Shadowing Practice: Germany Has Finally Built a Decent Airport - Learn English Speaking with Video

This is a mega build that couldn't afford to fail.

A huge expansion to one of Europe's busiest airports.

One of the largest privately funded infrastructure projects on the entire continent.

A chance to compete with the region's biggest and best travel hubs before they fly even further out of reach.

But most of all, it had one job.

To avoid a repeat of what happened last time.

Previously, I'm the B1M.

The airport was supposed to have been completed eight years ago, but they are still working on it.

A number of construction flaws, poor planning and even alleged corruption is to blame.

The building was actually finished nine years ago.

Then technical problems and safety defects began piling up.

It's a huge embarrassment.

For a country world-renowned for its engineering, national pride is at stake.

This is Germany's first major airport project since the horror show that was Berlin Brandenburg, an episode that really has sullied this nation's aviation reputation.

Now with Frankfurt's long awaited new terminal finally up and running after experiencing some turbulence of its own,

the question is has Germany achieved a smooth touchdown this time around?

It's the morning of April 23rd, 2026, and a plane has just landed in Frankfurt.

There's nothing out of the ordinary there, it's just one of hundreds of aircraft that touch down at Germany's largest airport every day.

But this China Southern Airlines flight was significant

because these were the first travellers to arrive at Frankfurt's brand new and much-anticipated Terminal 3.

Following more than 10 years of construction, it's the culmination of one of Europe's biggest airport upgrades in recent times.

This would be a strengthening of what was already a top regional transport hub.

Those lucky folks may have just endured an 11-hour slog from Shenyang, but arriving into T3 will certainly have perked them up because there was a lot of hype.

Its operator, Fraport, had been calling it one of Europe's most advanced terminals, with a high-quality passenger experience and rapid processes.

Now, we're going to come on to what that looks like in a minute.

But first, while there was some excitement ahead of this project's opening, there would have been a lot of nail biting too.

And the reason for that is this.

The country's last attempt at airport construction didn't exactly go very well.

Yes, I'm sorry Germany, just when you thought I'd finally stop talking about Berlin-Brandenburg, I'm going to bring it up again.

To reassure you, we have a whole video on that SAG, you can go and watch it now.

So in this case right here, we're going to keep things nice and brief.

For those of you who don't know, BER finished nine years later than it should have done and went 5 billion euros over budget.

It ended up costing more than three times what it was supposed to.

Back in 2013, a year after it was expected to open, a catalogue of errors were uncovered.

There would be over half a million of them in total.

The lighting worked, but couldn't be switched off.

were built too short and the fire safety alarm was faulty.

If you were to pass through Brandenburg today, you'd find no evidence of its past struggles.

In fact, it's become a perfectly functioning airport since it officially opened.

The hope was that Germany's next aviation project would end with a positive result too, but without any of the chaos along the way.

Especially as this wasn't an entirely new airport, but an upgrade to an existing one, albeit massive.

One more thing and then we're going to get into it.

You might already be wondering this, why isn't the biggest travel hub in Germany in the capital?

Well it all stems from when Berlin

and the country as a whole was divided into east and west after the end of World War II.

It meant Berlin wasn't very well placed to be a central hub for the more prosperous West Germany.

Frankfurt's Terminal 1 opened its doors in 1972, right in the middle of the Cold War.

By the 90s it had become overcrowded and air travel was surging.

Which is why a second terminal was soon unveiled.

To carry travellers between the two terminals, an automated people mover called the Skyline was introduced.

It was the first driverless passenger transport system in the whole of Germany

and it was cleverly designed to be expanded in the future should the need arise.

The city is where Lufthansa, Germany's top airline, is based.

It's a huge industrial centre and almost half of the country's population lives within 200 kilometers of it.

So its airport grew to become the biggest and has stayed that way ever since.

In the end it came down to convenience.

It doesn't matter how beautiful your airport is, if it's impossible to get to

or no one can find it in the first place then you're going to fail to land any customers.

The same can be said for almost any business.

Build it and they will come, as long as it pops up in the Google search rankings.

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While you're signing up to that, let's take a look at where Frankfurt Airport falls in the world rankings.

At a European level, Frankfurt is now the sixth busiest airport on the continent, serving more than 60 million passengers each year.

But despite that, its competitors have been growing faster.

The only way it was going to climb the table was to expand, and not just by a little bit.

They would have to go big, and that meant building to the south of the airport's four runways.

Terminals 1 and 2 were built on the north side over here.

Overall, Frankfurt's new Terminal 3 has a footprint of 176,000 square metres.

That's the equivalent of 25 Deutsche Bank parks, the city's 52,000-seat football stadium.

Much of this space is taken up by the giant new concourses, piers G, H and J.

With these, T3 has capacity for up to 19 million passengers every year.

H and J will have 24 docking stations between them, with Pier J, the larger of the two, offering four more.

These are for wide-body aircraft.

At 600 metres, it's 50% longer than Pier H and has three levels instead of two.

