Shadowing Practice: How China is designing flood-resistant cities - Learn English Speaking with Video
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This isn't a forest.
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Not really.
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It's actually an urban park in the densely populated city of Nanchang, China, filled with birds, native trees,
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and volcanic rock on 137 acres of urban land.
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It's called a sponge city, and it's a type of natural infrastructure
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that architects around the world are designing to help us combat and withstand a changing climate.
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So what does it mean for a city to become spongy?
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This video is presented by Delta Airlines.
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Today, like everywhere else on the globe, cities are feeling the effects of climate change,
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and they often don't have the right infrastructure to help them survive its impacts.
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Some neighborhoods in Houston don't have enough trees to provide shade and relief from rising temperatures.
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Meanwhile, rising sea levels threaten coastal cities like Mumbai and Seoul that don't often have the infrastructure to handle more frequent flooding.
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This is only made worse by the fact that cities are covered with pavement and other surfaces that can't absorb water.
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Urbanization changes habitats.
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So when you build on a place, it removes vegetation, It alters hydrology.
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That's Dr. Charlie Nylon.
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He told me that cities play a complicated role in the climate crisis, especially when it comes to maintaining biodiversity.
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Biodiversity is, simply put, the total number of plants and animals that occur someplace.
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Biodiversity is one of our main support systems for human life on Earth.
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We rely on natural ecosystems full of diverse plants,
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animals, and organisms for essential things like clean water, food, and medicine.
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And biodiversity is critical to defending the earth against climate change.
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We need healthy forests to absorb carbon dioxide from the air, and enough native plants for pollinators to help crops flourish.
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But studies show that as urban expansion continues, it can drive habitat losses that directly put some species in danger, profoundly impacting global biodiversity.
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Cities have a big impact on what happens locally.
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Cities capture a significant number of plant and animal species which are native, so that even in cities, there's a significant amount of biodiversity.
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Which means they can play a role in saving these local plant and animal species.
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The really important thing to think about is not so much how urbanization reduces biodiversity, but really how in cities you can conserve biodiversity.
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One way to do this is by creating environments where nature can flourish.
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Environments that can also help cities soak up excess water.
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And that's where sponge cities come in.
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In 2015, China launched a sponge city pilot program in 30 cities across the country.
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The goal of the program was to coordinate and promote the construction of sponge cities, which would improve urban drainage and flood prevention,
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and create a diverse biological environment.
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Architects did this by supplementing the existing gray infrastructure that relied on concrete pipes and dams with natural solutions,
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like gardens that are designed to capture rain and native trees that suck up excess water through their roots.
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In China, these ideas were taken from ancient drainage systems.
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That's because for centuries, Chinese cities actually handled water pretty well, in part because they were built with nature in mind.
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A study from the scientific journal
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Water recreated some of these old practices.
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Building roofs designed with sloped eaves allowed rainwater to fall onto the permeable pavement below,
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and exterior walls were lined with flowers and trees to absorb rain and stormwater.
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Today, natural solutions like these have been re -implemented in major cities across China.
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In Xi 'an 'an, a sewage pipe was replaced with this natural infiltration system
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that uses vegetation beds to purify storm and rainwater.
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Shanghai replaced concrete roads and sidewalks with this permeable pavement, which is lined with vegetation, to absorb excess water into the soil underground.
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And across Wuhan, dozens of urban gardens like these were planted to absorb water before or it overwhelms communities.
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Most of these projects rely on introducing vegetation in an urban area to soak up excess water.
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This is a really great way to handle flooding, and it also supports urban biodiversity.
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Because you're providing habitat for additional groups, plant and animal species, sometimes you can restore habitats that have been lost.
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Despite these benefits, sponge cities can't fix everything.
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The connection between climate change and flooding is still being studied.
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But when floods do happen, these spongy cities are only able to absorb excess water up to a certain point.
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In 2021, sponge city designs in Zhengzhou failed when historic rainfall drenched the city.
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More than 300 people died from the catastrophic flooding.
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There are other limitations too.
