Shadowing Practice: FUN FOR FLYERS 4TH - UNIT 15D - PAGE 35 - Learn English Speaking with Video

Creating lesson...
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D. What's for dinner?
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Listen and order the pictures 1 to 6.
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William's Wonderful Honey Cake Hi.
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You might need some help, but you could make this delicious cake by yourself.
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Right.
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You need a cupful of flour, some butter, two eggs, a large spoonful of honey, and something else.
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Oh, a cupful of sugar, of course.
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To prepare, you should turn on the oven before you start, and wash your hands.
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First, put some sugar into a big bowl.
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You don't need very much because there's honey in this cake too.
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When the sugar is in the bowl, cut the butter into small pieces.
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Use a knife to do that.
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Then you can add the butter to the sugar.
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Mix these two things together with a big spoon.
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Find some flour and put that in next.
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Then break the eggs and put those carefully into the same big bowl.
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Last, you put the honey in.
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You don't need a lot.
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Then you mix everything together again with your big spoon.
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Some people add carrots before they put the cake into the oven.
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That It might sound really strange, but carrots taste great in cakes.
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You cook the cake for half an hour.
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Enjoy!

Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson

This speaking lesson is built on the video “FUN FOR FLYERS 4TH - UNIT 15D - PAGE 35”. The speaker keeps coming back to these words: cake, honey, sugar, butter, bowl. This video has 23 sentences and 202 words to shadow. The speech runs for 1:44. The speaker talks at a steady 117 words per minute, a comfortable pace for shadowing. 85% 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

12 words from the video worth learning, with pronunciation and meaning:

WordPronunciationMeaning
honey noun/ˈhʌni/A sweet, viscous, gold-colored fluid produced from plant nectar by bees, and often consumed by humans.
butter noun/ˈbʌtɚ/A soft, fatty foodstuff made by churning the cream of milk (generally cow's milk).
egg noun/ɛɡ/An approximately spherical or ellipsoidal body produced by birds, insects, reptiles, and other animals, often housing an embryo within a membrane or shell…
oven noun/ˈʌ.vn̩/A chamber used for baking or heating.
flour noun/ˈflaʊ.ə/Powder obtained by grinding or milling cereal grains, especially wheat, or other foodstuffs such as soybeans and potatoes, and used to bake bread, cakes, and…
spoon noun/spuːn/An implement for eating or serving; a scooped utensil whose long handle is straight, in contrast to a ladle.
carrot noun/ˈkæɹət/A vegetable with a nutritious, juicy, sweet root that is often orange in colour, Daucus carota, family Apiaceae, especially the subspecies sativus.
carefully adverb/ˈkɛɹf(ə)li/With care; attentively, circumspectly.
knife noun/ˈnaɪ̯f/A utensil or a tool designed for cutting, consisting of a flat piece of hard material, usually steel or other metal (the blade), usually sharpened on one edge…
delicious adjective/dɪˈlɪ.ʃəs/Pleasing to the sense of taste; tasty.
cupful noun/ˈkʌp̪fl̩/The amount necessary to fill a cup.
spoonful noun/ˈspuːnfəl/The amount that a spoon will hold, either level or heaped.

How to practise with this video

  1. Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
  2. Shadow it sentence by sentence at normal speed, repeating each one until your rhythm matches the speaker.
  3. Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like honey, butter, egg.

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 →