Shadowing Practice: Fernkenstein's Monster | Full Episode | ARTHUR - Learn English Speaking with Video

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Every day when you're walking down the street, everybody that you meet has an original point of view.

And I say, hey, what a wonderful kind of day.

If you could learn to work and play and get along with each other.

You got to listen to your heart, listen to the beat, listen to the rhythm, rhythm of the street.

Open up your eyes, open up your ears, get together and make things better by working together.

It's a simple message and it comes from the heart.

Oh, believe in yourself, for that's the place to start.

Start and I say, hey, hey, what a wonderful kind of day.

You can learn to work and play and get along with each other.

Hey!

What a wonderful kind of day Hey!

Hey, T .W.

Hey!

Whoa! Who wrote Frankenstein?

It was Mary Shelley at age 19.

How did this young girl come to create the most famous monster in the world?

She was on vacation with her friends in the Swiss Alps.

They decided to hold a contest to see who can invent the scariest story.

And now the ghost, too weak to haunt, once more shall fade, as is his want.

End.

Your turn, Mary.

I am by birth a Genovese, and my family is one of the most distilled...

Out of this friendly competition, a masterpiece of horror was born.

He was soon borne away by the waves and lost in darkness and distance.

Well, that's Frankenstein.

Look, I know it needs work, guys, but what do you think?

Guys?

If Mary Shelley can scare the world with her brilliant story, then maybe I can do it too.

Frankenstein's Monster How can it rain for three straight days?

We're trapped inside with nothing to do.

I know something we could do.

Let's see who can tell the scariest story.

Ooh, I love scary stories.

Really scary stories.

Yeah, no baby stuff.

It has to be as scary as you can make it.

Okay, okay.

I've got a really good one.

There was this vampire.

No way.

It was a giant radioactive lizard.

No way.

It was a giant radioactive vampire lizard.

Yeah, and he was really, really scary.

The end.

That wasn't scary, Buster.

It wasn't even a story.

I'll give you a scary story.

There was this girl, and she went to this dance.

Her dress was perfect, and so were her accessories.

She danced and danced.

It made her thirsty.

She went for punch, but the clumsy oaf in front of her tripped over his cheap shoe.

His punch spilled all over her dress, and the stain would never come out.

Was that supposed to be scary?

Fine.

Your turn, Arthur.

Go ahead and scare me.

Okay.

You asked for it.

There was this kid, and on his birthday, he got a hideous and mysterious pair of underwear.

He buried them in his underwear drawer, and that was that.

The next day, he was forced to go to the board and do long division.

Suddenly, his pants fell down.

And there it was.

The mysterious underwear.

The underwear he had never put on.

The underwear he thought he had buried forever.

Oh.

Arthur, you've got to get over your underwear obsession.

You split your pants months ago.

It's over.

Move on.

I guess it's my turn now.

My story is true.

It happened to my uncle.

He's the one who saw the thing.

The thing?

My uncle's an entomologist.

A what?

A person who studies insects.

You know, bugs, beetles, that sort of thing.

That's not the scary part.

Anyway, he's a scientist.

Stuff like that doesn't bother him.

But there was this one time.

One night, when my uncle was a graduate student, He was working late in the lab with one of his professors.

It was raining heavily.

They were unpacking specimens from an expedition to the Congo.

Some of the insects were quite large.

How large?

My uncle recalled a beetle with two -foot -long pincers, the Congolese pinchopod.

Eww!

Anyway, it was late, and the professor decided to go home.

He had no umbrella, so he decided to look around for an extra one that somebody might have left behind.

My uncle kept working.

He started to open the last crate and was surprised to find that it was already open.

That's odd, he remarked.

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Kinda weird.

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Well, just then the old professor called out that he had found an umbrella.

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It was a plain umbrella with a long wooden handle.

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The only distinguishing mark was a green emerald at the end of the handle, a large, round jewel that caught the light and glinted.

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It looked almost as if it had blinked, as if it were some kind of eye.

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My uncle walked the old professor to the door so he could lock up after.

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The professor stepped out into the rain and opened the umbrella.

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There was a high -pitched buzzing, and then a horrible rattle of scales and wings.

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My uncle could see this was no umbrella.

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It was some kind of a...

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Thing?

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He saw with horror that the wings were lined with hundreds of writhing stingers.

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He folded the stinging wings over the old professor.

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My uncle heard something like a satisfied slurp.

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And then, with a blood -curdling shriek, the thing flew off into the night.

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The old professor was never seen again.

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I just...

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I couldn't sleep.

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Couldn't get that story out of my head.

