Shadowing Practice: I get excited about &. - Learn English Speaking with Video

I went to Herefordshire to see a library.

A chained library where the books are physically connected to the shelves by heavy metal chains.

And then, I looked at two books from that library to show how one invention can change the world so much in a very short time.

Early in the morning, I arrived at Hereford Cathedral, and, just as a side note, because the cathedral has so much history: I passed by the Mappa Mundi, the largest surviving mediaeval map, showing all the world as it was known to Europeans in the 14th century, not accurately, but as art and religious propaganda.

Which, honestly, could have been a whole video on its own, but I’m there to visit the Chained Library and to talk to the cathedral librarian, Jennifer.

So, I went through the cathedral itself, and found the eight cases, or bays, of the Chained Library inside a much more modern building.

It’s designed to look and replicate the sort of proportions that there are in the Lady Chapel, which is where it lived for about 250 years from 1540 to 1840.

-Just a casual couple of centuries! -Just a couple of centuries.

These are the original bays that were in the Lady Chapel, built in 1611.

They’ve moved around a little bit since then, which is unbelievable.

Hard to fathom, isn’t it? -Yeah.

-Up and down some spiral staircases. -They must have moved them… -Yeah. -Right, intact in one piece?

-No, no, no. -Okay! I was gonna say.

-No, no, no. Absolutely not. -Alright.

So, you can see there’s still boards here and things like that.

But no, they would have disassembled them.

A bit of flat pack, I guess.

(laughter) 17th century flat pack, 19th century.

So, how far back does this go?

-It depends. -I can answer that by looking at the… Well, it depends on whether you’re talking about the books or the space, you know, the furniture basically.

So, the furniture and these chains are 17th century.

The books do go back a lot earlier than that.

They go back to about 800, well, yeah, around 800 is our earliest item.

This isn’t the only Chained Library in the world, but it is the largest one to survive to the present day.

Although given that it’s been disassembled, reassembled, moved and renovated, and the collection will have been built up over centuries… trying to give an exact age for something that has this nebulous a definition, is always going to be tricky.

We’ve got 229 mediaeval manuscripts, so written by hand, ink, some illumination, definitely lots of decoration.

And then we have about 1,200 printed books in the Chained Library as well.

So, do scholars still come in here and sit down at the pews?

Or is this just historical now? -No, they still...

-It’s historical now. -Okay.

It would be a bit disruptive to have members of the public coming through as you’re trying to very carefully... -Yep.

-...turn a page in a, you know, a thousand-year-old manuscript.

But folks still have access to this if they need to?

Absolutely, people do still have access.

We just take them upstairs to the reading room.

When we look at one of our books, they can...

well, actually, you can see here, some of our books are really, really big.

Oh, yes, okay! (laughter) So, thinking about reading that on that shelf is quite a challenge.

-Oh, yeah. That’s not actually… -They would have done, but it’s not great for the book, really.

They’re not really very well supported and things like that.

So, do we know what book that is? Do we have an index for it?

There’s a full electronic catalogue for the printed books.

-We do have a list of items at the end. -Oh, yeah.

Some of our books are held in our strong room downstairs so, it’s not an entirely place-accurate list, but it would have been at the time... -Right, okay.

-...when this was created, sort of 18th century.

So, you would have gone to that section, so, you’ve got section three, book five.

-Mm-hmm. -And you would… because people weren’t as precious about them back then.

Well, I think, but you also just knew where they were, ’cos, well, they were chained, weren’t they? -Okay, yes. No, sorry.

Completely lost the camera shot there. (laughter) Yes, of course you know where they were. They’re chained.

This wasn’t a public library back then.

This was for the canons, the people in charge of the cathedral, and anyone else they trusted to be in there.

-Can we have a tour down? Is that alright? -Yeah, yeah.

So, these are our manuscripts and those are mainly theology, canon law and the church fathers.

There’s a few exceptions in there.

Each letter has a rough subject.

E is our printed books and canon law.

And my favourite though is at the end where you’ve got Bibles on one side and church fathers on the other.

We’ve also got some history books, some geography books.

So, we’ve got a King James Bible down here.

We’ve got a first... -Wait, whereabouts?

-Oh, it’s one of these. -It’s one of these!

It’s one of these two. I think it’s this one.

Now, in theory, I realise that no random member of the public is gonna be able to look at that, but if there were a scholar with a thesis that required that specific copy, could you still pull that out?

