Shadowing Practice: At Home With Lydia Millen | Hello! - Learn English Speaking with Video

Hello I'm Lydia Millen and welcome to my home in the countryside.

We are currently in my kitchen garden

and about six years ago this didn't exist it was just a really lovely patch of lawn

but I think we could always see

that it could be something a little bit more useful and

so we brought in the Alitex team and built what is now my happy place.

I come here all the time and it is my favourite place to retreat.

We've got six beds currently filling up with spring vegetables and chickens at the moment.

So I'm actually having gardening lessons at the moment and this is my first year growing three different types of broad beans.

We've also got sugar snap peas we've got monge two

and then these are my beloved chives which honestly

when you just brush up against them they smell so good

so that's marmalade

and that's margaret hatcher we've also got gwyneth poultry somewhere there she is gwyneth poultry marigold beatrix clementine

pavlova, souffle, Jemima puddle chicken and olive is there.

Eleven chickens.

Welcome into my greenhouse.

I was just saying I'm a recovering perfectionist and

so I am learning to embrace both my failures in here

and my wins and I have to be honest this is a very good year

but I have made sure that I didn't hide the things

that haven't done well because there are many things that haven't done well.

Exhibit A, my baby gem lettuce.

I don't know why this one is doing so fabulously

and all of these other ones just they're just looking quite sad

but that is gardening it's very humbling sometimes you just don't know why something doesn't work.

My attar of roses is definitely my favourite plant of all time

because I think it's almost like a sensory experience when you prune it.

So this is an Attar of Roses Pelagonium

and I learned about these in Provence last year

and I didn't realize how difficult they were to find

and I ended up buying two little shoots from a lady on eBay.

I think they were from her personal collection and she'd cultivated them

and propagated them herself and this is them and

when you pick the leaves I cannot tell you that you have to smell this.

Pick the leaves even just wafting through them It smells just incredible.

Here have some.

You obviously want to sometimes take off the leaves that aren't looking great.

It's almost like it gives you a gift when you're doing it because it smells so lovely.

And afterwards I'll often leave the greenhouse and come back in and the whole air will smell of the rose geraniums, rose pelargoniums, and they're just wonderful.

So these are my favourites.

However, we're growing a lot in here this year

and I would probably say that my favourite things to grow are radishes because they're so easy.

Like honestly, they just, you don't even have to do anything and they just go, whup.

I've got sweet peas as well.

So lots of different types of sweet peas and my theme this year is green, blue and white.

So that's what I'm going for there.

I'm also doing dahlias and this is my year of doing more flowers.

And these are my little leaves from the rose geranium that I just break off and if I want to plant them, they seem to just do really well.

This one here, I actually broke the stem by accident

and I just put it in a pot and it's done really well.

The joy of growing is definitely more than the joy of eating.

The eating is just the sort of cherry on the cake.

This is actually a special time of year to be here in my garden

because at the moment you can see on the terrace there are four crabapple trees

and they are in bloom for all of about five seconds.

And I feel like they make the terrace look a little bit like a wedding venue.

So I say that every moment of this and I feel very lucky that I get to share this with you today.

We're then sort of going to walk through the lower terrace

which this was almost like a bit of a trip down memory lane

because I only got into gardening a few years ago

and I used to have a lovely garden in my old house and it was really small.

and I think there is something really special about creating a space in a small area

and so this is my little container sort of seating area where I've got lots of antique buckets

and just filled them with beautiful plants.

I think that that is so it's

so creative to be able to make a small space beautiful

and so this is my little small space that I enjoy making look pretty.

So we're currently trying to capture the sound of the bees on the crabapple trees.

This is very much my husband's domain, I would say.

Very much so.

But a lovely space to have.

Very much like the pizzas, oh my gosh.

They just taste like nothing you've ever tasted before when you've made them at home, made the dough yourself.

But it's very much my husband's forte this.

So this is like his outdoor kitchen whereas I'm going to show you my kitchen very shortly.

So this is my kitchen and this is the room in the house

that I walked into when we first looked at the house and I fell in love.

This is a Tom Howley kitchen and I think, I don't think I ever thought that I would have a Tom Howley kitchen.

