Shadowing Practice: Gerald Durrell to Lee McGeorge - Read by Tom Hiddleston - Learn English Speaking with Video
Creating lesson...
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The End The End
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July 31st, 1978.
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My darling MacGeorge, You said that things seemed clearer when they were written down.
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Well, herewith a very boring letter in
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which I will try to put everything down so
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that you may read and re-read at horror at your folly in getting involved with me.
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Deep breath.
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To begin with, I love you.
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With the depth and passion that I have felt for no one else in this life.
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and if it astonishes you, it astonishes me as well.
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Not, I hasten to say, because you are not worthy of loving.
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Far from it.
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It's just that, first of all, I swore I would not get involved with another woman.
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Secondly, I have never had such a feeling before and it's almost frightening.
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Thirdly, I would never have thought it possible
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that another human being could occupy my waking and sleeping thoughts to the exclusion of almost everything else.
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Fourthly, I never thought that even if one was in love,
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one could get so completely besotted with another person so that a minute away from them felt like a thousand years.
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Fifthly, I never hoped, aspired, dreamed that one could find everything one wanted in one person.
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I was not such an idiot as to believe this was possible.
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Yet in you, I found everything I want.
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You are beautiful, gay, giving, gentle, idiotically and deliciously feminine,
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sexy, wonderfully intelligent and wonderfully silly as well.
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I want nothing else in this life than to be with you, to listen and watch you, your beautiful voice, your beauty,
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to argue with you, to laugh with you, to show you things and share things with you, to explore your magnificent mind,
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to explore your wonderful body, to help you, protect you, serve you and bash you on the head when I think you're wrong.
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Not to put too fine a point on it, I consider I'm the only man outside mythology to have found the crock of gold at the rainbow's end.
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But having said all that, let us consider things in detail.
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Don't let this become public, but...
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Well...
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I have one or two faults.
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Minor ones, I hasten to say.
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For example, I am inclined to be overbearing.
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I do it for the best possible motives, all tyrants say that, but I do tend, without thinking, to tread people underfoot.
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You must tell me when I'm doing it to you, my sweet, because it can be a very bad thing in a marriage.
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Right, second blemish.
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This actually is not so much a blemish of character as a blemish of circumstance.
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darling I want you to be you in your own right
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and I will do everything I can to help you in this
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but you must take into consideration that I'm also me in my own right
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and that I have a head start on you what I'm trying to say is
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that you mustn't feel offended if you are sometimes treated simply as my wife.
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Always remember that what you lose on the swings you gain on the roundabouts.
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But I am an established creature in the world and
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so on occasions you will have to live in my shadow
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and nothing gives me less pleasure than this but it is a fact of life that has to be faced.
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Third, and very important and nasty blemish, jealousy.
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I don't think you know what jealousy is, thank God, in the real sense of the word.
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I know that you felt jealousy over Lincoln's wife and child, but this is what I call normal jealousy and this, to my regret, is not what I've got.
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What I have got is a black monster that can pervert my good sense, my good humor and any goodness that I have in my makeup.
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It is really a Jekyll and Hyde situation.
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My Hyde is stronger than my good sense and defeats me, hard though I try.
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As I told you, I've always known that this lurks within me, but I could control it and my monster slumbered and nothing happened to awake it.
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And then I met you, and I felt my monster stir and become half awake when you told me of Lincoln and others you've known.
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With your letter, my monster came out of its lair, black, irrational, bigoted, stupid, evil, and malevolent.
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You will never know how terribly corrosive jealousy is.
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It is a physical pain, as though you'd swallowed acid or red hot coals.
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It is the most terrible of feelings.
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But you can't help it.
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At least, I can't.
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God knows I've tried.
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I don't want any ex-boyfriend sitting in church when I marry you.
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On our wedding day, I want nothing but happiness, both for you and me.
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And I know I won't be happy if there is a church full of your ex-conquests.
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When I marry you, I'll have no past, only a future.
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I don't want to drag my past into our future, and I don't want you to do it either.
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But remember, I am jealous of you because I love you.
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You're never jealous of something you don't care about.
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Okay, enough about jealousy.
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Now let me tell you something.
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I have seen a thousand sunsets and sunrises on land where it floods forests and mountains with honey-colored light,
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at sea where it rises
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and sets like a blood orange in a multi-colored nest of cloud slipping in and out of the vast ocean.
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I've seen a thousand moons, harvest moons like gold coins, winter moons as white as ice chips,
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new moons like baby swan's feathers.
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I've seen seas as smooth as if painted, colored like shot silk or blue as a kingfisher,
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or transparent as glass or black and crumpled with foam, moving ponderously and murderously.
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I felt winds straight from the South Pole, bleak and wailing like a lost child.
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Winds as tender and warm as a lover's breath, winds that carried the astringent smell of salt and the death of seaweeds,
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winds that carried the moist, rich smell of a forest floor, The smell of a million flowers.
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Fierce winds that churned and moved like the sea, like yeast.
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Or winds that made the waters lap at the shore like a kitten.
