Shadowing Practice: 7 Simple (and EASY!) Habits for Better English Speaking - Learn English Speaking with Video
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I've been teaching English as a second language since 1999.
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Guys, that was last century.
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I see students who succeed and students who don't ever reach their goals.
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In my online courses at Rachel's English Academy, of course, we want all our students to succeed so often.
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As a team, we get together and talk about what makes a student successful and how can we make all students successful.
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I'm Rachel and I would love to give you my free course, The Top 3 Ways to Master the American Accent.
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Please visit rachelsenglish.com slash free to enroll.
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Today, I'm going to introduce you to the 7 Habits of Highly Successful Students.
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This is what I've noticed from my own thousands of students, people who want to improve their spoken English, their American accent, their listening skills.
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1. First, a practice schedule.
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This one seems obvious, but too often we make a goal, we want to reach it, but we don't plan how we will.
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I actually get emails from my academy students almost every day asking how can I stay motivated and do this.
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My most successful students are the ones who make practice a part of their daily schedule.
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They prioritize it.
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It's not an afterthought, something they'll squeeze in later if they can.
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For a lot of them, they practice at the same time every day.
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Planning it in consistently removes the stress of needing to find time for it every day.
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I talk about my student Chow a lot
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because she's just a great example of what you can get when you do a little every day.
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I've been recommending to a lot of friends, they've been noticing that oh i think you you're speaking better more natural
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and stuff like that
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so i introduce every time i will tell that's richard's english
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that's awesome can i ask you a question how much time
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on average would you say you've spent working on your accent i think every day 10 minutes
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that is not much guys
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that is not much i was thinking you might say like a half hour
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or an hour
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but it's the consistency of doing it every day yeah well
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ciao i think you're an inspiration to a lot of students you just sound absolutely fantastic i appreciate
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that i always think you as an expert inspiration for us thank you
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so much and i always think you guys are
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because you're actually out there doing the work
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so you sound just amazing i see john bow here is commenting 10 minutes a day he can't believe it
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when she first joined the academy her speech was a little choppy and she was a little hard to understand.
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Not now.
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Now her English is so natural and easy to understand.
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Make a schedule right now.
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Think of a 10 minute chunk of your day that you can set aside.
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Just try it for a month.
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Once you're in the habit, it's easy.
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Number two, the method.
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Now, if you make time to study 10, 20, 30 minutes a day, but you're not using the right method, you won't get too far.
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And the method for changing your accent involves a lot of repetition.
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After all, it's not a concept you're learning, that's easy.
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But speaking, that's a physical habit, a physical skill that you're building.
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That takes time.
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Think of a classical pianist learning a new piece or an athlete practicing a move over and over.
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This is how my student Adrian described it.
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When you're doing like a session like let's say you're working
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on a soundboard how many times in a row will you
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do the same audio file i try to repeat like maybe a million times do you spend a month on one
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sentence one soundboard yeah one soundboard usually because that would be boring yeah Yeah.
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It might be boring, but it works.
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I know.
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I know that's what I always try to tell people.
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I'm like, there's nothing boring about getting better.
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And yes, it's repetition.
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And we kind of, we're not used to having to learn that way.
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You know, as adults, we learn something and then we know it.
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But when it comes to your body and your accent, it is repetition, but yeah, you sound awesome.
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And like I said, people in the class, they're hearing it and they're loving it.
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So thank you for sharing how you work.
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Repetition gets the sound that you want into your body.
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It's how you learned your first language.
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And even though it's not how we're used to working on things as we get older, it's very effective.
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So my most successful students are the ones that just repeat, dedicate and repeat.
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Adrian mentioned working on a soundboard.
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In my academy, I have hundreds, actually maybe over a thousand at this point, of these soundboards.
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So you can play a phrase, say it, play it, say it, play it, say it.
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My students may do the same word or phrase 20 times in a row.
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You go through the whole soundboard, you do the same soundboard for a month.
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That is the method.
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You put in this time and it accumulates into something sounding like this.
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I sign up to sound better and more natural.
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That was my first goal.
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Right now I live in Miami.
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So, and I use English every day, so I just want to sound more natural.
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That's the main goal.
