Shadowing Practice: English Listening Practice - Childhood Activities - Learn English Speaking with Video

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Welcome to the Listening Time Podcast.

Hey everybody, this is Connor and you're listening to episode 123 of the Listening Time Podcast.

I hope you're all doing great.

At the time of recording this, it's the very end of summer here in the Northern Hemisphere,

and so autumn is just around the corner.

In English, when we say that something is just around the corner,

we're saying that it's about to appear or it's about to happen.

It's gonna happen very soon.

So fall is just around the corner

and a lot of people are really happy about this because a lot of people here like this season.

They like autumn.

They like to see the colors changing.

They like the seasonal food.

There are a lot of different types of food

that people start to eat during autumn that they don't eat during the spring or summer.

And so a lot of people like this season.

One fun thing about this season is that there are a lot of activities for children.

For example, pumpkin patches, these places where they sell pumpkins,

but they also have a lot of activities for kids.

And me and my family, we're planning on going to a couple pumpkin patches this season.

And I think that I'll do an episode on pumpkin patches.

So you'll get to hear about that, hopefully.

And I was thinking about this topic of fun activities for children

because I was thinking about pumpkin patches and about different things like that.

And I decided that I wanted to do an episode about some of my favorite activities

that I did when I was a kid.

So my childhood activities, specifically things that I did outdoors, things that I did outside.

I thought it would be fun to look back

and remember my childhood and some of my favorite things that I did outside

So I hope that this will be an interesting episode for you today And before we start,

I want to remind you that my new podcast is available now U.S.

Conversations, where I talk to different English teachers from around the U.S.

And we talk about many things and have natural conversations at normal speed

and you have the transcript available with the definitions of key words and phrases that we use.

So make sure to sign up for that if you're interested.

The link is in the episode description below this episode.

That's patreon.com slash US conversations.

And if you want my specialized training to help you understand native speakers when they speak fast,

then make sure to join my membership.

The link is also in the description below this episode.

So click on that and join if you're interested in getting my specialized training.

And of course, if you're a Spanish or a Portuguese speaker,

you can also check out my ebook if you want to start reading fiction in English.

Those links are down below as well.

And if you like this podcast, please share it with anyone else you know who's learning English,

and please give it a five-star rating and write a review.

Alright, let's get started. Are your ears ready?

You know what time it is.

It's listening time.

Alright, let's talk about some of my favorite childhood activities that I did.

some of my favorite things that I did outdoors because I did some things indoors as well.

I had some fun activities that I did inside, but I want to focus on the outdoor activities today.

So the first one that I want to talk about is building a tree house.

So you've probably seen this in movies or TV shows before where the kids build some type of house in their backyard,

maybe in a big tree.

And this is something that is a pretty classic tradition here in the U.S.

people like tree houses this is a fun thing for kids however I built a tree house

that was a little bit different from what you're probably imagining we didn't build a house

that was a closed box like you see in the movies usually

we built a treehouse where we just had these different platforms on different branches of the tree.

A platform is just a flat space and in this case a space where you can stand on.

So my friend and I we built this treehouse

that had many different platforms at different levels and on different branches

and we would have to climb to the different platforms using these steps that we also built.

We used wood and nailed the wood into the tree to build steps that we could step on.

By the way, when we say that you nail something,

we're saying that you use a nail this sharp little tool

and you use that and you hit it into the object you nail it

so we nailed these wooden steps into the tree trunk so

that we could climb the tree to get to the different platforms

I know that this might be a little difficult to visualize, but that's probably the best way that I can describe it.

And building this treehouse was really fun.

I think we had more fun building the treehouse than we did playing in the treehouse.

So it was really fun to construct this, and we were pretty young when we built this.

I think I was like 10 years old maybe.

So we were young.

It was probably a little dangerous, but we did it anyway.

And this was the first time that I really used a hammer and nails on my own.

So I learned how to hammer things when I built this treehouse.

and it was a great place to play

and to use our imagination to create games and things like

that in this treehouse and in general I always really liked climbing trees as a kid

that was always something that I enjoyed and

so this was a perfect project for me because I got the chance to climb this tree and also build something,

use my imagination, play, etc. So that was one of my favorite activities as a kid.