This extra story is for passengers coming or going from outside the Schengen zone.

Another unique feature of Pier J is the visibility of the Y-shaped columns.

These don't just dissipate the load of the structure above into the ground foundations below – they serve an architectural purpose too.

And that's not the only thing with these piers.

If or when the other planned extension, Pier K, gets built in the future, T3's capacity could rise to 25 million passengers.

But this wasn't a recent idea.

Thrapport's mission to add a new terminal began decades ago.

P3 was first approved in the year 2000 after the local state government decided to back the expansion.

Then it was time to bring in the architects, with a two-phase competition that saw nearly 50 firms from right around Europe submit their ideas.

A modular-based system, envisioned by London-based Foster & Partners, won the first round.

But it was Frankfurt's own Christoph Mackler architects that emerged victorious in the crucial second stage.

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Their job was to take Foster's concept and turn it into a detailed design, which Mackler describes as modern with a feel-good ambience.

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He wanted the terminal's main sections – the gates, lounges and piers – to feel like the streets and squares of a city.

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Filled with lights and packed with amenities, T3 would be somewhere passengers would enjoy being, instead of just killing time before their flight.

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By now, it was 2007, and a zoning plan to figure out what other infrastructure upgrades would be needed aside from the terminal itself was signed off.

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The result of this was an enlargement of the nearby motorway interchange

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and a new line for the people mover that would run between terminals 1 and 3.

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Which is perhaps even more important than the existing one when you look at the distance between these terminals.

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But there was a problem.

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The rail line would have to pass around the end of the runway, but also be high enough to get passengers in and out of the terminals.

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That's why it's been built at varying heights.

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The sections nearest the terminals are elevated on large V-shaped columns.

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When trains go past where the planes are taking off and landing, the track drops down to grade level.

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All in all, it meant there was going to be a lot more to this project than just the main terminal building.

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A new runway had to be constructed first, but then the global financial crisis of 2008 hit,

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and terminals 1 and 2 found they weren't yet stretched to capacity.

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So the construction permit for the new works wasn't signed until 2015.

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Once that happened, it meant that work could finally get started later that year.

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The work would all take place in a spot that's already steeped in aviation history.

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Before T3 was constructed here, this site was home to an old Air Force base, but not a German one.

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It was actually occupied by the US Air Force from the end of World War II up to 2005

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when it was handed back to Germany.

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As with any building, they couldn't start assembling the main structure or anything inside it without first sorting out the foundations.

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And because these foundations were going to be for an absolutely enormous new airport terminal, they started by clearing a vast amount of space.

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Around 66,000 square metres to be precise, which is the same as five Reichstag buildings.

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The enormous construction pit that would stretch across this massive area was delivered in two phases.

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First up was the dry excavation.

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This involved bringing in excavators,

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rigs and bulldozers to extract and remove up to 300 truckloads of material every day for six months.

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Once a depth of five and a half metres had been reached, workers started driving sheet piles into the pit's sandy bottom to create retaining walls.

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These prevented groundwater from pouring in

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and allowed the team to dig down a little bit further before things got a bit damp.

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Which brings us onto the second phase, the wet excavation.

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By this point the floor was heading below the water table and there was still quite a way to go.

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So down they kept going to around 11 metres and that gave them no choice but to let the water in.

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Lots of it, but all nice and contained.

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Next, concrete was poured in to seal the bottom of the pit, yes, underwater, with a team of divers on hand to check that it was all going to plan.

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After the concrete had cured, the water was pumped out and sent off to a purification plant before being released back into the ground again.

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Fast forward to 2020 and the structural shells or carcasses of the main sections were beginning to take shape.

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Here you can see those Y-shaped columns being craned into place on Pier J.

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There are 86 of them in total along both sides, each weighing over 22 tonnes.

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At the same time, progress had been made with the construction of the new PeopleMover line.

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The columns were in and the track was being installed with its concrete girders and frames made from prefabricated parts.

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A few more years passed before the platformers began to take shape, along with the elevated section that connects with the new terminal building.

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And by late 2024, vehicles could be seen racing around on test runs, closely monitored by the control centre.

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But hold on a minute, I just mentioned 2020 and something else happened that year, didn't it?

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Trust me, I'd rather not go there either.

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But the pandemic is a part of this story.

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All kinds of major projects around the world were impacted, but airports were especially hard hit.

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Passenger demand plummeted, creating all kinds of uncertainty for new builds like T3.

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Getting the right materials, equipment and people to the site became a real challenge.

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It's one of the main reasons why the terminal's opening, originally planned for 2022, was pushed back by four years.

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Extending the timeline came at a cost.

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The initial price tag was just under €3bn but the final figure was around €4bn.

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Now, sure, that's not a small increase and the same can be said for the delay, but it's nothing compared to the Berlin fiasco.

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One thing that kept T3 from falling into the same trap was the design freeze.

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A big thing at Brandenburg was the constant redesigns which ended up making everything take more time and cost more money.