Yeah, absolutely, and we do.

We’ve got a couple of scholars in next week, I think, to look at some things, and we had somebody in last week.

Yeah, so, we have a couple of people coming in every week, I would say, to consult something.

Manuscript books are probably the most popular.

I personally love our printed books and I’m trying to sort of raise their profile.

-So, manuscript means handwritten. -Handwritten, mm-hmm.

-Right. -That’s literally what manuscript means.

-It’s sort of Latin for “written by hand”. -Oh! “Man”, hand.

-And even the ending refers to the ‘U’. -Yeah.

-How have I not...? -I know.

It took me a long time to realise as well. -Manu-script, hand-writing.

-Yeah. Yeah, exactly. -Right.

So, these are available to the public.

We would say there needs to be a legitimate research purpose.

It doesn’t need to be a traditional scholar, though.

If somebody really needs to see a book or really wants to see a book and… it’s important to me personally that we open our collection as widely as possible.

So, we do still ask for some information, of course.

But we do try to be as flexible as we can.

As we toured around, Jennifer referred to a book as a “codex”, and while I’ve heard the word before, I realised I didn’t actually know what it means.

What’s the difference between a codex and a book?

-Oh, the codex describes the shape. -Right, okay.

I think we could probably get into all sorts of philosophical questions about what makes a book, couldn’t you? -(laughter) Is an audiobook a book? -Okay, yeah. Fair.

-It’s me being technical. -Codex is the physical thing.

It’s the physical square thing that you open, basically, as opposed to like a scroll.

A codex describes the structure, basically.

-And a book describes the contents. -Yeah, arguably.

-Oh, okay. -On a technical level.

Well, it’s the English language, everything’s technical.

So, what do we have in this section? -This section is our… oh, dictionaries, I think.

We’ve got a first edition of Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary.

-Good heavens! Yes, you do. -Yes. I’m excited we do.

K8, Johnson, Dictionary of the English Language.

Yeah. Despite what pop culture might have you believe, Johnson did not write the first dictionary, or even the first English dictionary.

But as books became more accessible, and reading and writing more common, Johnson’s dictionary was the most influential, more than two thousand pages compiled over seven years.

And there it was, a first edition copy, the two books, well, the two codexes, codices.

They are in the middle of the shot, right there.

100

You can tell my background, can’t you?

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Bible from the 9th century, yeah, I guess that’s interesting.

102

First edition of Johnson’s Dictionary, come on!

103

But if you want to look inside that dictionary, there are several copies of it that have been scanned and digitised and are available online.

104

You can get a near-perfect physical reproduction without risking any damage to the original.

105

And there aren’t many original copies left.

106

If somebody asks to see it, I will try to take it out for them if possible.

107

But I will often try to ask them if there’s a particular page they want to see beforehand, and I will send them a link to that digital copy.

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Right. So, why are the books chained?

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I did think about clickbaiting this with some ghost story or legend, but the truth is: it was to stop people stealing them.

110

There’s been suggestions that the potential value of a manuscript written by hand was the whole value of a farm, for example.

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And even as you come into printing, they still retain that value.

112

Of course, there is also the arrangement bonus.

113

-Arrangement bonus? -If it’s chained, you know where it is and you can find it, basically. -Yes. (laughs) Basically. So, there’s the location.

114

Sorry, I’m laughing because I have literally had to do research in… I think it was a library in Amsterdam? -Mm.

115

And it was a really obscure book on some buildings.

116

Yep, we’ve got it in stock, we know exactly where it is, it’s on... No, it’s not on that shelf.

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-This happens all the time. -Yep.

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Less of an issue with the chained library, although we do have records from the 18th century of books being described as “messy again” and somebody being paid to come in and arrange them.

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So, I don’t know whether that’s to do with the classification or whether things did actually shift because obviously you can take them off, but it is a real discouragement, I have to say.

120

And I guess these days, these books are priceless.

121

Because in the event that Hereford Cathedral goes, “Someone has stolen one of our books”... -Yeah.

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…there isn’t an antiquarian dealer in the world who’s gonna touch that.

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-No, no. -It’s literally priceless.

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You cannot put a price on these. -No, no, that’s the strangest thing about working here is that so many of the things that we do work with are just priceless, irreplaceable... -Yeah.

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-...completely unique.