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Really good, smooth, easy to understand English.
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By the way, soundboards are also a part of the free course that you can get at rachelsenglish.com slash free.
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Yet another reason to try it out.
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The third habit of my most successful students is developing the right mindset.
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This is one that it's ignored way too often, but as I've dworked with students I've realized they have a mindset whether or not they know it,
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and often it's a negative one that makes their progress much slower.
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I remember a conversation I had with Tom, the head teacher here at Rachel's English, when we were trying to figure out why some students progress so much slower than others,
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and we decided a lot of it has to do with mindset.
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Some people are more open to real change than others.
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Changing your accent means changing your voice, and that can be scary for some people.
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So we let our students know to sound natural in American English, they're probably gonna have to change something fundamental about their voice.
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One student said, I have my Spanish voice and I have my American voice, and I thought, that's brilliant.
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You allow yourself to develop something totally different and you approach it positively.
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Others really do want to change, but in their mind they're saying, oh, I can't have this kind of conversation, or I have a big problem with this kind of sound, and so on.
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They say this to themselves even as they practice, and the practice doesn't work as well.
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Try saying this to yourself instead.
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I have a wonderful American R sound.
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I can think quickly and express myself the way I want to.
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Successful students change their image and their mindset about themselves, and the improvement is great.
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So you have to have your method, but you have to address your mindset as well.
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And this is what some of my most successful students do.
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I have a course that helps students with their mindset and approach in my academy, but I also have one of the lessons free here on YouTube.
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I'll put a link to that video in the video description.
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Fourth.
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Okay, now the next habit gets you so much bang for your buck, record yourself.
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There are actually two different great exercises for this and I'll describe both for you.
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One, free talk.
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Record yourself talking every day, not long, maybe a minute, maybe less, then go back and listen to it.
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You'll notice the words that were difficult for you.
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The more you study the American accent, the more you'll notice things like sounds that are unclear or flow that's choppy.
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You'll actually be able to become a pretty good coach for yourself with this practice.
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As you notice words or phrases or connections between words that need work, do them slowly.
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Maybe find examples of that online.
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You can go to Youglish, type in your word.
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Let's say it's interesting and you can hear lots of examples of native speakers saying this word.
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Maybe you start to notice that it's not as complicated as you thought.
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It's not INTERESTING, but INCH-R-sting.
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Interesting.
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Interesting.
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Interesting.
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You start to collect so much knowledge about American English, then you practice it over and over.
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Interesting.
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Interesting.
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Then, before you know it, the words that were the hardest for you to pronounce are now easy.
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The second recording method is to record yourself repeating with a native speaker speaker.
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This allows you to hear things that you might not have heard in the moment
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and that's gonna get your sound closer to natural.
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One of our students in the Academy posted a video of
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her practice session with the soundboard to our community for other students to see.
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Along.
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Along.
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Along.
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Along.
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Also.
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Also.
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Also.
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Also.
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Recording yourself and listening to it will make you an expert in your own own accent
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and the tweaks that you can make to sound more natural.
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The fifth habit of highly effective students is taking notes and tailoring studies to their own situations.
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This ties back to recording yourself.
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If you record yourself talking about your day or talking about your favorite book or what you think about a current event,
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you're going to be finding words and phrases that are relevant to you.
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Maybe you can even record yourself in conversations, a conversation with a colleague, or someone at dinner, or at the grocery store.
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Record a voice memo.
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Delete it when you're done with your lesson so it's not weird that you recorded someone.
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But you can use this.
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Listen back later and find the phrases where you struggled to express yourself.
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Now you don't have the pressure of the conversation, you can stop.
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And you can think.
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How could you have said that better?
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Maybe there's a particular English word that you didn't know.
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Look it up.
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Learn it.
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Or maybe there was a phrase that didn't seem quite right grammatically.
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See if you can work it out.
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Do a search on the phrase or key words from the phrase
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and see if you can find examples that make the grammatical structure clearer.
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Or show you a different word that might be even better.
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Memorize this phrase, these words.
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Keep a list of your words and phrases that you're discovering you need to know because of your own conversation.
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Six.
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The sixth habit is simply speaking, speaking with others.