Another childhood activity that I wanted to mention is that I actually collected bugs for a time.

The word bug just means insect, right?

So I actually collected bugs during a brief time in my life.

Now, when I look back on this, it seems kind of gross to me.

The word gross just means disgusting.

So it seems kind of gross when I think back to all the bugs that I collected.

I remember that in particular, I collected caterpillars, you know,

these things that turn into butterflies, right?

So I collected caterpillars and I remember putting them in a container

and I tried to create a good environment for them in this container.

I put leaves and sticks and things like that inside and I fed them fruit.

I remember feeding them cantaloupe, actually.

If you don't know what a cantaloupe is,

this is that type of melon that's orange on the inside.

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That's cantaloupe.

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So I remember feeding them cantaloupe and cleaning the container.

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And I don't know why I was so interested in them,

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but for some reason, I like to collect them and watch them interact with each other in this container.

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And I also remember collecting some beetles.

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I remember doing that.

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I don't remember all of the other specific bugs that I collected,

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but I just remember that I liked to watch them interact with each other.

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I would combine

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some different bugs together and watch what they did to see

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if they would get along or if they would fight or whatever.

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By the way, the phrasal verb get along means that you are in harmony with another person or another animal.

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So it means that you don't fight with each other, you get along.

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So I think that I liked to experiment a little bit and see if these bugs would get along with each other.

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So that's another activity that I did as a kid.

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And another one was making paper airplanes.

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So I loved making paper airplanes as a kid,

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especially because I loved trying to find the different combinations of folds that would result in the best airplane.

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I don't know if you have much experience making paper airplanes,

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but of course it really matters how you fold the paper.

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So if you fold the paper in certain ways and you follow a certain design,

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you can make a pretty impressive airplane actually.

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Some airplanes that we made actually stayed in the air for quite a while.

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And I remember that we had one design in particular that was the best one.

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So my neighbor and I found this perfect design

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that we would recreate time and time again and create these airplanes

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and try to make them fly as high and as long as possible.

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And so it was a very intricate design.

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The word intricate means that something is very detailed.

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And so this was an intricate design.

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I still remember how to make this paper airplane even now as an adult.

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That's how many times I made it.

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I made it so many times that I still have that muscle memory.

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I still remember exactly how to make this airplane.

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So we found that perfect design and we always tried to improve it or find an even better design.

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So we found some other combinations of folds that worked pretty well,

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but we never ended up beating that one really good design that we found.

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but it was really fun to do that and to experiment with different types of designs.

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I really like that.

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I like experimenting with different options and trying to create different designs with things like that.

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That's something that I enjoy and I really enjoyed it as a kid.

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So that was another good activity that I had.

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And another one was something that we called cardboarding.

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So we would slide down this big hill on pieces of cardboard.

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Cardboard is that material that is used to package items,

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to transport them or ship them to another place.

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By the way, when we say shipping, when we say that an item ships, we're saying that it is sent from one place to another.

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So cardboard is that material that's used to ship items, to package them and ship them.

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So we would cut big pieces of cardboard from these different boxes

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and we would sit on them and then slide down this big hill that was behind my house.

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So this was something that my friend came up with.

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By the way, when we say that you come up with something, we're saying that you think of an idea.

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So this is something that he came up with and I joined in and we had a lot of fun doing this.

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It didn't always work really well because sometimes the grass grew in a way that didn't allow us to slide very well.

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So we had to work around that

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and do our best to be able to make it to the bottom of the hill on this cardboard.

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but it was actually a little bit dangerous because we weren't able to stop very well.

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You don't really have a brake system with this type of cardboard obviously. So

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if we made it to the bottom of the hill on

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the cardboard sometimes we wouldn't be able to stop well and we would

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kind of fall off of it and maybe it would hurt a little bit.

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Or we might run into something and we would crash, right?

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So it was a little bit dangerous.

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And I think there were a few times when I got hurt, but nothing serious, just minor things.

