Shadowing Practice: Author Douglas Stuart Explores Faith and Desire in His Latest Novel - Learn English Speaking with YouTube

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Without giving the plot away, especially, you know, you're not going to give the ending away.
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My producer was in tears reading it.
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We all were so moved by the ending, but you got to get there.
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Tell us about John of John.
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Yeah, it's set in the late 90s on the Isle of Harris.
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You did that on purpose?
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I did that on purpose.
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I set that before the internet, which will become clear as you read the book.
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But it's set in the...
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Because if everybody was on their phones, this would be a very different story.
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Yeah, exactly, exactly.
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If you could find someone to date really quickly, it'd be...
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Yeah, yeah.
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Wouldn't even be a short story.
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Yes.
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No need to knit your penis.
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Yeah.
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Spoiler alert.
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Yeah, exactly.
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Yeah, exactly.
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Well, you could still do that if it's fun for you.
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But yeah.
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But yeah, and so it's a story of a young man who is on the mainland and at art school.
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His name is John Callum McCloud.
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We call him Cal.
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And in that wonderful moment of graduation, he is down on his luck.
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He can't find work.
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And he's having a tough time getting by in the capital city.
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And he calls home every Wednesday and Sunday to worship with his father back to the Isle of Harris.
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And one day his father says to him, you have to come home, it's time.
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And it's that wonderful moment where a young man should just be going out into the world and suddenly he's pulled back to his home.
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And so he returns to this island, which is quite difficult to get to.
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It takes a lot of intent.
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And he's told his grandmother is very ill and he must come home and care for her, that his grandmother is his responsibility because it's his father's mother-in-law, not his father's mother.
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And so he does his duty and he comes home and it brings him back into a world where he has a lot of broken relationships and unfinished business.
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But it also brings him back under his father's roof.
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And his father is what is known as a deacon or a presenter in the local church, meaning he sets the hymn and the congregation sings it back to him.
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And he believes very deeply in scripture.
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He does not negotiate with it.
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And he has very sort of strict rules for the house.
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And so Cal comes home.
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He finds, I don't think it's a spoiler, that he finds almost instantly that his grandmother is in great health.
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And so she's the same as she ever was.
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And so he's been falsely lured back home.
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For some reason that we will discover, yes.
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And Cal is coming home with a secret that's right and he goes home and his dad also has a secret that's right yes we're not telling the
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secrets we can tell the the secrets i think okay because it's really early on that you find out that's right yeah and i thought this
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was so interesting in in light of heated rivalry and all that's going on with that if you liked heated rivalry you're gonna love this book all right That's all I got to say.
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This is the deeper end of the ocean of rivalry.
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And so Cal is gay and holding the shame of that for himself because he knows he's not going to be received in that community.
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That's right.
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And his father, the deacon, is gay.
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That's right.
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Yes.
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But you find that like 20 pages in.
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That's what is happening.
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He's coming home to that.
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And then all that happens with that.
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That's right.
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And strangely enough, I thought it was really just the story of a gay son returning to the islands.
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And when I was meeting with islanders, I would go from settlement to settlement.
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And in every sort of little village, I would hear the history of who lived there.
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And there would be some spinsters or there would be some bachelors, some unmarried older people.
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And I would ask, you know, oh, sort of what happened?
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And the conversation often was that person missed their moment for love.
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You know, they just didn't find somebody to love.
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They missed their moment.
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And sometimes the story would be, oh, he looked after his mother and father into old age.
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And or, you know, he really didn't want to be bothered with the opposite sex.
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And I was listening to this for like a couple of weeks.
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And then I would say, I said very casually, well, of course, some of them must also be gay.
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And the woman that I said it to said, oh, no, oh, no, no, no. And she didn't say it with any cruelty or malintent, but because faith was very important.
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They couldn't believe that.
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And I knew just instinctively in my heart that some of these men and women, these older men and women, would have been gay and just had never...
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You can't have a whole town.
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No. And not have anybody.
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That's exactly so, yeah.
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You just can't.
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You just cannot.
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And that's when the book for me became much more interesting.
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I realized it wasn't really about the son, but it is also about his father and what we inherit from our parents.
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Okay.
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So that's when you decided to allow him to be gay and also the father who is the deacon is holding this secret.
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Now, what is interesting to me is I started out reading it and I didn't know that I was reading a love story, but it becomes very evident that it's a love story.
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It's a love story in ways that we did not expect.
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Did you know that yourself, that it was gonna be a love story?
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Yeah, I do.
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I think in all my novels, no matter what I throw at my characters, I'm always testing the strength of the love, whether that's between a mother and son or two teenage boys,
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or in this case, between a grandson and grandmother and a son and a father, and also the patience of love for some other characters.
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But yeah, I always knew it was going to be a love story.
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I didn't have a father myself.
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My father abandoned my mother and I when I was about four years old.
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And so I've always grown up thinking, what must it be to have a father's love?
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And what would that have been?
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what would have meant for me as a young gay man as well, who had the father that I did have, you know, was really a product of the patriarchy.
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And I always sort of spent time imagining that.
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And the way I wrote John of John to sort of breathe life into that idea and to imagine these two on this island.
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But, you know, of the title, the important word on the title is the of, because it is about how fathers possess sons and how they often seek to control them.
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When you're on the island, you know, names are very common.
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Family names repeat.
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There's a lot of McDonald's and McLeod's and McNeil's and then you're often named after your father and mother.
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And so the very first question someone might ask you is, you know, who are you?
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But then the very next question needs to be, and who do you belong to?
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And that sense of who do you belong to was something that can carry an awful lot of weight through your whole entire life because you've also got to show up and represent yourself in a good light,
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but also all the generations going back because everybody remembers who you're from.
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Yes, and that's the pressure that Cal feels coming home, that you're not allowed to be yourself.
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And that's also why I'm sure so many people leave the island for the desire to fulfill who you were meant to be and not to be somebody else's idea of who you are.
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That's right, that's right, yeah.
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And also for a 22-year-old man to come back, the island does have a very busy city or a very busy town of about 8,000 people, but they live, it's quite a big island and they live in a very rural part of it.
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And for a 22-year-old man to return home at that time, you know, he says a couple of chapters in, And he meets another character and he says, you're the first person I've seen under 30.
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And he's been there a while.
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And so there is also a little bit of a social and a romantic struggle, even for straight people on the islands, to find the person that they will fall in love with.
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And almost impossible in that time for a gay character.
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Okay, so a thread throughout the story is this struggle between faith and desire.
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What did you find in that struggle?
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Faith and desire.
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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I mean, I think it's an eternal struggle, isn't it?
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And I don't know that I could necessarily come to a place where I could resolve it because I think it will go on long beyond this novel.
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You know, it is a community that believes very deeply in God.
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And when you're on the landscape and you see the wind and the weather and the sea, you can understand that God is here.
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We're very close to it, unlike we often are in cities.
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But it is also a very conservative church.
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And it does, as I said, it believes very deeply in scripture and does not negotiate with it.
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And so to be gay or to be outside of any relationship that is not one man and one woman is just not something that really can exist.
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And yet you have these two men and probably other people in rural situations like that, that have, this is how they were born.
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This is how they were made.
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And so the struggle becomes not only sort of with the community, but it also becomes inside self.
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You know, it's about how can you both love God and love yourself and love who you love?
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And how can you reconcile those things?
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Why practice speaking with this video?

