Shadowing Practice: A Clifftop Home Perched High Above the Ocean in New Zealand (House Tour) - Learn English Speaking with Video
Creating lesson...
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The difference between being in the city and being in a beach house is that,
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weirdly, in a beach house you're time rich.
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So we talk a lot about the rituals and
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the process of washing dishes or going fishing and coming back
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and cleaning the fish and people gathering around and it's it's a completely different
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time movement that you actually have in these places.
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And a lot of our thought goes around, how can we enhance that?
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I'm Lance Herbst of Herbst Architects and this is the house that we call Tafo.
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This home is located on Waheke Island, which is one of the closest and biggest islands in the Horaki Gulf.
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It's a 35 minute ferry trip from downtown Auckland.
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The island is home to some people that live here permanently, but there are a lot of people that use it as a beach house destination.
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It's known really for its wine estate water activities and for its general beauty.
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So as a practice for the last 25 years we've been working in this genre of building
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which is kind of referred to as batch in New Zealand, which is essentially a second house, it's a beach house.
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And these buildings range from really rudimentary shacks to really sophisticated buildings.
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The clients when they approached us, what they really were looking for is they had bought this incredible land that had recently come on the market.
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It was a wine estate with a restaurant on it
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and it had been subdivided and for the first time in forever really the point, which is what this piece of the land is called, became available.
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And what they wanted was something that they could use as a getaway for the weekends, but also they were very concerned that the house sat in the environment sensitively
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and essentially enhanced the experience of being on the land.
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The decision to build in this particular location was made because it became that the view is in two directions,
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essentially from the north -south axis of the site, is there is a view directly onto Rangitoto, which is the volcanic island, which is the icon of Auckland City.
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And then in the directly opposite position, it's a view straight down the Firth of Thames into the distance.
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As you arrive at the house onto the rear deck, your view is already cropped on all sides.
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But as you step through that aperture, the view then opens up into a panorama and you're immediately drawn essentially to the right, which is the living space.
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It's a compact space, essentially a living room, a kitchen and a dining room with a lanai outside of that.
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You move out into the lanai and there's a fire outside for the evenings and there's a barbecue behind doors.
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Otherwise, you cross to the other side of the living space and essentially there's a level change at that point, which takes a little bit of a living space you down into the bedroom components of the house.
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They're three bedroom to the south side of that mass is either bathrooms and bathroom courtyards
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onto the view side are three bedrooms set up in a row.
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We often struggle with the idea of what do you do with letting light into bathrooms.
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You can let it in the roof, but if you've got any kind of wall without protection, then you're dealing with some kind of privacy issue with blinds or curtains or something you don't want to deal with.
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So what we often do is we make a courtyard outside the bathroom and then open doors onto that.
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That feeling like bathing for us, especially in a beach house, is quite like a visceral experience.
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part of your day, like as a delightful experience.
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So the bathrooms essentially are semi indoors and semi outdoors.
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They're kind of a microcosm of what we're doing with the living space is that semi indoors, semi outdoors.
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The Chateaulieu in this house is really one of the primary elements both formally
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because they are the element which connects the roof and the ground essentially.
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So they're a kind of a filigree filler between the two but they're also highly articulated.
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So they're designed as an element
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that essentially allows you to deal with the west sun
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when it comes in in the afternoon because it bounces off the water and can be quite bright in your eyes.
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So we have four shutters on the main facade which you can move into any position.
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So the idea with it is if you're sitting in the lounge
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and you're starting to get a bit of sun then you would move the shutter into that position
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They're also designed as wind shutters as well, to take out the sting of the wind, because sometimes the wind will come off the water.
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The view is very particular, and we do get some of these, in that it's about a 270 degree view in one direction.
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So it's a very horizontal view and we've learned in the past
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that it really assists to kind of define the drama of that view to actually crop it horizontally.
