Shadowing Practice: ENGLISH SPEECH | STAN LEE: Believe In Your Ideas (English Subtitles) - Learn English Speaking with Video

Please join me in giving a big UCLA extension welcome to our inaugural Icons of LA Award recipient, Mr. Stan Lee.

Thank you.

First of all, I hate Dean's boots.

He said my whole speech.

All the things he said, I was going to say.

So I sit here before you, hopeless, worried.

What can I possibly do to make...

I didn't really mean that, Dean.

I spent quite a lot of time writing a 25-page speech that I could give you.

And as I looked at it, I said, would I want to hear this speech?

So I tore it up.

So I stand here now defenseless with nothing except to tell you I think you're all great.

The fact that you're taking the courses you're taking,

you're trying to help, to add to what you already know, to make yourselves better workers,

better contributors, and I think that's great.

I think also that I'm not going to make a long speech, but I'm going to tell you I was told to say an anecdote.

Anecdotes are easy.

So I thought to myself, what kind of anecdote can I tell these people who really have more important things to do?

And I figured I'm going to tell you how Spider-Man came into being.

It's a true story, although sometimes it's hard even for me to believe it.

But we had I had already done the Fantastic Four and I think maybe the X-Men, I can't remember the order,

but my publisher came to me and he said, Stan, I want you to come up with another superhero.

So I said, okay, and I went home, and when my publisher said do something, I'd better do it, because I wanted to keep my job.

I thought, what can I come up with now?

And the most important thing in a superhero at first is the superpower.

Once you get that, everything else comes along.

So I thought, what power will I give a new guy?

And I saw a fly crawling on the wall.

And I said, hey, if I could get a superhero that could stick to walls and crawl on him, man, that would be cool.

And that, no, I'm lying to you.

I don't think the word cool was in use then.

I probably said it'll be groovy.

I'll never lie to you.

So I thought that was good, now I needed a name.

So I said, well, let's see, Fly Man, Mosquito Man.

I got down to Spider Man.

Spider Man, it just sounded dramatic.

So okay, I had my hero, I had his power, his name, and then I figured just for fun, I'm gonna give him personal problems,

because except for you people, your lives are perfect, But most other people have personal problems.

And then I thought I'd make him a teenager, because there were no teenage superheroes that I knew of at the time.

So armed with all that wonderful material, those great ideas, I ran into my publisher's office, and I told him.

This was my reaction, the reaction he gave me.

Stan, that is the worst idea I have ever heard.

First of all, and he started to give me his, because he's a very logical man, very intellectual.

First of all, people hate spiders,

so you can't call a hero spider-man you want him to be a teenager teenagers can only be sidekicks

and you want him to have personal problems stan don't you

know what a superhero is they don't have personal problems well i left the office disappointed

but obviously a much wiser man and i couldn't get spider-man out of my system

so we were about to kill a magazine i think it was called amazing fantasy it wasn't selling well

and we were sending the last issue to press

when you do the last issue of a magazine nobody cares what you put in it because the book is dying

just to get it out of my system I put Spider-Man

in Amazing Fantasy feature him on the cover forgot about it

a month later all the sales figures came in my publisher came racing into my office Stan Stan you remember

that character we both loved

so much Spider-Man let's do him as a series now why am I telling you this besides the fact

that I have to kill a little time if you have an idea

that you genuinely think is good don't let some idiot talk you out of it Now,

that doesn't mean that every wild notion you come up with is going to be genius, but if there is something that you feel is good,

something you want to do, something that means something to you, try to do it.

Because I think you can only do your best work if you're doing what you want to do,

and if you're doing it the way you think it should be done.

And if you can take pride in it after you've done it, no matter what it is, you can look at it and say, I did that, and I think it's pretty damn good.

That's a great feeling.

So don't let idiots talk you out of something something that you think is good.

By the same token, that doesn't mean every single thing you think is good is going to win a prize.

Gotta have a little judgment there.

I've had other things that I thought were good that didn't work, but I'll save that for the next award you give me.

I'll need something to tell you about.

And I want to say, I cannot tell you how much I appreciate this award.

And this college has meant a lot to me.

I have spoken here many times over the years.

It's one of the great institutes of learning.

And to get this award, the Icon Award, I am truly touched.

So I want to thank the staff and whoever it is that gave it to me.

And I want to wish all of you the best luck in the world.

Just do your thing.

Do it as well as you.

That's the important thing.

Don't shirk.

Whatever you do, give it your best shot you'll be glad you did.

Exalt!

Thank you.

Together.

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 Practice: ENGLISH SPEECH | STAN LEE: Believe In Your Ideas (English Subtitles) - Learn English Speaking with Video

Context & Background

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What is the Shadowing Technique?