Shadowing Practice: EVERY LEVEL OF MANIPULATION - Learn English Speaking with Video
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There are seven levels of manipulation, and most people can only spot the first two.
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Everything above that doesn't feel like manipulation at all.
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It feels like friendship.
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It feels like love.
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And sometimes, it feels like your own idea.
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That's what makes the higher levels so dangerous.
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By the time you notice them, they've usually been working on you for months.
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By the end of this video, you'll be able to recognize all seven,
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and you'll know the one question that protects you from every single one of them.
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Let's start with the easiest to see.
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Level 1.
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Flattery.
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You're so smart.
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I knew you'd understand.
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Honestly, you're the only one I can talk to about this.
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Someone as talented as you could do this in five minutes.
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This is Level 1.
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Manipulation through compliments.
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It's the oldest trick there is, and most people think they're immune to it.
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You hear an obviously fake compliment, you roll your eyes, and you move on.
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But a 2010 study found something uncomfortable.
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Researchers showed people flattering messages they knew were insincere, sales pitches that were clearly buttering them up.
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People dismissed the flattery consciously, but deeper, measured attitudes toward the flatterer still shifted in a positive direction,
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and that hidden effect lasted longer than the conscious rejection.
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In other words, you can see through flattery and still be moved by it.
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Flattery is level one because it's mostly harmless.
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Your guard goes down a little, and that's all.
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But a guard that goes down a little is exactly what
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Level 2 needs.
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Level 2 – The Favor Someone does something nice for you that you never asked for.
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They buy you a coffee, they help you move a box, they send you a small gift.
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And a few days later, they ask for something much bigger.
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In 1971, psychologist Dennis Regan ran a simple experiment.
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Participants were paired with a stranger who was secretly working for the researchers.
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During a break, the stranger left the room and came back with a bottle of Coke for the participant, without being asked.
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Later, the stranger asked the participant to buy raffle tickets.
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People who'd received the Coke bought about twice as many tickets as those who hadn't.
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And here's the part that matters.
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It barely mattered whether they actually liked the stranger.
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That's the power of reciprocity.
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A small, unrequested favor creates a feeling of debt.
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And that feeling of debt doesn't care whether the deal is fair.
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At level two, you're not being tricked.
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You're being made to feel like you owe something.
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And once you've paid a little, it gets easier to ask for more.
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Level three, the small yes.
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At level three, nobody asks you for the big thing.
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They ask for something tiny.
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Just a quick favor.
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Just this once.
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Just a small exception.
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In 1966, researchers Jonathan Friedman and Scott Frazier asked homeowners in California to put a large,
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ugly sign in their front yard that said, drive carefully.
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Most people refused.
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But a different group of homeowners had been asked, two weeks earlier, to put a tiny, almost invisible sign about safe driving in their window.
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Most of them agreed to that.
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And later, when they were asked about the big, ugly sign, a large majority said yes.
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Psychologists call it the foot -in -the -door technique.
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Once you've said yes to something small, you start to see yourself as the kind of person who says yes
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and saying no to the next step would feel like going against yourself
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this is where manipulation stops being about one moment
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and becomes about a direction every small yes moves the line a little further
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and you never notice the line moving because each single step looks so small
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and that's where the dangerous levels begin level four love bombing
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it starts like a dream someone new comes into your life and they're completely obsessed with you.
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Constant messages, big compliments, plans for the future after two weeks.
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You've never felt so seen.
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Then, suddenly, it changes.
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They go cold.
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They're distant.
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You don't know what you did wrong.
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And then, just as suddenly, the warmth comes back and the relief feels incredible.
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This is level four, and it's built on one of the most powerful forces in psychology.
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In the 1950s, psychologist B .F.
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Skinner studied how animals learn.
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He found that when a reward came every time, animals learned quickly but quit quickly once the reward stopped.
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When the reward came unpredictably, sometimes yes, sometimes no, the behavior became incredibly persistent.
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Unpredictable rewards are the same principle that keeps people pulling the lever on slot machines.
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At level 4, affection becomes the reward, and the manipulator controls when it arrives.
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You don't stay because things are good, you stay waiting for the good to come back.
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Once someone has that kind of hold over your emotions, the next step.. is to make sure nobody else can loosen it.
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Level 5.
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Isolation.
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It never starts with, don't see your friends.
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It starts with small comments.
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Your sister doesn't really get you like I do.
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I just feel like your friends are a bit jealous of us.
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Why do you need to go out when we have such a good time here?
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Slowly, your world gets smaller.
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You see your friends less.
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You stop telling your family what's going on because they'd only worry.
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And without anyone else around, there's no one to say, hey, that's not normal.
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That's why isolation is one of the clearest warning signs of what experts call coercive control,
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a pattern of behavior used to dominate another person over time.
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It's taken so seriously that in 2015, England and Wales made coercive control in relationships a criminal offense.
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At level five, the manipulator becomes your only mirror, and whoever controls the mirror can start to change what you see.
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Level six, gaslighting.
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That never happened.
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You're remembering it wrong.
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You're being way too sensitive.
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Everyone agrees with me, you know.
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The name comes from Gaslight, a 1938 play that became a famous 1944 film.
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In it, a husband secretly dims the gaslights in the house, and when his wife notices, he insists she's imagining it,
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until she starts to doubt her own mind.
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The word became so common that Merriam -Webster named gaslighting its word of the year in 2022.
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Here's why it works.
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Your memory is not a recording.
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In a famous 1974 study, psychologist Elizabeth Loftus showed people a film of a car crash.
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Afterwards, some were asked how fast the cars were going when they smashed into each other.
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Others were asked about the cars that hit each other.
