Shadowing Practice: Body Language: How to tell if someone is bored or interested! - Learn English Speaking with Video

Hi.

I'm here to teach you some English, more some life skills, I think.

One thing that's really intimidating or uncomfortable as someone who's trying to speak another language is

when you're speaking to someone and they're listening to you,

sometimes you're not too sure what they're feeling inside because they're not talking.

They're like, oh my god, are you listening to me?

Do you like this?

You can't just stop your presentation or stop what you're doing and ask them like, hey are you listening?

If you have to ask, they're probably not.

But one thing that's really intimidating is,

let's say that you're speaking English and the person that is listening Listening to you is not paying attention.

What do you think?

You think, oh my god, my English is terrible.

I can't speak English.

The person doesn't like what I'm saying.

I can't.

My English is bad.

Hey, it's not you.

You are probably doing a really good job.

English is difficult.

It's hard to get all the verbs in the right tenses

and the right order and pronounce our crazy words in English correctly, especially like pronounce.

It's hard.

It can be very intimidating.

But I'm here to let you know that it's not you.

It could be your audience or the person that you are listening to or is listening to you.

How to read your audience.

So, if you read your audience, it means that you understand what your audience is thinking without asking them,

huh, can you read minds?

No, we're going to get these clues through body language.

So there are certain things we have to look at when you're talking to people.

And also, this is going to help you be a good listener.

If you follow these tips, you're going to know what to do if you actually enjoy what the person's saying or if you're really bored.

So, first one, eye contact.

If you're looking directly at the person, this means good things.

It means you're interested.

It means you're having a good time.

You want them to keep talking.

If you're looking around the room and not looking at them, it shows you're not interested.

head movements.

I used to teach English in Japan and Japanese people, as soon as they didn't understand something, would do this.

Complete 45 degree rotation of the head.

They didn't say they didn't understand, but I know from this movement that they don't understand.

But be careful.

This can mean two things.

One, it can mean that I'm kind of processing something

if I tilt my head or depending on what way I tilt my head.

Oh, sleeping.

It could mean that I'm bored, but don't worry.

We'll go through that.

Is the person smiling?

The opposite of smile is frown.

If someone's smiling, that's usually a good thing.

If someone's frowning, it's never cool.

It's never cool.

It might mean that they disagree with you or that they're absolutely maybe even mad about what you're talking about.

So be careful of the frowns or they're bored, right?

Eyebrows, these things here, these are your eyebrows.

If they're raised, one raised, I can't do that.

Can you do that?

One raised, one not.

I can't.

If the eyebrows are raised like this, it means, oh, they're surprised or interested in what you're saying.

If one eyebrow is raised and the other isn't, like this, probably a bad thing.

They probably disagree with you.

And their body position, which we'll get into later.

But basically, if they're leaning towards you, this is good.

If they're back from you or they're actually not a good thing.

Okay, so let's go through the different emotions that we can have or we can see.

We will understand if the person agrees with us, usually because they smile, and they nod their head.

Nod's a weird word in English, spelled N-O-D, and it basically means you put your head up and down like,

yes, and a smile.

If people disagree, they move their head from side to side.

And I don't remember what that's called when people do that, but they're like, no, uh-uh-uh.

You can also see if people are surprised.

They kind of freeze, their eyebrows go up.

Or if they're mad.

If their eyebrows go together like this, that means they're kind of angry with what you're saying.

Which is not necessarily a bad thing.

It just means it's their emotion.

If someone disagrees with you or someone's angry at you, again, that's fine.

Everyone can have their own opinion.

Don't get mad or feel you're not a good person or your English isn't good just because someone disagrees with you.

That's fine.

Or they get angry. Who cares?

It's their anger to deal with, not yours.

You're doing a great job.

Let's go through what humans do when they're interested in something.

You better be doing this right now.

If you're interested, like I said before, your body movement is you're leaning forward, which means you're like, you're getting right in there.

You want to be closer to the person.

Whereas if you're bored, your body movement's further away.

You're like, oh, back up.

Get me out of here.

So leaning forward, making eye contact, 100%.

I'm looking at you and this means, hey, I'm interested in you.

Hello.

I put fake smile with a question mark.

Even if they have a fake smile, they're still smiling.

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How do you know if the smile is fake or not?

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This is a fake smile.

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A real smile involves the eyes and your mouth.

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So you can see when I have a real smile, my eyes crinkle here, wrinkles here, little crinkle wrinkle.

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And my mouth makes a smile.

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But it doesn't matter.

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As long as you're fake smiling, you're still in there.

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Raised eyebrows.

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This is showing like surprise.

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Like, whoa, no way.

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What this person is telling me is interesting.

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Some people might do this.

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They might stroke or touch their face, their chin, their nose, their cheek.

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These are your cheeks.

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Hmm.

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Their head.

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This is a good thing.

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It means they're thinking about or processing what you're speaking about.

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They're still paying attention to you, but they're thinking about it.

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It's always great to make people think.

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Sometimes people do this.

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They're not praying.

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They're putting their hands together, maybe touching their chin.

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Again, they're considering something.

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They're like, hmm, okay.

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Looking up, tilting your head.

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This is telling people that, oh, hey, I'm processing, I'm thinking about what you're saying.

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And as I said together, you tilt, or as I said before, you tilt your head.

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Like, oh, hold on, hold on, getting this.

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Oh, understanding.

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Yes, understand.

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Okay.

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So a head tilt can be pretty positive at some point.

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But if it's over here all the time, maybe they're sleeping.

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Be careful with the head tilt.

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So these things show that you're interested.

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As a listener, you will do these things subconsciously.

