Shadowing Practice: 순수 국내파 한국인이 실리콘밸리 빅테크 개발자로 입성한 특급 영어 공부법 - Learn English Speaking with Video

I work at a big tech company.

I jokingly say it's a fruit company.

Hints, hints.

I came from Korea.

I didn't study here.

I was very desperate to get a job.

It was very difficult times.

I failed a lot.

Honestly, I cannot believe that I'm here.

What's more important than learning the language was...

Can you introduce yourself?

My name is Choi Woo -Hum in Korean, and I go by the English name Sean.

I'm an engineer.

I work at a big tech company.

I jokingly say it's a fruit company.

Hints, hints.

Yeah.

I live here in United States in Bay Area.

I've been here with my family for almost 13 years.

Can you tell me a little bit more about your job?

Like your day -to -day responsibilities or what you're in charge of there?

I make iPhone apps.

I work in front of computer, just coding.

These days I use AI a lot.

Have you been doing this the whole time, like the 13 years you've been in the US?

Yes.

I got a job as a software engineer back in Korea too.

And I always wanted to move here in Silicon Valley because this is like a center of all the tech industry.

I was like desperately looking for opportunity here for quite a while, like one or two years.

I tried many things.

I mean, I have talked to people who work in here in Silicon Valley.

I made some connections.

Also, back in, I think 2011, I was traveling here in Bay Area and I filmed a YouTube video.

I made a video about Bay Area and tech industry.

And I interviewed many people like we are doing right now who is working in tech industry.

And I made some connection there.

So yeah, that was a start.

Back in Korea, I went to like a tech conference where many tech industry people came

and I made a business card and I gave it to many people

and I told everyone that I'm looking for a job in Silicon Valley

and one of them knew someone who founded the company here

so he connected me to the founder so that's how I got the job.

Wow that's really cool so a lot of word of mouth networking just putting yourself out there.

Yeah that was important putting myself out there.

I What I want to tell other people who also want to maybe get a job in the United States

or work in tech industry, just put yourself out there and don't be afraid.

It's okay if it doesn't work, you know, you don't lose anything.

I think it started from my love for United States actually.

When I was a kid, I have some relatives who live in here in California, Sacramento, and I have visited them a few times back in the 90s.

It takes me, but I fell in love with this California life the sun is shining all the time

and to like a younger self it looked like a dream like life here

so I wanted to move to the United States

and I dreamed about studying here for high school and college

that didn't work out but I still had that dream in my mind

so after getting a job in Korea I started looking for opportunities here

when I was in high school I like drawing I like drawing animator or cartoonist was my dream.

I also wanted to put my work out there.

Back then the internet was starting.

Again, it's a long time ago.

So I wanted to make my own website to put my art online.

That's how I started programming and later I fell in love with technology.

I love making computers like you could build your own computers back then.

That was the first computer I bought, which was a MacBook, made by Apple.

Back then, no one was using MacBooks around me.

So I fell in love with it, how intuitive the user interface is, things like that.

So I was like telling everyone to how good this devices.

That's really cool how your passion, your life experience, like traveling to California, all of that kind of led you here.

That's wild.

I admire Steve Jobs.

He's one of my heroes.

He made a speech in Stanford before he died and he was talking about connecting dots.

If you look back your life, everything is just connecting dots.

You don't know.

That's so true when things are happening, but if you look back later, everything you experience lead to where you are right now.

So I believe that.

Yeah, I think like you're living proof of that.

Thank you.

Yeah.

Before, like you said, you had this kind of American dream and now you're living here.

When you first moved here, was it challenging or was it kind of everything you dreamed of?

Were there hardships?

Yeah, there was challenges for sure, but for me, it was like my dream coming true.

But I think it was more challenging for my wife, Wonji.

I asked her to come here with me after we got married, but yeah, there was some challenges, culture shock, things like that.

First thing I remember right after I came to the US was

that my uncle was picking me up from the airport and he brought me to Taco Bell, the franchise fast food place.

And after eating, back in Korea, I'm very used to recycle everything, like separate everything, right?

But he was dumped everything in one bucket or one trash can.

I was very shocked.

That was like first culture shock that I experienced.

That's very true.

Korea takes like the sorting recycling very seriously.

Here it's like everything goes in one bin.

