Shadowing Practice: How to Think in English (Stop Translating in Your Head) - Learn English Speaking with Video
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In this video, I am going to help you take a very important step towards speaking English fluently.
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So watch this video carefully until the end.
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My name is Matty and welcome to this Slow English podcast.
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Let me ask you a question.
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When you are alone with yourself and you are quiet and you are thinking.
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You hear an inner voice.
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That inner voice, what language does it speak?
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Think about it.
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You're alone, you're thinking, and you hear that inner voice.
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I would say that is in your mother tongue.
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If you're from Italy, you hear that in Italian.
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If you're from China, you hear that in Chinese.
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If you can shift that inner voice from your mother tongue to English, you will become fluent.
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I am guaranteeing this.
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This is my promise to you.
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So in this video, we're going to figure out how to do that.
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First, let's understand why it happens.
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Let me paint you a little picture here.
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Here's your brain and this is your mother tongue and next to it is English.
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When you want to say something or when you want to think about something, when you want to express yourself,
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your brain reaches out to whichever is closest of the two.
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Which is closer to your brain now?
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It's your mother tongue.
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so your brain reaches to your mother tongue and then your mother tongue reaches to english
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between english and your mother tongue something important happens it is called translation
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because from your mother tongue you get
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that idea you have to translate to english from english you have to get it back to your mother tongue
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and your brain will then understand it so each time you want to say something or you want to understand something
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your brain reaches to your mother tongue your mother tongue reaches to english translation happens
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and then it reaches to your brain translation in itself is the biggest blocker of fluency
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because translation inherently involves delay when your brain starts translating something there is a delay right
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because it has to go from one language to another
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and then from another language to another there there's this exchange and the exchange creates delay when you are speaking
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if you want to be fluent what you need to do is to eliminate
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that delay that delay kills your fluency and
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that delay is caused by translation so you need to destroy
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that step how
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if from this diagram you take out the mother tongue your brain will have to directly reach English
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and when it directly reaches English whenever there's an idea
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that idea goes
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and instead of going to your mother tongue it goes to
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English directly you have basically eliminated the step of going to your mother tongue
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and then translating to English you have eliminated that it's easier said than done meaning it's easy to say,
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hey guys, the solution is to think in English.
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Do you want to be fluent?
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Then think in English.
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Goodbye.
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It's easy to say that.
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But how can you actually do it?
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There are a couple of factors and a couple of things to do.
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So listen closely.
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Here's the first thing.
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In your head, quietly name things around you in English.
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Oh, that's a vase.
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Flowers.
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Picture frames.
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A microphone.
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Camera.
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Notebook.
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A cell phone.
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A pen with three colors.
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Blue, black, red, a room, chairs, table, kitchen, living room,
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windows, name things in English, right in your head, name everything around you in English.
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You go out, you're sitting in the bus stop, waiting for the bus, look around you, name things in English in your head.
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This is the first step, this is the easy step.
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And this is what I did when I was growing up.
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You know, I'm a non-native English speaker.
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I learned English from scratch, from zero.
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And one of the things that really helped me was naming items around me, naming things around me in English.
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The second thing I want you to do, this helped me a lot, narrate your daily life.
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Again, in your head and silently. So you're doing something.
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Okay, look, I'm sitting on a chair.
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There's a microphone in front of me.
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I'm recording a video, and this video is going to go on YouTube.
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A lot of people are going to watch it.
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I want people to learn something from this video.
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Ah, this morning I had coffee.
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That was good.
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Maybe it is time for my second coffee.
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Yeah.
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Let me look to my left.
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What was on my right again?
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Narrate your life.
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As you are doing different things, if you're at work, if you're at home, if you're at the bus stop, if you are at school, in university,
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as you are doing different things narrate it in English force
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yourself to narrate them in English um it's gonna help you a lot it is gonna help you a lot
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because this is the next step right first you name items around you now
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that you know the names of the items around you in
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English you're going to narrate let me move this vase closer to myself oops now that's too close
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good you see I know the name
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and now I'm narrating what I'm doing this is step two
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and you know
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when I think about how I learned English you know I'm a deeply introverted person I'm very shy
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and growing up I didn't have many friends I used to spend most of my time alone
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and I had this imaginary friend whose name was Eminem.
