Shadowing Practice: How to Transform Your Mind | Morgan Freeman's Advice in 15 Minutes - Learn English Speaking with Video
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206 sentences
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Got on the elevator in LA one day and the lady said, oh, I just saw you in the Hudsucker reduction.
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I had a long haul from where I came from to here, but here we are.
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Your job as an actor is to give it your best shot every time.
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So, there was a period there in the early 80s when I didn't get any work because I would ask these questions.
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He's an American actor, producer, and narrator.
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He's known for his distinctively smooth and deep voice.
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He's ranked as the third highest box office star with over $4 .3 billion in box office gross.
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He's Morgan Freeman, and here's my take on his top 10 rules for success.
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To collect unemployment, you have to go out and hunt for employment.
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And they give you, you have a code.
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And mine was as a clerk typist, So you go out and you look for work as a clerk typist.
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And one day, I just, I can't keep being forced to be a clerk typist.
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So I went to the employment office and I asked to see the supervisor.
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And I was led into this office.
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And this pretty little lady with red head, whose name was Mrs. Lipton.
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What can I do for you?
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And I said, you're forcing me to be something I'm not.
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I have to go out and look for work as a clerk typist.
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I'm not a clerk typist.
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I'm an actor.
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So I just can't keep doing it this way.
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He took this thing and stamped my employment book.
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Said, you got six months.
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Go be an actor.
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So if Mrs. Lipton is alive today, Mrs. Lipton, I'm an actor.
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The box office success when the Shawshank Redemption came out was Dumb and Dumber.
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I'm just not going to laugh.
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Well, no, but that's, you know, just the juxtaposition of box office and...
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What's that other term?
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Critical.
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Shawshank got really good reviews, but because nobody could say Shawshank Redemption,
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it didn't get word of mouth.
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And I don't care how much you promote a film, if you don't have word of mouth, you ain't promoting it.
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People have to be able, now they're going to say, listen, I saw this really terrific film.
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It was called Shanksham?
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Shemshank?
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Got on the elevator in LA one day and the lady said, and he said, oh, I just saw you in the Hudsucker reduction.
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So that was the reason it was not a box office success.
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No word of mouth at all.
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Here's a stat from your show,
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and it says that the richest 85 people on this planet have as much money as the poorest 3 .5 billion.
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Yeah, right.
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That's on the planet, however.
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in that sense.
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It's not far off in America.
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No, it isn't far off in America, but we still here don't abandon the idea that it isn't finite.
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It isn't finite if you were born.
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Where were you born?
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Me?
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Yeah.
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Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
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Baton Rouge General Hospital.
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Baton Rouge.
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There you go.
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Louisiana.
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I was born in Memphis, Tennessee.
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I had a long haul.
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from where I came from to here, but here we are.
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So the proof of the pudding is in the eating, and here we sit at the dining table.
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But it's hard to, when you say that to some people,
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because they say, oh, there you go with a pull yourself up by the bootstraps thing, and you're just being respectable.
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Not everybody can do that.
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Bull .
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Everybody can.
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Everybody doesn't...
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Courage...
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Courage is the key to life itself.
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There are a lot of people who are born in situations where they say, Well, I'll never get out of this.
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So, they won't.
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I say to people who say, Well, I would like to have done so -and -so -and -so.
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I say, Well, you could have done it.
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I say, Well, I couldn't get out of here.
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Man, the bus runs every day.
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You're exactly right.
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If you can conceive it in your mind.
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If you can think of it, you can do it.
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That's the human condition.
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If we can imagine it, we can do it.
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And I think that's the condition of each individual human.
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Your job as an actor is to give it your best shot every time.
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So yes, I'm going into it with the idea
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that I'll play it to the best of my ability and they wouldn't give it to me,
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the role, if they didn't think I was capable of pulling it off.
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Or I wouldn't take it if I didn't think I was capable of pulling it off.
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So what advice would you give purely in an acting sense to yourself 30, 40 years ago?
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Same advice I gave myself 30, 40 years old ago.
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So, get a job.
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Act.
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There are, unfortunately, those of us who say, well, I want to be a star.
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That's way out there in the ether somewhere.
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I want to be a working actor, you can pull that off. So act, work, work.
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Someone asked me once, and you were about to do it.
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What would you do if you weren't an actor?
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If you didn't make it as an actor, what would you do?
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I have no idea.
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I would act somewhere.
