Shadowing Practice: A Day with My Vietnamese In-Laws: Daily Routine in Slow English - Learn English Speaking with YouTube
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Hi, welcome to Slow English with Brian.
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Hi, welcome to Slow English with Brian.
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I'm Brian.
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This is a Slow English podcast for listening practice and speaking practice.
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When you are listening, you can pause the video to repeat the words that I said.
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That is called shadowing, and it is very good for your speaking practice.
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Also, if I say a word that you don't know, you can Google what it means.
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That way, you can use this video as comprehensible input.
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Comprehensible input means you understand the words that I am saying.
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Hearing comprehensible input in English is really good for your listening practice.
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In this podcast, I will talk about the routines of my wife's family.
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In my wife's family, there are four people.
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My mother-in-law, that's my wife's mother,
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my father-in-law, my brother-in-law, who is older than my wife,
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and my wife's sister-in-law.
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My wife's sister-in-law is the wife of my wife's brother.
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Let's start in the early morning.
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My wife's mother wakes up at around 5 or 5.30 in the morning.
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She loves to wake up early
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because she likes to go shopping at the local market before all of the new food for the day has been bought.
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she likes to buy the best food at the market.
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So she gets up and puts on her shoes and gets on her bicycle to pedal to the market.
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She has a motorbike, but she likes to exercise because she is very energetic.
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So she prefers to go by bike to the market.
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When she gets to the market, she loves to talk with all of the vendors there.
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The word vendor means someone who sells things.
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In this picture, we see many vendors in a Vietnamese market.
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My mother-in-law is friends with most of the vendors at our local market.
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She likes to bargain with them to get a good price.
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The verb bargain means have a conversation to try to lower the price of something.
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My mother-in-law really likes to get good prices.
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After my mother-in-law fills up the basket on her bike with all the fresh food that she can carry there,
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she goes home.
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Then she puts the food on the table and then goes to the gym that my wife's family owns.
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She makes sure that everybody follows the rules and is nice in the gym.
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At around that time, maybe 6 or 6.30 in the morning, my father-in-law wakes up.
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He loves to cook.
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his passion.
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So he likes to stay home and cook all of the food that my mother-in-law brought for the day.
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Even when people try to cook for him, he says, no, no, no, let me do the cooking.
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At around 8 or 8.30,
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my mother-in-law comes home from the gym and it's time for breakfast.
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Sometimes my wife and I eat breakfast there too,
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but it really depends on our schedule for that day.
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At around nine in the morning,
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my mother-in-law and my father-in-law go to their little field.
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They love to grow the food that they eat.
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So in addition to cooking the food that my mother-in-law buys at the market every day,
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they cook a lot of food from their own field.
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So, even though it's hard work,
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my mother-in-law and father-in-law really enjoy growing their own food in their own field.
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It is also exercise for them, so they really enjoy that part of their lives.
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They grow more than enough fruits and vegetables for their own house.
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So they frequently give my wife some too.
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We are very grateful to them for doing that.
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After they get home from their field at 10 or 10.30 in the morning,
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it is time to start cooking lunch.
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Both my mother-in-law and my father-in-law help with cooking lunch.
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but my father-in-law is the head chef of the kitchen.
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They cook a variety of foods, but here are some samples of things that they like to eat.
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You can pause the video after you go back to see some of those foods.
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No matter what they are cooking, they always cook rice.
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In the past, they used to eat white rice like this,
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but nowadays they prefer brown rice like this for its health benefits.
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People in Vietnam love to eat rice, and most meals in Vietnam include rice.
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It is a staple food of Vietnamese cuisine.
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After eating lunch, it's time to take a nap.
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Many people in Vietnam take a nap after lunch.
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That includes my family too, with my wife and my daughter.
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My wife's parents typically nap for about an hour, but sometimes an hour and a half.
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They find that it helps them to have enough energy for the rest of the day.
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So they sleep from about 1230 to 130 in the afternoon.
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Now I'll talk about my wife's brother and his wife.
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That is my wife's sister-in-law.
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My wife's sister-in-law works for the Vietnamese government.
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So she wakes up at about 6 or 7 in the morning
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and then goes to work in an office that is owned by the government.
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So she is gone for the whole morning most of the time.
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My brother-in-law owns the gym that I talked about earlier.
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So he wakes up and then goes to the gym right when my mother-in-law comes home from the gym.
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My brother-in-law stays at the gym until lunchtime.
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Then he comes home at about the same time at which my wife's sister-in-law comes home.
