Shadowing Practice: At least five wildfires raging in Los Angeles | BBC News - Learn English Speaking with YouTube

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At least five wildfires are still raging around Los Angeles,
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At least five wildfires are still raging around Los Angeles,
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including one engulfing the iconic Hollywood Hills.
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Fire chiefs say they're hard to control and rapidly expanding as they approach some of the city's iconic landmarks.
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The intense flames have been difficult to tackle because of high winds,
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dry conditions and low water pressure.
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Five people are confirmed dead
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and more than 137,000 homes have been evacuated in what has now become the most destructive wildfire in LA's history.
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Buildings on Sunset Boulevard, the famous strip that stretches for miles through West Hollywood,
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are lying in ruins after being destroyed by the power of the blaze.
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The largest fires in Palisades and Eton remain entirely uncontained.
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That means firefighters are prioritising saving lives rather than trying to put out the flames.
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Three smaller fires are also still burning.
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Well, these images show you what a house in Altadena looked like before the fire broke out
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and how it is now after being engulfed.
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And it's the same for this cafe in Palisades.
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The building has been completely destroyed.
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Our correspondent Helena Humphrey has this report from LA.
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A picture of utter devastation.
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The flames here are pitiless,
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sparing nothing in their path,
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not the glitzy houses of Pacific Palisades, nor the hillsides.
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The imagery of this is next level.
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It's shocking.
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I mean, I was down to my knees
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when I got up to my parents' house with just sheer amazement at what I was looking at,
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which was basically just a chimney stack and a pile of ash.
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I mean, it's something out of a movie.
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With the fires still burning,
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more people are being told to evacuate their homes,
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faced with the agonizing decision of what to take and what to leave behind.
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You look at something, you go,
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you know what, I've had that for almost all my life,
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but you know what, I can let that go.
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I can let it go.
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I can let it go.
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And then I took photographs and things that meant something,
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a little, a little figurine that my daddy bought for me
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when I was five
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or you know some those kinds of things southern California is used to wildfires
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but not like this January is supposed to bring rain instead the ground is tinder dry
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Palisades the first blaze to break out on Tuesday has now become the most destructive in LA's history
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hurricane strength winds fanning the flames some desperately trying to protect their homes I know this looks pretty stupid,
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but if I can save one ember from burning down my house,
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I will take the risk.
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AMNA NAWAZ, The downtown of Pacific Palisades is nearly wiped out.
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Its celebrity-filled suburbs, home to Tom Hanks,
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Ben Affleck and Reese Witherspoon, now deserted.
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Vice President Carmela Harris's Los Angeles residents also affected.
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What residents will return to, no one knows.
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I will be OK.
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I'm tough.
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And we will start over.
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You are tough.
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Even though I'm 91 years old,
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I will start over again.
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AMNA NAWAZ, The scale and severity of these blazes is changing day by day.
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Here in Hollywood, in the hills,
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another fire on the horizon showing how the situation can change in an instant.
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On the ground, there's limited water supply.
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The wildfires have caused massive issues for power supply too,
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affecting 1.5 million people.
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The Eaten fire is now at around 10,600 acres with zero percent containment.
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But we have over 2,000 city employees deployed and working nonstop to address this.
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But promises of help will do little to calm fears.
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Scientists warn that wildfires in the region are growing faster and more unpredictable,
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fuelled by climate change.
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As residents watch the orange haze on the horizon,
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all they can do is wonder what the next hours will bring.
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Helena Humphrey, BBC News, Los Angeles.
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I want to show you these live pictures.
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This is what it looks like in Los Angeles right now,
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just after 5 o'clock in the morning.
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You can see there the flames still burning out of control.
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And we can speak to CBS reporter Chris Van Cleve, who is there.
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Chris, what's the latest where you are?
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We're in the Altadena area of Los Angeles.
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That's eastern L.A.
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County.
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This is the Eaton Fire,
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Pasadena, maybe the most recognizable place nearby.
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That's just down the road from here.
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This was a home.
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We see it looks like a gas fueled,
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the natural gas line still burning a little bit here and we see that a lot.
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There aren't many structures left on this block.
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In fact, in this neighborhood,
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there aren't many homes that look to be intact and untouched.
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Water dropping helicopters and aircraft are in the air.
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Right now they are trying to tackle the Eaton Fire.
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It's more than 10,000 acres, 0% containment.
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Much of it does appear to be burning in forest land that's away from homes.
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But if that wind picks up and the wind that we saw yesterday that was hitting 70,
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80-mile-an-hour wind gusts, hurricane force winds,
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if that picks up again,
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which it may happen tonight,
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There's a lot of concern about blowing embers,
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these little basically balls of fire.
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They were blowing them one,
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two, three miles from the fire line earlier this week.
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There's worry about that.
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All of Southern California really holding their breath,
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given the number of fires that are burning.
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The winds are in the forecast for at least another night.
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That's a major point of concern.
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You know, when you look around here,
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you see just snippets of what were homes.
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Chimneys are standing.
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We got one wall that's still intact over here,
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like appliances that burned, the remnants of that.
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But anything that those things that we those memories,
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those things that we all care so much about,
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photos, memories, they're just gone.
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And it's it's this house.
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It's that house.
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It's almost every other house on the block here.
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You drive by burnt out cars.
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You know, yesterday we were coming up here.
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yesterday when we were coming up here we drove down a street
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and it was either every house was either on fire or had already burned to the ground.
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Chris take care thank you for joining us live from LA
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and
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if you want to keep following this story there'll be a
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special program on the LA fires at seven o'clock this evening you can find
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that on the BBC News Channel and on the BBC iPlayer.