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Maybe I'd be driving a cab, maybe I'm working in somebody's yard, whatever I'm doing, I'm going to belong to somebody's little theater group.
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I will act, because I'll die if I don't.
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I got into the Air Force because I was,
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as it turns out, I was romanticizing that whole idea.
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We were refighting
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World War II as I was growing up, So we had all these heroic movies.
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And I fell in love with the idea of flying.
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And then when I got into the Air Force,
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I had this big eye -opener that racism was rampant there also.
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and that I had not qualified or suited is a better word for military life.
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That kind of unquestioning obedience to a lot of things that I think are stupid didn't quite go over well.
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So when I got out, I was in early discharge.
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It was almost dishonorable because I just really didn't fit.
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But the catalyst actually was I did get to sit in a jet trainer
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because I had a lot of people behind me to get me into flight school and stuff.
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But sitting there, it occurred to me that this is absolutely not what I want.
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It isn't movies.
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It's for real.
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This little red button on the joystick controls guns with real bullets.
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And I sat there for quite a while and knew that if I made a strafing run,
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I needed a camera here and I needed the people to be able to get up and go back to number one.
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So I got out of that plane on the runway at North Island Air Station,
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a naval air station, and I walked away from that and towards acting.
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I knew that it was all about the movies.
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It was all about the movies.
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I got on stage the very first time when I was eight years old.
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I was brilliant.
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Then I got on stage again four years later when I was 12, brilliant again.
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So by the time I was 13, it was pretty much a foregone conclusion in everybody else's mind,
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teachers, parents, that acting was gonna be my thing.
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I hadn't, like, made a conscious decision and I'm going to be an actor.
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I don't think you do.
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I think you just, that's what you do.
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The first stage play I did in New York, I was working with Stacy Keech and Vivica Lenzvers.
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That was a great experience for me.
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If you talk about a master class, you have it there.
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Stacy had come out of Yale University, I think, and I was much more advanced as a stage actor than I was,
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but wow, did I have big ears and was I ready to learn?
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So you just sit and watch.
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It's always a learning experience.
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The big thing I learned from working with Pearl Bailey was professionalism.
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She was total professional, total, total, total professional.
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She always gave 100%, 110 % in performance.
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And I watched her very carefully.
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It was one of those performers that you say, this is the way to go,
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this is the way to be in this business.
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Be on time, know what you're doing, do it full out, give all you can.
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That's a lesson.
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You know, as I said, I went to the movies all the time.
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I've seen the movies.
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and at some point it struck me rather dramatically how much I wasn't in the movies,
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not the way I needed to be in the movies.
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And if you look at a lot of the disaster movies in that period, the only people left on the planet were white.
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So now my thing is, I get into movies.
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I want to make sure that I speak about that.
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That if I'm able to do it, I want to talk about it.
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So there was a period there in the early 80s when I didn't get any work because I would ask these questions questions.
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I auditioned, I don't think I even got to audition.
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I interviewed for the movie
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The Thing, the remake.
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So I read the script, and I go back for the audition,
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and the producer or the director, one of those, said, did you read the script?
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I said yes, what do you think?
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I said well, you've got 11 people at the South Pole, eight of them are scientists,
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and then you have a cook, a mechanic, and something else.
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They're all black, none of the scientists are.
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What do you think I think?
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Needless to say I didn't get that job.
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Again though, you know, Providence rears her beautiful head when glory came about.
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I was just floored
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because I knew about the 54th Massachusetts Regiment from a one -page thing on this day in history in Jet Magazine.
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It's talked about this sergeant who was awarded a Medal of Honor for his activities at this charge with this outfit.
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So the history is there.
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It's there to draw upon.
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But we can ask ourselves, we, me, black people, why aren't we, why don't we figure more in it?
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I need something that's going to engage me, that makes me sit up and think.
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I refuse to take part in anything that is going to denigrate a people.
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Especially me.
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All right, here we go, all right?
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Do you ever want to go to space?
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I really shouldn't be doing this.
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It's helium.
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It's helium, Morgan.
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It is helium.
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It's very undignified.
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No, no. Oh, my gosh.
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I think your voice sounds great.
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It's not undignified.
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Some people just have voices like this, so you're actually making fun of those people.
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Thank you.
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Say?
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I told you.
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I want to thank you so much for being on the show and please, would you ever like to come back?
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I'm never coming back.
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Thank you guys so much for watching.