Yeah Here in California people are better at recycling and composting, but still it's very different from Korea.

Not in Michigan But they're very positive side of American culture.

It's very diverse culture here So many races many different people so people are very used to being careful about

typing for other people right and that's one of the reasons I wanted to move to America.

Even just coming back here this time we were walking down the street

and we heard so many different languages around us and I was like wow it really is so global just super international.

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Yeah especially here in Bay Area there's a lot of different cultures are mixing.

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Yeah that is really cool I think you get to experience a lot of different cultures in one place.

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And one good thing about that is that they have really great food from all around the world.

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We have great Asian food, even Korean food.

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Mm -hmm.

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We've been eating well here.

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Too well, probably.

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How about language when you first moved here?

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Did you face any language barriers or how was your English at the time?

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I think I was lucky.

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I was exposed to English since I was a kid.

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My dad traveled to the United States many times.

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He brought some VHS tapes.

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Again?

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A long time ago?

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Maybe some of the viewers don't know what it is.

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So he brought like a Disney video tapes.

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I watched a lot of them without Korean subtitles.

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That's how I got exposed to English from early ages.

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Because of that I built like confidence in English.

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And after I moved here, even though I don't speak perfect English with perfect grammar, I was not afraid of speaking to people and I was actually enjoying it.

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Enjoying to meeting new people, speaking to people in from different cultures and that confidence was built up and I think that helped a lot.

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I think that's very important when you learn a language to have a confidence and just try it out.

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You know, I think the other one is like a social media.

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In the beginning time of Twitter, there was something called tweet up.

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Okay, I made a committee with foreign people who live in Seoul

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and we had like off -site or in -person meetings and made friends with them.

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I learned a lot of English from them too.

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I ended up creating like a startup company with people I met at Twitter.

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Oh that's so interesting.

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I think a lot of people are always asking

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and they're always curious about like how to meet foreign friends in Korea to practice their English

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and I always just tell them to like go to ETA1.

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Definitely you can use a platform.

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I think now it's a lot easier with social media to make friends that way.

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I think I would say it's better if you find friends who speak English who has common interest with you.

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being in a like, for example, movie community or some sports community, that would be great.

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Because you have other stuff that you can connect with other than the language.

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So I think to me, living here in the United States, what's more important than learning the language was learning the culture, I think.

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That's what I felt.

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If you think about some Korean people who are living in Seoul, you have lived in Korea for a long time, right?

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You feel more familiar with them if they understand the culture and they respect the culture.

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Like, for example, Korean drinking culture, you know?

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I know nothing about that.

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try to respect it and their friends will like it more.

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And I think if you live in different countries like us, you try to learn the culture and what's offending to the people, what makes them happy.

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Learning those things are more important I think than learning language perfectly.

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That's a good point.

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It goes deeper than just learning the grammar, learning the vocab.

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You have to understand the culture.

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Huge part of it.

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When you talk to other people here, and especially like You know, 13 years ago when you first got here, if your English wasn't at the level it is now, now you're really great.

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But you know, when you first moved here and were engaging in conversation with other people, were they usually pretty friendly?

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A lot of people worry like, "Oh, I'm slow when I talk," or "If I don't say something right,

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will people understand me?" Were people pretty good about that when you engage in conversation?

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Yeah, I think...

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We are also pretty lucky because we met a lot of people who became our friends who were very nice to us.

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And they were very understanding of our English not being perfect.

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And we were involved in like an American church and we made great friends there.

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And I think that helped us a lot in the beginning to be used to speaking to American people.

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And like you said, they are very understanding.

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So it made us to not be afraid of speaking more.

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Because I always think it does take a lot of confidence and it is scary speaking in a different language.

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But I think sometimes the biggest critic is yourself.

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Other people won't judge you, but maybe we judge ourselves too harshly.

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Yeah, you don't need to do that.

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Yeah, and I think finding a great community can also probably be a great way to practice.

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And I also what I learned from working here, working is also a little bit different than just making friends, right?

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I don't use professional terms, but what I learned was that even people who were born and raised here, some people don't speak perfect.

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I mean, they don't speak well.

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100 %?

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Yes.

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Yes.

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And even like me, when I speak Korean, I was not a person who speaks very well.

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Especially like public speaking.

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Sometimes when I speak Korean, I feel like, why can I speak well?