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I loved him.
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I used to listen to his music a lot.
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And I would imagine that he's sitting next to me and I'm talking to him.
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And when you want to talk to Eminem, my imaginary friend, he only speaks English.
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He only understands English.
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So I had to speak in English with him.
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And I didn't want others to understand that I am crazy imagining Eminem sitting here.
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So I would imagine those situations, those scenarios in my head, and I would speak with him in my head.
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Hey, Em, what's up?
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Do you like my bedroom?
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So I used to think and narrate my life a lot with my imaginary friend.
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And I really advise you guys to do that too.
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Here's another step, very important.
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When you want to learn a new word, when you want to look up something new in a dictionary
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or as chat GPT something always do that in English
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and here's why if you are learning a new word
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and you don't know what it means and you look up in the dictionary
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if you do it in your mother tongue you are bringing back
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that translation step remember the whole point is to eliminate
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that the whole point is to throw that away so you are not going to learn the meaning of a word
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in your mother tongue, what you are going to do is to learn the meaning in English.
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Use an English to English dictionary.
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Cambridge dictionary is the best.
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Use it.
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You can use the online version.
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Go to CambridgeDictionary.com, I think, .org maybe.
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Google Cambridge dictionary.
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You will see the website.
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Use Cambridge online dictionary English to English and always look for the meaning of words in English.
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And this is quite important because you know something
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that has ruined the whole learning process for a lot of us is the school system.
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Schools follow a very very traditional method called grammar translation method, GTM.
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The grammar translation method is this, it's very Very simple.
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Teach grammar, teach words, then translate sentences from mother tongue to English and from English to the mother tongue.
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That's how schools teach English.
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And, you know, with the same method, a lot of people spend six or seven years at school learning English grammar translation.
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The only thing it does is it forces your brain to think in your mother tongue and then translate.
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That translation is the reason people who studied English at school or people who even studied English at university, they are not able to speak fluently.
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The correct method is a conversational method.
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You teach people how to have conversations in English.
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And the first step in this method is to think in English.
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Right.
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So what I want you to do is never, ever, ever write anything in your mother tongue.
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Always look for a word or a sentence or a phrase in English and write down the English meaning.
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That's a very important step.
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Next, talk to yourself a lot.
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Now, here's the thing.
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When I was learning English, I remember for a long time I had a teacher.
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And that teacher was never teaching us the book.
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students a lot of students a lot of classmates we had
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back then they were angry parents were really angry they were furious the school they hated this teacher
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but I loved him
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and I think he was the most influential person in my
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entire learning journey he did one thing he taught us how to be crazy
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and he said if he wants to speak fluently you need to be crazy And what he meant was on the street,
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at home, at work, talk to yourself out loud in English.
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And if you think about it, if you see someone on the street who's talking to himself, yeah, look at that, nice weather.
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Oh, the supermarket.
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Look at that guy.
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You would say that person is crazy.
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But this method really works.
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And I'm not telling you to go out there and be crazy in front of people and embarrass yourself.
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What I'm telling you is try to find situations in
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which you can talk to yourself freely without people laughing at you or pointing at you.
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I mean, if you are brave enough, go ahead and speak to yourself on the street.
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But if you are introverted like me, go to your room, close the door and speak with yourself out loud.
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Go stand in front of the mirror and speak with yourself out loud.
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Imagine different scenarios.
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Talk to yourself.
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Now you see this is the natural progression of the previous steps.
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First you think in your head and name the items.
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Second you narrate what you were doing in your head quietly.
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Now what you're doing is you were saying that out loud.
