Shadowing Practice: for those who are constantly lonely - Learn English Speaking with Video

We all know that to be loved is to be known.

But how do you become known enough to be loved?

How known do you have to be to be deserving of love?

No one ever tells you how to get there.

Are you someone who's still figuring out how to get there?

So I'm going to tell you two stories today.

I'm going to tell you the story of how I became known and the story of how I became loved.

So I'm not sure if a lot of you know this, but five years ago, I was on Brat TV.

Brat TV is a production company that makes original shows on YouTube geared toward Gen Z audiences, as well as the following amazing meme.

So much you don't know about me.

Like what are you like, axe murderer?

Worse What?

I'm a gamer.

If you know chicken girls that was brat TV, so I was on chicken girls is lesser-known cousin Charmers, it was a show about 14 witches one of

which was me at a summer camp who use magic to fight off Really terrifying demons

and protect their camp while still managing to have time for crushes and things like that I had my first film kiss.

I hope you do It was on the cheek, but you know, it still counts.

One unique thing about Brat TV

that you wouldn't know unless you watched a single one of their shows is that they primarily hire influencers as the actors.

Many A-list influencers made their acting debut on Brat TV.

Dixie D'Amelio, Nia from Dance Moms, and all of the ex-members of Piper Raquel's The Squad.

Those were the girls on my show.

Collectively, on all of their platforms combined, they had 20 million followers.

And they were all younger than me.

I, on the other hand, entered into the Brat TV multiverse the old-fashioned way, where I submitted a self-tape, somehow got a callback, did the callback, got the role.

Before the show, I didn't know anything about influencing.

I didn't even have TikTok.

That sounds so crazy saying it now, but the point is, I was a complete culture shock to the girls, as they were to me.

So naturally, we just didn't really get along at first, because we just didn't speak the same language.

I felt such imposter syndrome.

I was intimidated as fuck by these girls who were two, three years younger than me.

Some of whom are now close friends.

But at the same time, I was so deeply inspired by what they did.

These girls built their platforms from the ground up.

They were paying adult bills by making 15 second dance videos in between camera setup.

I remember the first time I appeared on one of their stories.

I gained like 3,000 followers on Instagram overnight.

And then I hit 10k in like a month.

Growing up, my dream was always to be an actress.

I had this dream in part maybe because I was in it for the craft and I wanted to act really good.

But I think most of all, I just wanted to be famous.

I want it to be known.

I followed this acting dream all the way to Los Angeles to Arts High School where I studied acting

and I'm still following it at Yale.

But it isn't lost on me that regardless of what you say your motivation is, your end goal, your definition of success is defined by recognition.

You know you've made it

when people know who you are thus traumers made me realize something important

that there was a Shortcut to help me get known

and I downloaded that damning clock app and opened up a YouTube account

and began recording My life as much as possible and posting vlogs

which most of you are here for not this bullshit Whatever it is and I did all this telling everyone.

Oh, yeah I just want to document my life record my favorite memories with my favorite people Remember

and cherish the small moments of life blah blah blah

But ultimately it was to further this dream of being known

and I say

that I wanted to be known like it's a confession Like it's something that's slightly shameful maybe telling you guys

that I wanted so badly to be known is a bad idea

But I actually think

that it isn't at all the desire to be known is

ancient it predates tick-tock it predates Hollywood It predates the printing

press the first two cavemen to ever exist had to want

to be known by each other It's in every piece of art that has ever been made.

This need to reach across whatever distance exists between you and another person and say, I was here.

I was real.

Did you feel that?

The desire to be known is natural and human.

There's a philosopher, Axel Honneth, who spent his entire career studying the human need to be known.

And his argument is that it's not about vanity or weakness.

It is a fundamental psychological need, as basic as food or shelter.

You can't develop a stable sense of self without it.

Children who are not seen and acknowledged do not develop basic social communication skills.

We are wired for recognition.

So the problem isn't the desire itself.

It's the fact that we can now measure it.

I propose that being known is particularly powerful to our generation

because we are the first people in history who grew up being able to put our knownness on a scale

and get a literal numeric answer.

Follower count, friend count, how many people came to your last birthday party.

We were the first generation who could quantify belonging.

In a world where everything else is constantly unstable and changing, we are bound to opt for the easily accessible and understandable metrics that spell out an easy answer of who we are,

that claim to know us.

The sociologist Zygmunt Bauman wrote about this, a concept he called liquid modernity.

Essentially, it claims that in the past, the world used to be solid, meaning that your identity was mainly just handed to you.

Your class, your religion, your socioeconomic status, your community, your role within that community.

You knew exactly who you were because the structure told you.

That sounds limiting, right?

