Shadowing Practice: How I improved my listening & speaking in English to a C2 level - Learn English Speaking with YouTube

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You want to take your English listening and speaking to an advanced level, maybe even C2.
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You want to take your English listening and speaking to an advanced level, maybe even C2.
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And you're probably tired of hearing the same old advice.
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Just practice more.
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Don't worry, I've been exactly where you are right now.
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I was terrified to speak English.
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I memorized long lists of random words.
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I watched hours of content without improving.
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Until I discovered a few strategies that actually helped me improve my speaking and listening skills.
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So in this video, I'm going to share all of these methods with you to help you not just understand English, but develop this natural feel for the language.
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Alright, so the first strategy that helped me improve my listening skills and my speaking skills in English is input first, output later.
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Input is really your listening and reading, and output is your speaking and writing.
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And so if we look at this really famous 80-20 rule, in the past, I would focus mainly on my speaking and my writing.
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Like 80% of my language practice at the very beginning was dedicated to that.
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And in many cases, I pushed myself to speak to produce the language before my brain had enough of that language stored.
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But I think here I really want to mention that yes, it is just my personal experience.
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I have talked to many language learners who really like speaking early on.
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It's pretty much the base of their language practice.
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For my learning though, I do think that speaking fluently is the result of massive input.
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And so that is why right now, this is the strategy I follow in English and in Spanish.
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Because you know, think about it this way, if you never consume the language, how are you going to produce it?
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And so that is why right now,
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for all the languages i'm learning i have flipped this principle this 80 20 principle the 80 of all
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of my learning is dedicated to massive input and yes it has to be comprehensible so i'm doing a lot
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of listening and a lot of reading and yes 20 is still output but it's only
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20 because i prefer to let my speaking skills emerge naturally as a result of a lot of input.
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Before we talk about the next strategy that is going to help you improve your speaking and listening skills in English, I want to tell you about an amazing productivity tool, Akiflow.
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It combines time blocking, AI planning, and all of your tasks from different apps in one clean, easy-to-use space.
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I've been using AccuFlow a lot to plan out my week.
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I just drag all of the things that I need to do directly into my calendar, color code my events, and it helps me actually stick to my plan without feeling overwhelmed.
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You can connect Gmail, Notion, Slack, and even Todoist, and all of your tasks automatically show up in one place, in what they call a universal inbox.
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So you no longer have to switch between different apps and different tabs to remember what you need to do and to keep track of everything.
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One feature that I really love is their AI co-pilot.
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It learns your habits and starts auto-scheduling your tasks based on how you work.
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And if you're someone who likes tracking your progress, Akiflo also gives you productivity stats so you can see how much time you're spending on different types of work, your language learning, and where you might be getting stuck.
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A huge part of staying consistent and making progress is how you organize your time.
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And AccuFlow makes this process so easy.
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If you want to try it for yourself, use my link in the description to sign up.
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And you'll also get access to a free one-on-one onboarding call, which is a really helpful way to learn how the platform works.
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Huge thank you to AccuFlow for sponsoring a portion of today's video.
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Okay, the second strategy that has helped me improve my speaking and listening skills is trying to balance intensive and extensive practice.
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When I talk about intensive listening and intensive reading, I kind of mean active listening and active reading.
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It's when you analyze everything in detail.
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You pause, you check the vocabulary, you repeat, you practice shadowing.
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An extensive listening and extensive reading is when you listen and read a lot.
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You focus on large amounts of material without stopping.
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And I used to be a person for whom balancing these two things like active practice and passive practice was really hard because I thought that my practice always had to be intensive.
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I always wanted to be a good student.
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I always wanted to do my homework.
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Many of us only focus on one kind of practice, either extensive practice or intensive practice.
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so i think combining the two is important for me when i was mostly focusing on over analyzing everything
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like pausing the show to you know read every single sentence multiple times and then write everything down that really
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increased my cognitive load and i talk about this a lot on my youtube channel because i think when we are learning anything especially when we're learning a new language, we have to be mindful of cognitive load.
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Simply put, what it means is that our brain can only process a limited amount of information before it starts to boil, before you start to get extremely tired.
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And so once I started incorporating this extensive practice, this passive practice into my routine, I started having more moments of fun.
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Like, you know, I was just watching a YouTube video just because I liked it.
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Not because I wanted to pause after every single sentence and shadow every single sentence.
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No, I was just watching this video in English for fun.
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What really helps me find this balance is my notion template for language learners, because there I can plan my study time, my active practice, and my passive practice, and also keep track of all of the languages I'm learning.
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So if you want to check it out, you can use the link in the description.
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And yes, extensive practice really helped my language journey.
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I would even say it saved it.
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And there is actually a Japanese method called tadoku that supports this theory.
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So this word tadoku literally means extensive reading.
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And I obviously like to apply this principle to reading and also listening.
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It basically tells you to focus on reading and listening to a lot of material that is easy and enjoyable instead of struggling with texts that are way too hard for you.
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Because you know, if you're stopping every 10 seconds for a dictionary, whether while reading something or listening to something, that means that this material is just way too hard for you.
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It's not comprehensible enough.
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This Japanese method isn't about reading one book really carefully.
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It's about reading lots of pages, lots of articles, and listening to a lot of audio that you can mostly understand.
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Because I think that reading 10 pages of a simple book that you really enjoy will teach you so much more than reading one page of a very difficult book that you literally have to struggle your way through.
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And obviously, that is exactly how we create our habit of language learning by doing it consistently.
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And one thing that is going to help you a lot is if you actually have fun, if you enjoy the process of language learning.
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And so that is why when I was in college, I started reading young adult fiction in English.
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Those were the books that I really enjoyed reading and they were comprehensible enough for me so that I could read pages and pages and pages of those books.
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Alright, so the next strategy is create an English environment.
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And this method is for all of you who think that you can only learn English by moving to an English-speaking country.
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I mean, I learned English without moving to an English-speaking country.
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So yes, it is possible to become advanced without moving abroad.
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And I would even tell you that a lot of people who move abroad, they stay in their native language bubble.
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And it becomes really hard for them to create this immersion and to actually create this English environment around themselves.
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Because moving abroad is really stressful.
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When I moved to Mexico, I did not speak any Spanish.
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And like the first six months, it was really hard for me to be consistent with my Spanish learning because I was just really stressed out.
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And only when I created this language bubble around myself did I start improving all of my skills.
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Advanced speakers, C2 speakers, they don't just study English, they live in English.
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And you can create this kind of environment for yourself no matter where you are.
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Alright, the final strategy that I'm going to share in today's video is going to be move from translation to intuition.
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So this is something that happens to a lot of us language learners.
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We think of translation as a crutch, like we literally needed to survive.
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But actually, the more advanced you become, the more you realize that translation doesn't help you at all.
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In fact, it makes your progress slower.
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Because instead of teaching your brain to develop this natural feel for the language, this like intuition, instead of starting to think in this language, what you're doing is constantly translating everything.
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So you're still creating those connections with your native language.
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And that is something that's not helpful at those advanced levels.
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I have all of these words here like angry, frustrated, irritated, furious, annoyed, resentful, and it could happen that in your native language, all of these words collapse into one word, into one translation.
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But obviously in English, all of these words are a little different, like what they actually mean.
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And so if you only translate all of these words to your native language, you start losing this natural feel.
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Because obviously in real life in English, the word furious is not the same as the word resentful.
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One is this explosive anger and the other is long-lasting bitterness.
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And so that is why right now I always remind myself that fluency isn't about knowing the right translation all the time.
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Fluency for me is being able to feel the difference,
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being able to feel what this word means without needing the translation and so yes you're probably thinking veronica
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all of this is great how can i train my intuition my feel for the language instead of relying constantly
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on translation the first principle is let's say you're learning a new english word so use english to explain english look up a definition in english or maybe talk to chat GPT about this word.
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Ask AI to explain this word in simple ways.
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The next principle that I really like, especially if you're a beginner and intermediate learner, is using images.
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And in psychology, there is a theory that actually explains why our memory works so much better when we combine text with images.
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It's called the dual coding theory.
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Basically, the way it works is it says that images are non-verbal processing and words are verbal processing.
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And if we combine these two kinds of processing, it makes our memory stronger.
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It actually helps our memory retain information for longer.
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I think I really like using context and images because I'm a Gen Z and I have a visual memory.
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So I think it's going to be it for today's video.
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If you liked it, please don't forget to give it a thumbs up and subscribe to my channel.
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It means a lot to me when you comment, when you like my videos, because YouTube starts pushing them to a wider audience and so more people see my content.
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Before you go, don't forget to check out AccuFlow, an amazing productivity tool to plan out your days, your weeks, in a simple way.
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If you want to see how to get fluent by reading in English and all of the book recommendations for every single level that I have, I highly recommend checking out this video right here.
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Just click here and I'll see you there.
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Shadowing English

