Shadowing Practice: Dave Navarro Opens Up About His Mom’s Murder (2001) - Learn English Speaking with Video
Creating lesson...
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You are an amazing guy.
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I mean, I applaud you.
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In fact, people always say to me, who are people that you think have gone through adversity and risen and all that?
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You're one of those people to me.
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I don't even know how, as a child, that you were able to concentrate on guitar and play the guitar with your background.
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Do you know anything about Dave Navarro's background?
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No, I do not.
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If I can bring up some of your tragedy, without just turning into a telethon.
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No, no, absolutely.
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Your mother was killed at an early age by a guy who raised you.
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It was a guy that she was dating, and I wouldn't say he raised me.
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I think that that guy got lost in the translation.
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He lived with you for a while.
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He just had to be living with you at the time.
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No, and truth be told, he was, you know, I did trust the guy.
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Right.
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And I was close to him.
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Right.
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And why not?
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I mean, you have two options.
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How old were we talking?
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I was 15.
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Right.
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15 years old, his mother was taken away from him.
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Wow.
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Your parents were divorced.
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But it was a violent kind of thing?
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Yeah.
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Your mom was murdered.
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Yeah, yeah.
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And your mom was this beautiful woman.
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She was on The Price is Right.
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I mean she was doing well.
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Yeah, she was she was um it was actually my mother
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and my aunt who happened to be there And
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and they were murdered yeah by this one guy
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and the guy got away with it for like 10 years But the freaky thing is that TV show
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America's most wanted got the guy yeah, could you you knew who did it?
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Oh, yeah.
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How did you know he was the guy who killed your mom?
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Well, I kind of put two
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and two together I mean I had a gun to my
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head a couple weeks You know we did I said I didn't know that yeah, so like there was a point where
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where he had broken into the house and kind of held me up
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and handcuffed me and basically got pretty violent and then let me go.
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Who was this guy?
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I mean, were they broken up at the time?
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Yeah.
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He was so in love with her that if he couldn't have her, no one else could.
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Yeah.
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I mean, that's what you would think.
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I mean, there's no logical explanation for something like that.
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Yeah.
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But I mean, I think in that irrational thinking, that's what was going on.
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The guy's locked up in prison now.
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Yeah.
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Have you ever been able to say to this guy why'd you take my mother from me?
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No, no, no, I mean cuz I don't I don't think that any answer he could give me to that Yeah, what would be satisfied?
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Yeah, it's gonna be satisfactory.
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The guitar save you like were you like one of those
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kids who just like sat in his room play guitar when all this happened?
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I started at 11 So I kind of had that as an avenue.
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All right when you're that age or for me You don't know where to go with that kind of stuff No, and
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and you don't know who to talk to you kind of
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don't even have the dialogue to talk to anybody about that kind of thing I mean, it's just so overwhelming right and so So I just kind of turned to music.
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You know, to me, to come back from something like that, after your mom is killed, your aunt, I mean, just your whole family, and I guess your dad was distant.
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Did you have brothers and sisters?
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No, no. That's it.
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No, my dad was there.
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He just, you know, he loved this woman, and so, you know, we were both kind of like...
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Devastated.
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Yeah, we were both devastated.
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Was your whole life uprooted in the sense also that you had to move?
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Yeah, where'd you go?
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Well, my parents were divorced, and I was living with my mother, and I ended up just moving in with my dad, which was in the same city.
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And the weird thing about it, and a connection I made years and years later, which was I used to spend Wednesday evenings with my dad.
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Right.
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And for some reason, he couldn't see me one Wednesday and he saw me on a Thursday instead.
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Right.
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And that's when this happened.
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Wow.
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You could have been there.
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And if I was, yeah.
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And if that little chance didn't happen, I probably would have gotten killed too.
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If you hadn't gone to visit your father.
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Right.
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Right.
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So, and I kind of believe, you know, I mean, and it's unfortunate it's taken me years and, you know, I had to create much more trauma in order to get to this place for somehow, you know.
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Yeah, I mean, because you went like, and understandably, you went like crazy from this.
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Yeah.
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And I understand that the drugs and all that kind of stuff.
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I'll tell you something about the drugs and all that stuff.
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And I appreciate, you know, you suggesting understandably I went to that.
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Absolutely.
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At the same time, though, I can confirm that there was part of me that used
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that trauma as an excuse to pretty much get away with whatever I wanted.
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Right.
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So you said, oh, yeah, I'm allowed to do drugs because my mother was killed.
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And whatever else.
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Oh, poor me.
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I've had this horrible thing.
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And you can excuse this.
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You can excuse that.
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And it took a lot of damage inflicted upon myself.
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I'll say.
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I mean, I was reading some of the stuff that, I mean, I don't know where we got all this stuff from.
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Maybe some of it's not true.
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You tell me.
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Yeah, let's clear it up.
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Your heroin addiction got so bad you had sores on your face that exploded.
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No one would even go near you and stuff.
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Yeah.
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I mean, here you are.
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You're such a good -looking guy.
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I wonder how people, you know, because his skin looks perfect.
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How do people come back from that?
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Yeah, how do you come back?
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Why do you not have any scars on your face?
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Why are you so lucky?
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You know what?
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I have no idea.
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You don't know.
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I really don't, and I do feel totally blessed and lucky to be able to come back from something like that.
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Yeah.
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And you know what?
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And if anything else, it's like, and I hate to sit here and sound like arrogant and like I've got some message for anybody.
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But the truth of the matter is I was pretty bad and it's possible to come back.
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If you came back, anybody could.
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I hate to say that because that implies that I'm as bad as it gets.
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But I was pretty bad and I've discovered that life is a beautiful thing.
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Why Practice Speaking with This Video?
This video offers a raw, conversational context perfect for IELTS speaking practice and honing real-world communication. The dialogue between Dave Navarro and the interviewer is informal yet emotional, mirroring the kind of spontaneous conversations you might encounter in daily life or exams. Practicing with it helps you build fluency in discussing personal stories, asking sensitive questions, and responding to challenging topics—skills critical for english speaking practice. The natural pace and emotional tone also make it ideal for the shadowing technique, where you mimic speech patterns, intonation, and pauses to improve pronunciation and rhythm.
Grammar & Expressions in Context
- "I kind of put two and two together": This phrasal expression means to deduce something from clues. It’s a common way to explain reasoning in casual speech, useful for IELTS speaking when describing problem-solving or conclusions.
- "If he couldn't have her, no one else could": A conditional structure emphasizing a tragic motive. Notice the use of "couldn’t" and "no one else could" to show a hypothetical outcome, a key pattern for discussing causes and effects.
- "Do you know anything about Dave Navarro's background?": A direct question using "anything about" to ask for general information. This structure is essential for initiating conversations or clarifying details, a must for shadow speak practice.
Common Pronunciation Traps
The video’s conversational tone includes several tricky sounds. For example, "handcuffed" has a silent "d" between "hand" and "cuffed"—many learners over-pronounce the "d," but native speakers often blend it into a soft "k" sound. "Adversity" is another challenge; the stress falls on the second syllable ("ad-VER-si-ty"), not the first. Also, "murdered" is often reduced to "mur-dered" with a quick "er" sound, avoiding a full "d" pronunciation. Practicing these with the shadowing technique on a shadowing site can help you sound more natural.
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 | was killed · be told · was taken |
| Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing | guy who raised · guy who killed · kids who just |
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | have gone · I've discovered |
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.