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Don't wait for perfection.
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It's through speaking and making mistakes that will make the most progress, the fastest progress.
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For some people, it's just not in their personalities to speak up or to try something out before it's perfect.
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But those students who aren't afraid to try, who aren't waiting for perfection, are the students who make the most progress.
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So please challenge yourself.
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You can even track this as part of your practice plan.
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Today, I tried speaking with John when I passed him in the hall, even though I wasn't feeling totally comfortable and confident.
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And every time you find yourself writing something like that down, dang, take a moment.
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Congratulate yourself, that is not easy to do.
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Challenging yourself out of your comfort zone, speaking English, you did that.
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Seven, the last thing my most successful students do is find a practice partner to speak with on a regular basis.
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Just last month, I was teaching a student from the Academy in our live class, and she told me even though she lives in the U.S.,
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she mostly just speaks her own native language of Thai.
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But she found some practice partners through the Academy's community, and that practice has really helped.
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Well, on the speaking partner part, on the community.
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Yeah.
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Where do those two speaking partners live?
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One of them live in Texas and I asked him to try to watch me in this live video.
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Oh, good.
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Oh, that's awesome.
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I love that.
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Yeah.
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Who, where's the other one?
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The other one is in Canada.
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Okay.
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That's so great.
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I'm so glad that you've connected with people and it's just
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so good to practice thinking and speaking and like all at once, all at the same time.
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I also reached out to a student who's actually not in the academy anymore.
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He used to be.
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He went through all the practice materials and really transformed his sound into something smooth and natural.
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But I remembered that he coordinated several conversation meetups and worked really hard with other students.
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So I asked him to share how he did that and what he got out of it.
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Hi, this is Shakar and this is a brief account of how I found my speaking partners, how we trained, and what I gained from this effort.
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It was really about three things.
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Motivation, accountability, and feedback.
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Initially, I trained by myself going through the modules and working on the feedback I got from the instructors.
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But eventually it dawned on me that I don't have to do this alone.
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I could accelerate my progress if I trained with other members who were just as serious as I was.
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So I reached out to some members who were quite active in the community.
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I engaged with their posts, offered some feedback, and built some rapport with them.
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And soon we connected on Messenger.
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But I was careful about one thing.
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Whenever I reached out to anyone, I made sure I knew them and approached them with a clear plan, explaining to them what, why, and how we could practice.
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Now, the ones who liked the idea of practicing together, happily joined in.
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There were also those who approached me in a similar way.
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We planned our practice routine in a way where we were training alone, by ourselves, on the weekdays and meeting up sometime on the weekend,
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sharing our learning insights and progress.
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We mostly had our meetings on Saturdays.
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I used to send reminders in advance so that everyone showed up on time.
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We recorded our meetings, which we reviewed later on, to figure out what mistakes we were repeating.
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There were times when no one showed up and I still went ahead with the meeting, recording myself, practicing alone, completing what was planned,
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and posting it in our private group.
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Our key strategy was to automatize the general speech patterns.
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Speaking is a motor skill, and we were building new speech habits.
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We first started with phonetics, focusing on the difficult vowels and consonants, reading out lists of challenging words and phrases,
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paying careful attention to the stress and intonation pattern, and then shifted our focus to practicing conversation scripts and free talking.
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We rewatched our recordings from time to time to figure out what needed more work.
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I even documented what we covered in our practice.
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We focused on one topic per week, but sometimes it took longer.
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I gained a lot from practicing in groups.
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My speaking partners were able to spot the errors that I missed.
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We also reflected on the feedback we got from our instructors.
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But the biggest benefit was that we kept each other accountable to our goals, checking up on each other from time to time, making sure we've completed our tasks that we committed to.
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It was truly worthwhile.
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So that sums up my story.
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Hope that helps.
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Shikhar, thank you so much for sharing your experience here.
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Congratulations on the dedication you made to yourself, you sound just amazing.
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And thank you for watching this video.
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Can you pick up all seven of these habits of my most successful students?
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It takes some work and dedication, but to reach our goals, it's worth it.
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Keep your learning going now with this video, and don't forget to subscribe with notifications on.
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I absolutely love being your English teacher.
