Shadowing Practice: How I Practice English Speaking - Learn English Speaking with Video

Look at this tiny little paw.

This video is for English learners who want to practice their English speaking skills and become more fluent.

English is my second language and I also teach it, so whatever I recommend or suggest comes from either my experience or my students' experience.

This is from years of learning, practicing, living in English speaking societies, having a job in English,

and kind of going through the challenges that come with that.

So what I noticed a lot, comments that I get pretty much every day is that people think

that the only way to practice English is to find a native speaker

and talk to them and that's not entirely true that's not true at all

so I'm going to show you four ways you can practice

English speaking by yourself at home without needing a native speaker to help you with

that and I'm also going to explain why these methods work

your speaking through shadowing and

if you don't know what shadowing is I'm gonna try to explain it to you in very few simple words

so basically what shadowing means is you being someone's shadow

and repeat everything they say

and the way they say it the same tone the same melody the same speed the same connected speech

so I'm going to shadow a little bit of a TED talk called the Manitou Springs edition, I think.

So I'm just going to shadow her and there's two methods for doing this two shadowing methods.

So if you're just at the beginning, if you're just learning English now, the first method is you listen to one line, pause, repeat.

Listen, pause, repeat, right?

So you give yourself a little bit of space, a little bit more room.

The second method is simultaneous shadowing.

Basically, you just

press play and then repeat immediately after

that person you are a shadow for their voice

so first we're gonna do the first method

so then you can see how you can apply it

and then i'll show you how to do the second spend a lot of money on your phone

and your phone and your phone and your phone of quality time with your friends and your family.

Spend a lot of quality time with your friends and your family.

For me, this looks like weekly date nights with my husband, For me, this looks like weekly date nights with my husband,

playing with my daughters, playing with my daughters...

Every single day with my phone away, every single day with my phone away, and FaceTiming and calling my sisters multiple times a week.

and facetiming and calling my sisters multiple times a week.

So see how I imitated her.

I imitated her melody and her rhythm.

That doesn't necessarily mean that that's exactly how I would have said those words

if I read them off of a piece of paper, right?

Because if I'm a non -native speaker or I'm still learning, I don't really know how this melody goes, how the tone changes.

But when you do shadowing, it's very easy to understand, okay, You stop here, but you say all of these words faster.

You take a break here, but you group all these words together.

And that's how you learn this flow.

So for example, when she said, spend a lot of time with friends and family.

So she said a lot, right?

So that shows you that that's how you emphasize this quantity, a lot.

Because if she said, spend a lot of time with friends and family,

lot right so that's how your voice has to go a lot

and take it a little bit slower within those two words a lot

and then she says for me this looks like weekly date nights with my husband right

so this is where it gets a little bit tricky

because it's sort of a tongue twister you have to say weekly date nights with my husband really quickly

and that's where you can see that maybe you have troubles with

so you have to go again and repeat it until you can say it really quickly so first

and then she pauses right because We wanted to see what comes next.

First, she said that for me, in her opinion or for her life, for me, this looks like...

So for me, this is first part.

This looks like it's the second part and then the third part weekly date nights with my husband, right?

So that is one unit.

It's a group of words.

It's connected speech.

And that's how you learn how to connect little words into bigger groups.

Okay.

And now the second method is going to be the simultaneous shadowing, which is a little bit trickier, but it's not as hard as you might think.

It might sound a little weird, but I'm going to show you and you can be the judge of that.

But I promise you, you get used to it.

Spend a lot of quality time with your friends and your family.

for me for me this looks like weekly date nights with

my husband with my daughter playing with my daughter every single day every single day with my phone away

and facetiming and calling and face timing

and calling my sisters multiple times a week so

that just put my brain into hyper focus mode

and i had to keep up right i had to just follow the sounds

that she was making and repeating

that i i didn't have time to overthink i didn't have time to think about grammar i didn't have

I don't need to know all the words she's saying.

I don't need to understand everything she's saying.

This exercise is just for you to be able to practice

the way the mouth moves every time you are in connected speech mode, basically in real life speaking mode.

And that will also challenge you to become quicker, faster and more fluent.

And this can be done with a million different videos, different types of videos, people speak differently.

It's really good to practice with different speakers and not just one.

And it's really good to practice different accents as well, because then you get to actually understand "Oh, this is the difference.

This is how they say it.

This is how I say it." And then in time, you get used to different accents as well, especially the non -native speaking accents.

So the shadowing method helps you realize

and helps you see how real people talk and how they connect the words to each other when they speak.

And shadowing is pretty easy because you don't have to produce your own thoughts yet.

