Shadowing Practice: 5 Weird Involuntary Behaviors Explained! - Learn English Speaking with Video
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We like to think we walk through our lives completely conscious,
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free to choose whatever we like, totally, completely in control.
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Not even close.
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Our bodies leave a lot to autopilot, which is a good thing, because imagine having to regulate your heartbeat and your breathing and your digestive system and your body temperature,
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while not peeing your pants and falling down.
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That would be hard.
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Many of those involuntary actions are mysterious, annoying, and just plain weird.
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Here are five of the human body's strangest out-of-control behaviors.
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Start typing why does my into Google, and the top result is an eye-opener.
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Involuntary twitching of the muscles around the eye has a number of causes, including dry eyes, caffeine, bright lights, and just like during a tough workout, from simple fatigue.
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It's usually totally harmless and eventually goes away on its own, and it's a good hint that you've probably been looking at that screen enough for one day.
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Looking at bright light can cause more than an eye twitch.
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In Aristotle's book of problems, he asks, why is it that one sneezes more after one has looked at the sun?
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Proving that people have been asking a lot of the same questions for a long time, and no one told Aristotle that you're not supposed to stare at the sun.
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Like, ever.
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The so-called photic sneeze reflex, aka the autosomal cholinergic heliophthalmic outburst,
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abbreviated achoo, yes, seriously, is experienced by about one in four people, leading scientists to believe that it is genetically heritable.
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While the exact cause hasn't been pinpointed, Many scientists think that it's due to crosstalk between the optic nerve
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and the nerve that feeds the tickling sensation in your nose.
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The visual cortex of sun-sneezing people is also prone to overstimulation, which might send the sneeze-sensing parts of their brain haywire.
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Have you ever been just about to go to sleep, walking through the gates to dreamland, only to have the floor pulled out from under you and suddenly you're falling and then you wake up?
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These frustrating sleep starts have another cool medical name, hypnagogic myoclonus.
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When we drift off, the areas of our brain that control motor function are inactivated, in favor of those that control our sleep cycles.
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Which is why you can dream about riding your bike without actually moving your feet.
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As the sleepy part of your brain fights with the awake and moving parts of your brain, that battle can spontaneously tip back in favor of the motor control side,
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and then suddenly you're like, whoa, I'm awake.
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Sleep starts aren't the only myocloni that we experience.
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Makeups are an uncontrollable contraction of the diaphragm muscle that we use to draw air into our lungs.
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About a quarter second after that muscle contracts, the vocal cords snap shut, creating that characteristic… Scientists still aren't sure what causes them,
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but possible explanations include hiccups being an evolutionary remnant from a few hundred million years ago, when our ancestors still had to pump water over their gills.
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Or, since hiccups mainly happen in mammals, that they they started as a way for nursing infants to clear air from their stomachs.
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If you want to get rid of hiccups, it seems that increasing the amount of CO2 in your blood can do the job, which is why common remedies include drinking water, holding our breath, or breathing into a paper bag.
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Yawning, another long, slow, involuntary form of breathing, is common throughout the animal kingdom, and it even happens in the womb.
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We know it's associated with sleep and boredom, but that doesn't explain why it happens.
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Unlike most human behaviors, if you stop and think about yawning long enough, it starts to become a really weird thing to do.
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Hippocrates believed that yawns released noxious fumes that had built up in the body, but modern medicine has shown us that that usually happens on the other end of the body.
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We also know that about 50% of people who observe a yawn will yawn in response, so it's thought to be a social cue to synchronize our biological clocks.
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One theory says yawns might even cool the brain slightly to make us more alert as we get bored or sleepy.
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Even watching someone talk for extended periods of time can induce yawning.
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So next time you're getting bored in class, tell your teacher it's Mother Nature's fault.
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Finally, I'll leave you with one bonus behavior, post-micturition convulsion syndrome, or the pee shivers.
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This is another behavior for which scientists haven't quite shaken out all the details,
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but some believe it's simply because we're exposing sensitive areas of our body to the cold while we expel some internal warmth.