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And I know you don’t necessarily think about that with the printed books, but of course there are... there’s marginalia, there’s writing, and you’ve got all that provenance information, so...

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Even if you have that same access to text somewhere else, it’s not the same if you’re thinking about those levels of detail, if you’re thinking about it as an individual object.

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-It’s beautiful. It really is. -Yeah, it’s very lovely.

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You literally cannot put a price on the books in that library.

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But you can put a price on this: The people who buy and sell your personal data hate this man. - Hi! - This is Ben, he is in charge of how Incogni works behind the scenes.

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That’s not a joke, he’s not an actor, when people say “Incogni stops data brokers buying and selling “your personal information”, Ben is the person who makes sure that happens.

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Yeah, we send requests to hundreds of brokers, we check whether the information was removed, if it wasn’t removed, we send repeated requests, until the information gets eventually removed.

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Data brokers buy and sell people’s details, so they build up groups of people that they then sell to advertisers and trackers.

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Your personal details, down to things like your purchase history, may well just be up for sale.

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One broker had lists of people, with titles like “Rural and Barely Making It”, or “Rough Retirement”.

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You can opt out of these manually, but there are so many companies, you have to know who they are, and how to ask.

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I have made those requests by hand before!

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It takes ages, and it’s frustrating, and I have better things to do.

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And the details can just pop up again later.

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Exactly. And we’re also offering a family plan, where where you can not only have removals for yourself, but also invite family members or even friends, and have a joint account where we will take care of everyone that you care about.

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Incogni also stops your data appearing in online directories, people-search sites, and commercial databases.

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Yeah, it’s a really cool feature that we offer we call it Custom Removals, where we not only send automated requests, but we also scan the whole internet and whatever exposures we find, we will present it to you in a grid view, and you can then select which ones to remove and which ones to keep.

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You can go to incogni.com/tomscott scan the QR code or follow the link in the description for a big discount on their annual plan, and keep your data private.

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As we say it: if they can’t find you, they can’t harm you.

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Wow! (laughs) No, you landed that, that was good!

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That was a really good one.

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Back to the Chained Library.

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Actually removing books from the shelves is a lengthy process that requires three people, a lot of time and care, and so much close, slow, careful work that it would have been nearly impossible for me to film.

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So, Jennifer had already taken out the two books we’d be looking at in the reading room.

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But she was able to demonstrate how the locks and chains work with one of the more difficult areas to reach.

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First step: unlock the “hasp”.

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-Now, is that an old key or a new key? -No, this is a replica.

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That’s the one bit that they didn’t find.

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A verger actually kept a box of all the chains, so the chains are original.

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They were taken off the books at one point, but a verger had kept them for ages and then they were put on again.

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-But the key’s not original. -So, original chains, original rods, original lock. -Yes.

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So,someone had to back-solve the key for the lock?

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-Yep. -Wow!

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-As far as I know, yeah. -(laughter) Yeah. I mean, that’s definitely not a 17th century key.

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Okay. But the lock is and the lock still works.

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But the lock is, and the lock still works and the hasps still work, some of them better than others. Oh.

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(rattling, clicking) Oh, there we go. Yeah, so, spring.

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-Springs open that way. -Springs open that way.

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The way you described it, I thought it was going sideways, but no, it lies down.

165

Oh, no, no, it goes down. You’ve got little holes put in for the rods and things like that. -Right. That makes so much more sense.

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I know that’s a little bit difficult to see, so...

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I have a version of it!

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Once the hasp is unlocked, this rod can move back and forth.

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And then you have to remove all the chains, one at a time, until you reach the book that you want.

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Then you very, very carefully remove the book, put all the other chains back on one at a time...come on.

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And then...put the rod back through, and lock everything back up again.

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-The hasp just... -The hasp just comes out.

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-Yeah. -You slide the rod along.

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In theory, you just take them off like that.

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But if you want the tenth book down, all the nine before it have to come off. -Yes, yes.

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(huffing) Our library assistant in particular is very good at just putting them onto her finger, then looping them back on, whereas I have to do it individually. (laughter) Oh, just wearing them like rings and then put them back in the right order. -Yeah, basically, yeah.

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Because that’s the only way to do it, really, unless you want to take them all off and leave them on the table and then they get tangled and it’s just a bit of a mess, really.

178

We went upstairs to the reading room, and for the second act of this video, we’re gonna look at two chained books, that despite only being 56 years apart, look completely different.