It is such a special room and I probably spend most of my time in here.

It's just that place in the home that everyone congregates to

but what I love to do in is I love to decorate seasonally

so anything from pots and hops garlands over the kitchen oven is my favourite thing to do.

I love florals in pots, things that last a little bit longer.

I love ivy which I think is a bit niche

but ivy works so well indoors it adds that element of greenery

and it lasts so well so you'll often see a pot of ivy somewhere in my home.

I mainly focus on like baking so I love baking bread.

I love homemaking anything from scratch that I can.

I'm not the best at it but I'm passionate and I think that that counts for something.

I often make things like homemade granola which is like a gift that keeps on giving through the week.

There is nothing better than hand selecting the seeds,

the nuts, how much oats and honey you want to mix into your granola and having it made perfectly for yourself.

I even add rose petals into mine which is my little bougie touch.

But I make bread and I've been making bread for the last nearly year and a half and I almost, it's almost like addictive.

I love the whole process and how it takes two days to make the bread and then getting that perfect rise.

This is my butcher's block and this was actually handmade by the Burgess Reclamation Yard team.

They made this specially for us

and they are basically the only people you want to go to for a butcher's block in my opinion.

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They make the best, they've got real sort of like chunkiness to them and we just use it so much.

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It's such a great place even just for laying out food if you've got friends over and entertaining

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but also as a workhorse as well in the kitchen.

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So this is actually the entire pantry unit and this is

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so handy to have because we hide the fridge in

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that side and then in this side we have basically all of the nuts, seeds, ingredients that I cook with,

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bake with, ready and raring to go.

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It doesn't necessarily have to be organised like this but I just, oh, those labels all in a line, they just do something to me that I love.

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This is my office and this room has probably been eight years in the making

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and it has gone on to become one of the coziest rooms in the house.

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There's something really special about the wallpaper in here

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because we've got it's almost like a Hessian sack wallpaper and the acoustics that it creates in here.

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It feels like you're in like under a duvet cover.

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It's lovely.

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And these are my bookcases.

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I love books.

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I love reading.

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I love the beauty of books.

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I love old books.

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I love new books.

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And of course, I have favorite books as well.

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This is one coffee table book, though, that I bought recently and I found it.

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This is Lady Pamela and this is by her daughter India Hicks.

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And I found Lady Pamela through an interview about how she gets ready for bed on India Hicks' sub stack

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and I was just enamoured.

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It just was the most beautiful story of someone taking such pride

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and joy in her bedtime routine that I had to get her book.

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So very excited to get stuck into that.

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I also have Arthur Parkinson's Hen Party.

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I've got chickens.

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I love chickens.

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And I actually have one of Arthur Parkinson's chickens upstairs, Sweet Pea.

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And this is his most recent book.

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So very happy to have this on show.

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And then over here, fancy, fancy seeing 10 of these here, but this is my book.

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It's actually my book, Evergreen and the Evergreen Journal that that was released in December.

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And of course I have to put them on display because if my mum ever comes around, she'd be very upset if they weren't on display.

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So they're there.

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The whole experience of publishing a book is so different and it was such a learning curve.

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I really had to approach it with like an amateur mindset.

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And that became such an integral part of the Evergreen initial book was

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that being able to embrace being an amateur at something.

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And it felt really freeing to just say, I don't know what I'm doing, but I have a story to tell.

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And then when you get that physical book, it's like this thing is going to outlive me.

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Even when the internet maybe isn't there anymore, this book will outlive me.

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That's, it feels very significant.

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And this just brings me so much joy, coming down here, sitting on my sofa.

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I call it my little office come book nook.

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It's a really, really special place.

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So this is a very, very special piece of art because this is actually a painting of our garden,

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Something that we started last year was having artists come to our garden, almost sort of like an artist in residence for the day, and paint our garden.

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We have someone coming in a couple of weeks' time to do it again.

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And this is a piece by Georgia Elliott, and it feels so special to have this in my office.

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And it was the perfect piece.

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I was more into traditional art, but the moment that I saw this piece, it was perfect it goes

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so beautifully in the space but also it just feels so special that that is my garden.

