Shadowing Practice: Every Hardware Protocol Explained Simply in 10 Minutes! - Learn English Speaking with Video
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your computer, your phone, your car.
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Every electronic device you own has dozens of tiny components inside it.
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And all of those components need a way to talk to each other.
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That is what hardware protocols do.
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They are the rules that let chips, sensors, and controllers exchange data reliably.
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Some protocols use four wires, some use two.
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And one of them uses just a single wire for everything.
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Each one was designed to solve a different problem.
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Here is every major hardware protocol, explained simply.
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UART, which stands for Universal Asynchronous Receiver Transmitter, is one of the oldest ways two devices can communicate with each other.
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It has been around for decades, and it is still one of the first protocols most engineers learn.
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UART uses just two wires.
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One wire sends data, the other wire receives data.
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That is the entire setup.
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The word asynchronous is important here.
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It means there is no shared clock signal between the two devices.
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Instead, both sides agree on a communication speed before they start talking.
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That speed is called the baud rate.
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Common baud rates are 9600 and 1150200 bits per second.
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Think of it like two people agreeing to speak at the same pace before a phone call.
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If one person talks too fast and the other listens too slow, the conversation breaks down completely.
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You will find UART everywhere.
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Arduino boards, GPS modules, Bluetooth adapters, debug consoles, and many embedded systems still rely on it today.
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It is not the fastest protocol out there.
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It can only connect two devices at a time, point to point.
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And there is no error correction built in, so if data gets corrupted during transmission, neither side will know unless you add your own checks.
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But the reason engineers keep using it after all these years is because it is dead simple to set up.
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You connect two wires, set the baud rate on both devices, and you are good to go.
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No complicated configuration.
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No addressing scheme.
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No extra hardware required.
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When you just need two devices to talk, and simplicity matters more than speed, UART is still the first choice for most hardware projects.
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SPI, which stands for Serial Peripheral Interface.
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This protocol is a clear step up from UART in both speed and capability.
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Instead of two wires, SPI uses four.
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There is a clock wire that keeps both devices in sync.
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A MOSI wire, which stands for MLAV-IN, sends data from the master to the slave.
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A MISO wire, which stands for master in slave out, sends data back from the slave to the master.
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And a chip select wire that tells the system which device the master wants to talk to.
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The big difference between SPI and UART is that SPI is synchronous.
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That clock wire keeps both devices running at exactly the same timing.
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The master device controls the clock and the slave devices follow it exactly.
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No guessing.
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No mismatch.
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No baud rate negotiation.
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Think of it like a conductor leading an orchestra.
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Everyone plays at the exact same tempo because they are all following the same beat.
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SPI is fast.
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Much faster than both UART and I2C.
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Some SPI implementations can reach speeds of tens of megabits per second.
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You will find it inside SD cards, display screens, flash memory chips, and sensors that need to move large amounts of data quickly.
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But there is a clear downside.
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Every additional device you connect needs its own dedicated chip select wire.
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So if you connect five devices, you need five extra wires just for device selection.
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That adds up fast on a real circuit board.
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SPI is the best choice when you need raw speed and only have a small number of devices.
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But if you need to connect many devices at once, that wiring cost becomes a real problem.
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I2C, which stands for Inter-Integrated Circuit.
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This protocol solves the biggest problem SPI has.
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It only uses two wires, one for data called SDA and one for the clock called SCL.
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And on those same two wires, you can connect up to 127 different devices.
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No extra wires needed no matter how many devices you add.
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How does it manage that?
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Every device on the I2C bus has its own unique address, like a phone number.
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When the master wants to talk to a specific device, it broadcasts that address on the bus first.
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Every device connected hears the call, but only the device with the matching address responds.
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Think of it like a group chat where everyone is on the same line, but each person only speaks up when their name is called.
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This addressing system is what makes I2C so efficient with wiring.
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You will find I2C in temperature sensors, OLED displays, gyroscopes, accelerometers, real-time clock modules,
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and many small components that report data back to a main controller.
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It is probably the most popular protocol for connecting multiple low-speed sensors to a single microcontroller.