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What they've done at Frankfurt is decide on their designs right from the start and then stuck to them, which is a much less costly way of doing things.

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Speaking of costs, I really should point out where all the capital from this came from.

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Fraport says it was the biggest project on the continent to be privately funded, at least at the time of construction.

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Now that might sound odd when the state of Hessen has a 31% stake in the operator, with the city of Frankfurt holding another 21%.

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But all that does is give them a controlling public influence over the company and therefore the project.

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Those local authorities didn't have to put in a single Euro to build T3.

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So it's not being paid for out of public taxes, but now that it's open, the people of Germany, and indeed travellers from all around the world, have been able to give their verdicts.

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When it comes to architecture and design, the response has been mostly positive.

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There are loads of comments about its visual appeal, the choice of shops and restaurants.

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But the experience hasn't been trouble-free for everyone.

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Some have complained about painfully long lines at immigration.

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But that's partly because of the EU's new digital border system.

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What is more a fault of the new terminal

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and its infrastructure is the problem that loads of passengers faced just a month after the opening.

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The new Skyline extension stopped working, giving people no choice but to take shuttle buses between the terminals instead.

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And it took three weeks to get it up and running again.

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Since then, things seem to have been going relatively smoothly, and there have been no major issues during T3's first summer of operations.

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Now, we're not quite done covering the early feedback because it's not just travellers who've been given Frankfurt's new expansion their approval, at least on aesthetics.

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The terminal is one of seven projects included in the 2026 list of the world's most beautiful airports published by PrevaSci.

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It's a series of awards that's given out each year across various categories of architecture

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and T3 is the only European entry to make the list this time.

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Others include Navi Mumbai and the new Pittsburgh International Airport.

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Now, you know about the first one already because we featured it on the B1M pretty recently.

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As for my summary on T3, well, it's not been perfect, but these projects rarely are.

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What's been achieved here is great and there's recognition of it coming in from passengers.

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They can feel it and experience it, which is fantastic.

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And it bodes well because Frankfurt isn't yet done with its airport glow up.

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In June 2026, Terminal 2 was closed for refurbishment with all the airlines that flew from there, relocating to the new T3.

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With construction not due to start on that until 2030, ahead of a planned reopening in the mid-2030s, it's another scheme that's not going to be done quickly.

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But at least this time, thanks to Terminal 3, the pressure to succeed won't be quite as intense.

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This video was sponsored by Odoo.

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Don't forget that you can build your own website for free

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by scanning the QR code on screen or clicking the link below.

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It massively helps us out when you guys take the time to go and check out our video sponsors, so please do go and have a look at Odoo, we'd really appreciate it.

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And as always guys, if you enjoyed this video and you want to get more from the definitive video channel for construction, make sure you're subscribed to the B1M.

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Why This Video Is Great for English Speaking Practice

This video is a goldmine for learners aiming to improve English pronunciation and fluency. Its mix of conversational tone and technical details—like "mega build," "turbulence of its own," and "smooth touchdown"—exposes you to real-world vocabulary. The narrator’s clear, steady pace makes it ideal for shadowspeak (repeating aloud in real time), helping you mimic natural rhythm and intonation. Plus, the story’s narrative flow keeps you engaged, making practice feel less like work and more like learning through storytelling.

Breaking Down Natural English Phrases

Let’s unpack 3 key lines to see why they sound authentic:

"A chance to compete with the region's biggest and best travel hubs before they fly even further out of reach." The phrase "fly even further out of reach" uses a metaphor (aviation-related, fitting the topic) to add color. Native speakers often mix metaphors with literal context, so mimicking this helps you sound more natural.
"But most of all, it had one job. To avoid a repeat of what happened last time." The short, punchy "it had one job" is casual and relatable. Pausing after "job" creates emphasis, a common technique in spoken English to highlight key points.
"Those lucky folks may have just endured an 11-hour slog from Shenyang, but arriving into T3 will certainly have perked them up." "Slog" (informal for a tough journey) and "perked them up" (phrasal verb for lifting mood) are everyday terms. Combining formal context (airport project) with casual language is typical in English, and practicing this balance improves fluency.

A Simple Shadowing Routine for This Video

Use this repeat-and-record loop to master the dialogue, whether with a shadowing app, shadowing site, or just your phone:

Watch 10 seconds of the video, focusing on the narrator’s mouth movements and stress (which words are emphasized).
Hit pause, then shadow speak the segment—repeat it aloud, matching pace, tone, and volume. Don’t worry about mistakes; focus on mimicry.
Record yourself, then compare to the original. Note differences in pronunciation (e.g., "Brandenburg" vs. "Brandenburg") or rhythm.
Repeat with the next 10 seconds. After 5 minutes, try a 30-second segment. Over time, you’ll notice smoother delivery and better intonation.

This routine trains your brain to think in English and your mouth to form sounds naturally—key for sounding like a native.

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	have been growing · have been going
Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now	has sullied · has just landed · have perked
Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it	have been completed · was actually finished · was expected
Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing	precise, which is · them, which is

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 →