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One review of sponge cities in Guayan, New District, found that national standards and codes for spongy infrastructure are really difficult to enforce because climate,
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hydrology, and even socioeconomics are vastly different from one city to the next.
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So what might work in some cities won't necessarily solve climate -related problems in others.
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Plus, ambitious sponge city designs like the sprawling parks built in China are expensive and require a lot of space, which most cities don't have.
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So some US cities experimenting with natural infrastructure, like LA and Boston,
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are using the green space they already have by trying things like planting vegetation on curbs
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and creating green spaces along median stripes.
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One type of city design certainly won't save us from climate change, but they can make a difference in how we live with
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it we often talk about biodiversity like it's far away
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but it's actually right there and I think the more
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that people understand that the kinds of things they do from where they live
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that really matters people can do things to change cities
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they can do things to make cities different they can do things to make cities better
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This speaking lesson is built on the video “How China is designing flood-resistant cities”. The speaker keeps coming back to these words: cities, biodiversity, sponge, climate, urban. This video has 75 sentences and 954 words to shadow. The speech runs for 6:27. The speaker talks at a steady 148 words per minute, a comfortable pace for shadowing. Only 78% 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 |
|---|---|---|
| sponge noun | /spʌnd͡ʒ/ | Any of various marine invertebrates of the phylum Porifera, that have a porous skeleton often of silica. |
| infrastructure noun | /ˈɪnfɹəˌstɹʌkt͡ʃə/ | An underlying base or foundation for a building, organization, or system. |
| flood noun | /flʌd/ | An overflow of a large amount of water (usually disastrous) from a lake or other body of water due to excessive rainfall or other input of water. |
| absorb verb | /æbˈsɔɹb/ | To include so that it no longer has separate existence; to overwhelm; to cause to disappear as if by swallowing up; to incorporate; to assimilate; to take in… |
| excess noun | /ˈɛksɛs/ | The state of surpassing or going beyond a limit; the state of being beyond sufficiency, necessity, or duty; more than what is usual or proper. |
| vegetation noun | /ˌvɛd͡ʒəˈteɪʃən/ | Plants, taken collectively. |
| habitat noun | /ˈhæb.ɪ.tæt/ | Conditions suitable for an organism or population of organisms to live. |
| rely verb | /ɹɪˈlaɪ/ | To trust; to have confidence in; to depend. |
| pavement noun | /ˈpeɪvm(ə)nt/ | A paved surface; a hard covering on the ground. |
| concrete adjective | /ˌkɑnˈkɹit/ | Real, actual, tangible. |
| capture verb | /ˈkæp.(t)ʃɚ/ | To take control of; to seize by force or stratagem. |
| pipe noun | /ˈpaɪp/ | A wind instrument consisting of a tube, often lined with holes to allow for adjustment in pitch, sounded by blowing into the tube. |
| diverse adjective | /daɪˈvɜːs/ | Consisting of different elements; various. |
| architect noun | /ˈɑɹ.kɪˌtɛkt/ | A professional who designs buildings or other structures, or who prepares plans and superintends construction. |
| drainage noun | /ˈdɹeɪnəd͡ʒ/ | A natural or artificial means for the removal of fluids from a given area by its draining away. |
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 | is presented · is only made · are designed |
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | have been · have been lost |
| Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing | species which are · pavement, which is |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 10 contractions and reduced forms, such as don't, can't, won't. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “th” sounds: threaten /ˈθɹɛt.n̩/, withstand /wɪðˈstænd/
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: vegetation /ˌvɛd͡ʒəˈteɪʃən/, capture /ˈkæp.(t)ʃɚ/, flourish /ˈflʊ̈ɹ.ɪʃ/, prevention /pɹɪˈvɛnʃən/, shade /ʃeɪd/
- Long words — get the stress right: infrastructure /ˈɪnfɹəˌstɹʌkt͡ʃə/, vegetation /ˌvɛd͡ʒəˈteɪʃən/, necessarily /ˌnɛs.əˈsɛɹ.ə.li/, complicated /ˈkɑm.plɪˌkeɪ.tɪd/, economics /ˌiːkəˈnɒmɪks/
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 sponge, infrastructure, flood.
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.