Shadowing Practice: How our expectations shape what we see, hear, and feel - Learn English Speaking with Video
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It can certainly feel like emotions happen to you, that they bubble up and that they cause you to do and say things.
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But that experience is an illusion that the brain creates.
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Not everybody has as much control as they might like, but everybody has a little more control than they think they do.
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When you're experiencing emotion or you're in an emotional state, what your brain is doing is telling itself a story about
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what is going on inside your body in relation to what's happening in the world.
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Your brain is always regulating your body.
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Your body is always sending sensory information back to your brain.
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And your brain isn't wired in a way for you to experience those sensory changes specifically.
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Instead, what you experience is a summary.
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And that's where those simple feelings come from.
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If you understand that every experience you have now becomes part of your brain's ability to predict,
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then you realize that the best way to change your past is to change your present.
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Just in the same way that you would exercise to make yourself healthier,
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you can invest energy to cultivate different experiences for yourself.
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The fact that your brain is using your past experience to predict what you're going to see and hear and feel
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means that you are an architect of your experience.
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And that doesn't involve breaking predictions.
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It involves seeding your brain to predict differently.
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It's my belief that the way in which emotions evolved was to deal with things like saber-toothed tigers,
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the current incarnation of which is the car that's suddenly lurching at your car at a high speed.
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You don't have time to think.
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In split seconds, you have to do and make very complex decisions.
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And if you had to think about what you were doing, you'd be dead.
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It's a system that evolved to deal with really important things without your thinking about.
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So that means that sometimes you're going to be very unconsidered, very thoughtless.
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Well, these exercises that we're giving people, moving their facial muscles,
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concentrating on the sensations to make them more aware of an emotion
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when it arises so that they will feel it at the moment
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and then can say did you really mean to ignore me?
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No. It was just an accident or maybe I shouldn't jump to the conclusion that she doesn't care about me at all.
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The way in which we can improve of our emotional life is to introduce conscious awareness.
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Nature did not want you to do that.
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So you have to do it yourself.
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All relationships are colored with expectations about myself and about the other.
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My expectations influence that which I then see or hear.
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It is a filter as well as my mood.
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That is one of the most important things to understand about relationships and communication
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is how people actually co-create each other in the context of a relationship, because those people make part of who we are.
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We will draw from them the very things which we expect from them, even when it's the opposite of what we really want.
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A lot of emphasis is put on our ability to say certain things, to say them in the right way,
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to articulate our needs, our feelings, our thoughts, our positions, our opinions.
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What is lacking is the ability to see
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that speaking is entirely dictated by the quality of the listening that is reflected back on us.
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If I am talking to someone who is on their phone, I will be expressing myself and experiencing the communication completely different than
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if I am speaking to someone who is looking at me in the eyes who says to me, I get it, I understand.
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Not necessarily I agree, because ultimately, if I speak to you, and in the end, I live feeling even more alone,
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I am literally in an existential crisis.
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There is nothing worse than to be alone in the presence of another.
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So when you listen to me, the first thing I need to know is that I have your attention.
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The second thing I need to know is that maybe you can acknowledge the validity of my point of view.
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And potentially you may even empathize with my point of view.
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You can understand why I would think or feel or experience things the way I do.
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That reflecting back, acknowledging, validating, empathizing.
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That sequence is where the depth of communication takes place.
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When you enter this world, you're not wired full of memories that your brain will use to predict.
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Other people cultivate your world
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and as a consequence they are wiring your brain full of experiences that your brain will then use to predict.
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So as an adult you can make decisions about what you experience now.
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You can make choices about how you act and those decisions
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and choices either reinforce the predictions that your brain makes or it changes them.
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Sometimes in life we are responsible for changing things not
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because we're culpable or to blame for those things but because we're the only ones who can change them.
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You always have tools available at your disposal to heal yourself,
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to act differently, and to feel differently.
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This video has 64 sentences and 881 words to shadow. The speech runs for 6:51. The speaker talks at a steady 128 words per minute, a comfortable pace for shadowing. 87% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English; the rest is worth studying before you start.
Key vocabulary in this video
15 words from the video worth learning, with pronunciation and meaning:
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| predict verb | /pɹɪˈdɪkt/ | To make a prediction: to forecast, foretell, or estimate a future event on the basis of knowledge and reasoning; to prophesy a future event on the basis of… |
| emotion noun | /ɪˈməʊ.ʃən/ | A person's internal state of being and involuntary physiological response to an object or a situation, based on or tied to physical state and sensory data. |
| wire noun | /ˈwaɪɚ/ | Metal formed into a thin, even thread, now usually by being drawn through a hole in a steel die. |
| differently adverb | /ˈdɪf.ə.ɹənt.li/ | In a different way. |
| reflect verb | /ɹɪˈflɛkt/ | To bend back (light, etc.) from a surface. |
| involve verb | /ɪnˈvɑlv/ | To have (something) as a component or a related part; to comprise, to include. |
| acknowledge verb | /əkˈnɑ.lɪd͡ʒ/ | To admit the knowledge of; to recognize as a fact or truth; to declare one's belief in. |
| expectation noun | /ˌɛk.spɛkˈteɪ.ʃən/ | The act or state of expecting or looking forward to an event as about to happen. |
| prediction noun | /pɹɪˈdɪkʃən/ | A statement of what will happen in the future. |
| evolve verb | /ɪˈvɑlv/ | To move (something) in regular procession through a system. |
| sensory adjective | /ˈsɛn.sə.ɹi/ | Of the physical senses or sensation. |
| ignore verb | /ɪɡˈnɔː/ | To deliberately not listen or pay attention to. |
| necessarily adverb | /ˌnɛs.əˈsɛɹ.ə.li/ | Inevitably; of necessity. |
| belief noun | /bɪˈliːf/ | Mental acceptance of a claim as true. |
| awareness noun | /əˈwɛɹ.nəs/ | The state or level of consciousness where sense data can be confirmed by an observer. |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 14 contractions and reduced forms, such as you're, we're, doesn't. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “th” sounds: tooth /tuθ/, empathize /ˈɛmpəˌθaɪz/, thoughtless /ˈθɔtləs/
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: emotion /ɪˈməʊ.ʃən/, expectation /ˌɛk.spɛkˈteɪ.ʃən/, prediction /pɹɪˈdɪkʃən/, conclusion /kənˈkluːʒən/, potentially /pəˈtɛnʃ(ə)li/
- Long words — get the stress right: differently /ˈdɪf.ə.ɹənt.li/, expectation /ˌɛk.spɛkˈteɪ.ʃən/, necessarily /ˌnɛs.əˈsɛɹ.ə.li/, potentially /pəˈtɛnʃ(ə)li/, validity /vəˈlɪd.ɪ.ti/
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 predict, emotion, wire.
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 | isn't wired · are colored · is put |
| Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing | someone who is · ones who can |
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.