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Context & Background

The video discusses the devastating wildfires currently ravaging Los Angeles, particularly focusing on the iconic Hollywood Hills and the Pacific Palisades area. With environmental factors such as high winds and dry conditions exacerbating the situation, firefighters are grappling with a crisis that has led to widespread evacuations and significant destruction of property. This alarming event not only tells a tale of ecological disaster but also reflects the human experience during such emergencies. For English learners, this is an excellent context to practice listening skills, engage with emotional narratives, and learn vocabulary relevant to natural disasters.

Top 5 Phrases for Daily Communication

  • “Evacuate your home” – used when residents need to leave their houses due to imminent danger.
  • “Engulfing flames” – describes flames that quickly cover and consume structures.
  • “Prioritizing saving lives” – indicating the focus on ensuring safety over material possessions.
  • “Tackling the flames” – refers to the efforts firefighters undertake to control or extinguish fire.
  • “Devastation” – a powerful word for describing severe destruction, often used in natural disaster contexts.

Step-by-step Shadowing Guide

To effectively use this transcript for enhancing your English skills, follow the step-by-step guide below, which emphasizes shadowspeaking techniques. This approach will help you improve English pronunciation and overall fluency.

  1. Watch and Listen: Start by watching the video, paying close attention to the speaker's intonation, pace, and emotional delivery. This is crucial for capturing the nuances in communication.
  2. Initial Shadowing: Replay specific phrases like “engulfing flames” or “prioritizing saving lives”. Pause after each phrase and repeat it, mimicking the speaker's pronunciation and tone as closely as possible.
  3. Break it Down: For more challenging sentences, such as “the flames here are pitiless,” break them into smaller parts. Shadow each part before combining it into a full repetition.
  4. Record Yourself: After practicing, record yourself speaking the same phrases. This will help you assess your pronunciation and identify areas for improvement.
  5. Engage Emotionally: The content of the discussion is heavy. Try to connect emotionally with the material. This engagement will help your pronunciation sound more natural and less mechanical.

Remember, by integrating these techniques into your practice when you learn English with YouTube, you’ll gain not only linguistic skills but also cultural awareness related to real-world events. Embrace the challenges of shadow speak and watch your confidence soar!

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.

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