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They all eat lunch together before taking a nap.
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Typically, my wife's parents sleep downstairs, and my brother-in-law and his wife sleep upstairs.
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They all live in a house together next door to the house in which my wife and I live.
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After the nap, my mother-in-law takes care of chores at the house,
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while my father-in-law has his turn taking care of the gym.
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My brother-in-law also helps with chores and helps my father-in-law at the gym,
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and my brother-in-law's wife goes back to do government work.
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At around four or five in the afternoon, my father-in-law comes home from the gym to start cooking.
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Again, he loves cooking, so it is a happy time for him.
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At around six or seven, it's dinner time in their house.
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But at that time, my wife and I are almost guaranteed to be teaching English together, so we don't eat with them.
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But my daughter does eat with them, and her two cousins.
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They are the daughters of my brother-in-law.
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They all have a very good time together at my wife's parents' home.
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After dinner, it's time to socialize.
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Socialize means talk with people and sometimes go to visit people.
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So often the neighbors come to talk with my wife's parents.
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They talk about things that are happening in the village, they talk about news, they talk about their grandchildren,
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they talk about money, stuff like that.
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Meanwhile, my daughter and her two cousins, the daughters of my brother-in-law, dance and play together after dinner.
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They have a really fun time.
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From then until about nine o'clock, it's time to relax and have fun while my wife and I finish teaching.
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We teach very late.
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At around nine to nine thirty, the kids start to get tired, so it's time to help them to get ready for bed.
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My daughter and her cousins say goodbye for the night, and then the two homes get ready for bed.
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That is how a typical day is here in Vietnam.
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We do not live in a big city, so our life is a little bit different from the lives of people who do live in big cities,
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like Hanoi or Ho Chi Minh City.
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This is how a rural life is in Vietnam.
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It's peaceful and somewhat predictable, and I like that a lot.
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Please tell me in the comments how similar your life is to what you heard here today.
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Also, it's important to remember how helpful shadowing is for your speaking practice.
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You can pause this video from time to time and repeat some of the things that I said.
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That will really, really help your pronunciation and your fluency.
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Your fluency is the speed and smoothness of your words.
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So please, practice shadowing this video.
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This video is also really good for your listening practice
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because of all the comprehensible input that you have access to here in this video if you know all the words.
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So if you don't know all the words,
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I encourage you to go back and and try to look at the words that you did not understand,
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use a dictionary to learn what they mean, and then listen to them again.
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That will really help your listening skills.
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I hope that you enjoyed this Slow English podcast.
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Please like and subscribe, and I will see you in the next video.
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Bye.
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Context & Background
In this engaging video titled "A Day with My Vietnamese In-Laws: Daily Routine in Slow English," Brian offers viewers a fascinating glimpse into the daily life of his wife's family. The video is designed for those looking to enhance their English speaking practice, particularly highlighting how to incorporate comprehensible input into your learning routine. Brian's easy-to-follow narration allows learners to acquire vocabulary and expressions relevant to everyday situations, making it a perfect resource for improving English conversational skills.
Top 5 Phrases for Daily Communication
- Wake up early: A helpful phrase for discussing daily routines.
- Go shopping: Essential for conversations around purchasing groceries or other items.
- Talk with vendors: Useful for negotiating and socializing in market settings.
- Get a good price: Great for discussions about budgeting and saving money.
- Grow their own food: Perfect for conversations about sustainability and gardening.
Step-by-step Shadowing Guide
To maximize your learning from this video, follow this simple shadowing technique that can significantly boost your IELTS speaking practice. Here's how to effectively implement this method:
- Listen Actively: Start by listening to a segment of the video without repeating. Focus on pronunciation and intonation.
- Pause & Repeat: Whenever Brian speaks a phrase that interests you or is difficult, pause the video. Try to repeat what you heard, mimicking his voice and cadence. This is known as shadowspeak.
- Research Unknown Words: If you encounter words or phrases you don't understand, look them up. This will enrich your vocabulary and comprehension, enhancing your overall learning experience.
- Practice Regularly: Consistency is key in english speaking practice. Try to set aside time each day to practice shadowing with this video or others like it.
- Track Your Progress: Record yourself speaking the phrases after shadowing. Compare your pronunciation to Brian’s to identify areas for improvement.
By following these steps, you can effectively use shadowing to enhance your English speaking skills while enjoying the rich cultural insights provided in the video. Embrace this learning style, and you'll find yourself becoming more confident and fluent in your daily conversations.
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.
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