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It takes a long time to think about a word.

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And I think it's the same when I speak in English.

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So that thought made me more confident.

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Like, I think one, The benefit of being a non -native speaker is that you use easier words and you speak slowly.

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So other people understand you better think.

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That's a great perspective.

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Yeah, I never thought of it like that, but that's very true.

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Yeah, and you also prepare a lot because you're not perfect.

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You write down, you memorize it and speak it so you don't use a lot of filler words.

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So that's easier for people who are listening.

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I think there's some benefit of that.

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That's true.

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Because sometimes even I have a hard time understanding other people and they speak really fast.

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I'm like, wait, what?

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You said you watched Disney.

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Do you have like a specific movie you remember watching at that time that kind of made you curious about English or...?

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Yeah, I learned a lot of my English from movies and TV shows.

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I also watched a lot of Friends.

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the American TV show.

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And I watched many times the whole season.

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BTS also learned English from France.

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And also other TV shows like Lost or 24, which are also popular in Korea.

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Why I have been trying to learn English was to immerse myself in English speaking environment.

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I intentionally don't turn on Korean subtitle.

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I always turn on English subtitle though.

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Sometimes I can understand it.

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I can read it, right?

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books in English which doesn't help my reading habit I don't I don't read a lot of books

204

but I also read books that I'm interested in and that I know well.

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I read a lot about like tech industry and it's easier to digest for me.

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Working at a big company like this, like you said, the English is very different.

207

It's very professional.

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And especially in the tech industry, they use a lot of like tech Jargon was that really challenging at first?

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Yes at first it was challenging, but I Listened to like podcasts to tech industry podcasts and

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that helped me a lot to getting familiar with the jargon or some terms professional terms and also

211

Listening to other people at work in meetings

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that helped a lot too Mm -hmm when I heard some phrase

213

that I never or expressions that I've never heard of I I remember that, try to use that in a similar situation in the future.

214

So yeah, I learned from co -workers and friends a lot too.

215

That's really awesome.

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I love how proactive you are about learning English.

217

That's really great.

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Your whole journey of learning English is actually very inspirational.

219

But I don't feel like I try hard to learn English.

220

I just enjoy it.

221

I like speaking in English and I think essentially I like learning about new culture.

222

different environment.

223

And that curiosity helped me a lot to kind of learning English without trying too much.

224

That's great.

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I think if you can find a way that you enjoy it, that's the best way to do it.

226

So now you're working at your dream job.

227

Can you kind of tell me how you achieved that, especially since it's such a competitive market?

228

Honestly, I cannot believe that I'm here.

229

There's a thing called imposter syndrome.

230

I had that when I first get my dream job in a big tech company.

231

Because I came from Korea, I didn't study here.

232

I didn't graduate here.

233

It was hard to compete with other people who graduated here in a more famous school.

234

For my age, usually my peers are younger than me because I came here at an older age, right?

235

But I still love that I'm working here.

236

And because I started at an older age, I have some other different experience compared to other younger people.

237

That's an advantage too.

238

Do you have a specific or practical action item?

239

Start from the company that you don't really like.

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Make that as a learning experience.

241

And if you think you're ready, you can try a company you like, or you can just try to interview with the company you like, even if you fail.

242

I think it also helps.

243

You have a friend who works in tech industry.

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You can ask them to do like a mock interview with them.

245

I don't think I can even count.

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It was like maybe around like 40 -50.

247

Yeah, it was very difficult times.

248

I failed a lot.

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But as that accumulates, you fail less.

250

You can see that.

251

You can see the progress.

252

I really like respect you for that because I'm sure like that must be so discouraging.

253

You know, you start questioning yourself and am I good enough?

254

Am I on the right path?

255

Can I do this?

256

But like you pushed through all that and you've landed your dream job.

257

So and it's well deserved.

258

Like, that's really cool.

259

But there was also like all the reason that I was very desperate to get a job like a visa

260

If I didn't get a job here, I had to go back to Korea That's another level of pressure that pressure.

261

Yeah, also

262

Recently because I have been working here for a

263

while I got an opportunity to interview other people to hire to my team

264

and if you be in the other side of the interview that helps

265

to know what kind of person you like to hire.

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So if you flip that if you want to get hired if by someone you can use that knowledge.