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About This Lesson

In this lesson, you will explore effective strategies to enhance your English listening and speaking skills, specifically aiming for an advanced C2 level. You will learn the importance of prioritizing input over output, how to balance intensive and extensive practice, and techniques for developing a natural feel for the language. By applying these methods, you can shift from mere memorization to a more intuitive use of English, leading to significant improvements in your conversational abilities.

Key Vocabulary & Phrases

  • Input: The language you consume through listening and reading.
  • Output: The language you produce through speaking and writing.
  • Intensive Practice: Active engagement with the language, focusing on detailed understanding through methods like shadowing.
  • Extensive Practice: Consumption of large amounts of material without interruptions, promoting fluency.
  • Comprehensible Input: Language that is understandable and slightly above your current level.
  • Shadowing: A technique involving mimicking spoken language to improve pronunciation and fluency.
  • Natural Feel: An intuitive grasp of the language developed through immersion and practice.
  • 80-20 Rule: A principle suggesting that 80% of your learning should focus on input and 20% on output.

Practice Tips

To effectively use these strategies, consider incorporating the practice of shadow speech into your routine. Start by listening to the transcript at a slower pace and pause frequently to repeat sentences. Aim to mimic not only the words but also the tone and rhythm of the speaker. Use a shadowspeaks technique where you speak along with the audio, allowing your speech patterns to adapt naturally. This method helps synchronize your speaking style with fluent speakers, enhancing your pronunciation and intonation.

Remember to balance your practice sessions: dedicate significant time to listening and reading (input) before attempting to speak (output). Utilize a shadowing app that allows you to track your progress and offers a variety of materials suitable for both intensive and extensive practice. Engage with diverse content, pausing to analyze new vocabulary, and then switch to extensive listening where you let go of the need to understand every word. This dual approach will develop your overall language proficiency and prepare you for spontaneous conversation.

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.

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