Shadowing Practice: How My Kids Learn English - Learn English Speaking with Video

Let's talk a little bit about how kids learn English.

So this is a video in which I'm speaking at normal speed, by the way.

This will be good practice for your listening.

Of course, the subtitles are right there.

So hopefully you can follow along as I'm talking about this.

I want to talk about the subject of kids learning English.

And I'm not giving a guide or anything like that, or I'm not really trying to make a ton of comparisons between us and kids.

I just want to talk about this subject in general because it's really interesting.

I have young kids and it's fascinating to watch them learn their native language.

It's a really interesting process that they go through.

So I'm just going to give some general notes about this, things that I've noticed.

And I hope that this will be an interesting topic for you to listen to as you practice your listening, just practicing your English listening comprehension with me.

So also remember that if you like this type of content in which I speak at normal speed, make sure to sign up for my advanced podcast episodes that link is down below.

Okay let's talk about what it's like for a kid to learn English.

Well first of all as a parent it's kind of interesting

it's kind of hard to realize how much your kid is learning in just any given moment

because you're with them all the time you don't really notice their progress until you look back

and you say wow you know they didn't used to be able to

or they weren't able to say this before

and now they can say this or maybe you watch old videos

that you have of them and you realize wow they couldn't say anything back then

and now they say all these different things

so it's kind of hard to really track

and follow this really closely in the moment because it happens very slowly

but like little by little they start to be able to speak

and after a while you realize whoa they're saying all these different things

so it's pretty cool my kids are growing up bilingual

so it's a different situation from the average kid in the US

because the average kid in the US they just have to

focus on one language really it's just one language one system

one grammatical system one set of vocabulary that's it however my kids are growing up bilingual so

that changes a lot it's double the words they need to

learn double the rules double the sounds just a lot of stuff

that they have to learn and then separating those languages in their brain right

which happens by the the way it happens at a very young age it's really fascinating to to see

that happen but it's a lot of stuff

that they have to learn compared to the average person here in the US and

so of course their development in each language is a little

bit slower than the average kid who's only learning one language

because they're spending all day in that language with

that language hearing those sounds those words my kids get half the time in each language right

so they hear Spanish from their mom they hear English from their dad

so of course is natural

that their development is a little bit slower in each language than just a monoling monolingual kid

but they have like double the things the vocabulary and sounds

and all that to learn so it's normal

and then they get to learn two languages which is really cool

so let me talk about their English and how it's been for them learning English.

By the way, my son is like four and a half, my daughter is two in a few months maybe.

So at first they say single words.

At first it's not even like proper sounds for that word but you can tell they're saying a certain word.

Like I remember my daughter would always say ka instead of car, right?

She wouldn't make the R sound, she would just say ka ka whenever she'd have like a little toy car or whatever.

Or like right now instead of saying bread she says bed bed instead of bread right because

that br is a little bit tricky the easiest type of

sound for them to make is just like one consonant one vowel

so like ka da ma right those are the easiest sounds

for kids to make where it's just like they start with a consonant

and then they end with a vowel just one sound um that's like typically what you hear at the very beginning

You hear, you know, ma, da, ka, you know, these types of sounds, right?

But then these start to become actual words, right?

They start to be able to say phone, for example, right?

And they'll say one word, right?

They'll just say one word here, one word there.

And really they're doing a lot of imitation.

That's basically how they're speaking, that's how they're saying these words.

They hear you say it as the parent and then they say it, right?

And that's kind of a lesson for us, right?

If kids learn their first language like that, obviously, you know, it's something that we can relate to as second language learners,

like we're really just imitating what we hear, right?

It's not like there's some really complex secret code to learning words right at the end of the day

if you hear someone say a word many times

and you repeat it you're eventually gonna know that word right

so that's how it works with little kids as well

and their sounds start to become better over time as well

so they can actually say the word clearly like my daughter four

or five months ago a lot of her words were like not properly said.

Like we knew what she was saying but it wasn't well formed.

Whereas like now a lot of her words are well formed.

Like it's very clear what she's saying.

So that's kind of cool.

After the one word utterances, of course they start to say two words.

These two word phrases.

So for example, my daughter might say Dada Shu.

Right?

So now she's putting together two words to create a phrase.

Obviously it's not a correct phrase.

Right?