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I made this video because JP Annette asked me to.
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So if there's a famous entrepreneur that you want me to profile next, leave in the comments below and I'll see what I can do.
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I also love to know what you learned most from Morgan Freeman
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which of the 10 clips had the biggest impact to you and why?
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What change are you going to make in your business or life as a result of watching this video?
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What's the impact?
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Leave it in the comments below and I will join in the discussion.
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Finally, I want to give a quick shout out to Chris Chance from happyworker .com.
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Chris, thank you so much for picking up my book.
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It really means a lot to me.
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For those of you watching, if you want a chance to add a shout out in a future video,
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make sure to grab the book and also email in your receipts so we can keep track.
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Thank you guys so much for watching.
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Continue to believe, or whatever your one word is, and I'll see you soon.
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This speaking lesson is built on the video “How to Transform Your Mind”. This video has 206 sentences and 2050 words to shadow. The speech runs for 15:57. The speaker talks at a steady 129 words per minute, a comfortable pace for shadowing. 82% 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 |
|---|---|---|
| clerk noun | /klɝk/ | One who occupationally provides assistance by working with records, accounts, letters, etc.; an office worker. |
| audition noun | /ɑˈdɪʃən/ | A performance, by an aspiring performer, to demonstrate suitability or talent. |
| baton noun | /bəˈtɑn/ | A staff or truncheon, used for various purposes. |
| producer noun | /pɹəˈdjuːsə/ | An individual or organization that creates goods and services. |
| reduction noun | /ɹɪˈdʌk.ʃən/ | The act, process, or result of reducing. |
| script noun | /skɹɪpt/ | A writing; a written document. |
| courage noun | /ˈkʌ.ɹɪd͡ʒ/ | The quality of being confident, not afraid or easily intimidated, but without being incautious or inconsiderate. |
| scientist noun | /ˈsaɪəntəst/ | One whose activities make use of the scientific method to answer questions regarding the measurable universe. A scientist may be involved in original research… |
| shout verb | /ʃaʊt/ | To utter a sudden and loud cry, as in joy, triumph, exultation or anger, or to attract attention, to animate others, etc. |
| elevator noun | /ˈɛləˌveɪtɚ/ | Anything that raises or uplifts. |
| haul verb | /hɔl/ | To transport by drawing or pulling, as with horses or oxen, or a motor vehicle. |
| finite adjective | /ˈfaɪ.naɪt/ | Having an end or limit; (of a quantity) constrained by bounds; (of a set) whose number of elements is a natural number. |
| lesson noun | /ˈlɛs.ən/ | A section of learning or teaching into which a wider learning content is divided. |
| occur verb | /əˈkɜː/ | To happen or take place. |
| carefully adverb | /ˈkɛɹf(ə)li/ | With care; attentively, circumspectly. |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| get out of verb | To leave, exit or escape from; to become free of. | |
| go out verb | To leave, especially a building. | |
| come back verb | To return to a place. | |
| come out verb | /ˌkʌm ˈaʊt/ | To be discovered; to be revealed. |
| get out verb | To leave or escape. | |
| get up verb | To move in an upward direction; to ascend or climb. | |
| go back to verb | To stem from; to originate in. | |
| go over verb | To look at carefully; to scrutinize; to analyze. |
Sentences worth repeating
Short, complete lines from the video that you can reuse in everyday conversation:
- What can I do for you?
- What would you do if you weren't an actor?
- If you didn't make it as an actor, what would you do?
- I said yes, what do you think?
- What do you think I think?
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 | being forced · was led · was called |
| Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing | people who are · people who say |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 61 contractions and reduced forms, such as I'm, didn't, don't. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “th” sounds: smooth /smuːð/, theater /ˈθi(ə)tɚ/, ether /ˈi.θɚ/
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: audition /ɑˈdɪʃən/, reduction /ɹɪˈdʌk.ʃən/, shout /ʃaʊt/, conclusion /kənˈkluːʒən/, conscious /ˈkɑn.ʃəs/
- Long words — get the stress right: elevator /ˈɛləˌveɪtɚ/, unemployment /ʌn.ɪmˈplɔɪ.mənt/, entrepreneur /ˌɑn.tɹə.pɹəˈnɝ/, supervisor /ˈsupɚˌvaɪzɚ/, juxtaposition /ˌd͡ʒʌk.stə.pəˈzɪʃ.ən/
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 clerk, audition, baton.
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.