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So a lot of what we did is in both the bedroom wings
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and in the main living space was to essentially create a very strong horizontal crop on the floor
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which we've done with the floor just falling off into a kind of trench before the pool
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and then the swimming pool itself with a very sharp edge which And then the same thing we've done in the roof,
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where it kind of floats through and then crops the sky.
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And what it does is it kind of accentuates the kind of the panorama
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feeling that you actually get from the view that's in front of you.
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So the materials we used, we really stripped it down to as fewer components as we could.
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And they were really all chosen to be weathered materials.
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The concept of this heavy stone -like material coming out of the ground without literally being stone is
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that it's kind of all, you know, concrete block work, but it's got a 30mm plaster on it.
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And it's not a modern plaster.
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We looked far and wide and found a very old plaster that could still do old -fashioned cement plaster.
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it gets wet and it starts to stain a little bit over time
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and sometimes you get little rust bits coming out of it.
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And that's exactly what we wanted.
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We wanted a sense of the building having been here a long time, even when it was just coming out of the ground.
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And then the other materials we chose were essentially for their lightness to to contrast that heaviness were just timber really, which in a bandsaw finish,
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again, a kind of rough finish.
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And the idea is that The timber itself also weathers, so it has this kind of pre -weathered feeling about it.
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The site we chose was essentially the part of the site that wasn't covered in any native bush.
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And then during the process of building the house, we collaborated with Jared Lockhart, the landscape designer.
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And what he's been doing is essentially filling the areas that had been kind of cleared of native bush.
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He's kind of reseeding that.
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The view looking forward is you don't see any new planting in the foreground.
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You look to ancient bush, which is probably 30 meters away.
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And everything in the foreground, which was just wild grass, is actually seeded with wild natural grasses.
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So there's a very natural look going forward.
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And when you look back up at the house, when you're walking back up from the point, kind of frayed natural grasses and the end of summer they go brown
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and so everything sets at off really well against the kind of aging plaster and the weathering wood.
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The other thing, you know, when I see a building is sitting really comfortably in the land, You know, I think we've done our job well,
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and I think that is the case with this one you Thank you.
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you
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About This Lesson
In this lesson, you will practice your English speaking skills by engaging with the content from a house tour video titled "A Clifftop Home Perched High Above the Ocean in New Zealand." You will focus on enhancing your listening comprehension and pronunciation through a shadowing technique, which involves mimicking the speaker's speech patterns, intonation, and rhythm. This will not only improve your fluency but also help you acquire new vocabulary related to architecture, nature, and lifestyle in New Zealand.
Key Vocabulary & Phrases
- Time rich: A term used to describe having an abundance of time for leisurely activities.
- Bach: A colloquial term in New Zealand referring to a beach house or a holiday home.
- Panorama: An unbroken view of the whole region surrounding an observer.
- Lanai: A term for a porch or veranda, particularly in tropical regions.
- Semi-indoor: A space that has both outdoor and indoor features, enhancing the natural experience.
- Cropping the view: Adjusting the visual framing to create a particular perspective.
- Weathered materials: Building components that have aged and taken on a natural look over time.
- Landscape design: The art of arranging and modifying the features of a landscape for aesthetic and functional purposes.
Practice Tips
To effectively use the shadowing technique during this video, listen carefully to the speaker and pay close attention to their tone and speed. Since the speaker has a thoughtful and calm delivery, try to match their pacing — don’t rush. Start by repeating short phrases or sentences to capture the natural flow of conversation. It may help to pause the video after each sentence, allowing yourself time to repeat what you heard in a similar manner.
Take notes on the key vocabulary and try to use these terms in your own sentences later. For example, after stating, “I feel time rich at my beach house,” you might say, “The panorama from our lanai is breathtaking.” Lastly, consistent practice with the shadow speak approach will not only enrich your English speaking practice but also build your confidence in using complex vocabulary and phrases. Embrace the opportunity to learn English with YouTube while immersing yourself in a genuine architectural conversation!
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | is located · had been subdivided · was made |
| Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing | Island, which is · Zealand, which is · point, which is |
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | we've learned · we've done |
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.