She should say Dada Shu with the possessive S on the end

but nevertheless it's a phrase so it's interesting

when the one-word utterances become two-word phrases it's like an exciting thing

and they start to be able to communicate more with that

because now the sentence is like double the length they can

include more information in there right instead of just shoe it's dad

that shoe right so there's more information encoded into that phrase

so the communication starts to become a little bit more complex you start to be able to say

or just you know have conversations let's say with them

so that's really cool their words continue to become clearer of course especially once they're saying two-word phrases like

that a lot of times their words start to just become clearer their sounds

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and then three-word utterances that is like the next step after the two-word utterances right

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so instead of dad that shoe it might be dad

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that shoe there or something like that right

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so now they're putting together these different words

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and there's a lot of information in there

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but really they're including like mostly nouns verbs adjectives maybe adverbs like the words

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that really have a lot of meaning to them right

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so dad that shoe there right however they're not really including all the prepositions

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and the articles and things like that that they might need.

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The possessives and these little grammatical function elements, right?

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So they're not saying the yet, right?

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They're not saying, I don't know, in the house.

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They might just say like in-house or house or whatever.

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Like they have to start to develop the ability to put together those little building blocks of like articles

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and determiners and stuff like that.

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But as the phrases get longer, you know, after the two-word, three-word phase that they're in,

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then they start to include those little building blocks, those little function words that they weren't able to do,

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they weren't able to say before.

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So you can see the little by little how their

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ability to communicate information increases with more words

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and using different types of words

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so that's really cool once they have all these building blocks

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like my son for example right who is older than my

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daughter he has these building blocks right he can say the little words

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that have just more grammatical function meaning rather than like you know a noun

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or a verb or whatever so once they have these building blocks and they're saying full sentences, they're communicating to you well,

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they still run into problems, right?

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They're still young, they're still early on in their linguistic journey, even in their native language, and so they still run into issues,

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they still make a lot of mistakes, right?

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So a good one with English, not a good one, but a good example of this is like with inversion, with questions.

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So for example, like I could ask, how many did you do, right?

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So I have this inversion and I put the did, right, the auxiliary verb there.

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Like how many have you done, right?

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So we invert our sentences.

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We change the order of them with an auxiliary verb in English when we ask questions.

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So instead of saying how many did you do my son might say how many you did right?

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So he doesn't invert it and he doesn't have that 100% yet.

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I'll correct him and then maybe he'll he'll correct it himself

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But really he's not at the stage where he asks these questions completely

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correctly other kids his age do Some don't some do like I said my kids are bilingual

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so you can forgive them for developing a little bit more slowly

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because they have all the rules in both languages to learn right

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so I'm not very worried about that type of thing

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but you know that's inversion is a good like a good example of a problem

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that they run into or maybe they do invert I remember hearing my my nephew this was

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when he was maybe like three and a half or something like

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that or four I forget when how old he was maybe he was three

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but he was trying to invert or he was trying to ask the question like where are they?

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Instead of where are they he just said where is them?

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Right?

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So he's thinking like where is Dada, where is Mama, where is them?

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Right?

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He's just substituting them there.

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Obviously that's wrong but you can see how he came to that conclusion.

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Right?

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So a lot of these like grammar rules they're actually understanding

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that there's like these patterns and they're trying to say things correctly

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but the rules are a little bit more complicated than what they're thinking

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and so they can't follow these irregular patterns and things like that.

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Like I just heard my friend's son the other day instead of saying I fell, I think he said I falled or I felled

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or something like he needed to put a D on the end because in his mind that's how the grammar works right.

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I walked, I talked, I felled or I falled or whatever he said right.

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So it's interesting to see how they try to apply grammar

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but then the irregular rules trip them up

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so that's pretty cool to see that working in their brain

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and you don't really realize

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when they get these rules down it's kind of hard to remember like

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when my son started to say things correctly it just kind of happens gradually

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so again like I said at the beginning it's more like

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when you watch old videos of them or whatever

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and you see how they used to talk

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and then you oh yeah you're saying all these things much better now right

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so that's a way that you notice it kids learn a lot of English

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or whatever language they're learning I'm just talking about English right

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now here in the US they learn a lot of English from their friends their environment the people around them

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and the entertainment they watch

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so a lot of what my son can say right now

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doesn't actually come from me I'm most of it comes from me I assume

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but a lot of it comes from the things that he watches, the things he hears from his friends.