And it was.

But it also meant that you were solid.

That you didn't have to constantly construct yourself.

You knew who you were.

And who you would likely be for the rest of your life.

What happened between then and now, Bauman says, is that civilization developed and these structures slowly dissolved.

The old certainties melted and in their place was unlimited freedom.

Which sounds exciting, right?

But with this freedom comes a price.

A specific kind of anxiety.

As they say, the anxious generation.

Because now, identity isn't something that you have.

In fact, it is pointedly something that you don't have.

100

It's something that you have to build and rebuild every single day.

101

In liquid modernity, identity becomes a site of constant tension and struggle, a forced globe, a taste profile update.

102

Also in this liquid world, the original old-fashioned foundation, yeah, remember her?

103

She hasn't fully dissolved.

104

In fact, it's probably the only thing left of the solid world.

105

The supposed free-for-all exploration of identity goes hand-in-hand with the strict rules of consumer society.

106

You can only choose an identity that you can afford.

107

You don't discover yourself, you purchase yourself.

108

You curate yourself.

109

And no one's gonna give you the money to just discover who you are.

110

You had to bring it from home.

111

That doesn't sound very fair, does it?

112

So what we can say is that the desire to be known is valid.

113

It's not the problem.

114

It's just that the knownness measurement method that we're using right now just isn't the real thing.

115

And here's how we know that it's not the real thing.

116

We have a literal loneliness epidemic.

117

Our generation is statistically the loneliest generation recorded in history.

118

Holy shit.

119

Yet at the same time, we are the most connected generation in recorded history.

120

We have more access to each other, more tools to contact each other than any human beings who have ever lived.

121

The most connected and the loneliest at the same time.

122

All of this is not a coincidence.

123

We're mistaking knownness for something that it isn't.

124

We have collective fake knownness syndrome.

125

So what is the real thing?

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Lucky for us, Harvard has been running a study on this since 1938.

127

The longest happiness study ever done.

128

85 years and counting tracking thousands of people through their entire lives.

129

And after all of that data, all those decades, the conclusion is almost embarrassingly simple.

130

The single best predictor of our long-term happiness and health is the quality of our relationships, our close relationships.

131

They act as a literal health supplement, helping to delay physical and mental decline.

132

They are better predictors of longevity than even social class, IQ, or genes.

133

There was this nurse, Bronnie Ware, who in the mid-2000s spent years sitting with people in the last week of their lives.

134

And she would write down what they said, what they regretted, what they wish they'd done differently.

135

She eventually published the five most common ones.

136

And I want to read them to you guys.

137

The number one regret was I wish I had had the courage to live a life true to myself.

138

Number two was I wish I hadn't worked so hard.

139

Number three was I wish I'd had the courage to express my feelings.

140

Number four was I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.

141

And number five was I wish I had let myself be happier.

142

The things that we spend so much energy on, our social standing, our image, They didn't show up not even once.

143

Okay pause.

144

I will say this being known is at times about your social standing

145

and that's okay It's okay to care about being well liked as I said before that's natural

146

and that's human But that can't be all

147

that we care about It can't even be the first thing

148

or the most important thing

149

that we care about there needs to be a shifting of

150

priorities Let's go back to Hanath for a second here

151

because according to him recognition isn't just one thing It actually comes in different forms There's the recognition that comes from love, from people who know you intimately.

152

Then there's recognition as general respect, like being seen as a human being.

153

And then there's social esteem.

154

Your reputation, status, what people say about you when you leave the room.

155

Hanath found that social esteem is the most hollow form of recognition.

156

When it's decoupled from the other two forms, it loses any value of its own.

157

In other words, if you don't have the other two, it doesn't do you any good by itself.

158

So let's get back on track.

159

What is the right way of becoming known?

160

There is this new internet word bot, which is used to describe a person who is going through life on auto mode, like an MPC.

161

I can't lie, I've used it many times to describe an op, or a co-worker, or a friend's ex-boyfriend, or a friend's current boyfriend, and I've used it many times to describe myself,

162

in moments when my anxiety kicks in and I don't perform my best in a social setting, botting out, as we would say.

163

I've been struggling a lot with the hollowness of feeling recognized, yet not known.

164

I still struggle with feeling that I'm someone that matters when I'm just being my plain old self.

165

But there are certain people who make me feel like I can just bot out around them.

166

Like I can be as NPC, as cringy, as stupid as I want and they won't judge me.

167

They'll still see me for who I am.

168

In fact, it's not even that I can bot out around them.

169

It's that I'll never bot out around them because they've already accepted me for who I am.

170

I don't need to put on any performance because I know I'm already not a bot to them.

171

To them, I have the innate characteristic of being a real person.