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But that was an activity that was a fun one in the sense

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that we created it and it wasn't something that other people really did.

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We didn't learn about it from anyone else.

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My friend just created it.

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He had this idea and we just did it

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and we were the only ones that we knew who did this type of activity.

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So that was pretty cool.

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It was born out of kids imagination, right?

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It was just something that we decided to do

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because it sounded fun and we had the material and we made it work.

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We did it until we found the perfect way to do it and then we had fun with it.

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I really like when kids come up with interesting games and activities like that.

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I think that's really cool.

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And speaking of that, the last activity that I want to talk about is playing make-believe.

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In English, when we say that you make-believe or you play make-believe,

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we're saying that you create situations and games from your imagination.

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things that aren't real but you imagine them and then you play this game or you do this activity.

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So I played make-believe a lot when I was around the age of six or seven around that age.

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I remember playing with my old neighbor in my old house,

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my first house, and I remember inventing different games together where we would have to make believe,

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we had to pretend and imagine these different situations.

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By the way, in this context, the word pretend means that you imagine something that isn't real,

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but you act like it's real.

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Okay, so for example, if I pretend that I'm a superhero,

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this means that I'm acting and imagining that I'm a superhero, even though it's not real, right?

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So I remember pretending and coming up with all of these different scenarios with my neighbor.

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And we just went through these whole storylines and pretended that we were different characters doing different things.

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And it was tons of fun.

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I remember that our favorite thing to pretend was that we were on a big boat.

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We called it the boat game.

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And we pretended that we were these sailors on this big boat

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and we were navigating the open seas and we encountered all of these different complications and problems.

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I don't know where we got that idea from.

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I have no idea how we started that,

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but I just remember that we loved playing this boat game and using our imagination.

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So I really like that type of activity, that make-believe type of activity,

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because I think it's really good for kids.

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It helps kids use their imagination and not just rely on being given the stimulation from a screen or from something else.

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Kids have to think of things on their own and create things from nothing.

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I really like that.

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And I think it's also beneficial in the sense that it helps kids become more social, right?

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You have to work with your friends and you have to

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agree with each other and get along with each other while you're imagining these situations and playing in this context.

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And I think it also helps kids become a little more independent

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and it helps them begin to play on their own and not just need their parents to play with them, for example.

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So I think that there are a lot of good benefits for kids to play make-believe.

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I really like that.

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and I'm interested to see when my son will start to play make-believe and create scenarios like that that are imaginary.

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I'm looking forward to that stage in his life.

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I think that will be fun.

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All right, why don't I stop there?

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I hope this episode was interesting for you.

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remember that you can sign up for my new podcast US Conversations

217

it's an exclusive podcast so you need to sign up

218

and you'll get one new conversation every month where I talk

219

to a different person from a different part of the United States

220

and you have the transcript available with the definitions of keywords and phrases that we use

221

So the link is in the description below this episode.

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That's patreon.com slash US Conversations.

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And if you want help understanding native speakers, if you want my training, then make sure to sign up for my membership.

224

The link is also down below.

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And if you like this podcast, I'd appreciate it if you could share it with anyone else you know who's learning English.

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and please give it a five-star rating and write a review.

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All right, thank you for listening to this episode and I'll talk to you on the next episode of Listening Time.

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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson

