Shadowing Practice: Are we too Materialistic? - Learn English Speaking with Video
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43 sentences
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It doesn't seem to make sense to suggest that there might be such a thing as good materialism.
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After all, isn't materialism just plain bad, always?
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It can seem as if we're faced with a stark choice.
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Either you can be materialistic, and that means obsessed with money and possessions, shallow and selfish, or you can reject materialism,
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be good and focus on more important matters of the spirit.
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But in truth, most of us are, in our hearts, stuck somewhere between these two choices, which is pretty uncomfortable.
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We're still enmeshed in the desire to possess, but we're encouraged to feel rather bad about it.
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Yet, crucially, it's not actually materialism, the pure fact of buying things and getting excited by possessions, that's ever really the problem.
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We're failing to make a clear distinction between good and bad versions of materialism.
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Let's try to understand good materialism through a slightly unusual route – religion.
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Because we see them as focused exclusively on spiritual things, it can be surprising to note how much use religions have made of material things.
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They've spent a lot of time making and thinking about scrolls to hang in your house,
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shrines, temples, monasteries, artworks, clothes, ceremonies.
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However, they've cared about these things for one reason only
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because they've wanted material things to serve the highest and noblest purpose – the development of our souls.
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It's just that they've recognised that we are incarnate, sensory, bodily beings and that the way to get through to our souls has to be,
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at least in part, through our bodies rather than merely through the intellect.
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The importance of material things was for centuries at the core of Christianity
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which proposed that Jesus was both the highest spiritual being and a flesh and blood person.
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He was the spirit incarnate, holiness embodied.
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In the Catholic mass, great significance is accorded to the bread and the wine, which are believed to be transubstantiations of Christ,
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that is, material objects which simultaneously have a spiritual identity, just as Jesus himself combined the spiritual and the bodily while on earth.
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This can all sound like a very weird and arcane point, entirely removed from the local shopping mall.
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But exactly the same concept actually applies outside of religions.
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Many good material possessions can be said to involve a kind of transubstantiation, whereby they are both practical and physical,
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and also embody or allude to a positive personality or spirit.
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Take this watch by the designer Dieter Rams.
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To the outer eye, it's an ordinary timepiece, but at a psychological level, it's also a kind of transubstantiation.
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It tells the time, but it also hints at a more psychological or even spiritual side, with ideals of purity, simplicity and harmony floating around it.
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It tells us how long there is till lunch, but it's also trying to nudge us towards being a certain sort of person.
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Or take this chair.
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It, too, transubstantiates a set of important values straightforwardness, strength, honesty and elegance.
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By getting closer to the chair we stand to become a little more like it, which is an important piece of inner evolution.
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Material objects can therefore be said to play a positive psychological or spiritual role in our lives when higher,
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more positive ideals are materialized in them, and so when buying and using them daily gives us a chance to get closer to our better selves.
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When they're contained in physical things,
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valuable psychological qualities that are otherwise often intermittent in our thoughts and conduct can become more stable and resilient.
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This isn't to say that all consumerism just conveniently turns out to be great.
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It depends on what a given material object stands for.
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An object can transubstantiate the very worst sides of human nature, greed, callousness, the desire to triumph, as much as it can the best sides.
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So, we must be careful not to decry or celebrate all material consumption just like that.
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We have to ensure that the objects we invest in
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and tire ourselves and the planet by making are those that lend most encouragement to our higher, better natures.
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This speaking lesson is built on the video “Are we too Materialistic?”. The speaker keeps coming back to these words: material, materialism, spiritual, object, psychological. This video has 43 sentences and 686 words to shadow. The speech runs for 4:24. The speaker talks at a natural 156 words per minute, close to everyday conversation. Only 80% 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 |
|---|---|---|
| spiritual adjective | /ˈspɪɹɪt͡ʃuəl/ | Of or pertaining to the spirit or the soul. |
| psychological adjective | /ˌsaɪ.kəˈlɑː.d͡ʒɪ.kl̩/ | Of or pertaining to psychology. |
| possession noun | /pəˈzɛʃn̩/ | A control or occupancy of something for which one does not necessarily have private property rights. |
| ideal adjective | /aɪˈdi(ə)l/ | Pertaining to ideas, or to a given idea. |
| bodily adjective | /ˈbɑdɪli/ | Of, relating to, or concerning the body. |
| practical adjective | /ˈpɹæk.tɪ.kəl/ | Relating to, or based on, practice or action rather than theory or hypothesis. |
| stable noun | /ˈsteɪ.bəl/ | A building, wing or dependency set apart and adapted for lodging and feeding (and training) ungulates, especially horses. |
| encourage verb | /ɪnˈkʌɹ.ɪd͡ʒ/ | To mentally support; to motivate, give courage, hope or spirit. |
| temple noun | /ˈtɛm.pl̩/ | A house of worship dedicated to a polytheistic faith. |
| unusual adjective | /ʌnˈjuːʒ(u)əl/ | Not usual, out of the ordinary. |
| plain noun | /pleɪn/ | An expanse of land with relatively low relief and few trees, especially a grassy expanse. |
| ceremony noun | /ˈsɛɹ.əˌmoʊ.ni/ | A ritual, with religious or cultural significance. |
| designer noun | /dɪˈzaɪnɚ/ | A person who designs something, or who designs things as a profession. |
| ordinary adjective | /ˈɔɹdɪnɛɹi/ | Having regular jurisdiction; now only used in certain phrases. |
| evolution noun | /ˌiːvəˈluːʃ(ə)n/ | A manoeuvre of troops or ships. |
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | have made · They've spent · they've cared |
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | is accorded · can be said · be said |
| Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing | choices, which is · wine, which are |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 12 contractions and reduced forms, such as they've, we're, isn't. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: possession /pəˈzɛʃn̩/, unusual /ʌnˈjuːʒ(u)əl/, evolution /ˌiːvəˈluːʃ(ə)n/, consumption /kənˈsʌmp.ʃən/, flesh /flɛʃ/
- Long words — get the stress right: psychological /ˌsaɪ.kəˈlɑː.d͡ʒɪ.kl̩/, unusual /ʌnˈjuːʒ(u)əl/, ceremony /ˈsɛɹ.əˌmoʊ.ni/, ordinary /ˈɔɹdɪnɛɹi/, evolution /ˌiːvəˈluːʃ(ə)n/
How to practise with this video
- Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
- Start at 0.75× speed, shadow it sentence by sentence, then go back to normal speed once it feels easy.
- Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like spiritual, psychological, possession.
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.