Shadowing Practice: Andrew Ford talks about The Waltz Book, part 1 - Learn English Speaking with Video

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I was asked by Ian Munro if I'd write him a long piece

and I had the idea of writing a long piece made up of lots of short pieces

and not just lots of short pieces

but lots of short pieces of exactly the same length so

and a minute was the obvious uh length so so

so you you can think of these pieces as like tiles

in a mosaic um each tile is exactly the same size

but you could paint different things on the different tiles some

of them might be completely white some of them might have intricate at designs on them

and you put them all together next to each other and they make up a bigger

picture and it's so it's like that with the 60 pieces the 61 minutes in the Wolves book

some of the pieces contain a lot of notes you know very fast virtuosic things

and some of them contain very few notes, very spare and simple but each one lasts exactly a minute

and one of the things that attracted me about the notion was

that you would be in a way playing with time

because our sense of time depends partly on what's happening and

if there's a lot of things happening we experience time differently than if there's just one thing happening very slowly.

So some of these minutes don't seem like minutes, some of them seem much shorter than minutes

and some of them seem longer than minutes and yet they are in fact all the same.

I thought there had to be something that each of these pieces had in common

and making them all into waltzes or perhaps I should say waltz related pieces was the way to do it.

Some of them are real waltzes, some of them you really could dance to if you wanted,

some of them are more like pieces about waltzes but then so are some of Chopin's.

This piece works on lots of different levels.

First of all, I wanted it to be possible for most of the waltzes to be played on their own,

so that you could play one of them as an encore at the end of a concert, for example.

Then I also wanted it to be possible for a player to make a little group of waltzes,

to select their favourite six or twenty or whatever, and make their own kind of concert piece.

Then the big level, of course, is where you play from number one to number sixty, going right through.

And they all had to work.

That was my idea.

Yeah, so I started, the first one I composed was Jasper's Waltz, which is number five now.

And I wrote it just on spec for a friend's baby who had just been born

and it starts with the second and third beats heard

but not the first beat so

if the basis of a waltz is um -pa -pa

um -pa -pa um jasper's waltz starts with the ba -ba -ba -ba and that became one of the unifying factors.

That figure, the 2 -3 of 1 -2 -3, is in, oh I would think at least 20,

probably more of the waltzes.

So that keeps coming back as a feature.

And as I started to compose these pieces, more of these features began to occur.

But I was still just writing waltzes on I was still

just sort of in a way experimenting with the idea of writing these minute long pieces

which had to have a beginning and a middle and an end.

And then came the point where I thought right now I've got maybe 18 I think of these waltzes.

If I just keep writing waltzes they're not going to fit together in the end.

I paused.

It was at this stage that I sort of made the grand plan

and I drew up a chart with 60 slots and I started

and I took the waltzes that I'd written and I started slotting them in

and some of them went in the wrong place to start with.

But once you've put 18 little pieces of the mosaic into place you've got the beginning of a structure there.

You've got for instance this place where there's a really loud one and this place where there's a really slow, quiet one.

And that gives you a sense of the overall shape and you can then decide whether you're going to put another quiet,

slow one next to the other, the quiet, slow one you've got, or whether that's where the piece turns a corner or something completely new happens.

Thank you.

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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson

This speaking lesson is built on the video “Andrew Ford talks about The Waltz Book, part 1”. The speaker keeps coming back to these words: piece, waltzes, waltz, writing, tile. This video has 56 sentences and 774 words to shadow. The speech runs for 5:50. The speaker talks at a steady 133 words per minute, a comfortable pace for shadowing. 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 words from the video worth learning, with pronunciation and meaning:

Word	Pronunciation	Meaning
tile noun	/ˈtaɪ.əl/	A regularly-shaped slab of clay or other material, affixed to cover or decorate a surface, as in a roof-tile, glazed tile, stove tile, carpet tile, etc.
slot noun	/slɑt/	A narrow depression, perforation, or aperture; especially, one for the reception of a piece fitting or sliding into it.
mosaic noun	/moʊˈzeɪ.ɪk/	A piece of artwork created by placing colored pieces (usually tiles, either regular or irregular in shape) in a pattern so as to create a picture.
chart noun	/t͡ʃɑɹt/	A map illustrating the geography of a specific phenomenon.
occur verb	/əˈkɜː/	To happen or take place.
select verb	/sɪˈlɛkt/	To choose one or more elements of a set, especially a set of options.
experiment noun	/ɪkˈspɛɹ.ə.mənt/	A test under controlled conditions made to either demonstrate a known truth, examine the validity of a hypothesis, or determine the efficacy or likelihood of…
partly adverb	/ˈpɑɹtli/	In part, or to some degree, but not completely.
spare adjective	/spɛɚ/	Being more than what is necessary, or what must be used or reserved; not wanted, or not used; superfluous.
differently adverb	/ˈdɪf.ə.ɹənt.li/	In a different way.
attract verb	/əˈtɹækt/	To pull toward without touching.
depend verb	/dɪˈpɛnd/	To be contingent or conditioned; to have something as a necessary condition
notion noun	/ˈnoʊʃən/	Mental apprehension of whatever may be known, thought, or imagined; idea, concept.
pause noun	/pɔːz/	A temporary stop or rest; an intermission of action; interruption; suspension; cessation.
speculation noun	/ˌspɛk.jəˈleɪ.ʃən/	The process or act of thinking or meditating on a subject.

Phrasal verbs you will hear

Word	Pronunciation	Meaning
come back verb		To return to a place.
draw up verb		To compose (a document), especially following a standard form; prepare a plan.
make up verb	/ˌmeɪk ˈʌp/	To constitute, to compose.

Pronunciation to watch

The speaker uses 10 contractions and reduced forms, such as you've, I'd, don't. Say them the short way, as you hear them.

The “sh” and “zh” sounds: notion /ˈnoʊʃən/, speculation /ˌspɛk.jəˈleɪ.ʃən/
Long words — get the stress right: experiment /ɪkˈspɛɹ.ə.mənt/, differently /ˈdɪf.ə.ɹənt.li/, speculation /ˌspɛk.jəˈleɪ.ʃən/

How to practise with this video

Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
Shadow it sentence by sentence at normal speed, repeating each one until your rhythm matches the speaker.
Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like tile, slot, mosaic.

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: Andrew Ford talks about The Waltz Book, part 1 - Learn English Speaking with Video

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