Shadowing Practice: English Podcast 1: Learning Languages - Learn English Speaking with Video

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Hello, today I thought we could do a longer speaking video like a podcast in English to practice listening to natural English.

So I'm going to speak at the normal pace

that I would speak if I was speaking to a friend or somebody I know well.

Often I find myself slowing down the pace at which I talk so that people can understand me.

And this is because in my own experience, when I've been learning a language, often I don't understand the first time somebody tells me something.

So I do appreciate it when people slow down their pace

and the rhythm with which they're speaking so that I can understand.

But I know as well that for more advanced or intermediate learners,

that this becomes a little bit futile after a while because you want to speak natural English, right?

So if somebody is always slowing down what they're saying, then it's not natural.

And it can be infuriating if people continue to speak to you like a child, almost.

So today I'm just going to speak at the normal pace that I would speak, like I said.

And I thought that would be an appropriate topic to talk about learning languages in general.

So as I say, it's helpful to hear the natural rhythm with which people speak.

And another thing that I think is always very helpful is to hear multiple different voices,

to hear different accents so that you become used to different voices

and how the language actually sounds when people are really speaking it

and you're not just listening to a book designed for beginners for example

so um to talk about my experiences learning languages I've always liked listening to audiobooks um

when I first start learning a language I'll obviously look for A1

or A2 content and if I need to I'll listen to it a couple of times

or maybe I will slow down the pace with which people are speaking.

It depends on the book, it depends on the language, it depends on how challenging I find it.

If it's easy then obviously I don't want to listen to it on repeat.

This goes with films as well.

I recently read that one of the best ways to really learn from watching films is to watch it about three times.

One time with no subtitles, just the audio in your target language then try with the subtitles in the target language as well

and then finally

if you still don't understand to use the subtitles of your mother tongue of your natural language apparently

this is a more effective way of learning than just watching it

with the audio in your target language and reading the subtitles apparently this is not very effective.

I don't know.

I'm just repeating what I've heard, but I can believe it.

I do see why that might be the case.

For example, like if I'm watching a foreign movie, like a Korean film, I don't know any Korean.

So if I'm just reading the subtitles in English,

I start to just tune out the real audio like it doesn't go in I'm purely reading

if that makes sense

so I do think it's better maybe it activates your brain a bit more it engages your brain

so that you really understand

and you take the time to process what you're both listening to

and reading at the same time anyway I think

that movies can be a really effective way to learn a language for sure um ultimately

I think the best way to learn a language is to choose the method

that works well for you people have all different kinds of learning styles for example

I um I think I learn best when I hear something

if somebody explains it to me and I listen to it

or if I listen to a podcast this helps me a lot more than uh than visual cues

but for some people visual cues are really important

they they won't learn the vocab they don't learn from flashcards unless there's a picture

and something you can associate it with in your mind

um so it depends on the person it depends on your language style or your your learning style sorry

um so everybody has their own method and

if you don't know yet then you need to just experiment

with different things maybe one thing is really helpful for you and another thing is not helpful and that's a game.

You just need to go through trial and error and see what works well for you.

That being said, as a teacher, I think that it's important to kind of hit all aspects of a language,

to spend some time on grammar, spend some time on vocabulary, do reading, listening, writing, speaking, hit all four of them.

Maybe if you prefer to read, dedicate more time to reading and less time to writing whatever works well for you

but I do think it's important to hit all four skills

at some point in the week which brings me on to another thing i want to talk about

and that's how much time should you spend learning a language

i think again this is highly individual some people have a

lot of free time some people can maybe spend three hours

a day learning a language some people have a full -time job some people have a family

and they can't commit to an hour a day

and in this case i think you know 15 minutes a day is perfect

it's progress it's the same with anything in life like any sport any hobby

if you spend 15 minutes a day doing something proactively then of course over time it builds up

and it amounts to something and you will see progress even

if you're maybe frustrated in the beginning

that you can't dedicate more time to this pursuit ultimately doing something is always better than doing nothing

so if you only have five minutes a day to learn vocab than do it

because five minutes is better than zero minutes.

