Shadowing Practice: CET-6 Listening Practice: Why Familiar Things Feel Better - Learn English Speaking with Video
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1
Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to today's lecture on familiarity and liking.
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There is an old saying that familiarity breeds contempt.
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In other words, the better we know something, the less we tend to value it.
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But does seeing something again and again really make us like it less?
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In nineteen sixty-eight, the psychologist Robert Zajonc set out to answer this question.
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He showed volunteers a series of made-up words that sounded vaguely foreign.
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He also used symbols that resembled Chinese characters, as well as photographs of strangers.
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Crucially, some items appeared only once, while others were shown as many as twenty-five times.
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Afterwards, participants guessed whether each word or symbol meant something good or bad.
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For the faces, they simply rated how much they liked each person.
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The results were strikingly consistent!
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The more often an item had been shown, the more positively it was rated.
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Nothing about the items themselves had changed, only how familiar they were.
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He called this the mere exposure effect, because exposure alone was enough.
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However, this does not mean that more exposure is always better.
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In nineteen eighty-nine, a review of more than two hundred experiments examined the effect.
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It found that liking usually peaks within ten to twenty exposures.
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Beyond that point, liking can even decline, perhaps because people simply get bored.
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Surprisingly, the effect tends to be stronger when people barely notice the item at all!
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In some studies, shapes flashed too quickly to be recognised were still preferred later.
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This helps explain why advertisers repeat the same brand name over and over.
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It may also be why a song we disliked at first can gradually grow on us.
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Even a classmate who seemed unremarkable at first can become likeable through repeated encounters.
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For language learners, the lesson is clear: meet new words again and again.
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The more often you hear them in songs, films and conversations, the less strange they feel.
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Just vary your materials, so that repetition never turns into boredom.
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So next time you find yourself liking something new, ask yourself how often you have seen it.
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Thank you for listening, and see you next week.
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This C1 speaking lesson is built on the video “CET-6 Listening Practice: Why Familiar Things Feel Better”. The speaker keeps coming back to these words: liking, exposure, item, word, effect. This video has 28 sentences and 362 words to shadow. The speech runs for 2:43. The speaker talks at a steady 133 words per minute, a comfortable pace for shadowing. 82% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English; the rest is worth studying before you start.
Key vocabulary in this video
The 15 most advanced words in the video, with pronunciation and meaning:
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| familiarity noun | /fəmɪliˈæɹɪti/ | The state of being extremely friendly; intimacy. |
| advertiser noun | /ˈædvɚˌtaɪzɚ/ | One who advertises. |
| boredom noun | /ˈbɔɹ.dəm/ | The state of being bored. |
| classmate noun | /ˈklæs.meɪt/ | A student who is in the same class at school. |
| crucially adverb | /ˈkɹuːʃəli/ | In a crucial manner. |
| learner noun | /ˈlɜɹnəɹ/ | One who is learning; one receiving instruction. |
| likable adjective | /ˈlaɪkəbl̩/ | Of a person, having qualities tending to result in being liked; friendly, personable. |
| repetition noun | /ˌɹɛp.əˈtɪʃ.ən/ | The act or an instance of repeating or being repeated. |
| strikingly adverb | In a striking way. | |
| unremarkable adjective | [ˌʌn.ɹɪˈmɑɹ.kə.bl̩] | Not remarkable. |
| vaguely adverb | /ˈveɪɡli/ | In a vague manner. |
| resemble verb | /ɹɪˈzɛmbəl/ | To be like or similar to (something); to represent as similar. |
| contempt noun | /kənˈtɛmpt/ | The state or act of contemning; the feeling or attitude of regarding someone or something as inferior, base, or worthless; scorn, disdain. |
| participant noun | /pɑːɹˈtɪsəpənt/ | One who participates. |
| psychologist noun | /ˌsaɪˈkɑl.ə.d͡ʒɪst/ | An expert in the field of psychology. |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| make up verb | /ˌmeɪk ˈʌp/ | To constitute, to compose. |
Pronunciation to watch
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: crucially /ˈkɹuːʃəli/, repetition /ˌɹɛp.əˈtɪʃ.ən/
- Long words — get the stress right: familiarity /fəmɪliˈæɹɪti/, advertiser /ˈædvɚˌtaɪzɚ/, repetition /ˌɹɛp.əˈtɪʃ.ən/, unremarkable [ˌʌn.ɹɪˈmɑɹ.kə.bl̩], participant /pɑːɹˈtɪsəpənt/
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 familiarity, advertiser, boredom.
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.