This engaging video featuring author Douglas Stuart is a perfect opportunity to enhance your English speaking skills, especially through the shadowing technique. As Stuart explores profound themes of faith and desire, you will encounter a range of emotional expressions and complex narratives. Practicing with this video allows you to not only improve your speaking fluency but also develop a deeper understanding of context and storytelling in English. Engaging with Cal's journey—facing personal struggles and societal expectations—provides valuable insights that can enrich your vocabulary and conversational skills, essential for exams like the IELTS speaking practice.

Grammar & Expressions in Context

While listening to Douglas Stuart, pay attention to the following key structures:

  • Reported Speech: Phrases like "his father says to him" and "Cal comes home" illustrate how dialogue is transformed in storytelling.
  • Conditional Clauses: Expressions such as "if you could find someone to date quickly" show how conditions can shape narratives and convey hypothetical scenarios.
  • Compound Sentences: Notice the use of clauses combined with conjunctions, like "he's coming home with a secret and he goes home," highlighting the importance of relationship between ideas in a flowing conversation.

Utilizing these grammatical structures in your own speech will enhance clarity and coherence, aligning with best practices in shadow speech. As you repeat the phrases, aim to emulate the speaker's tone and inflection to develop a more natural speaking style.

Common Pronunciation Traps

As you engage with this video, be aware of certain pronunciation challenges that may arise:

  • Words with Silent Letters: Watch for “island” and “honest,” as these words often trip up non-native speakers.
  • End Sounds and Linking: Pay attention to sounds like “back home” where the final consonant blends into the following word, making it sound more fluid.
  • Intonation Patterns: Notice the emotional shifts in Stuart's voice as he discusses serious themes like shame and acceptance. Replicating these intonations will help you convey similar emotions in your speech.

Integrating these practices into your shadowing site exercises will enhance your pronunciation and pitch, creating a more engaging and relatable dialogue when speaking English. Consistent practice using the shadowing technique with this video will certainly prepare you for real-life conversations.

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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