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The smashed group gave higher speed estimates, and a week later, they were more likely to remember broken glass that was never in the film.
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One word changed what people remembered.
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Now imagine someone you trust doing that to you every day, for months.
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At level 6, you stop trusting your own mind.
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And once that happens, you'll believe almost anything the manipulator tells you, including the final lie.
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Level 7.
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You.
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The final level is the hardest to see, because there's no one else in the room.
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At level 7, the manipulation runs by itself.
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You defend the person who hurts you.
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You explain away the warning signs before your friends can point them out.
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You tell yourself it's not that bad, that everyone has problems, that it's probably your fault anyway.
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The manipulator doesn't need to do anything anymore.
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You've learned to do it for them.
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But level 7 isn't only about other people.
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It's also every time you tell yourself the story you want to hear.
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One more episode.
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I'll start on Monday.
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This time it'll be different.
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The physicist Richard Feynman once said it perfectly.
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The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.
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At level 7, you realize the most persuasive voice in your life has always been your own.
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And that means the defense was always going to have to start there, too.
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But here's the part most people miss.
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These levels don't always come in order.
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Some people go straight to level 4.
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Some stay at level 1 for years.
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And every one of us uses the lower levels sometimes, a little flattery, a favor when we want something.
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That doesn't make you a monster.
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What matters is whether someone is trying to work with you or work on you.
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So here's the one question that protects you from all seven levels.
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Next time someone asks you for something, pause and ask yourself, what happens if I say no?
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At level one, a no to someone flattering you gets you a shrug.
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At level 2, it reveals whether the favor was a gift or a trap.
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At level 3, it stops the line from moving.
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At level 4, watch whether the warmth suddenly disappears.
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At level 5, notice whether they make you feel guilty for having other people in your life.
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At level 6, notice whether a no is suddenly something you made up.
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And at level 7, ask yourself the same question.
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If someone you love wanted to leave this situation, what would you tell them?
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Healthy people can hear no. Manipulators can't.
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And if parts of this video felt a little too familiar, talk to someone you trust outside the relationship.
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That's the first step back to seeing clearly.
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Tell me in the comments which level you think is the most dangerous. And subscribe!
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Because next time, we're going inside the mind of someone who does all seven, and why the people around them almost never notice.
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This speaking lesson is built on the video “EVERY LEVEL OF MANIPULATION”. This video has 155 sentences and 1595 words to shadow. The speech runs for 9:26. The speaker talks at a natural 169 words per minute, close to everyday conversation. 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
15 words from the video worth learning, with pronunciation and meaning:
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| reward noun | /ɹɪˈwɔɹd/ | Something of value given in return for an act. |
| manipulation noun | /məˌnɪp.juˈleɪ.ʃən/ | The practice of manipulating or the state of being manipulated. |
| psychologist noun | /ˌsaɪˈkɑl.ə.d͡ʒɪst/ | An expert in the field of psychology. |
| researcher noun | /ˈɹiˌsɝ.t͡ʃɚ/ | One who researches. |
| compliment noun | /ˈkɑmpləmənt/ | An expression of praise, congratulation, or respect. |
| participant noun | /pɑːɹˈtɪsəpənt/ | One who participates. |
| trick noun | /ˈtɹɪk/ | Something designed to fool, dupe, outsmart, mislead or swindle. |
| mirror noun | /ˈmiɹɚ/ | A smooth surface, usually made of glass with reflective material painted on the underside, that reflects light so as to give an image of what is in front of it. |
| ugly adjective | /ˈʌɡli/ | Displeasing to the eye; aesthetically unpleasing. |
| principle noun | /ˈpɹɪn.sɪ.pəl/ | A fundamental assumption, fundamental law or guiding belief. |
| smash verb | /smæʃ/ | To break (something brittle) violently. |
| isolation noun | /ˌaɪsəˈleɪʃən/ | The state of being isolated, detached, or separated; the state of being away from other people. |
| secretly adverb | /ˈsiː.kɹɪt.li/ | In secret, covertly. |
| warmth noun | /wɔɹmθ/ | A moderate degree of heat; the sensation of being warm. |
| defend verb | /dɪˈfɪnd/ | To ward off attacks against (something or someone). |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| come back verb | To return to a place. | |
| go down verb | To descend; to move from a higher place to a lower one. | |
| go out verb | To leave, especially a building. | |
| hold over verb | /ˌhəʊld ˈəʊ̯.və/ | (Of a resource) To support or sustain someone for a limited period. |
| make up verb | /ˌmeɪk ˈʌp/ | To constitute, to compose. |
| see through verb | To perceive visually through something transparent. |
Sentences worth repeating
Short, complete lines from the video that you can reuse in everyday conversation:
- Let's start with the easiest to see.
- Your guard goes down a little, and that's all.
- At level two, you're not being tricked.
- You're being made to feel like you owe something.
- You've never felt so seen.
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 | be moved · were paired · being asked |
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | you've paid · you've said · You've never felt |
| Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing | those who hadn · person who says · person who hurts |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 35 contractions and reduced forms, such as you're, doesn't, don't. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: manipulation /məˌnɪp.juˈleɪ.ʃən/, smash /smæʃ/, isolation /ˌaɪsəˈleɪʃən/, friendship /ˈfɹɛn(d)ʃɪp/, exception /əkˈsɛpʃən/
- Long words — get the stress right: manipulation /məˌnɪp.juˈleɪ.ʃən/, psychologist /ˌsaɪˈkɑl.ə.d͡ʒɪst/, participant /pɑːɹˈtɪsəpənt/, isolation /ˌaɪsəˈleɪʃən/, experiment /ɪkˈspɛɹ.ə.mənt/
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 reward, manipulation, psychologist.
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.