You just have to repeat after someone else.

And our brain naturally imitates what it sees and what it hears.

So that's why the shadowing method is really good to improve your fluency, your pronunciation, and your melody and tone.

And because you have to

that person like immediately your brain doesn't have time to overthink you just repeat the sounds

and that's what we need this method is supposed to improve your pronunciation

and fluency it's not supposed to focus on grammar vocabulary

or any other structures so no overthinking just repeating

and teaching your mouth how to move quickly and how to sound natural so shadowing is basically a speak really quickly.

So it's a circle that has to go on like high rotation.

And the more you mimic, the more you imitate other people, the more confident you become because you know that what you are repeating is not only correct,

but it also sounds good, fluent and natural.

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So you can pick an audiobook, a TED talk, a speech a show,

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a movie, some interviews, I do recommend to focus a lot on maybe street interviews or vloggers,

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YouTube vloggers, even TikTok, people like normal people who talk in a normal rhythm.

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Because if you only shadow audiobooks or TV shows or movies, those are scripted things.

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People right?

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So it's not really natural, natural.

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And also their articulation, their diction is a lot better because they have to be understood.

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But with vloggers, they talk like normal, real people, even though they probably also try to be a little bit more clear, but at least it's a normal flow.

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Okay, method number two is to practice your passive vocabulary.

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And a lot of my students, - Thank you.

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they don't really understand the difference between passive vocabulary and active vocabulary and they think that everything you learn

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should be active vocabulary the difference is that

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if you have a lot of passive vocabulary it means

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that you understand a lot of things

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but you cannot produce those things you cannot speak the same way active vocabulary means

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that you are able to use the words that are in your active vocabulary and the expressions

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immediately when you need them

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and you don't you don't hesitate you just have them available to you

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so the reason why you understand everything i'm saying

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or you understand what everybody else is saying

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but you can't speak the same way is

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because you do have a lot of passive vocabulary

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and you haven't practiced it enough so for example

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if you're watching somebody vlogging

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or showing you you know this is what this is called

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this is what i'm doing this is what this action is called and

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words and this is cool right you're watching somebody talk and you're learning but that is only 50

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of your learning right you are absorbing that information but

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that doesn't mean that you are able to use it

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so let's say i feel myself making breakfast

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and i'm narrating everything i'm doing right i'm flipping pancakes

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and i'm whisking eggs and all of that

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and you're like oh i didn't know that that is a whisk and i didn't know that it's flipping pancakes, right?

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So you think, oh, I learned something new today.

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And yes, you did learn it for like 10 minutes.

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But tomorrow, you might not remember what you learned.

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And that kind of goes into your passive vocabulary, if you're lucky, like next time, if you hear the word whisk,

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and you automatically can remember where you heard it and what it means, that's great.

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But most of the time you don't even retain that word.

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You just understand it in the moment and you think you learned it.

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Like, it's more of an illusion.

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So what you want to do is you see me using a whisk, you see me flip a pancake, you think, oh, I learned that.

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Now what you're going to do is, You go and whisk some eggs and then you say, I am whisking eggs.

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This is a whisk, right?

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You introduce it into your speech.

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You tell your mouth, what it's supposed to sound like what is this word supposed

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to sound like you uh tell your ear okay this is

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a whisk associate this sound with this object with this action you basically have to do more with the words

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that you are consuming the words that you are absorbing the words

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that you are understanding because the first step you're getting familiar with them

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and then the second part is when you actually introduce them into your speech

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so they stay there so they can be available few activities you can do to practice your passive vocabulary,

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and I have a lot of these on my TikTok channel actually, is number one, your house should be your English zone, everything that you do in your house,

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everything that you see in your house, you should be able to say that in English, if you're cleaning your house, narrate what you're doing in as much detail as possible.

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If you are cooking, narrate what you're doing.

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If you are doing laundry, if you are painting, if you're doing anything, if you're going even to the gym, narrate what you're doing.

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You're going to be surprised by how many simple words you don't actually know

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that you see every day and you do every day.

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And what's cool about in other areas.

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For example, if you flip a pancake, you can also flip a burger.

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you can also flip the page so basically anything

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that you can quickly turn over

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or turn on the other side that's flipping you can do a what's in my bag video pretend

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that you're a celebrity you can do a day in my

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life video pretend you're a vlogger you can describe objects for example

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if I have this pillow and I want to describe it, I can be very very descriptive with it in terms of physical appearance, right?

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I can talk about the shape, I can talk about the fabric, I can talk about the colors, the print, what I use it for, what I need it for, and so on.

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Hey, don't.. not very graceful.