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You're using your speaking muscles
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and now pronunciation is coming into play because
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when you're just doing it in your head there's no pronunciation there's no enunciation
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when you are actually saying the words when you're actually saying the sentences pronunciation
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and movement of your tongue they all come into play
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so it's a very important step and last
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but not least before I say this one
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if you are enjoying this video give a thumbs up now thank you
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if you are new to this channel
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and you want to learn more from me
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and you want to join our four million plus subscribers click subscribe now and turn on notifications
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done okay back to the lesson here's the last one it's a very important one very interesting one
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immerse yourself what do i mean english
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and not just english any new thing you want to learn
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is think of it as this it's a muscle in your
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head a part of your brain is creating new links
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and new connections and those links initially are very very thin and narrow they're tiny you have to make them thick?
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Now think of it like this.
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My biceps are very, very tiny, right?
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They're huge?
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No, they're tiny.
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What is the way in
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which i can make them thick i need to lift weights
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a lot how many times a lot for how long forever
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right the more i do it the stronger it becomes the same thing is with
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that links with those links in your head you want to
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make they're very thin now you want to make them thick
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you need to use them a lot a good way to
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use them a lot is to immerse yourself in english everything around you should be in english
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now if you are living in an english-speaking country as an immigrant that's a very good step
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if you are not in that position here's what i would recommend pursue your hobbies in english
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I had a student who was a big Chelsea fan.
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He was following the news in English.
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He was following the players' Instagram accounts, and that was his hobby.
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And he was really fluent when it came to English speaking.
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Another student of mine was a movie fan.
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He used to watch a lot of movies.
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Myself, I was a fan of rap music, Eminem in particular, and I used to listen to him a lot.
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pursue your hobbies in English.
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That's number one.
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The second thing, a very interesting trick, a very interesting tactic I used.
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Back then, I had a very simple mobile phone, very simple cell phone, and no cameras, nothing.
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It was a very simple, very basic phone.
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And the language of that phone was in my mother tongue.
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It was set to my mother tongue.
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What I did was I wanted to challenge myself.
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So I changed the language to English.
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Whenever I went on my phone, whenever I took my phone and opened it, everything was in English.
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And initially I was so confused, but little by little I learned my way around it.
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I learned a lot of new words.
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I used to go to settings and read everything.
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It was a nice trick.
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And then later on when I had my first computer, what I did was But I immediately changed the language of the computer from my mother tongue to English.
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So each time I use my laptop, each time I use my computer, I opened it, everything was in English and I was really confused.
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I was really confused.
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All the error messages, everything, they were in English and I was really confused.
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But little by little, I learned a lot just from these two things.
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Look around you right now.
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Look at the different things you do in your daily routine.
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See which ones you can do in English.
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If you are the kind of person who likes reading books, see if you can read books in English, the books that you like.
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If you are the kind of person who watches movies, if you are using the, sorry, if you are watching dubbed movies in your mother tongue,
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change it to English with subtitles.
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And little by little, change the subtitles to English as well.
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about different things you do and then think about how you can do them in English.
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Immerse yourself in this language and you will see the result.
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And that's it guys.
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It is not going to happen overnight.
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I did all the five.
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I'm still thinking in my mother tongue or my inner voice is still in English.
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Of course, it's not going to happen overnight.
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It will happen naturally.
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It will come to you naturally once you follow all these steps
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and they're not really time consuming these are easy things you
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can do you're already doing them in your mother tongue just change it to english
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looking around naming items in english is very easy it's not going to take you any time
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because every day your eyes are open and you're looking around just name the items in english in your head
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narrating your life is very easy you are already doing all those things you are already making coffee, making tea, calling someone.
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Do them narrate your life.
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Say what you're doing in English.
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Speak to yourself.
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Close the door.
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You're thinking, say that out loud in English.
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It's not going to take any time.
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You're already doing all of these.
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I'm just asking you to do them in English and you will see the result.
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Because once that inner voice of yours turns to English, you will speak fluently, guaranteed, 100%.
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I hope you've enjoyed this lesson.
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See you soon with the next one.
