Shadowing Practice: How to know your life purpose in 2 minutes | Adam Leipzig (TED Talk Summary) - Learn English Speaking with Video
Choose a practice mode
Each mode opens a full-screen practice room.
24 sentences
If sentences are too short or too long, click Edit to adjust them.
1
Would you like to know your life purpose in the next five minutes?
2
If you're like a lot of us, you have wondered and worried about your life purpose for a long time.
3
So let's figure out the life purpose right now together.
4
Who you are, what you do, who you do it for, what those people want and need, and how they change as a result.
5
Shall we do it?
6
Who are you?
7
Yes.
8
What do you do?
9
Yes.
10
Who do you do it for?
11
Yes.
12
What do they want or need?
13
How do they change as a result?
14
You might say, I help people get great work into the world.
15
If your life purpose is, I train entrepreneurs and creative people to take decisive actions so they can get their greatest work into the world.
16
Or you might say, I help people look and feel their best.
17
If your life purpose is, I design apparel for men and women who need affordable choices so they can look and feel their best.
18
Now, why is that formulation so powerful?
19
Because of all those five things that you need to know to know what your life purpose is, only two are about yourself.
20
The others, three of them, are about other people.
21
That formulation forces you to be outward-facing.
22
And you may have intuited this already, that the most successful people in any field
23
always focus most on the people that they serve than how they are served themselves.
24
If you make other people happy, life teaches us, we will be taken care of too.
Download App
Everything you need to speak fluently
AI PronunciationScore every sentence
IPA PracticeMaster every sound
VocabularyBuild your word bank
Vocab GameLearn while playing
Same Channel
B22
Celeste Headlee - 10 ways to have a better conversation (Condensed Talk)
Daily ConversationWorking Adults
B212
4 Fundamentals to Smart Speaking | Matt Abrahams (Key Points Talk)
Business EnglishUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
B25
How to speak so that people want to listen | Julian Treasure (TED Talk Summary)
Daily ConversationWorking Adults
B225
3 Lessons from Steve Jobs (Key Points from Stanford '05 Speech)
Business EnglishDaily ConversationUniversity Students
C125
Simon Sinek | Start with WHY to inspire action (Super Quick Version)
Business EnglishUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
B211
Josh Kaufman | 20 Hours to Learn Anything (Key Points Talk)
Business EnglishUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
B28
Ivan Joseph | 5 Keys to self confidence (Key Points Talk)
Business EnglishUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
FOR YOU
Recommend Video
B212
351 sentences
English Podcast For Learning English | How To Find Your Purpose | Daily Life English Conversation
Business EnglishDaily ConversationUniversity Students
B21
468 sentences
How To Plan Your Life For Success & Handle Change P1: Dr. Myles Munroe's Strategy | MunroeGlobal.com
Daily ConversationWorking Adults
B21
325 sentences
You can progress more in 6 minutes than you would in a month | Daniel Coyle
Daily ConversationWorking Adults
C11
162 sentences
The Most Valuable 15 Minutes You'll Spend Today | Oprah Winfrey Motivation.
Daily ConversationWorking Adults
B2290 sentences
Do You Know Who You Are? | from The Alchemy of Happiness by Imam Al-Ghazzali 📖✨
Daily ConversationWorking Adults
B211
25 sentences
The Short-Term "Mistake" That Made Long-Term Impact
Business EnglishDaily ConversationWorking Adults
B23
211 sentences
Stop Wasting Your Life - 7 Things I Quit to Go From Broke to Millionaire
Daily ConversationWorking Adults
B2549
12 sentences
Organize Your life - Motivational speech
Daily ConversationWorking Adults
B21
20 sentences
Loneliness comes from not working on your purpose.
Daily ConversationWorking Adults
B26
24 sentences
Man's Search for Meaning: Finding Your Why
British AccentDaily ConversationUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
C1208 sentences
for Muslims who forgot what they're Talented at
Daily ConversationWorking Adults
B22
58 sentences
Changing Your Life Is Not Easy with Lewis Howes
Daily ConversationWorking Adults
Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This B2 speaking lesson is built on the video “How to know your life purpose in 2 minutes”. This video has 24 sentences and 266 words to shadow. The speech runs for 1:35. The speaker talks at a natural 168 words per minute, close to everyday conversation. 93% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English, so the vocabulary is easy to follow. 8 of its 24 sentences are questions, so it is good practice for question intonation and short answers.
Key vocabulary in this video
The 15 most advanced words in the video, with pronunciation and meaning:
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| affordable adjective | /əˈfɔɹ.də.bəl/ | Able to be afforded; inexpensive or reasonably priced. |
| entrepreneur noun | /ˌɑn.tɹə.pɹəˈnɝ/ | A person who sets up a business; generally, a person who owns and manages a business and assumes its financial risks. |
| decisive adjective | /dɪˈsaɪsɪv/ | Having the power or quality of deciding a question or controversy; putting an end to contest or controversy; final; conclusive. |
| apparel noun | /əˈpæ.ɹəl/ | Clothing. |
| outward adjective | /ˈaʊt.wɚd/ | Outer; located towards the outside. |
| formulation noun | The act, process, or result of formulating or reducing to a formula. | |
| intuit verb | /ɪnˈtuɪt/ | To know intuitively or by immediate perception. |
| teach verb | /ˈtiːt͡ʃ/ | To pass on knowledge to. |
| creative adjective | /kɹiˈeɪtɪv/ | Tending to create things, or having the ability to create; often, excellently, in a novel fashion, or any or all of these. |
| purpose noun | /ˈpɜːpəs/ | The end for which something is done, is made or exists. |
| serve verb | /sɝv/ | To be a formal servant for (a god or deity); to worship in an official capacity. |
| focus noun | /ˈfoʊ̯.kəs/ | A point at which reflected or refracted rays of light converge. |
| train noun | /ˈtɹeɪn/ | The elongated back portion of a dress or skirt (or an ornamental piece of material added to similar effect), which drags along the ground. |
| successful adjective | /səkˈsɛs.fəl/ | Resulting in success; assuring or promoting success; accomplishing what was proposed; having the desired effect. |
| wonder noun | /ˈwʌndɚ/ | A sense of awe, astonishment and curiosity, inspired by unexpected events, novel experiences and inexplicable circumstances, sometimes accompanied by surprise… |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Meaning |
|---|---|
| figure out verb | To come to understand; to discover or find a solution; to deduce. |
Sentences worth repeating
Short, complete lines from the video that you can reuse in everyday conversation:
- Shall we do it?
- What do you do?
- Who do you do it for?
Pronunciation to watch
- Long words — get the stress right: affordable /əˈfɔɹ.də.bəl/, entrepreneur /ˌɑn.tɹə.pɹəˈnɝ/
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 affordable, entrepreneur, decisive.
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.