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I've known silence.
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The cold, earthy silence at the bottom of a newly dug well.
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The implacable, stony silence of a deep cave.
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The hot, drugged, midday silence When everything is hypnotized and stilled into silence by the eye of the sun
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The silence when great music ends
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I've heard summer cicadas cry so that the sound seems stitched into your bones
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I've heard tree frogs in an orchestration as complicated as Bach singing in a forest lit by a million emerald fireflies.
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I've heard the keys calling over the grey glasses
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that groan to themselves like old people as they inch their way to the sea.
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I've heard the hoarse street vendor cries of the mating fur seals as they sang to their sleek golden wives,
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the crisp staccato admonishment of the rattlesnake,
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the cobweb squeak of the bat and the belling roar of the red deer knee-deep in purple heather.
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I've heard wolves baying at a winter's moon, red howlers making the forest vibrate with their roaring cries.
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I've I heard the squeak, purr and grunt of a hundred multicolored reef fishes.
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I have seen hummingbirds flashing like opals around a tree of scarlet blooms, humming like a top.
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I've seen flying fish skittering like quicksilver across the blue waves, drawing silver lines on the surface with their tails.
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I've seen spoonbills flying home to roost like a scarlet banner across the sky.
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I've seen whales, black as tar, cushioned on a cornflower blue sea,
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creating a vast sigh of fountain with their breath.
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I've watched butterflies emerge and sit, trembling while the sun irons their wings smooth.
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I've watched tigers like flames mating in the long grass
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I've been dive-bombed by an angry raven black and glossy as the devil's hoof
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I've lain in water warm as milk
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soft as silk
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while around me played a host of dolphins I have met a thousand animals and seen a thousand wonderful things
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All this I did without you This was my loss
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All this I want to do with you This will be my gain
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All this I would gladly have forgone For the sake of one minute of your company For your laugh,
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your voice your eyes, hair, lips, body, and above all for your sweet,
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ever surprising mind, which is an enchanting quarry in which it is my privilege to delve.
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This video has 112 sentences and 1454 words to shadow. The speech runs for 11:48. The speaker talks at a steady 123 words per minute, a comfortable pace for shadowing. Only 73% 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 |
|---|---|---|
| silence noun | /ˈsaɪ̯ləns/ | The absence of any sound. |
| jealousy noun | /ˈd͡ʒɛl.ə.si/ | A state of being jealous; a jealous attitude. |
| vast adjective | /væst/ | Very large or wide (literally or figuratively). |
| marry verb | /ˈmæɹi/ | To enter into the conjugal or connubial state; to take a husband or a wife. |
| smooth adjective | /smuːð/ | Having a texture that lacks friction. Not rough. |
| explore verb | /ɪkˈsploɹ/ | To examine or investigate something systematically. |
| jealous adjective | /ˈd͡ʒɛl.əs/ | Suspecting rivalry in love; troubled by worries that one might have been replaced in someone's affections; suspicious of a lover's or spouse's fidelity. |
| awake verb | /əˈweɪk/ | To become conscious after having slept. |
| silk noun | /sɪlk/ | A fine fiber excreted by the silkworm or other arthropod (such as a spider). |
| darling noun | /ˈdɑɹlɪŋ/ | Often used as an affectionate term of address: a person who is very dear to one. |
| roar verb | /ˈɹoɹ/ | To make a loud, deep cry, especially from pain, anger, or other strong emotion. |
| scarlet noun | /ˈskɑɹlɪt/ | A brilliant red colour sometimes tinged with orange. |
| wonderfully adverb | /wʌn.də(ɹ).fli/ | In an excellent manner. |
| grey adjective | /ɡɹeɪ/ | Commonwealth standard spelling of gray. |
| bone noun | /boʊn/ | A composite material consisting largely of calcium phosphate and collagen and making up the skeleton of most vertebrates. |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Meaning |
|---|---|
| call over verb | To ask (someone) to come to one's location, especially when raising one's voice towards someone within earshot. |
| write down verb | To produce or set (something) down in writing; to record something. |
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | have felt · have thought · I've always known |
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | were written · are sometimes treated · be faced |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 38 contractions and reduced forms, such as I've, don't, I'm. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “th” sounds: smooth /smuːð/, worthy /ˈwɝ.ði/, heather /ˈhɛðɚ/, feather /ˈfɛðə/, mythology /mɪˈθɑ.lə.d͡ʒi/
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: flash /flæʃ/, passion /ˈpæʃən/, shadow /ˈʃædəʊ̯/, occasion /əˈkeɪ̯ʒən/, shore /ʃɔɹ/
- Long words — get the stress right: complicated /ˈkɑm.plɪˌkeɪ.tɪd/, intelligent /ɪnˈtɛlɪd͡ʒənt/, consideration /kənˌsɪd.əˈɹeɪ.ʃən/, magnificent /mæɡˈnɪfəsənt/, mythology /mɪˈθɑ.lə.d͡ʒi/
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 silence, jealousy, vast.
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.