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Ballerina Cappuccino.

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And because you rotate these words, you say them all the time, you pronounce them, you say them out loud, your brain is going to get so used to them.

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So next time you need them outside your house, you're going to be able to produce them right away.

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Okay, third method is converting your thoughts into an English zone.

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So first the house, then your thoughts.

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How many times have you replayed a dialogue that you thought, you know, oh, I should have said that, I could have said that instead, right?

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You replay that in your head a lot. that in English.

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If you have some opinions about something that happened at work, something that happened with a friend, some news that you saw.

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Try to share and express your opinions in English.

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It doesn't have to be to anybody, just to yourself out loud when you're by yourself.

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If you want to ask your boss for some time off or a raise and you're kind of imagining

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what would that conversation look like?

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What would I say?

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What would I say if he says that?

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What would I say back if he said that?

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So try to do that.

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But in English, this is going to help you

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convert your own thoughts into english and not just someone else's right

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when you do shadowing for example you are repeating someone else's

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thoughts you have your own style you have your own humor

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you have your own way of speaking about different things

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and this is also going to show you that these are the words

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that you need right now and these are the words

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that you think you knew

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but you don't really have them as part of your active vocabulary i used to do that a lot when i

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imagine all these

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missed opportunities that I had in different conversations

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and dialogues I have with my mom or with my dad

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or with my brother with my friends or with my teacher, right?

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I, I used to imagine how I would like talk back and what would I say back to them, you know?

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And of course my English was terrible at the beginning.

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I didn't have a lot of the vocabulary that I needed, but I tried to explain that, you know?

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So I try to use whatever words or imagine whatever words I needed, but if I didn't know the word,

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I just tried to deconstruct it and explain it.

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And I was imagining all of these dialogues while

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how they were so expressive when they would say something like

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if they asked you know what are you doing here

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or what do you think about that or why did you do

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that or whatever you know all of these questions sentences expressions

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that they would use would have a different melody than they

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would in my language you know for the equivalent of those expressions

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so to me that was interesting to explore and I was practicing

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that in my mind so this way I started converting my thoughts into I caught myself Thinking in English,

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you know, some of these situations would happen a lot.

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So I would rotate them in my mental dialogues a lot.

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So the next time I would have to say that same expression, it would just come naturally.

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I wouldn't have to think too much about it.

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And I also started to look at English as a communication tool, not just a set of vocabulary words and grammar rules that I was learning in school.

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So I would watch these people on TV using this melody, the fluctuation in their voices, the pauses, the connected speech,

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the group of the words and all of these things.

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tool now, not just a subject in school.

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And that brings me to my next point and my last fourth method.

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Develop your social skills.

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At the end of the day, English, just like any other language, just like your native language, requires having some personal and social skills.

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It's not just knowledge and pronunciation.

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It's a human being connecting with another human being

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and english is just another language

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that has to be used in a certain way in order

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for it to work the right way you need to learn

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how to be an active listener you need to learn how

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to be empathetic you need to learn how to be aware

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of your body language your facial expressions your eye contact your

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tone of voice you have to learn how to read the

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room how to adapt to the atmosphere in the room you need to know how to be respectful

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and polite in english you need to learn how to provide

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feedback in english you need to learn how to regulate your

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emotions you need to learn how to be a little bit more open -minded

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or a lot more open -minded

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because you will be interacting with people from all over the world both native speakers

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and non -native speakers that come from different backgrounds so

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very quickly and yes that includes practicing talking to real people

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and I know this goes against my first thing

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that I've said at the beginning of the video

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that you don't need a native speaker to practice English

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and I said that is not the only way right to practice English

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and the reason I add this point is

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because it is 2025 we have so many more resources right now so many different skills with real people.

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I didn't have a smartphone when I was learning English

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and I didn't have a lot of opportunities to interact with real people.

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And from my experience when I went to the US and the cultural shock I got,

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you know, from how you should behave, how you should talk to people, how you should adjust your tone of voice,

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your facial expressions, that was something that I - Okay.

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Every single time you said something and a native speaker would interpret it differently, He'd be like,

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what did i say wrong what was wrong with the words i said yeah

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but the thing is your words were perfectly fine your grammar was perfectly fine your vocabulary is perfectly fine

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but the tone of voice or the moment when you said that

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didn't really fit the situation and while it's really good to practice with ai apps or to chat

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through text with different people that doesn't really expose you to these social skills

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that you need to learn

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and for example in speaking clubs you get to interact with different people

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and you can also observe how other people interact with you

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and other people in the club

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so you can learn from their mistakes you can learn from the reactions from others and that's how you become

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confident in your own speaking and social skills and

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that makes you a little bit more motivated and encourages you to do it more.