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So you're not going to say, okay, body lean forward.

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I like this person.

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Or make sure you look at their eyes.

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It's amazing what our brain does, so delicious, is it actually does these things without us knowing it.

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So if you're like, hmm, oh, whoops, I guess I'm thinking about this.

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It's subconscious things that we do.

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Let's go on to the bored part.

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Do you get bored at presentations or in meetings or at your job when someone's, yep, yep, yep, or this video?

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No, do not get bored in this video.

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If you're bored, turn it off.

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Go.

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Bye.

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Here's a good word in English.

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Squirm.

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it rhymes with the word worm squirm warm

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if you squirm it means you move around a lot not

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not like this no maybe you're having a dance in your chair that's fine that's cool

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but if you're bored you're not intense no i'm looking at someone

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or interested you're gonna move around you know like switch your legs over You pick your teeth.

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So moving around a lot is an indication that the people are getting, we say antsy.

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They want to leave.

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They're not interested.

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I talked before about body position.

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If they completely change their body position towards you, show them their shoulder or their back,

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you know right away like oh i'm losing this audience gotta do something um

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so body positions facing forward

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and leaned forward is good anytime people are going to the side

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or the back no not not not a good thing for you hey

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if you're bored do that just completely yeah whatever

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uh-huh okay um you turn away here's a weird word in english to slump

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slump basically means your posture is not upright your shoulders are like this

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and you're like kind of like falling into yourself you can

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slump in a chair means you're not sitting up straight

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when you're sitting up straight you're you're paying attention like in school but if you slump you're like, I don't care, or flop down.

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This is a fun word, too, even to say it, flop down.

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If you flop down in a seat, it's like you're a jellyfish sitting down.

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It's like you're showing the person, like, I don't even want to be here.

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What are you talking about?

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Like, okay.

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um yeah sometimes when you're bored you turn your head to one side you're looking at something else

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or you tilt your head if you tilt your head for a little bit

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and your eyes go up you're thinking but

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if you tilt your head for a long time oh oh

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you've lost the person they are daydreaming they are in la-la land thinking about what they're gonna eat at snack time.

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So the head tilt for a long time, that short time, is okay.

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Oh yeah, they're sleeping.

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Yeah, they're gone.

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Or they kind of, oh, if their eyes close, oh, and then open, they're on their way to sleep as well.

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and a big one, they're not even making eye contact anymore.

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You know you've got to draw them back in.

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How do you do that?

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How do you draw people back in once you've lost them?

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First is voice.

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You have to speak loudly and you also have to do things like change your voice.

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You can't just be like this the whole time.

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As interesting as this lesson is, if I spoke like this to you, you're gonna get bored.

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So you need variation in your voice.

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You need to like, oh this is exciting!

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Move around a lot.

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You know, have fun!

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Do a little dance.

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People love it when you dance.

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Even if you're a bad dancer, it doesn't matter.

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Just go.

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Just dance, dance, dance, dance.

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Okay, okay.

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If people fidget, fidget means they they play with stuff okay um it's a

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weird word in english too fidget means you're playing with stuff

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you're playing with your glasses taking them off checking your playing

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with your jewelry you know picking your teeth grooming yourself oh just let me get my my mirror out

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and do my hair if people are doing their hair

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or their makeup first of all they're rude

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and second of all they're really bored okay they might have

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like oh hold on something in my tooth that's fine but

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if it's a prolonged grooming session go to the bathroom this is a really interesting one

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that I found when I was researching this

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if people start to massage themselves not down there they're not

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having a little wank in your session unless that's what you want them to do

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but if people start like you know rubbing their necks

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or doing one of these rolling their heads any kind of massage

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people are trying to comfort themselves because they're bored so

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if you see people like you know cracking their backs I do

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that a lot this is telling you like oh it's time

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to wrap it up let's go people are getting bored they're losing their interest

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and then the last one can happen a lot confusion maybe

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I'm confusing you maybe maybe you're not making sense with your English sentence.

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Maybe what you're saying is good, but because you're not a native speaker in English, you're just beginning to learn English.

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Maybe what you're saying is not right.

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That's okay.

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You can make mistakes, but you have to be aware of the audience.

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If the person you're talking to, like, kind of tilts their head and raises one eyebrow and not the other,

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hmm this is showing the person that they're confused another thing

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that they do is they they scan the room beep beep

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no scan the room means you look quickly around the room to see

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if other people are bored too or confused so if you're telling me something and I'm

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I'm not too sure what you're talking about.

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I will look to the other humans and be like, does this person get it?

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So if I see that the other person's confused, I feel justified in my confusion.

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Like, do you understand this?

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I don't get it.

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So when people look around at other people's reactions, you know something funky's going on and funky isn't usually good.

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So when When you're speaking, doing presentations at work, look out for these nonverbal body movement cues.

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If you're the listener, try and pay attention to what you're doing.

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If you're interested, think about, oh, oh, hold on, I'm touching my mouth.

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I'm interested.

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See what would happen.

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I think I have something there.

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Okay.

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If you need help with English, my name's Ronnie.

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I have private English lessons online, englishwithronnie.com.

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We can hang out, do some classes.

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And I hope whatever you have to do, presentations, speaking to people, English is not your first language.

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Go easy on yourself.

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You're going to make mistakes.

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That's fine.

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Learn from your mistakes, build your confidence, and you can do it.

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All right.

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I've got to go now.

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I'm getting bored of myself.

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See ya.

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: Body Language: How to tell if someone is bored or interested! - Learn English Speaking with Video

Context & Background

Top 5 Phrases for Daily Communication

Step-by-step Shadowing Guide

What is the Shadowing Technique?