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This is the living room and we are actually making some changes in here at the moment.

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We're just about to have some new carpet put down

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because after five years of two dogs it needed a little refresh

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but it's only a little change because I love this room so much.

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It gets so much light and I recently painted it green

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and it just softened things in here actually used to be black

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which was really dramatic and it made it so cozy because

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when we moved in it was quite a big room there was no log burner there was no bookcase

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and it just felt like it needed to

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be a bit cozier in here and now this is probably the coziest room in the house

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So this is a bookcase that we had put in a few years ago

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and come here you want to join in you join in come on in.

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So this is the bookcase

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and we had this built a few years ago it just felt like this was what this area needed

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and it also has my very very strange collection of old books.

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We've got British Wildflowers, The Gardener's Assistant.

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I love antique gardening books and books on flowers and trees.

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But my favourite one is this one here, as pointed out by Porter Snoot.

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And that is The Book of Household Management by Mrs L.

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Beaton.

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And it is fascinating.

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It literally tells you all of the runnings and the details that they would go to in old house.

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Everyone's joining in!

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It's a madhouse!

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Yes it is!

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So this is our ottoman and this is great because it's multifunctional.

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You can put your feet up on it, but you can also have a cracking game of backgammon.

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And my dad has been teaching me how to play backgammon.

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And actually, I thoroughly enjoy it.

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And we got this really lovely set from my grandma a few years ago, so we're putting it to good use.

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So this is my table, affectionately known as my Princess Diana table

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because I found this at the back of a reclamation yard with a sticker on it that said, was once sat at by Princess Diana.

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Now, I'm not saying that I got scammed.

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I've got a picture of her sat at a table that looks like this.

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So I firmly believe that Princess Diana sat at this table.

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This is the club room and this was the one room

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that eight years later we had not touched a point of

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and it has taken such a long time to get to this point that we are savouring every moment down here.

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It is the biggest room in the house, it was the most daunting room at the house and we have changed absolutely everything in here.

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We wanted to make it feel cosier.

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We almost wanted to create that sort of like members club vibe.

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But the only members are me, my husband and the animals.

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And I love it.

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But it's also really lovely to have our friends over.

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And we actually christened this at New Year's with a load of our friends.

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And it was a very good thing to do because it just ripped the bandage off,

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you know, spilt drinks, having a good time and we just really put it to good use.

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This sofa is the comfiest sofa in the world.

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We worked with the Darlings of Chelsea team to bring the perfect sofa for this space

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because it was such a large space we wanted it to feel cosy, just like the sofa was almost like swallowing you up.

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And we've used velvet mohair on the sofa.

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It's like a chocolate shade that just adds so much richness.

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We've got cushions everywhere, blankets.

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It is the perfect sofa, in my opinion.

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I love it.

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And then on this wall, in a perfect world, I would have loved to have put a fireplace down here, but it just wasn't possible for us.

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So I really love traditional art and this just felt like the perfect piece to put here.

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This is a really really beautiful tapestry

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but what it does is it adds intrigue to this wall

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when the cinema screen isn't down so we can actually see up here

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that the cinema screen comes down from the floor

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which was all of my husband's idea hiding everything in the ceiling

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so that it feels a lot more sympathetic to the place to the space and just looks lovely as well.

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My husband likes whiskey, he really loves whiskey and so he'll often come down here, escape me and the animals and have a whiskey

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but I am a wine girl through and through and my favourite thing at the moment is if I go somewhere,

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whether it's France, Italy, anywhere in the world and I have a lovely bottle of wine, I come home and I order myself six bottles

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and I get to use my wine storage and as you can see we're getting through it quite well.

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I did a huge shipment from France last year and some of these bottles are so beautiful.

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I think this is probably one of my favourites in terms of design but also name.

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This is Roseblood and it's from the vineyard at Esteblanc in Provence and it has a beautiful rose detail.

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It just feels really special.

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Thank you so much Hello for coming to look around my home.

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There is still so much that we are doing here

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so you'll have to come and find me and see what we get up to.

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 Practice: At Home With Lydia Millen | Hello! - Learn English Speaking with Video

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What is the Shadowing Technique?