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The trade-off is speed.
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I2C is noticeably slower than SPI because all devices share the same two wires.
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The more devices you put on the bus, the more traffic there is and communication can slow down.
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There is also a hard limit of 127 addresses, so you cannot go beyond that.
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But for most real-world projects, 127 is far more than enough.
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When you need to connect 10 or 20 small sensors without turning your circuit board into a wiring nightmare, I2C is the best option available.
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For most engineers, that wiring simplicity is worth the speed trade-off.
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CAN, which stands for Controller Area Network.
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This protocol was invented by Bosch in 1983, and it was designed for one specific environment.
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Cars.
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Think about a modern car for a second.
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It has dozens of small computers inside.
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The engine control unit, the braking system, the airbags, the dashboard, the transmission controller, the power steering module.
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All of these systems need to talk to each other constantly.
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And they cannot afford to fail, because failure in a car can mean a serious accident.
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CAN uses two wires, called CAN-high and CAN-low.
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Every device on the network sends and receives data on those same two wires.
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But here is what makes CAN different from everything else on this list.
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It has a built-in priority system called arbitration.
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If two devices try to send a message at the exact same time, the CAN protocol automatically compares the message IDs and lets the higher priority message go through first.
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The lower priority message backs off and tries again.
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No data is lost.
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No collision.
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No crash.
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The system just handles it on its own.
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That kind of reliability is why CAN is not just in passenger cars.
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You will find it in trucks, industrial robots, factory automation lines, agricultural equipment, and even medical devices.
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Anywhere that communication failure is not acceptable, CAN is the protocol engineers trust.
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It is not the fastest protocol.
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It is more complex to set up than UART or I2C.
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But when reliability matters more than raw speed, CAN is one of the most battle-tested protocols ever designed.
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It has been keeping cars safe for over 40 years now.
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RS-232 This is one of the oldest serial communication standards still in use today.
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It was first defined back in 1960, which means it is over 60 years old, and engineers still rely on it.
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RS-232 connects two devices in a simple point-to-point setup.
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One device talks to one device.
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No bus.
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No network.
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Just a direct connection.
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It transmits data by using voltage levels to represent ones and zeros.
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But unlike UART, which typically uses low voltages like 0 and 3.3 volts or 0 and 5 volts, RS-232 uses much larger voltage swings.
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A logic 0 is represented by a positive voltage up to plus 15 volts.
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A logic 1 is represented by a negative voltage down to minus 15 volts.
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That large voltage difference was intentional.
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The bigger the swing between high and low, the harder it is for electrical noise to corrupt the signal.
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That means RS-232 works more reliably over longer cable distances than UART does.
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You might recognize RS-232 from the old 9-pin connector called DB9 that used to be on the back of every desktop computer.
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Today, you will not find it on any modern laptop or consumer device.
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USB replaced it a long time ago.
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But RS-232 is still alive and well in industrial settings.
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Factory machines, scientific instruments, point-of-sale terminals, networking equipment, and CNC machines all still use RS-232 connections
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Engineers use USB-to-RS-232 adapter cables all the time to communicate with legacy equipment
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that was built decades ago and still runs perfectly fine When something works and does not break,
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nobody replaces it That is exactly why RS-232 is still around after more than 60 years One wire
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The name tells you everything about this protocol.
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It communicates using just one single wire.
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And here is the interesting part.
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That same wire also supplies power to the connected device at the same time.
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One wire handles both data and power.
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That is the most minimal wiring you can possibly have.
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One wire was developed by Dallas Semiconductor, which is now part of Maxim Integrated.
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Each one-wire device comes with a unique 64-bit ID that is burned into the chip at the factory.
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That ID can never be changed and is globally unique, so even if you connect dozens of devices on the same single wire,
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the master can identify every single one and talk to each one individually.
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The communication works like this.
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The wire voltage sits high by default.
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When a device needs to send data, it pulls the voltage low for a very precise amount of time of time.
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A short low pulse means one thing.
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A longer low pulse means something else.