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The first was a manuscript, a handwritten version of the Bible called the Wycliffite Bible, from 1420.

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Religious history, like all history, is messy and complicated, but the quick version is: this was a copy of the first translation of the Bible into English.

181

-So, this is, you said 1420? -Mm-hmm.

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Written in 1420. -605 years.

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-Mm-hmm. -Someone wrote that 605 years ago.

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-Yeah, absolutely. -I’m whispering. I don’t need to whisper.

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There’s no one else in the reading room. -There’s nobody here.

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-It’s very quiet up here. -The gold foil.

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-Mm-hmm. -Now is that actual gold?

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’Cos that is... -It’s gold leaf, yes.

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I was going to try and get...I don’t know if the camera’s gonna show it.

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That is shimmering in the light. That’s clearly reflective metal.

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But if we look at other pages, look how clean that is.

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-(laughs) -And it’s because this is one of our most popular pages to show, because of the gold.

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There’s only about three illuminated pages in here.

194

-Oh, right! -In this whole book there’s about three pages… -So,most of the rest are just...

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Just like this. So, there’s decoration. -So, they still have the capitals There’s a bit of decoration, but there’s no gold leaf applied.

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Yeah, exactly, ’cos it was so expensive.

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Our library is a very functional library, it continues to be and has always been a functional library, so, we don’t have those luxury manuscripts that are created for wealthy patrons.

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Those were really...

199

It was important to have this book and so they had it.

200

-Wow. -And it’s not fancy and that’s okay.

201

No, it’s...but you say it’s not fancy.

202

I mean, I think it’s still fancy, but you know, compared to...

203

-But someone had to handwrite… -Absolutely.

204

Well, a group? I’m assuming a group of monks.

205

Well, at this stage, it would probably not have been a monk.

206

Okay. So, commercialisation of manuscripts started a lot earlier than you might think.

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So,even arguably in the 12th century, you had manuscripts being in demand more, and so it moved from that act of devotion to a commercial enterprise.

208

-Right! -And you had commercial scribes.

209

-Of course it did. -So, this could have been...

210

you know, I would say at this stage it would almost definitely have been written by a commercial scribe rather than produced in a monastery or a religious scriptorium.

211

“Here endeth the Gospel of Mark.

212

“Here beginneth the prologue on the Gospel of Luke.” Given how excited I’m gonna get about punctuation in a few minutes’ time, I’m kind of astonished that I missed it here: you see that symbol that’s repeated throughout that text?

213

That is an ampersand, the symbol for ‘AND’, although it’s not a design I’ve seen before.

214

Because that saves both time and space when you’re repeatedly writing the same word, ‘and, and, and, and, and’.

215

How long must it have taken to handwrite all those pages so neatly?

216

Let alone the work involved with daring to translate the Word of God, which was very controversial.

217

Jennifer said this was an unauthorised translation.

218

-Who would have authorised it? -The Pope.

219

Right, okay. Sorry, stupid question! (laughter) Yep, nope. -And he didn’t.

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And in fact, one of the leading translators of the Wycliffite Bible was Nicholas de Hereford, who was a canon here.

221

He took that with him to Rome to try to get it authorised by the Pope, but he was put in jail for three years.

222

So, the problem was that the Latin text is a sacred text and it is… Not the Hebrew, the Latin?

223

Well, because most people couldn’t read Hebrew, and so the Vulgate Bible, which was done in like the 6th century I think, maybe 7th, was considered the authorised translation.

224

Saint Jerome knew the Hebrew, did the translation.

225

-Right. -And that was considered to be the authoritative text. -Now, hold on, this book’s in a box.

226

This book is…oh, this book in a book shoe. Come have a look.

227

-Sorry, this codex is in a book shoe. -This codex is in a book shoe.

228

And it’s got a little platform to support it and everything.

229

So, this is one of the ways that we protect our books.

230

Books naturally sag when they’re vertical.

231

This is one of the reasons why they weren’t necessarily...

232

And in fact, this one lies on its side.

233

That’s why it’s not in the Chained Library itself.

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It’s so big that actually the weight of that text would drag it down and these boards would just come… would just come off basically over time.

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You know when there’s been something obvious staring you in the face for a while, and you just haven’t spotted it?

236

Jennifer pointed out that the books in the chained library face inwards, and I hadn’t even noticed it or thought it was weird.

