Shadowing Practice: Baking Bread with Lava in Iceland - Learn English Speaking with Video
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28 sentences
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1
Siggi Ron Hillmarsson is an Icelandic baker with an unconventional oven.
2
He bakes bread by burying it underground, where it's heated for 24 hours by nearby hot springs.
3
It's very common to see hot springs here in Iceland.
4
There is constant lava crawling under us.
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This lava is heating up water, and this water comes boiling up on the surface.
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We could put it in the oven, but this is much more fun.
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Iceland is one of the most volcanic regions in the world, with 30 active volcanoes at any one time.
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That helps create an abundance of hot springs, some with boiling hot water.
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And Siggy uses them to his advantage.
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He specializes in baking huvabrod, a traditional Icelandic rye bread recipe that dates back hundreds of years.
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I know for sure that in this village I can track it down as far as late 1800 something.
12
My grandmother taught my mother how to bake this bread and my mother taught me.
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In the hot spring rye bread recipe we have rye, flour, sugar, baking powder, salt and milk.
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We put this in a pot, we put butter in the pot,
15
then we wrap it with plastic foil and we put it down in our hot spring hole for 24 hours.
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It's very obvious to see if the ground is hot or not.
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I never use a thermometer.
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If I need to check the heat, I just use this one.
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Our biggest challenge is rain.
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If it rains a lot, these holes that we are using can cool down and if they are not hot enough,
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obviously the bread doesn't bake completely.
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Everybody eats our bread.
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Our visitors, the locals, hot spring rye bread has a unique taste that you don't get from ovens.
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The texture of this bread is quite special.
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It's quite heavy.
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It's not the typical light bread.
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When you show this to travelers that come to Iceland and you see their faces, they go wow.
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Then you start to think that this is quite amazing actually.
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This speaking lesson is built on the video “Baking Bread with Lava in Iceland”. The speaker keeps coming back to these words: bread, hot, spring, rye, Iceland. This video has 23 sentences and 337 words to shadow. The speech runs for 2:26. The speaker talks at a steady 139 words per minute, a comfortable pace for shadowing. 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 |
|---|---|---|
| bake verb | /beɪk/ | To cook (something) in an oven (for someone). |
| oven noun | /ˈʌ.vn̩/ | A chamber used for baking or heating. |
| recipe noun | /ˈɹɛs.ɪ.pi/ | Any set of instructions for preparing a mixture of ingredients. |
| boil verb | /bɔɪ(ə)l/ | To heat to the point where it begins to turn into a gas. |
| lava noun | /ˈlɑvə/ | The molten rock ejected by a volcano from a vent such as a crater or fissure; magma that has breached the surface of the earth. |
| butter noun | /ˈbʌtɚ/ | A soft, fatty foodstuff made by churning the cream of milk (generally cow's milk). |
| underground adjective | /ˌʌn.dəɹˈɡɹaʊnd/ | Below the ground; below the surface of the Earth. |
| powder noun | /ˈpaʊ.dɚ/ | The fine particles which are the result of reducing a dry substance by pounding, grinding, or triturating, or the result of decay; dust. |
| baker noun | /ˈbeɪ.kɚ/ | A person who bakes and sells bread, cakes and similar items. |
| wrap verb | /ɹæp/ | To enclose (an object) completely in any flexible, thin material such as fabric or paper. |
| grandmother noun | /ˈɡɹæn(d)ˌmʌðɚ/ | A mother of someone's parent. |
| visitor noun | /ˈvɪzɪtɚ/ | Someone who visits someone else; someone staying as a guest. |
| flour noun | /ˈflaʊ.ə/ | Powder obtained by grinding or milling cereal grains, especially wheat, or other foodstuffs such as soybeans and potatoes, and used to bake bread, cakes, and… |
| texture noun | /ˈtɛkst͡ʃə(ɹ)/ | The feel or shape of a surface or substance; the smoothness, roughness, softness, etc. of something. |
| bury verb | /ˈbɛɹi/ | To outlive. |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| cool down verb | /kuːl ˈdaʊn/ | To become cooler; to be reduced in temperature. |
| heat up verb | To heat, to cause to become hotter. |
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| Superlatives the -est / the most … — the top or bottom of a group | the most volcanic · Our biggest |
| Present continuous am/is/are + -ing — something happening right now or around now | is heating · are using |
Pronunciation to watch
- The “th” sounds: grandmother /ˈɡɹæn(d)ˌmʌðɚ/, thermometer /θɚˈmɑ.mɪ.tɚ/
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 bake, oven, recipe.
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.