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I know.

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I'd close my eyes and all I could see were those writhing stingers.

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I kept hearing the satisfied slurp.

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And the blood -curdling shriek.

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Hey, everybody.

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Isn't it beautiful today?

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Why did you have to tell us about the thing?

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Yeah, I was so happy before.

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How does your uncle sleep at night?

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Muffy, I don't have an uncle.

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And there is no thing.

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I made it up.

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You guys know that.

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But you said it was a true story.

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Were you lying?

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No. Saying that it all really happened was just part of the story.

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It's a common storytelling device, Arthur.

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By the way, Mary Shelley used it too.

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But those details, the lab and the rain and the insects, you made it all sound so real.

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Yeah, well, that's what a good storyteller does.

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Look, it's not real, so get over it.

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But I can still hear that blood -curdling shriek.

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And that satisfied slurp.

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And those writhing stingers.

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Who can forget about those?

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Come on, it's just stuff I made up.

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You know what's really scary, Fern?

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Your brain.

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I mean, how could you think up a story like that?

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Easily.

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And I could think up even scarier ones if I tried.

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Listen to this.

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It was a dark and stormy night.

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Let's get out of here!

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Fraidy cats.

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Hi, Buster.

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Relax.

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I just wanted to remind you about the library book sale tomorrow.

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Can't hear you!

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Can't hear you!

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Hey, Arthur, will you help me with this?

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What's in there?

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Oh, Arthur, here.

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It's just...

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No!

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Keep your scary stories to yourself!

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Scarier pants -off books are always hot items at the book sale.

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Are you absolutely sure you want to part with all of these, Fern?

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Yeah.

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Since I read Frankenstein, I found them all kind of tame.

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Wait till I plug in these lights.

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A touch of glitz and glamour for the book sale.

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Be right back.

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Welcome to the totally unscary book sale.

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Here, everybody.

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Garlic.

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Prunella said it would protect us.

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What's with the garlic?

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Be gone, queen of darkness.

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Your powers mean nothing here.

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I am not the queen of darkness.

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Um, what exactly caused this blackout, do you think?

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Electrical hubris.

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I blew a circuit when I plugged in the fancy -schmancy slime.

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Hi, we've got lots of scare -your -pants -off books today.

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Everybody likes a good scare.

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Not everybody.

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Well, if you don't want scary, we've got plenty of options here today.

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This one's hilarious.

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Captain Underpants and the Wrath of the Wicked Wedgie Woman. So funny.

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I loved it.

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Or how about this one?

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A real tearjerker.

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Old yeller. So sad.

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I cried and cried.

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Me too.

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A good writer can make you feel anything.

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You're right.

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Arthur, I'm not ready to go.

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Listen, guys.

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I'm not the queen of darkness, and I can prove it.

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Yeah, right.

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My story was scary, but I can make it unscary.

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Just listen.

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No way!

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The umbrella doesn't have to turn into the thing.

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I can make it into anything you like.

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It's a trick.

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No, listen.

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I could make it turn into something wonderful like...

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Like a dragon.

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Dragons are scary.

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Not this one.

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When the old professor opens the umbrella, it transforms into a golden dragon.

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Golden is good.

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Platinum is better.

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Okay, it's a platinum dragon.

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And it knows the way to a secret cave full of,

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you know, treasures, jewels, and really great, um, accessories. And shoes.

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Lots of shoes.

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Shoes?

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I don't get it.

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Or maybe the umbrella turns into something else.

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Like, like...

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An alien? But a nice one.

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Does it always have to be aliens?

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No!

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The umbrella could have superpowers.

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Hold on to it and you can, um...

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Fly?

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Fly!

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And rid the world of evildoers!

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Stop!

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Stop it, all of you!

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You're ruining the thing!

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D .W., what are you talking about?

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You don't even know what the thing is.

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I have ears, Arthur.

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For the past two days, the thing is all you've talked about.

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The slurp, the shriek, the stingers.

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I want them back in!

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But it's too scary, D .W.

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It could be scarier.

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I had a couple of ideas.

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Oh, yeah?

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Like what?

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I think the big horrible thing should break up into a lot of little horrible things.

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I really like the platinum dragon.

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You mean like lots of little spiders or scorpions running around?

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That kind of thing?

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That's good.

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We can hear you.

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We can hear you.

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We can hear you.

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We can hear you.

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We can hear you.

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Here's the deal.

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The little horrible things are really bloodthirsty.

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They take over the...