237

-That’s a point. The books… -Mm.

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We actually didn’t talk about that, did we?

239

No! And I’ve only just realised because everything else about that library was...

240

-For me, it’s so normal now. -Right.

241

-Sorry! -Everything else was so weird.

242

The spines are facing in.

243

-Yeah. -How do you tell which book is which?

244

-Well, you count. -Right.

245

If they’re in the right place. -If they’re in the right place.

246

And if you’ve had a look at a chained library book, you can understand why they’re shelved that way.

247

And it’s because you can’t have that chain at the back, can you?

248

This is the strongest part of the book.

249

If you tried having that looped across the back, you’d be a lot more at risk.

250

That wouldn’t be as solid.

251

This is the most stable part of a thing to staple the loop to. -Right.

252

Anyway, book number two.

253

Which was very different.

254

You’ve clearly brought these two books out for a reason.

255

I have. So, this one is a printed book.

256

So, we’ve looked at a manuscript. -Yep.

257

And I feel like this is what people think of when they think of a mediaeval manuscript, isn’t it, really?

258

Yes. Big old codex.

259

-Big old codex. -Illuminated.

260

Fancy letters that are hard to read.

261

-Yes. And that was 1420. -Yes.

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-Okay. -So, this book was printed 56 years later in 1476, but you’ll see that it looks very different.

263

56 years. There were 58 years between the Wright Brothers’ first flight and Yuri Gagarin being the first person in space.

264

There were 56 years between the basic chatbot ELIZA and ChatGPT.

265

And there were 56 years between that handwritten Wycliffite Bible and this copy, this movable type printing, of the doctrines of Nonius Marcellus.

266

It was printed by a man named Nicholas Jenson, who was a Frenchman who set up a printing press in Venice.

267

Wait, that’s...oh!

268

That is a…so, the font…that’s print, so, is that movable type?

269

Yes. So, this was sort of not quite 30 years after the introduction of printing type in Mainz in Germany.

270

The interesting thing about this is that it’s one of the most influential texts, font types, really.

271

There are plenty of books made in the 21st century that are set in typefaces very close to that one.

272

Compare that to the handwritten book!

273

56 years to go from every copy requiring untold days, weeks, months of work.

274

Those books look ancient.

275

And then along comes Gutenberg and his movable type printing press and we’ll get to see one of those close up later on in the road trip, but that’s where you have individual letters cast out of metal and they stamp ink onto pages.

276

And it looks… almost modern.

277

I love that transition period where you have illuminated printed books.

278

And it does blow people’s minds. -Right, so, they...

279

It blew my mind when I found out about it.

280

So, all the plain black text there... -Yeah.

281

-...is from a movable type printing press. -Mm-hm.

282

-They put the letters down, gah-dunk. -Yep.

283

And then someone has gone in with gold leaf! That’s shimmering!

284

Yeah, absolutely.

285

But again, this is the only decoration in the book.

286

-Wow. -But it is beautiful, isn’t it?

287

-It is. -But it’s a lot simpler than that one.

288

It’s just sort of following a different tradition.

289

I could believe that was printed with a modern font and just made to look old.

290

Although there are... there’s little things.

291

-Mm. -Like, there is a ligature.

292

Do not touch the book, Tom. On “acta”.

293

Just there. -Yes, absolutely.

294

So, that is presumably a separate joined c-t ligature...

295

-Mm-hm. -...that was put in specially.

296

Yes, he would have created that as a separate type.

297

You’ll still see ligatures like that in some modern fonts, where f-i and f-f-i come together into one joined glyph.

298

But not only that, the printer has taken scribal abbreviations and made letterforms for them.

299

There are horizontal lines over vowels.

300

That means the closing ‘m’ has been omitted.

301

The Q with a slash through it is “quod”, which means because, that or which.

302

Most of those haven’t survived into the modern day, except… There’s an ampersand. There is one.

303

-Oh, there is. -There is.

304

Where? Oh, yes, there it is! Oh, lovely.

305

Sorry, I just got excited about an ampersand.

306

Well, please, you’re in the right company.

307

I get excited about ampersands.

308

So how many copies of this would have been...do you have any clue?

309

Well, in the same year actually there was a record of him printing a thousand copies of one book.

310

We don’t know.

311

Some of them would have had smaller print runs.

312

So, I would say somewhere between five hundred and a thousand.

