Shadowing Practice: CONTEMPORARY TOPICS UNIT 3 SOCIOLOGY ONLINE COMMUNITIES - Learn English Speaking with Video
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Hello.
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Our focus today is a topic in sociology that has increasing importance for all of us, and that is online social communities.
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Think about it.
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As human beings, we spend our entire lives growing up and learning how to live within social communities,
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and our membership in these communities or networks affects our identities.
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It contributes to who we are as social beings.
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All aspects of our lives are somehow influenced by the people in our social networks,
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work, play, professional, family, and friend networks, right?
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And we in turn influence the other people in our networks.
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So given our intense need for social interaction,
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It shouldn't be a surprise that social networking and online communities exploded once the technology became widely available.
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Today, I'd like to focus primarily on the benefits or advantages of online communities, rather than on the drawbacks or disadvantages,
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and I'd like to organize these into five overlapping arenas.
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These arenas are personal relationships,
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professional relationships, commercial relationships, investment relationships, and play relationships.
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Okay?
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That's personal, professional, commercial, investment, and play.
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We'll look at these briefly, one by one.
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Let's first consider personal relationships.
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We all know that one positive aspect of social networking is
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that it allows us to make new friends and strengthen our current relationships with old friends and family members.
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Social networking does this by giving us a place to keep up to date with one another.
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We show pictures that let everyone know what we've been doing, we announce good and bad news,
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and we have a stage for expressing our opinions about everything from politics to fashion.
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Many of us have been regular users of Facebook, Twitter, Renren, or Mixi for years.
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These networks are ubiquitous.
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You can't escape them, really.
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And recent research indicates that most users report positive social benefits from being members of these networks.
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50% of teenage users say their relationships with their friends have improved as a result of social networking sites.
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About 65% of college students report that they make new friends easily through social networking sites.
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Research has also shown that over 50% of older users report feeling happier, feeling more connected with people,
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and even feeling an improved sense of well-being as a result of social interaction in online communities.
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Okay, these are all very robust figures in support of online social networks.
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A second area where online communities show consistent positive benefits concerns professional connections.
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If you're involved in business, large or small, you're probably exchanging information and contacts on networking sites.
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Sites like LinkedIn, Ning, or Zing.
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These sites have hundreds of millions of active users.
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In virtually every professional field, from education to law to running a restaurant, people are looking to strengthen and expand their networks.
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They're looking for new business opportunities, or they're looking for new jobs.
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They're trying to obtain more knowledge about their field.
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Often people access these networks just because they want to feel more connected with other professionals.
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In communities like Catalyst and Career Diva, users can exchange information about business to get professional support,
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but they can also share personal experiences and frustrations and receive emotional support and advice from their peers.
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Alright, that's the second area where we clearly see benefits of online communities.
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A third benefit of online communities of course is the power of social networks for commercial purposes.
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Many companies aim to develop an online marketplace where they can sell their goods and services, but a lot of companies also want to build a social community.
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They do this through the use of Social Media Marketing, or SMM.
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SMM is a type of internet marketing that uses social networking websites as a marketing tool.
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SMM aims to get users to share content with their social network.
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Shared content is a kind of business capital for a company.
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It increases brand exposure.
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It increases their customer base.
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It disseminates product information quickly.
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SMM also generates social interaction with the intended aim of creating a stronger relationship between a company and its customers.
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And social networks for commercial purposes works within smaller niches as well, not just for large companies.
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Okay, so we have social, professional, commercial, and now the fourth area concerns investment.
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Investment is vital for any business organization, finding the resources to operate and expand.
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And investment is not just monetary investment, but social investment also.
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Nonprofit organizations like the Red Cross, the World Wildlife Fund, or TED,
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all need social communities to raise awareness of their ideas and causes and also to raise funds for operations.
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One way they do this is through crowdfunding.
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Crowdfunding is the practice of presenting a product or a venture to an online community, and members of the community are encouraged to participate,
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to give money, and to share ideas, and share their passion with others in their network.
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Crowdfunding communities such as Kickstarter, Meetup, or Indiegogo are not just for entrepreneurs trying to make money off of an idea or product.
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Social causes such as NGOs and nonprofits are also active users of crowdfunding,
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and these types of organizations are supported by passionate online communities.
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Alright, so we've looked at four different types of relationships that can benefit from online communities.