This B1 speaking lesson is built on the video “English Listening Practice - Childhood Activities”. This video has 227 sentences and 2796 words to shadow. The speech runs for 24:18. The speaker talks at a steady 115 words per minute, a comfortable pace for shadowing. 86% 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
airplane noun	/ˈɛɹˌpleɪ̯n/	A powered heavier-than-air aircraft with fixed wings: a fixed-wing aircraft with at least one engine or electric motor.
treehouse noun	/ˈtɹiːˌhaʊs/	A house, or similar structure within a tree, or several trees, built with light materials.
cardboard noun	/ˈkɑɹdˌbɔɹd/	A wood-based material resembling heavy paper, used in the manufacture of boxes, cartons and signs.
podcast noun	/ˈpɑdˌkæst/	A program, especially an audio program, produced on a regular basis, delivered over the Internet in a compressed digital format and designed for playback on…
pretend verb	/pɹəˈtɛnd/	To speak or behave so as to give a false or simulated appearance.
bug noun	/bʌɡ/	An insect of the order Hemiptera (the “true bugs”).
nail noun	/neɪl/	The horny plate or appendage at the ends of the digits of various animals, including most reptiles, birds, and mammals (both nonhuman and human).
imagination noun	/ɪˌmæd͡ʒəˈneɪʃən/	The image-making power of the mind; the act of mentally creating or reproducing an object not previously perceived; the ability to create such images.
pumpkin noun	/ˈpʌm(p).kɪn/	A domesticated plant, in species Cucurbita pepo, similar in growth pattern, foliage, flower, and fruit to the squash or melon.
cantaloupe noun	/ˈkæn.tə.loʊp/	Cantalupensis Group sensu stricto, with non- or slightly netted rind, also known as true cantaloupe or European cantaloupe, found in the Middle East and Europe.
container noun	/kənˈteɪ.nəɹ/	An item in which objects, materials or data can be stored or transported.
fold verb	/ˈfəʊld/	To bend (any thin material, such as paper) over so that it comes in contact with itself.
patch noun	/pæt͡ʃ/	A piece of cloth, or other suitable material, sewed or otherwise fixed upon a garment to repair or strengthen it, especially upon an old garment to cover a…
climb verb	/ˈklaɪ̯m/	To traverse a slope or contour, either upwards (ascending) or downwards (descending).
intricate adjective	/ˈɪn.tɹɪ.kət/	Having a great deal of fine detail or complexity.

Phrasal verbs you will hear

Word	Meaning
come up with verb	To manage to produce, deliver, or present (something) by inventing, creating, thinking of, or obtaining it.
get along verb	To interact or coexist well, without argument or trouble.
check out verb	To record the departure or withdrawal of someone or something (such as guests, employees, books, etc.).
end up verb	To bring to a conclusion.
go through verb	To travel from one end of something to the other.
look back verb	To think of (past events) in retrospect (in hindsight).
look forward to verb	To anticipate, expect, or wait for, especially with a feeling of approval or pleasure; to be excited or eager to.
sign up verb	To add a name to the list of people who are participating in something.

Sentences worth repeating

Short, complete lines from the video that you can reuse in everyday conversation:

I hope you're all doing great.
Are your ears ready?
That's how many times I made it.
We didn't learn about it from anyone else.
All right, why don't I stop there?

Grammar in this video

The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:

Structure	In the video
Conditional sentences if + clause, will/would + verb — a condition and its result	if you like this podcast, I'd appreciate
Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it	is sent · was born · being given
Past continuous was/were + -ing — an action in progress at a moment in the past	was thinking · was making · were navigating
Superlatives the -est / the most … — the top or bottom of a group	the best · our best

Pronunciation to watch

The speaker uses 43 contractions and reduced forms, such as don't, you're, we're. Say them the short way, as you hear them.

The “sh” and “zh” sounds: imagination /ɪˌmæd͡ʒəˈneɪʃən/, specialize /ˈspɛʃəˌlaɪz/, combinations /kɑmbɪˈneɪʃənz/, complication /ˌkɑm.pləˈkeɪ.ʃən/, visualize /ˈvɪʒuəˌlaɪz/
Long words — get the stress right: imagination /ɪˌmæd͡ʒəˈneɪʃən/, caterpillar /ˈkætɚˌpɪlɚ/, combinations /kɑmbɪˈneɪʃənz/, superhero /ˈs(j)upɚhɪɹoʊ/, complication /ˌkɑm.pləˈkeɪ.ʃən/

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 airplane, treehouse, cardboard.

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 technique: read the full step-by-step guide →

Shadowing Practice: English Listening Practice - Childhood Activities - Learn English Speaking with Video

Choose a practice mode

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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson

Key vocabulary in this video

Phrasal verbs you will hear

Sentences worth repeating

Grammar in this video

Pronunciation to watch

How to practise with this video

What is the Shadowing Technique?