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I remember seeing something like research done about like how impactful

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it is like the environment around a kid specifically like their friends not necessarily their parents

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but like what they hear their friends say what they hear

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people on the streets say this really influences the type of language

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that they speak like the type of communication they have

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so that's a really big thing my son says new words

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and phrases all the time

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and I have no idea where he learned them I'm like where did you learn

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that I asked that all the time

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because I'm like I know you didn't learn

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that for me I didn't say that but he saw it somewhere else

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or whatever he heard it and then you know he adopted it

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so it's startling how many new things they learn from sources that aren't you as the parent.

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That's pretty interesting.

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Lastly, I just want to talk about reading.

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My son is learning to read right now and for me it's amazing

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that young children can learn how to read in English.

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In other languages this is not necessarily the case because they're phonetic.

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Like Spanish, you just learn the sound of every letter and you can basically learn to read.

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Like someone who's learning to read as a second language learner in Spanish, they can learn to read pretty quickly because you just have to know the sound of each letter, right?

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And even if you don't know what the words mean, you can say them, right?

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Whereas in English, nuh-uh.

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You probably already know by now, but English, like the way that it's written and the way that it's spoken is extremely different.

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And so this system is

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unbelievably complicated and

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so imagine trying to teach this to a four-year-old right you're teaching them the the sound of a letter A

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but then unfortunately the letter A can be said like five

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six seven different ways depending on the word the sounds around

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it how reduced it is how stressed it is like just

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its normal sounds like they just ask these questions like why

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is it said like this now I thought you told me

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that the A makes this sound it's super complicated I feel really bad for kids

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that are in this process because it must be so frustrating for them.

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Like, why is it pronounced like this?

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You just told me it was like this.

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Why isn't it like this?

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Right?

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Like my son, he has an O in his name that is reduced, right?

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If you've ever watched my pronunciation seminars or my listening practice seminars, you'll know what I'm talking about when I talk about reduced speech, right?

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So he has an O in his name that's reduced.

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and he asked the other day, like, why isn't the O in my name an O sound or an A sound?

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And I, of course, didn't really have the ability to,

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or he didn't really have the ability to understand when I explained to him about the stress system in English.

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But it's just super complicated to even explain to a kid why certain letters are pronounced certain ways and certain words.

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in English this is just a mess and

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so I commend all these kids for learning how to read at a young age

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because it's really hard again this is not the case in other languages

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but in English it's extremely hard so you know

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if that's you know when you hear me talk about reduction

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and stuff like that if you want to learn more about

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that make sure to sign up for my membership

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so you can get my training you can learn about these

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things the schwa sound why the O is not always pronounced ah or oh but it's pronounced right why right

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Why does that schwa sound come about?

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So if you're interested in that, make sure to sign up for my training.

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Click on the link down below.

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So a lot of what they're reading just does not match up to the sounds that they're learning.

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And so they just learn to sight read.

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In other words, you're just learning what the sound of a word is without really paying attention to the individual letters.

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Like the word the, right?

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It's not t-h-eh.

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That's not how you pronounce that word it's the

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so they just learn to sight read

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that like okay every time you see those three letters it's pronounced the right

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so that's kind of how we learn to read eventually we're not relying on our knowledge of sounds

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because in English that doesn't really take you very far right

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so you just learn how to sight read all these you know thousands of words

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so it's pretty incredible how that happens

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and I'm just watching the beginning stages of

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that with my son right now

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and I'm really excited to see this happen super stoked for him to learn how to read

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because I'm a big reader it's one of my greatest passions hobbies I love reading

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so I really want my son and my daughter of course

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and any of their future kids to be big readers as well

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so it's really fun for me to watch them read

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but I don't know how they do it it's like super complicated in English

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when you're a four-year-old Wow I commend them and it's exciting

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but it's hard so um overall these are some of the notes

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that I have about you know what I've seen from my kids learning to speak English.

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This wasn't really a guide for you, but it's just kind of like an interesting topic.

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So much of how they learn is just related to exposure, experience, repetition, imitating, recognizing patterns,

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you know, even just their desire to want to say certain things, right?

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So a lot of it is just like, it's not really like, you know, technical, it's just, you know, repetition, exposure, you know, all these different things,

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desire these other factors right and it's just interesting to watch all this happen

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so I hope you enjoyed this video I hope it was

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good practice for listening remember to sign up for my training

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if you want help understanding pronouncing you know different things like

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that if you want my advanced episodes in

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which I speak like I'm speaking now at normal speed make sure to click on the link below check out

268

that membership okay thank you all for watching this video and I'll talk to you in the next one

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 Practice: How My Kids Learn English - Learn English Speaking with Video

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What is the Shadowing Technique?