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Bye.
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This B1 speaking lesson is built on the video “How to Think in English”. The speaker keeps coming back to these words: english, tongue, mother, step, brain. This video has 258 sentences and 2727 words to shadow. The speech runs for 17:56. The speaker talks at a natural 152 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
The 15 most advanced words in the video, with pronunciation and meaning:
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| narrate verb | /ˈnæɹeɪt/ | To relate (a story or series of events) in speech or writing. |
| dictionary noun | /ˈdɪk.ʃəˌnɛ.ɹi/ | A reference work listing words or names from one or more languages, usually ordered alphabetically, explaining each word's meanings or senses, oftentimes also… |
| translate verb | /tɹænzˈleɪt/ | To change spoken words or written text (of a book, document, movie, etc.) from one language to another. |
| fluently adverb | In a fluent manner, as expressing oneself easily, especially in a foreign language. | |
| fluent adjective | /ˈfluənt/ | That flows; flowing, liquid. |
| eliminate verb | /ɪˈlɪm.ɪ.neɪt/ | To completely remove, get rid of, put an end to. |
| grammar noun | /ˈɡɹæm.ə(ɹ)/ | A system of rules and principles for the structure of a language, or of languages in general. |
| immerse verb | /ɪˈmɜɹs/ | To place within a fluid (generally a liquid, but also a gas). |
| pronunciation noun | /pɹəˌnʌn.siˈeɪ.ʃən/ | The formal or informal way in which a word is made to sound when spoken. |
| imaginary adjective | /ɪˈmæd͡ʒɪˌn(ɛ)ɹi/ | Existing only in the imagination. |
| hobby noun | /ˈhɑ.bi/ | An activity that one enjoys doing in one's spare time. |
| fluency noun | /ˈfluːənsi/ | The quality of smoothness of flow. |
| introverted adjective | /ˈɪn.tɹəˌvɜːɹ.təd/ | Thinking about internal or spiritual matters. |
| subtitle noun | /ˈsʌbtaɪtəl/ | A heading below or after a title. |
| vase noun | /veɪ̯s/ | An upright open container used mainly for displaying fresh, dried, or artificial flowers. |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| look around verb | To inspect a building or area. | |
| go out verb | To leave, especially a building. | |
| grow up verb | To mature and become an adult. | |
| bring back verb | /ˈbɹɪŋ bæk/ | To fetch something. |
| figure out verb | To come to understand; to discover or find a solution; to deduce. | |
| go ahead verb | /ˌɡoʊ əˈhɛd/ | To proceed with; to begin. |
| look up verb | /ˌlʊk ˈʌp/ | To have better prospects. |
| take out verb | To remove. |
Sentences worth repeating
Short, complete lines from the video that you can reuse in everyday conversation:
- First, let's understand why it happens.
- Which is closer to your brain now?
- Do you want to be fluent?
- What was on my right again?
- Do you like my bedroom?
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 spend · used to listen · used to think |
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | is called · is caused · are introverted |
| Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing | people who studied · student who was · person who likes |
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | have eliminated · has ruined · you've enjoyed |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 43 contractions and reduced forms, such as you're, I'm, they're. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: dictionary /ˈdɪk.ʃəˌnɛ.ɹi/, pronunciation /pɹəˌnʌn.siˈeɪ.ʃən/, conversational /ˌkɒnvə(ɹ)ˈseɪʃənəl/, enunciation /ɪˌnʌn.siˈeɪ.ʃən/, progression /pɹəˈɡɹɛʃən/
- Long words — get the stress right: dictionary /ˈdɪk.ʃəˌnɛ.ɹi/, eliminate /ɪˈlɪm.ɪ.neɪt/, pronunciation /pɹəˌnʌn.siˈeɪ.ʃən/, imaginary /ɪˈmæd͡ʒɪˌn(ɛ)ɹi/, introverted /ˈɪn.tɹəˌvɜːɹ.təd/
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 narrate, dictionary, translate.
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.