313

Within a lifetime, books went from individually hand-written to mass-produced.

314

Not on the scale we see now, they were still expensive, but artisans were replaced by… well, different artisans using machines.

315

Most technologies follow a sigmoid curve: slow at first, feeling like there’s no impact and it’s all useless, until suddenly everything changes, and it settles into a new normal.

316

Smartphones, flight, the printing press: they turn the world upside down and then we become used to them.

317

I assumed that was a modern thing, but it’s been going on for far, far longer than I thought.

318

Next time, or right now on Nebula: a hidden monorail, and a video that went wrong in the best possible way.

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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson

This video has 318 sentences and 4481 words to shadow. The speech runs for 23:25. The speaker talks fast, about 191 words per minute, so expect linked and reduced sounds. 83% 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
manuscript noun	/ˈmæn.jəˌskɹɪpt/	A book, composition or any other document, written by hand (or manually typewritten), not mechanically reproduced.
laughter noun	/ˈlæftɚ/	The sound of laughing, produced by air so expelled; any similar sound.
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…
cathedral noun	/kəˈθiːdɹəl/	The principal church serving as the office (and some as place of residence) of an archdiocese's/a diocese's archbishop/bishop which is symbolized by an…
translation noun	/tɹænzˈleɪʃən/	The conversion of text from one language to another.
fancy noun	/ˈfæn.si/	The imagination.
realise verb		Non-Oxford British standard spelling of realize.
shelf noun	/ʃɛlf/	A flat, rigid structure, fixed at right angles to a wall or forming a part of a cabinet, desk, etc., and used to display, store, or support objects.
scholar noun	/ˈskɑlɚ/	A student; one who studies at school or college, typically having a scholarship.
broker noun	/ˈbɹoʊkɚ/	A mediator between a buyer and seller.
decoration noun	/ˌdɛkəˈɹeɪʃən/	The act of adorning, embellishing, or honoring; ornamentation.
shoe noun	/ˈʃu/	A protective covering for the foot, with a bottom part composed of thick leather or plastic sole and often a thicker heel, and a softer upper part made of…
leaf noun	/lif/	The usually green and flat organ that represents the most prominent feature of most vegetative plants.
authorized adjective	/ˈɔθəɹaɪzd/	Explicitly allowed.
scan verb	/skæn/	To examine sequentially, carefully, or critically; to scrutinize; to behold closely.

Phrasal verbs you will hear

Word	Pronunciation	Meaning
come off verb		To become detached.
back up verb		To move backwards, especially for a vehicle to do so.
build up verb		To erect; to construct.
close up verb	/kləʊzˈʌp/	To close (remove a gap) completely or fully.
come out verb	/ˌkʌm ˈaʊt/	To be discovered; to be revealed.
come through verb		To come into a room or other space through a door or passageway.
go back verb		To return to a place or state after having been there at a previous time.
go back to verb		To stem from; to originate in.

Grammar in this video

The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:

Structure	In the video
Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now	They've moved · have been built · I've heard
Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it	was known · been disassembled · are held
Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing	Chapel, which is · then, which is · people who buy

Pronunciation to watch

The speaker uses 83 contractions and reduced forms, such as I'm, we've, don't. Say them the short way, as you hear them.

The “th” sounds: cathedral /kəˈθiːdɹəl/, authorized /ˈɔθəɹaɪzd/, wealthy /ˈwɛl.θi/, thesis /ˈθisɪs/, tenth /tɛnθ/
The “sh” and “zh” sounds: dictionary /ˈdɪk.ʃəˌnɛ.ɹi/, translation /tɹænzˈleɪʃən/, shelf /ʃɛlf/, decoration /ˌdɛkəˈɹeɪʃən/, shoe /ˈʃu/
Long words — get the stress right: dictionary /ˈdɪk.ʃəˌnɛ.ɹi/, decoration /ˌdɛkəˈɹeɪʃən/, necessarily /ˌnɛs.əˈsɛɹ.ə.li/, influential /ɪnflʊˈɛnʃəl/, individually /ˌɪndɪˈvɪd͡ʒ(u)əli/

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 manuscript, laughter, dictionary.

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 technique: read the full step-by-step guide →

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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson

Key vocabulary in this video

Phrasal verbs you will hear

Grammar in this video

Pronunciation to watch

How to practise with this video

What is the Shadowing Technique?