracking
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that progress is going to give your brain the evidence it needs to little by little build progress your confidence.
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And that's what we're here for, to build your confidence, hopefully lasting confidence so that you actually get to a point where you're like, do you know what?
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Maybe I don't actually even need to listen to the podcast anymore.
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Well, I would miss you if you didn't listen to the podcast, but you know what I mean?
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That would really be the ultimate goal.
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Anyway, food for thought.
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I'm going to leave the video for you.
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I would highly recommend that you watch it.
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I just thought it was a fantastic summary.
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We're going to leave it there for today then.
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So let me tell you how I can help you over summer until the next season of Confident Business English.
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First things first, I'm going to be keeping up my free newsletter, which I send out every Friday all throughout summer.
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This includes some extra tips and tricks that I don't talk about on the podcast.
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To sign up, click the link in the description box of this episode.
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And if you're like, you know what, Anna, I'd really love to do more of those interactive exercises you do on the podcast
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because it really helps me feel more confident with business vocabulary.
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If that's you, then you can get your hands on my confidence booster toolkit.
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This is a 90 -day program to help you feel more confident with some of the most common business vocabulary.
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All the exercises are audio, so you can do them wherever you are.
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It's super convenient and it's just going to help you get closer to having those phrases on autopilot.
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As a little special summer offer, I'm also giving you 20 % off just until the end of July.
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Click the link in the description box if you want to get your hands on that.
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And then if you're like, well, you know what, Anna, actually, I'd really like your feedback and guidance.
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I haven't had a chance to get on the coaching program yet, but I'd really love to have a session with you.
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Just for this August, I'm giving you the chance to have a clarity session with me.
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This is your chance to do an exercise
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or an activity with me in a session and for me to give you some feedback.
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A little bit more information about where I think you're at now.
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What are some of your strengths?
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And perhaps what are some of the weaknesses that you might want to work on?
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I've got 11 spots available.
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That's it.
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It's in August.
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And if you want to get that booked in, go to the link in the description box.
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All right, that's it then.
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Thank you so much again.
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Thank you for squeezing me into your routine throughout the past 30 or so weeks.
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It's been a pleasure as always.
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Do take care over the next few weeks.
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And if you're going on holiday, have a wonderful time.
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I don't see you before then.
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See you in September.
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Bye -bye.
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This video has 223 sentences and 2771 words to shadow. The speech runs for 15:43. The speaker talks at a natural 176 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 |
|---|---|---|
| vocabulary noun | /vəˈkæb.jə.lə.ɹi/ | A usually alphabetized and explained collection of words e.g. of a particular field, or prepared for a specific purpose, often for learning. |
| 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… |
| feedback noun | /ˈfiːdˌbæk/ | Critical assessment of a process or activity or of their results. |
| helpful adjective | /ˈhɛlp.fl̩/ | Furnishing help; giving aid; useful. |
| presentation noun | /ˌpɹɛzn̩ˈteɪʃn̩/ | The act of presenting, or something presented. |
| phrase noun | /ˈfɹeɪ̯z/ | A short written or spoken expression. |
| clarity noun | /ˈklæɹ.ɪ.ti/ | The state or measure of being clear, either in appearance, thought or style; lucidity. |
| vague adjective | /veɪɡ/ | Not clearly expressed; stated in indefinite terms. |
| relevance noun | /ˈɹɛl.ɪ.vən(t)s/ | The property or state of being relevant or pertinent. |
| reinforce verb | /ˌɹiː.ɪnˈfɔːs/ | To strengthen, especially by addition or augmentation. |
| summary noun | /ˈsʌm.ə.ɹi/ | An abstract or a condensed presentation of the substance of a body of material. |
| fancy noun | /ˈfæn.si/ | The imagination. |
| guidance noun | /ˈɡaɪdəns/ | The act or process of guiding. |
| emotion noun | /ɪˈməʊ.ʃən/ | A person's internal state of being and involuntary physiological response to an object or a situation, based on or tied to physical state and sensory data. |
| distinguish verb | /dɪˈstɪŋ.ɡwɪʃ/ | To recognize someone or something as different from others based on its characteristics. |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Meaning |
|---|---|
| come along verb | To accompany. |
| come up with verb | To manage to produce, deliver, or present (something) by inventing, creating, thinking of, or obtaining it. |
| get across verb | To cross; to move from one side (of something) to the other, literally or figuratively. |
| get on with verb | To proceed with; to begin or continue, especially after an interruption. |
| go back to verb | To stem from; to originate in. |
| keep up verb | To maintain; to preserve; to prevent from deteriorating or falling. |
| pick up verb | To lift; to grasp and raise. |
| pick up on verb | To notice, observe, learn, or understand, especially something otherwise overlooked. |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 95 contractions and reduced forms, such as you're, I'm, don't. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: presentation /ˌpɹɛzn̩ˈteɪʃn̩/, emotion /ɪˈməʊ.ʃən/, distinguish /dɪˈstɪŋ.ɡwɪʃ/, perception /pɚˈsɛpʃ(ə)n/, shade /ʃeɪd/
- Long words — get the stress right: vocabulary /vəˈkæb.jə.lə.ɹi/, necessarily /ˌnɛs.əˈsɛɹ.ə.li/, priority /pɹaɪˈɒɹɪti/, communicate /kəˈmjuːnɪkeɪt/, uncomfortable /ʌnˈkʌm.fɚ.tə.bl̩/
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 vocabulary, podcast, feedback.
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | I've seen · I've noticed · have asked |
| Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing | season, which will · list, which is · day which is |
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.