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That's it, and thanks so much for using Rachel's English.
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This video has 236 sentences and 2734 words to shadow. The speech runs for 16:16. The speaker talks at a natural 168 words per minute, close to everyday conversation. 86% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English; the rest is worth studying before you start.
Key vocabulary in this video
15 less common words from the video, with pronunciation and meaning:
- phrase /ˈfɹeɪ̯z/ (noun) — A short written or spoken expression.
- habit /ˈhæb.ɪt/ (noun) — An action performed on a regular basis.
- accent /ækˈsɛnt/ (noun) — A higher-pitched or stronger (louder or longer) articulation of a particular syllable of a word or phrase in order to distinguish it from the others or to…
- mindset /ˈmaɪn(d)ˌsɛt/ (noun) — A way of thinking; an attitude or opinion, especially a habitual one.
- feedback /ˈfiːdˌbæk/ (noun) — Critical assessment of a process or activity or of their results.
- bore /boɹ/ (verb) — To inspire boredom in somebody.
- lesson /ˈlɛs.ən/ (noun) — A section of learning or teaching into which a wider learning content is divided.
- skill /skɪl/ (noun) — A capacity to do something well; a technique, an ability, usually acquired or learned, as opposed to abilities that are regarded as innate.
- inspiration /ˌɪn.spɪˈɹeɪ.ʃən/ (noun) — The drawing of air into the lungs, accomplished in mammals by elevation of the chest walls and flattening of the diaphragm, as part of the act of breathing.
- smooth /smuːð/ (adjective) — Having a texture that lacks friction. Not rough.
- connect /kəˈnɛkt/ (verb) — To join (to another object): to attach, or to be intended to attach or capable of attaching, to another object.
- introduce /ˌɪntɹəˈdus/ (verb) — To cause (someone) to be acquainted (with someone else).
- succeed /səkˈsiːd/ (verb) — To follow something in sequence or time.
- instructor /ɪnˈstɹʌktɚ/ (noun) — One who instructs; a teacher.
- perfection /pɚˈfɛk.ʃən/ (noun) — The quality or state of being perfect or complete, so that nothing substandard remains; the highest attainable state or degree of excellence.
Phrasal verbs you will hear
- talk about (verb) — Used to draw attention to the speaker's characterization of someone or something.
- work on (verb) — To apply mental or physical effort to (something) in order to shape, form, improve, investigate, solve it, etc.
- figure out (verb) — To come to understand; to discover or find a solution; to deduce.
- live in (verb) — To reside on the premises of one's employer (used especially of domestic staff such as nannies, cooks, maids, etc.)
- go through (verb) — To travel from one end of something to the other.
- check up on (verb) — To examine or inspect something in order to determine its condition; to check out.
- do with (verb) — Only used in to do with
- get at (verb) — To manage to gain access to.
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 54 contractions and reduced forms, such as you're, don't, I've. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “th” sounds: smooth /smuːð/, sixth /sɪksθ/, athlete /ˈæθ.liːt/, worthwhile /ˌwɜː(ɹ)θˈwaɪl/, afterthought /ˈæft.ɚ.θɔt/
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: inspiration /ˌɪn.spɪˈɹeɪ.ʃən/, perfection /pɚˈfɛk.ʃən/, dedication /ˌdɛdɪˈkeɪʃən/, congratulations /kənˌɡɹæt͡ʃəˈleɪʃ(ə)nz/, motivation /ˈmoʊ.tə.veɪ.ʃən/
- Long words — get the stress right: inspiration /ˌɪn.spɪˈɹeɪ.ʃən/, dedication /ˌdɛdɪˈkeɪʃən/, complicated /ˈkɑm.plɪˌkeɪ.tɪd/, congratulations /kənˌɡɹæt͡ʃəˈleɪʃ(ə)nz/, fundamental /ˌfʌn.dəˈmɛn.təl/
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 phrase, habit, accent.
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 | I've been teaching · I've been recommending |
| “Used to” used to + verb — a past habit or state that is no longer true | used to be · used to send |
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | I've noticed · you've spent · I've dworked |
| Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing | students who succeed · people who want · ones who make |
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.