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They might also arise from a bit of conflict between our autonomous nervous system that's usually quietly keeping all that pee inside,
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and the part of our conscious mind that's in charge of the plumbing at that moment.
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These weird, wild, and often twitchy behaviors may define nice neat explanations, and yes, sometimes they are very annoying, but in the great movie that is life,
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they're a nice reminder of all the amazing things going on behind the scenes.
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Here's a reflex action, you click subscribe, and I'll see you again next week.
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Stay curious.
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When the mercury plummets, we don't actually feel the temperature.
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We feel the flow of energy.
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We feel the heat.
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Feel, feel, feel, feel my heat.
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Or really, we feel the unheat, because cold can never move into something.
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It's heat flowing out.
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This B2 speaking lesson is built on the video “5 Weird Involuntary Behaviors Explained!”. The speaker keeps coming back to these words: behavior, brain, sleep, yawn, scientists. This video has 55 sentences and 931 words to shadow. The speech runs for 5:12. The speaker talks at a natural 179 words per minute, close to everyday conversation. Only 80% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English, so the vocabulary is demanding.
Key vocabulary in this video
The 15 most advanced words in the video, with pronunciation and meaning:
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| yawn verb | /jɔn/ | To open the mouth widely and take a long, rather deep breath, often because one is tired or bored, and sometimes accompanied by pandiculation. |
| sneeze verb | /sniːz/ | To expel air as a reflex induced by an irritation in the nose. |
| hiccup noun | /ˈhɪkʌp/ | A spasm of the diaphragm, or the resulting sound. |
| involuntary adjective | /ɪnˈvɑ.lənˌtɛɹ.i/ | Without intention; unintentional. |
| annoy verb | /əˈnoɪ̯/ | To disturb or irritate, especially by continued or repeated acts; to bother with unpleasant deeds. |
| myoclonus noun | /ˌmaɪoʊˈkloʊnəs/ | The brief, involuntary twitching of a muscle or group of muscles. |
| reflex noun | /ˈɹiːflɛks/ | An automatic response to a simple stimulus which does not require mental processing. |
| sleepy adjective | /ˈsliːpi/ | Tired; feeling the need for sleep. |
| twitch noun | /twɪt͡ʃ/ | A brief, small (sometimes involuntary) movement out of place and then back again; a spasm. |
| bore verb | /boɹ/ | To inspire boredom in somebody. |
| awake verb | /əˈweɪk/ | To become conscious after having slept. |
| conscious adjective | /ˈkɑn.ʃəs/ | Alert, awake; with one's mental faculties active. |
| nerve noun | /nɝv/ | A bundle of neurons with their connective tissue sheaths, blood vessels and lymphatics. |
| abbreviate verb | /əˈbɹi.vi.eɪt/ | To make shorter; to shorten (in time); to abridge; to shorten by ending sooner than planned. |
| 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. |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| walk through verb | To explain (something) to (someone), step by step. | |
| drift off verb | To fall asleep slowly. | |
| fall down verb | /fɔl ˈdaʊn/ | To fall to the ground. To collapse. |
| wake up verb | /ˌweɪk ˈʌp/ | To stop sleeping; to awake. |
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| Present perfect continuous have/has been + -ing — an action that started earlier and is still going on | you've probably been looking · have been asking |
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | has looked · hasn't been pinpointed · has shown |
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | is experienced · been pinpointed · are inactivated |
| Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing | autopilot, which is · job, which is · people who observe |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 16 contractions and reduced forms, such as you're, aren't, I'll. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: conscious /ˈkɑn.ʃəs/, contraction /kənˈtɹækʃ(ə)n/, convulsion /kənˈvʌlʃən/, noxious /ˈnɑkʃəs/, shiver /ˈʃɪvɚ/
- Long words — get the stress right: involuntary /ɪnˈvɑ.lənˌtɛɹ.i/, abbreviate /əˈbɹi.vi.eɪt/, autopilot /ˈɔtoʊˌpaɪlət/, heritable /ˈhɛɹɪtəbəl/, hypnagogic /ˌhɪpnəˈɡɑd͡ʒɪk/
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 yawn, sneeze, hiccup.
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.