For me, I have obviously noticed a bigger change if I've dedicated three hours to learning a language a day.

I've noticed bigger progress.

For example, the first language I learned after my mother tongue was Italian and for a long time I didn't have...

I was studying so I didn't have a lot of time to dedicate to learning Italian

and I was frustrated because it felt like so much time was passing

and every year I had the same goal to improve my Italian

and every year I was always so disappointed because I didn't feel

or notice a big difference and then one summer I spent three

or four hours a day studying Italian

and it was great

I noticed a really big amount of progress in a relatively small amount of time however I burnt out

because it wasn't really sustainable as soon as I started

I went back to my job as soon as I went back to my studies

and I had a full schedule I didn't have time for three

or four hours a day of studying a language you know as educational

and beneficial as it is it's a hobby and you still have to work you still have responsibilities

so in the long run it wasn't um maintainable for me

and so what actually happened was I crashed out for a month for a month I did no Italian

so overall my progress in two months was the same as it was in one month

because I yeah I spent a really long amount of time working on it for one month

and then I did nothing

and in this case I think it would have been better to have spent maybe an hour a day

or 30 minutes a day every single day doing something instead of having

this one period where I did a lot

and then followed by another period where I did nothing like I say

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so ultimately as of everything discipline is really crucial

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when it comes to learning a language

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because learning a language can be fun I I find it fun that's now why I like to learn languages

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because it's very rewarding.

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I feel very proud of myself when I make progress in a language.

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I love to be able to communicate with people in different languages and I think you discover so much about yourself.

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Your personality changes or if you talk about a topic in one language and talk about the same topic in another language,

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sometimes you realise things that you didn't realise the first time round.

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Like you can almost see it from a different perspective.

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I don't know if this is real or not, this is just my experience,

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but sometimes if I talk to myself about a situation in English in my head,

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sometimes I feel very emotionally about the issue and I'm not really able to look at it logically.

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I'm too emotionally invested, but if I start to explain the situation in its bare bones in another language,

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like Italian for example then maybe I'll become less emotionally attached

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and I can start to see it more rationally see the situation as it is without the embellishments of emotion or attachment

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and that's really helpful

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that's an important skill to be able to think critically to be able to think rationally is

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so important and I think it's something

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that language learning really um permits you to do

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so I think it's important for this reason um

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which is kind of in itself as well a good way of learning a language

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I think by speaking to yourself by um cooking

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and explaining what you're doing in your target language or

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if you're in the shower talk about your day in your target language

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and your process um um you'll process everything

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that you've been thinking about all day which is good for you anyway

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but also it's great practice because you'll be using the words

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that you need in your target language and if there's a word

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that doesn't come to your mind you can't think of something

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or you don't know how to explain something then that's the thing

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you need to learn now you know what specifically what vocab you need to learn

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because it's all very well learning like a thousand most common words

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or 3 ,000 words to get you to level B2, that's fine.

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But if you're not using those words often, I guarantee you, you will not remember them in the long term.

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So it's better to, I think, better to learn the words that you will use to talk about your day,

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to talk about subjects that are interesting for you, than to learn a lot of vocabulary that you're not actually going to use

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and you're not actually going to remember so that's my opinion on

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that realistically I think that learning languages has so many benefits

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and very little cons I think the cons

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you could really just call challenges like time commitment is a big is a big challenge

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because like I say everybody has commitments everybody has work so sometimes it's difficult to put time aside for a hobby

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and also another challenge is

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that it's not always easy to learn another language for example with grammar grammar can be

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so boring and if you're not somebody

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that likes grammar to force yourself to learn these grammar rules about another language can be really demotivating

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it makes you think I don't want to continue with this anymore it's not interesting for me

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and especially if you couple of this if you couple this with the idea

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that you've not been feeling like you're making progress recently