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The exact timing determines whether the signal represents a 1 or a 0.
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The most famous one-wire device ever made is the DS-Wate8B20 temperature sensor.
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It is cheap, accurate, and you can daisy-chain dozens of them on a single wire.
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You will also find one wire in iButton security keys, battery fuel gauges inside laptops, and HVAC temperature monitoring systems.
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The obvious downside is speed.
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One wire, is much slower than SPI, I2C, or even UART.
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You would never use it for anything that requires fast data transfer.
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But when all you need is a simple sensor reading, and you want the absolute minimum amount of wiring possible, nothing beats one wire.
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One wire for data.
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One wire for power.
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Same wire.
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That is all it takes.
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Anyway, I also made some other cool videos too.
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Do not forget to watch them later.
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Okay.
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This video has 155 sentences and 1796 words to shadow. The speech runs for 10:31. The speaker talks at a natural 171 words per minute, close to everyday conversation. Only 77% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English, so the vocabulary is demanding.
Key vocabulary in this video
15 words from the video worth learning, with pronunciation and meaning:
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| wire noun | /ˈwaɪɚ/ | Metal formed into a thin, even thread, now usually by being drawn through a hole in a steel die. |
| protocol noun | /ˈpɹoʊtəˌkɑl/ | An amendment to an official treaty. |
| connect verb | /kəˈnɛkt/ | To join (to another object): to attach, or to be intended to attach or capable of attaching, to another object. |
| voltage noun | /ˈvəʊltɪd͡ʒ/ | The difference in electrostatic potential between two points in space, especially between live and neutral conductors or the earth. |
| sensor noun | /ˈsɛn.sɚ/ | A device or organ that detects certain external stimuli and responds in a distinctive manner. |
| clock noun | /klɑk/ | A chronometer, an instrument that measures time, particularly the time of day. |
| chip noun | /t͡ʃɪp/ | A small piece broken from a larger piece of solid material. |
| slave noun | /sleɪv/ | A person who is held in servitude as the property of another person, and whose labor (and often also whose body and life) is subject to the owner's volition… |
| hardware noun | /ˈhɑɹdˌwɛɹ/ | Fixtures, equipment, fasteners, tools, and devices used for general-purpose construction and repair of a structure or object. Also such equipment as sold as… |
| controller noun | /kənˈtɹoʊlɚ/ | One who controls something. |
| circuit noun | /ˈsɝ.kɪt/ | The act of moving or revolving around, or as in a circle or orbit; a revolution |
| priority noun | /pɹaɪˈɒɹɪti/ | An item's relative importance. |
| component noun | /kəmˈpoʊ.nənt/ | A smaller, self-contained part of a larger entity. Often refers to a manufactured object that is part of a larger device. |
| communicate verb | /kəˈmjuːnɪkeɪt/ | To impart or transmit (information or knowledge) to someone; to make known, to tell. |
| module noun | /ˈmɑd͡ʒul/ | A self-contained component of a system, often interchangeable, which has a well-defined interface to the other components. |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| set up verb | /ˌsɛt ˈʌp/ | To make ready for use. |
| add up verb | To take the sum of; to total. | |
| back off verb | To move backwards away from something. | |
| break down verb | To stop functioning. | |
| go through verb | To travel from one end of something to the other. | |
| slow down verb | To decelerate. | |
| speak up verb | /ˌspik ˈʌp/ | To talk more loudly or clearly. |
Pronunciation to watch
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: transmission /tɹænsˈmɪʃən/, flash /flæʃ/, efficient /ɪˈfɪʃənt/, implementation /ˌɪmplɪmənˈteɪʃən/, configuration /kənˌfɪɡ.əˈɹeɪ̯.ʃən/
- Long words — get the stress right: priority /pɹaɪˈɒɹɪti/, communicate /kəˈmjuːnɪkeɪt/, simplicity /sɪmˈplɪsɪti/, complicated /ˈkɑm.plɪˌkeɪ.tɪd/, electrical /ɪˈlɛktɹɪkəl/
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 wire, protocol, connect.
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.