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What a wonderful kind of day

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We can learn to work and play

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And get along with each other

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What a wonderful kind of day

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What a wonderful kind of day

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235 sentences

Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson

This speaking lesson is built on the video “Fernkenstein's Monster”. The speaker keeps coming back to these words: Fern, scary, Arthur, listen, umbrella. This video has 206 sentences and 1823 words to shadow. The speech runs for 13:12. The speaker talks at a steady 138 words per minute, a comfortable pace for shadowing. Only 79% 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
scary adjective	/ˈskɛə.ɹi/	Causing fear or anxiety
uncle noun	/ˈʌŋ.kl̩/	The brother or brother-in-law of one’s parent.
umbrella noun	/ʌmˈbɹɛl.ə/	A cloth-covered frame used for protection against rain or sun.
underwear noun	/ˈʌndɚˌwɛɹ/	Clothes worn next to the skin, underneath outer clothing.
dragon noun	/ˈdɹæɡən/	In European mythologies, a gigantic beast, typically reptilian with leathery bat-like wings, lion-like claws, scaly skin and a lizard-like body, often a…
scare verb	/skɛɚ/	To frighten, terrify, startle, especially in a minor way.
pants noun	/pænts/	An outer garment that covers the body from the waist downwards, covering each leg separately, usually as far as the ankles; trousers.
horrible adjective	/ˈhɔɹ.ɪ.bəl/	Causing horror; terrible; shocking.
darkness noun	/ˈdɑɹk.nɪs/	The state of being dark; lack of light; the absolute or comparative absence of light.
shoe noun	/ˈʃu/	A protective covering for the foot, with a bottom part composed of thick leather or plastic sole and often a thicker heel, and a softer upper part made of…
rhythm noun	/ˈɹɪð.əm/	The variation of strong and weak elements (such as duration, accent) of sounds, notably in speech or music, over time; a beat or meter.
platinum noun	/ˈplæt.ɪn.əm/	The chemical element with atomic number 78 and symbol Pt; a dense, malleable, ductile, highly unreactive, silverish-white transition metal of great value.
satisfy verb	/ˈsætɪsfaɪ/	To be enough (for)
insect noun	/ˈɪn.sɛkt/	An arthropod (in the Insecta class) characterized by six legs, up to four wings, and a chitinous exoskeleton.
ear noun	/ˈɪə̯/	The organ of hearing, consisting of the pinna or auricle, auditory canal, eardrum, malleus, incus, stapes and cochlea.

Phrasal verbs you will hear

Word	Pronunciation	Meaning
get over verb		To overcome.
open up verb		To open.
think up verb		To create in one’s mind; to invent.
call out verb		To specify, especially in detail.
come out verb	/ˌkʌm ˈaʊt/	To be discovered; to be revealed.
fall down verb	/fɔl ˈdaʊn/	To fall to the ground. To collapse.
get out of verb		To leave, exit or escape from; to become free of.
get together verb		To meet, to gather together, to congregate.

Sentences worth repeating

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

We're trapped inside with nothing to do.
Let's see who can tell the scariest story.
I've got a really good one.
I'll give you a scary story.
How does your uncle sleep at night?

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	was born · was soon borne · was forced
Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing	one who saw · person who studies
Past continuous was/were + -ing — an action in progress at a moment in the past	was working · was raining · were unpacking
Superlatives the -est / the most … — the top or bottom of a group	the most famous · the scariest · the most distilled

Pronunciation to watch

The speaker uses 30 contractions and reduced forms, such as can't, don't, you're. Say them the short way, as you hear them.

The “th” sounds: rhythm /ˈɹɪð.əm/, bother /ˈbɑðɚ/, thirsty /ˈθɝs.ti/, writhe /ɹaɪð/, bloodthirsty /ˈblʌdˌθɚsti/
The “sh” and “zh” sounds: shoe /ˈʃu/, distinguish /dɪˈstɪŋ.ɡwɪʃ/, vacation /veɪˈkeɪ.ʃən/, treasure /ˈtɹɛʒəɹ/, expedition /ɛkspəˈdɪʃən/
Long words — get the stress right: mysterious /mɪˈstɪɹi.əs/, radioactive /ˌɹeɪdioʊˈæktɪv/, accessory /əkˈsɛs.(ə.)ɹi/, electrical /ɪˈlɛktɹɪkəl/, hilarious /hɪˈlɛə.ɹi.əs/

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 scary, uncle, umbrella.

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: Fernkenstein's Monster | Full Episode | ARTHUR - Learn English Speaking with Video

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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?

~Mummies Alive!~ | Episode #01 | Ra, Ra, Ra, Ra | (Re-Upload in HD)