267

What kind of person do you like to hire?

268

Maybe it's different every people but for me

269

if you make me laugh during the interview you have a higher chance to get hired.

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I made you laugh maybe once right?

271

Get a job.

272

That means like not making jokes or anything

273

but try to be comfortable with the interviewer

274

and talk about something that's not related to the interview like maybe you can find common interest with a person.

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I think that made both of them relaxed.

276

So that's kind of my practical tip for interviews.

277

Recently I interviewed someone and it was very obvious they're using AI to answer the questions.

278

The sound is very like AI.

279

Every sentence They said like, "Oh, in summary, this is this." Don't do that.

280

Keep it, yeah, authentic, genuine.

281

Can you tell me a little bit about the working environment where you are?

282

Maybe the company culture?

283

What do you do to survive there?

284

So I think American culture, especially in the tech industry, it's very important to show what you did, your results.

285

And I'm a kind of shy person, so I'm not used to that too, but I learned that it's important.

286

Same in Korean culture and American culture, but if you try too hard to kind of promote yourself, other people don't like it.

287

Yeah.

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Yeah.

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But if you have opportunity and if you can keep the balance of being humble and show yourself more, you have to catch that opportunity and do that.

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Just there's a line, right?

291

You gotta be careful of the line.

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There's a line.

293

Definitely.

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day in the life of someone working at this big company and they always show like all the breakfast buffets, all the lunch buffets, is it really like that?

295

What are some of the perks you get to enjoy?

296

Perks?

297

Companies I have worked at, they had catered free lunch.

298

And my current company, I have to still pay for the food from our cafeteria.

299

have a lot of layoffs recently where other companies had a lot of layoffs.

300

So being frugal like that You know, I think it's positive.

301

Yeah, you're like, I'll pay for my lunch.

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Yes.

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I pay for my lunch.

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Don't fire me.

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That's so funny.

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That makes sense.

307

Are you currently working on any projects or do you have any future goals?

308

I cannot talk about my work stuff, but personally, I really like movies.

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And one of the goals this year was to write more movie reviews.

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So I started an account on threads.

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It's called Bay Movie Chat.

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Bay movie chat.

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Yeah.

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Okay.

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I write movie reviews in Korean, so I connect with movie fans in Korea.

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Wow.

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It's very small.

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I don't have a lot of followers.

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It's fun.

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Mm -hmm.

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To get connected with other people who have same interest.

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Mm -hmm.

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Yeah, that's what I'm trying to do this year.

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What's a movie you've watched recently that you recommend?

325

Recently, I watched Project Hail Mary.

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I don't know if you have watched it.

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Yes, loved it.

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You loved it?

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Okay.

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Loved it.

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Mm -hmm.

332

I didn't love that.

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No!

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I had too much expectation so I didn't love it as much as other people but...

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I enjoyed it, I enjoyed watching it.

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The one movie I liked recently was 28 Years Later.

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It's like a horror movie.

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But I'm a horror movie fan, so I really like that movie.

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I like horror, but I haven't watched it.

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I'm like this half the time, but I enjoy it.

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I know it's a series, right?

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There's a couple of them.

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Yeah, the latest one is called The Bone Temple.

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It's a really great movie.

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I'll have to watch it.

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I have to start from number one and watch it, maybe.

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Okay, I'll do that.

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Thank you so much for letting me interview you today and for sharing your story with us.

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Thank you so much.

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I really enjoyed this chat.

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I would love to do this again in the future.

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So hopefully see you again back here.

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Thank you so much for watching and see you next time.

354

Bye.

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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.

Shadowing technique: read the full step-by-step guide →

Shadowing Practice: 순수 국내파 한국인이 실리콘밸리 빅테크 개발자로 입성한 특급 영어 공부법 - Learn English Speaking with Video

미국인들이 회의할 때 사용하는 필수 영어 표현 👇🏻👇🏻

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이것만 달달 외워도 무조건 영어초보 탈출! 미국인의 저녁일상 영어회화 | 영어말하기 어렵다면 딱 10번만 보세요!

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미국인들이 밥 먹듯이 쓰는 마법의 패턴 10개, 딱 이것만 외우세요! | 저녁에 쓰는 필수 영어표현 | 이것만 달달 외워도 왕초보 탈출합니다!

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What is the Shadowing Technique?