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Because remember, English, just like any other language, just like your native language, comes with a cultural aspect as well.

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It's not just vocabulary words and grammar rules.

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It's human behavior, perception, expectations, social norms,

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clubs the next one is on July 13th you can find it in the link in the description 90 minutes of

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me interacting with you guys having little debates you get separated

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into groups I also offer some support with maybe some pronunciation

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or some vocabulary grammar whatever it is

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that in the moment would be helpful I'm there to support you with

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that but I provide the topics of the speaking clubs

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and you get to interact with people from all over the world because my audience is very

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control over your English speaking practice than you think.

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And saying that you don't have someone to talk to is just an excuse.

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Thank you so much for watching, I hope this gives you a bit of a different perspective around

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practicing your English speaking skills and I can't wait to hear or see your thoughts in the comments.

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Okay, bye!

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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson

This video has 277 sentences and 3539 words to shadow. The speech runs for 21:11. The speaker talks at a natural 167 words per minute, close to everyday conversation. 87% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English, so the vocabulary is easy to follow.

Key vocabulary in this video

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

Word	Pronunciation	Meaning
shadow noun	/ˈʃædəʊ̯/	A dark image projected onto a surface where light (or other radiation) is blocked by the shade of an object.
vocabulary noun	/vəˈkæb.jə.lə.ɹi/	A usually alphabetized and explained collection of words e.g. of a particular field, or prepared for a specific purpose, often for learning.
skill noun	/skɪl/	A capacity to do something well; a technique, an ability, usually acquired or learned, as opposed to abilities that are regarded as innate.
connect verb	/kəˈnɛkt/	To join (to another object): to attach, or to be intended to attach or capable of attaching, to another object.
flip verb	/flɪp/	To throw so as to turn over.
tone noun	/ˈtəʊn/	A specific pitch.
grammar noun	/ˈɡɹæm.ə(ɹ)/	A system of rules and principles for the structure of a language, or of languages in general.
interact verb	/ɪn.təˈɹækt/	To engage in communication and other shared activities (with someone).
passive adjective	/ˈpæs.ɪv/	Being subjected to an action without producing a reaction.
melody noun	/ˈmɛl.ə.di/	A sequence of notes that makes up a musical phrase.
dialogue noun	/ˈdaɪəˌlɑɡ/	A conversation or other form of discourse between two or more individuals.
pause noun	/pɔːz/	A temporary stop or rest; an intermission of action; interruption; suspension; cessation.
pronunciation noun	/pɹəˌnʌn.siˈeɪ.ʃən/	The formal or informal way in which a word is made to sound when spoken.
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…
accent noun	/ækˈsɛnt/	A higher-pitched or stronger (louder or longer) articulation of a particular syllable of a word or phrase in order to distinguish it from the others or to…

Phrasal verbs you will hear

Word	Meaning
go through verb	To travel from one end of something to the other.
keep up verb	To maintain; to preserve; to prevent from deteriorating or falling.
talk back verb	To reply impertinently or rudely; to answer in a cheeky or rude manner.
turn over verb	To flip over; to rotate uppermost to bottom.

Pronunciation to watch

The speaker uses 75 contractions and reduced forms, such as you're, I'm, don't. Say them the short way, as you hear them.

The “th” sounds: rhythm /ˈɹɪð.əm/, empathetic /ˌɛmpəˈθɛtɪk/
The “sh” and “zh” sounds: shadow /ˈʃædəʊ̯/, pronunciation /pɹəˌnʌn.siˈeɪ.ʃən/, facial /ˈfeɪ.ʃəl/, shock /ʃɔk/, associate /əˈsoʊʃi.ət/
Long words — get the stress right: vocabulary /vəˈkæb.jə.lə.ɹi/, pronunciation /pɹəˌnʌn.siˈeɪ.ʃən/, naturally /ˈnæt͡ʃ.(ə.)ɹə.li/, differently /ˈdɪf.ə.ɹənt.li/, simultaneous /ˌsaɪ̯.məlˈteɪ̯.ni.əs/

How to practise with this video

Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
Start at 0.75× speed, shadow it sentence by sentence, then go back to normal speed once it feels easy.
Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like shadow, vocabulary, skill.

Grammar in this video

The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:

Structure	In the video
“Used to” used to + verb — a past habit or state that is no longer true	used to them · used to do · used to imagine
Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it	can be done · are scripted · be understood
Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now	haven't practiced · I've said
Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing	shadowing, which is · people who talk

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 →

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