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then it can be really um really difficult quite like it puts

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you down it makes you feel like you are not clever enough to learn a language

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which of course is silly

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because learning a language is not about how intelligent

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you are anyone can learn a language babies learn languages

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it's nothing to do with intelligence I think

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it's purely about exposure how often you hear this language how often

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you use this language that's why I think people that people

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that live in a country

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that speaks their target language will learn the language more quickly than somebody who is learning the language

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but are not surrounded by the language on a daily basis

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and I always think of it as like

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if you live in a country where your target language is spoken

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you've really been thrown in the deep end like baptism by fire is a difficult situation

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and first to adapt to for sure but ultimately i think the most rewarding

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and the best method for learning i also think language courses can be really um helpful as well

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because you have the incentive that you've paid money to do it

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so um not only have you dedicated your time

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but you've also now dedicated your finances to learning something

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and I think that when you have

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that kind of commitment it makes you more motivated to learn

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and more dedicated to the task at hand so I do think

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that those are two really good methods in the future for me personally

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I would love to to maybe save up and then spend three

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or four months in a country where I'm learning the language

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and maybe working online or maybe go to a language center there

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and learn the language as an experiment for myself see how much progress I can make in

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that time that's really a goal of mine for sure um

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in terms of other ways of learning languages like uh language learning apps are very popular

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now I don't know how effective these really are I think something is better than nothing

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if you spend five minutes on Duolingo that's better than zero minutes doing anything

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so obviously I can support that

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but for me for me I don't think they're the best

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I think I spend too much time on my phone anyway to to excuse using um language apps

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I it's really boring

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but books are the are a really good way to learn either just reading a book

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or studying grammar from a book

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or making vocab lists from a language course book is boring

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but it's the traditional method and it's been used for centuries

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and there's a reason why because it works so I think

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that this is a good way of learning as well some apps

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I think can be useful I used to use Busuu

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which was essentially like a language course in app form

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so for the same reason it would teach you like a grammar lesson then it would give you a vocabulary lesson

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the same as if you were doing it with a grammar book.

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So I think that that was quite effective, but there were gaps.

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I don't think that it explained the grammar rules very well.

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Like I kind of could memorize the answers to the questions it gave me

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or memorize some structures but not really understand how it works or why it works or anything like that.

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So it was good.

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It was good, but it wasn't great um yeah

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and I'm not sure

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that same with things like AI AI makes mistakes now maybe in the future it will be better

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but AI does make mistakes so it's difficult to know um

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if what you have done is actually correct or if uh

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if it's has more mistakes in it and AI just isn't showing you yet

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so it's a little bit problematic I think some of the traditional methods as boring as they are do work

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and they have stood the test of time for a reason.

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I also think that communication, real talk with a native speaker can be so insightful and so helpful for language learning.

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I think it can be daunting at first.

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The first time I spoke in another language with

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native speakers of that language was terrifying because I know

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that I'm making mistakes and I feel embarrassed

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because I sound like a child and I don't want to sound like a child.

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I want to sound like me I want to be able to express myself

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and say what I want to say without not knowing the word

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but it's natural it's part of the progress nobody speaks a language fluently from day one

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it's impossible I think it's so revealing of your character

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if you can spend the time and have the motivation

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and discipline to learn a language by yourself

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and then have the confidence to talk to people to native speakers knowing

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that maybe your grammar is not perfect

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or maybe you want to use a better word than big

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but you don't know the word it's it's daunting it makes you feel very vulnerable

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so I think you have to have a lot of bravery

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and a lot of confidence to do it

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and I feel very um proud I guess or I admire people

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that learn languages um because I think it's a really good skill to have

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and I think it like I said it reveals somebody's true colors

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if they can do a challenge like that by themselves

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so with that being said I hope

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that this has been useful to practice listening to real um real English being spoken at my natural pace

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I've not tried to alter anything maybe some of it is a bit challenging maybe you need to listen to it twice

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But hey, that's part of the process.

