Shadowing Practice: Animal Classification: The Vertebrates Song - Learn English Speaking with Video
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40 sentences
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1
Hopscotch Do you have a backbone?
2
That's weird.
3
Ninety -five percent of earth life does not.
4
You're called a vertebrate because of the spine you've got.
5
There are five vertebrate classes.
6
Some have warm blood and some have cold.
7
Some are land in the air or sea.
8
What are they called?
9
Repeat after me
10
Mammals, reptiles, birds, amphibians, and fish
11
Mammals, reptiles, birds, amphibians, and fish
12
Most mammals don't come in eggs like all the others
13
The babies drink milk from their mothers
14
And we all have fur or hair on our soft skin
15
We have cats, deer, platypus, kangaroos, and you
16
Fun fact, whales and bats are mammals too Reptiles are covered in scales or bony plates
17
Yeah, we know you can't relate
18
We lay eggs in the leathery shell
19
We have snakes, lizards, crocodiles, and turtles as well
20
Birds are born from hard -shelled eggs
21
We have beaks and feathers, but scales on our legs
22
Not all of us take to the sky
23
But most of us have hollow bones and most of us fly Amphibians lead a double life in cold blood
24
Our metamorphosis takes us from the water to the mud
25
We start with gills, then we graduate to lungs
26
Some of us catch food with our specialized tongues
27
Some of us look like worms, and some of us are long
28
And some of us are toads, but most of us are frogs
29
Fish, fish, fish are the largest group of vertebrates and we've been around much longer.
30
We have scales and fins,
31
we're ectothermic, and we lay our eggs in the water. And guess what?
32
A jellyfish is not a fish, because it doesn't have a backbone.
33
Same with starfish, shellfish, cuttlefish, and crayfish.
34
These are fake fish.
35
Okay, I'm done. But they're fake.
36
There are so many ways to divide up the data, but we all have spines and subvalent vertebrates.
37
Mammals, reptiles, birds, amphibians, and fish, but only the real ones.
38
Enamels, reptiles, birds, amphibians, and fish.
39
Birds, amphibians, and fish.
40
Thank you.
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This speaking lesson is built on the video “Animal Classification: The Vertebrates Song”. The speaker keeps coming back to these words: fish, amphibians, birds, reptiles, mammals. This video has 40 sentences and 340 words to shadow. The speech runs for 3:36. The speaker talks slowly, about 94 words per minute, so there is time to copy every sound. Only 77% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English, so the vocabulary is demanding.
Key vocabulary in this video
15 words from the video worth learning, with pronunciation and meaning:
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| egg noun | /ɛɡ/ | An approximately spherical or ellipsoidal body produced by birds, insects, reptiles, and other animals, often housing an embryo within a membrane or shell… |
| shell noun | /ʃɛl/ | The calcareous or chitinous external covering of mollusks, crustaceans, and some other invertebrates. |
| spine noun | /spaɪn/ | A series of bones situated at the back from the head to the pelvis of a human, or from the head to the tail of an animal, enclosing the spinal cord and… |
| backbone noun | /ˈbækˌboʊn/ | The series of vertebrae, separated by disks, that encloses and protects the spinal cord, and runs down the middle of the back in vertebrate animals. |
| bone noun | /boʊn/ | A composite material consisting largely of calcium phosphate and collagen and making up the skeleton of most vertebrates. |
| relate verb | /ɹɪˈleɪt/ | To tell in a descriptive way. |
| snake noun | /sneɪk/ | Any of the suborder Serpentes of legless reptiles with long, thin bodies and fork-shaped tongues. |
| deer noun | /dɪɹ/ | A ruminant mammal with hooves and often antlers, of the family Cervidae, or one of several similar animals from related families of the order Artiodactyla… |
| divide verb | /dɪˈvaɪd/ | To split or separate (something) into two or more parts. |
| lung noun | /ˈlʌŋ/ | A biological organ of vertebrates that controls breathing and oxygenates the blood. |
| whale noun | /ˈweɪl/ | Any large cetacean, usually with the exclusion of dolphins and porpoises. |
| hollow adjective | /ˈhɑloʊ/ | Having an empty space or cavity inside. |
| turtle noun | /ˈtɝtl̩/ | Any land, aquatic, or semi-aquatic reptile of the order Testudines, characterised by a protective shell enclosing its body. See also tortoise. |
| worm noun | /wɝm/ | A generally tubular invertebrate of the annelid phylum; an earthworm. |
| fin noun | /fɪn/ | One of the appendages of a fish, used to propel itself and to manoeuvre/maneuver. |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 9 contractions and reduced forms, such as can't, doesn't, don't. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “th” sounds: feather /ˈfɛðə/, leathery /ˈlɛðəɹi/
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: shell /ʃɛl/, crayfish /ˈkɹeɪˌfɪʃ/, cuttlefish /ˈkʌt(ə)lfɪʃ/, jellyfish /ˈd͡ʒɛliˌfɪʃ/, shellfish /ˈʃɛl.fɪʃ/
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 egg, shell, spine.
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.