Shadowing Practice: British Council Listening Practice A talk about motivation - Learn English Speaking with Video
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17 sentences
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This recording is from the British Council.
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So, we think we know how to motivate people, right? Offer them a reward.
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Do this and you'll get this. Do this faster, earn more money. Do this better than everyone else.
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Here's a promotion. We offer incentives when we want people to do things.
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We do it at work, at school, even at home with our kids. Tidy your room and you can watch TV.
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But when social psychologists test whether incentives work, they get surprising results.
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Sam Gluksburg from Princeton University America set people a problem to solve and told them he was going to time them to see how long they took. Then he put them in two groups.
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He offered one group a reward for finishing fast, $5 for anyone finishing in the top 25% and $20 for the person who finished the fastest of all. To the other group, he offered no incentive, but he told them he was going to use their times to calculate an average time.
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The first group, the ones with the reward, solved the problem faster, you'd think, right? Well, no.
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They actually took 3 and 1/2 minutes longer than the group who just thought they were being timed.
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Incentive didn't work. In fact, it made them slower. This experiment has been repeated with the same results many times. But in business, we still offer bonuses, promotions, and rewards to staff.
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That's fine if we want them to do something simple like chop wood. We'll pay you more if you chop the wood faster. An incentive works then. But if we want someone to do something complex, something creative, something where they have to think, rewards don't work.
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They might even have the opposite result and make people perform worse. Another study by Dan Arieli showed that the bigger the reward, the worse the subjects performed on a complex task.
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The reward made them focus so hard on the result that they couldn't think creatively anymore.
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And this all matters because more and more simple jobs will become automated. We'll be left with creative problem-solving jobs that computers will never do. And we need to find a way to motivate people to do those jobs when we've proved the traditional incentives don't work.
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So, what does work? Giving your workers freedom. Freedom to work on the things they want to work on. Freedom to choose when, where, and how they work. want to work from home 3 days a week, get up late and work into the night instead. Fine, just do the job well. And evidence shows people who choose the way they work get results. Companies that give employees time during the week to work on things that interest them and are not part of their regular job achieve amazing things. Some of the big tech companies are good examples of this with pingpong tables and areas to relax in.
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This recording is from the British Council. To find more activities to practice your English, visit www.britishconsil.org/learnenglish.
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This video has 17 sentences and 504 words to shadow. The speech runs for 3:53. The speaker talks at a steady 130 words per minute, a comfortable pace for shadowing. 88% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English, so the vocabulary is easy to follow.
Key vocabulary in this video
15 words from the video worth learning, with pronunciation and meaning:
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| reward noun | /ɹɪˈwɔɹd/ | Something of value given in return for an act. |
| incentive noun | /ɪnˈsɛntɪv/ | Something that motivates, rouses, or encourages. |
| solve verb | /sɒlv/ | To find an answer or solution to a problem or question; to work out. |
| promotion noun | /pɹəˈmoʊʃn̩/ | An advancement in rank or position. |
| chop verb | /t͡ʃɑp/ | To cut into pieces with short, vigorous cutting motions. |
| motivate verb | /ˈmoʊ.tɪ.veɪt/ | To provide someone with an incentive to do something; to encourage; to actuate. |
| earn verb | /ɝn/ | To gain (success, reward, recognition) through applied effort or work. |
| bonus noun | /ˈbəʊ.nəs/ | Something extra that is good; an added benefit. |
| worker noun | /ˈwɝ.kɚ/ | One who works: a person who performs labor for a living; traditionally, especially, manual labor. |
| experiment noun | /ɪkˈspɛɹ.ə.mənt/ | A test under controlled conditions made to either demonstrate a known truth, examine the validity of a hypothesis, or determine the efficacy or likelihood of… |
| relax verb | /ɹɪˈlæks/ | To make something loose. |
| calculate verb | /ˈkælkjʊleɪt/ | To determine the value of something or the solution to something by a mathematical process. |
| psychologist noun | /ˌsaɪˈkɑl.ə.d͡ʒɪst/ | An expert in the field of psychology. |
| automate verb | /ˈɔ.təˌmeɪt/ | To replace or enhance human labor with machines. |
| creatively adverb | /kɹiˈeɪtɪvli/ | In a creative manner. |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Meaning |
|---|---|
| get up verb | To move in an upward direction; to ascend or climb. |
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | being timed · has been repeated · be left |
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | has been repeated · we've proved |
| Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing | person who finished · people who choose |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 9 contractions and reduced forms, such as don't, we'll, couldn't. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- Long words — get the stress right: experiment /ɪkˈspɛɹ.ə.mənt/, psychologist /ˌsaɪˈkɑl.ə.d͡ʒɪst/, creatively /kɹiˈeɪtɪvli/
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 reward, incentive, solve.
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.