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I would need to do exactly the same thing too in a different language.

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It's completely normal, completely human.

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If you would like to see more videos like this, please let me know.

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I will try to make some more longer videos to practice comprehensible input

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because I think this style is really useful for learners.

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It's useful for me when I'm learning. But that's everything.

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So I hope you have an amazing day.

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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson

This speaking lesson is built on the video “English Podcast 1: Learning Languages”. The speaker keeps coming back to these words: language, learning, learn. This video has 238 sentences and 3055 words to shadow. The speech runs for 17:50. The speaker talks at a natural 171 words per minute, close to everyday conversation. 84% 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

15 words from the video worth learning, with pronunciation and meaning:

Word	Pronunciation	Meaning
grammar noun	/ˈɡɹæm.ə(ɹ)/	A system of rules and principles for the structure of a language, or of languages in general.
helpful adjective	/ˈhɛlp.fl̩/	Furnishing help; giving aid; useful.
dedicate verb	/ˈdɛdɪˌkeɪt/	To set apart for a deity or for religious purposes; consecrate.
pace noun	/peɪs/	A step taken with the foot.
depend verb	/dɪˈpɛnd/	To be contingent or conditioned; to have something as a necessary condition
bore verb	/boɹ/	To inspire boredom in somebody.
topic noun	/ˈtɑpɪk/	A subject; a theme; a category or general area of interest.
audio adjective	/ˈɔ.di.oʊ/	Focused on audible sound, as opposed to sight.
commitment noun	/kəˈmɪtmənt/	The act of sending a legislative bill to committee for review.
emotionally adverb	/ɪˈməʊʃənəli/	In an emotional manner; displaying emotion.
hobby noun	/ˈhɑ.bi/	An activity that one enjoys doing in one's spare time.
vocabulary noun	/vəˈkæb.jə.lə.ɹi/	A usually alphabetized and explained collection of words e.g. of a particular field, or prepared for a specific purpose, often for learning.
lesson noun	/ˈlɛs.ən/	A section of learning or teaching into which a wider learning content is divided.
reveal verb	/ɹɪˈviːl/	To uncover; to show and display that which was hidden.
skill noun	/skɪl/	A capacity to do something well; a technique, an ability, usually acquired or learned, as opposed to abilities that are regarded as innate.

Phrasal verbs you will hear

Word	Meaning
slow down verb	To decelerate.
go back to verb	To stem from; to originate in.
build up verb	To erect; to construct.
go through verb	To travel from one end of something to the other.
save up verb	To accumulate money, especially for a specific, planned expenditure.
tune out verb	To stop paying attention to; to ignore; to zone out.

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	I've been learning · you've been thinking
Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now	I've always liked · I've heard · I've dedicated
Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it	being said · was frustrated · are not surrounded
Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing	day which is · somebody who is

Pronunciation to watch

The speaker uses 71 contractions and reduced forms, such as don't, I'm, you're. Say them the short way, as you hear them.

The “sh” and “zh” sounds: emotionally /ɪˈməʊʃənəli/, exposure /ɪkˈspəʊ.ʒə(ɹ)/, essentially /ɪˈsɛnʃəli/, associate /əˈsoʊʃi.ət/, crucial /ˈkɹuː.ʃəl/
Long words — get the stress right: emotionally /ɪˈməʊʃənəli/, vocabulary /vəˈkæb.jə.lə.ɹi/, experiment /ɪkˈspɛɹ.ə.mənt/, disappointed /ˌdɪsəˈpɔɪnɪd/, essentially /ɪˈsɛnʃəli/

How to practise with this video

Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
Start at 0.75× speed, shadow it sentence by sentence, then go back to normal speed once it feels easy.
Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like grammar, helpful, dedicate.

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 →

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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson

Key vocabulary in this video

Phrasal verbs you will hear

Grammar in this video

Pronunciation to watch

How to practise with this video

What is the Shadowing Technique?

2 Tips For Improving Your Listening Skills