172

For example, I remarked to my boyfriend after a particularly wonderful and deep conversation that we had, Oh my god, I'm so glad that we're not bots.

173

We are people who think and feel deeply and have meaningful things to say about the world to each other.

174

But then it dawned on me that this is not at all specific to me and my boyfriend, nor is it specific to me and my best friend, or my mom, or my brother.

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No one is a bot to their person.

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We all have that person.

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That set of people that make us feel awesomely, beautifully real.

178

And we need, need, need to lean into that.

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To pour your heart and soul and energy and love into those relationships because that is what makes you real.

180

There is a hunger right now for realness.

181

And I think that's actually a good sign because you can't be hungry for something that you've never tasted before.

182

The fact that we feel this absence, this loneliness so deeply, means that we know what the real thing feels like.

183

The relief of being with someone who makes you real.

184

Who knows you better than you know yourself.

185

Who needs you to be nothing more than what you already are.

186

We know what we're looking for.

187

We just have to remember to keep reaching for the right thing.

188

I hope you enjoyed and don't forget to give it a like and subscribe.

189

I'll see you guys in the next one.

190

Bye!

191

We'll praise you.

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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson

This B2 speaking lesson is built on the video “for those who are constantly lonely”. This video has 191 sentences and 2345 words to shadow. The speech runs for 11:03. The speaker talks fast, about 212 words per minute, so expect linked and reduced sounds. 83% 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

The 15 most advanced words in the video, with pronunciation and meaning:

Word	Pronunciation	Meaning
knownness noun		The condition of being known.
predate verb	/pɹəˈdeɪt/	To designate a date earlier than the actual one; to move a date, appointment, event, or period of time to an earlier point (contrast "postdate".)
follower noun	/ˈfɒləʊə(ɹ)/	One who follows, comes after another.
literal adjective	/ˈlɪt(ə)ɹəl/	Exactly as stated; read or understood without interpretation; according to the letter; not figurative or metaphorical; following the letter or exact words; not…
callback noun		The return of a situation to a previous position or state; a reference to such a position or state.
dissolve verb	/dɪˈzɑlv/	To terminate a union of multiple members actively, as by disbanding.
influencer noun	/ˈɪnflu.ənsə(ɹ)/	A person who or a thing which influences.
modernity noun	/məˈdɝnɪti/	The quality of being modern or contemporary.
predictor noun	/pɹɪˈdɪk.tɚ/	Something that anticipates, predicts, or foretells.
loneliness noun	/ˈloʊnlinəs/	A feeling of depression resulting from being alone or from having no companions.
bot noun	/bɑt/	A physical robot.
esteem verb	/ɪˈstiːm/	To set a high value on; to regard with respect or reverence.
awesomely adverb	/ˈɔ.səm.li/	In a manner inspiring awe.
cringey adjective	/ˈkɹɪnd͡ʒi/	Characterised by causing feelings of embarrassment; embarrassing.
curate noun	/ˈkjʊɹɪt/	An assistant rector or vicar.

Phrasal verbs you will hear

Word	Meaning
grow up verb	To mature and become an adult.
fight off verb	To succeed in defeating a challenge, or an attack.
figure out verb	To come to understand; to discover or find a solution; to deduce.
go back to verb	To stem from; to originate in.
go through verb	To travel from one end of something to the other.
open up verb	To open.
show up verb	To appear, arrive, or attend, especially suddenly or erratically.
spell out verb	To form (a word) from letters; say the letters in a word.

Sentences worth repeating

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

How known do you have to be to be deserving of love?
Are you someone who's still figuring out how to get there?
Before the show, I didn't know anything about influencing.
Did you feel that?
It's the fact that we can now measure it.

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	has been running · I've been struggling
Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it	be loved · was intimidated · be known
Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing	Children who are · people who know · bot, which is
Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now	you've made · has ever been made · have ever lived

Pronunciation to watch

The speaker uses 57 contractions and reduced forms, such as I'm, don't, isn't. Say them the short way, as you hear them.

The “sh” and “zh” sounds: cherish /ˈt͡ʃɛɹɪʃ/, shameful /ˈʃeɪmfəl/, confession /kənˈfɛʃən/, civilization /ˌsɪv.ɪ.laɪˈzeɪ.ʃən/, measurement /ˈmɛʒ.ə.mənt/
Long words — get the stress right: influencer /ˈɪnflu.ənsə(ɹ)/, modernity /məˈdɝnɪti/, embarrassingly /əmˈbɛɹəsɪŋli/, intimately /ˈɪntɪmətli/, intimidate /ɪnˈtɪmɪdeɪt/

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 knownness, predate, follower.

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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