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The fifth type of online community concerns, play.
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What we do in our leisure time.
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What we do for fun.
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One aspect of play communities is huge, and that is gaming.
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Playing games online with other players in a virtual gaming community.
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A recent poll in Game Studies, a journal of computer game research,
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suggests that approximately one out of every four internet users visits online gaming sites on a daily basis.
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These are visits to gaming communities such as Steam or GameSpot or Kotaku,
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where game players can interact with a number of games and an unlimited number of players from around the world.
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Members of these online gaming communities feel they are doing more than just playing games.
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They feel a sense of camaraderie, a sense of belonging, a feeling that they are part of a genuine community.
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Okay, so today we've looked at five benefits of online communities.
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I'll leave you with this final thought.
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People have been using the Internet for decades now, and online communities have been a major social force behind the growth of the Internet,
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which has enormous potential benefit for improving social relationships and building social communities.
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This C1 speaking lesson is built on the video “CONTEMPORARY TOPICS UNIT 3 SOCIOLOGY ONLINE COMMUNITIES”. The speaker keeps coming back to these words: communities, online, network, relationship, users. This video has 82 sentences and 1066 words to shadow. The speech runs for 8:11. The speaker talks at a steady 130 words per minute, a comfortable pace for shadowing. 85% 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 |
|---|---|---|
| crowdfunding noun | Funding by many individuals pooling their money together for a common goal, usually via the Internet. | |
| nonprofit adjective | Not seeking to produce a profit (a financial gain). | |
| strengthen verb | /ˈstɹɛŋ(k)θən/ | To make strong or stronger; to add strength to; to increase the strength of; to fortify. |
| camaraderie noun | /ˌkɑm(ə)ˈɹɑdəɹi/ | A close friendship in a group of friends or teammates. |
| disseminate verb | /dɪˈsɛmɪˌneɪt/ | To sow and scatter principles, ideas, opinions, etc, or concrete things, for growth and propagation, like seeds. |
| drawback noun | /ˈdɹɔˌbæk/ | A disadvantage; something that detracts or takes away. |
| ubiquitous adjective | /juːˈbɪkwɪtəs/ | Being everywhere at once: omnipresent. |
| overlap verb | /ˌəʊvəˈlæp/ | To extend over and partly cover something. |
| disadvantage noun | /ˌdɪsədˈvæntɪd͡ʒ/ | A weakness or undesirable characteristic; con; drawback. |
| sociology noun | /ˌsoʊsiˈɑləd͡ʒi/ | A social science that studies society, human social interaction, patterns of social relationships, and the interactions of culture. Through both theory and… |
| explode verb | /ɪkˈsploʊd/ | To fly apart with sudden violent force; to blow up, to burst, to detonate, to go off. |
| marketplace noun | An open area in a town housing a public market. | |
| niche noun | /nɪt͡ʃ/ | A cavity, hollow, or recess, generally within the thickness of a wall, for a statue, bust, or other erect ornament. |
| leisure noun | /ˈlɛʒə(ɹ)/ | Freedom provided by the cessation of activities. |
| robust adjective | /ɹəʊˈbʌst/ | Able to withstand adverse conditions. |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Meaning |
|---|---|
| grow up verb | To mature and become an adult. |
Sentences worth repeating
Short, complete lines from the video that you can reuse in everyday conversation:
- We'll look at these briefly, one by one.
- Let's first consider personal relationships.
- You can't escape them, really.
- I'll leave you with this final thought.
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| Present perfect continuous have/has been + -ing — an action that started earlier and is still going on | we've been doing · have been using |
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | have been · have improved · has also shown |
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | are encouraged · are supported |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 14 contractions and reduced forms, such as they're, we've, I'd. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: leisure /ˈlɛʒə(ɹ)/, frustration /fɹʌsˈtɹeɪ.ʃən/, passionate /ˈpæʃənɪt/
- Long words — get the stress right: camaraderie /ˌkɑm(ə)ˈɹɑdəɹi/, disseminate /dɪˈsɛmɪˌneɪt/, ubiquitous /juːˈbɪkwɪtəs/, disadvantage /ˌdɪsədˈvæntɪd͡ʒ/, sociology /ˌsoʊsiˈɑləd͡ʒi/
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 crowdfunding, nonprofit, strengthen.
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.