Shadowing Practice: I learned English to a C2 level, so you can just copy me - Learn English Speaking with YouTube

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I learned English to a C2 level,

and you can just copy what I did.

Seriously.

No secret formulas, no complicated methods,

just a system that works.

And the best part, you can adjust it to your own life.

And to make it super easy for you,

I put together a free guide with all of my best strategies.

You'll get a daily immersion checklist,

a structured system to follow,

and the biggest mistakes that slow you down so that you can avoid all of them.

The guide is totally free and you can get it right now by clicking the link in my description.

So let's begin our conversation by talking about why traditional classes just didn't work for me.

Like most people, I started learning English in a classroom when I was in elementary school.

Then I went to middle school,

high school, and obviously when I was a kid,

I wasn't really interested in learning English.

If somebody were to come up to me when I was like 10 and tell me,

Veronica, you know that one day you would be speaking English and Spanish in your everyday life?

I would be like, what are you saying?

Like, I actually hate foreign languages and I don't want to study them.

I am sure I will not need them.

And I didn't have to wait too long for my words to be proven wrong,

because when I turned 14,

15, I realized that if I wanted to go to college,

I actually needed English.

And so I started thinking about how I was being taught this language

and how I would actually want to learn it because I wanted to enjoy the process of language learning.

I wanted to stop hating English as a subject.

I remember when I was in high school,

I attended all of my English classes.

I did all of my homework,

studied all of those grammar drills,

but my listening skills were absolutely horrible.

In fact, I was probably the worst in my class when it came to listening.

I would pass all the written tests,

but if somebody were to actually speak to me in English, I would freeze.

It honestly wasn't until I got to college that I realized that if I wanted to be fluent,

I needed to make English a part of my daily life.

I needed to live and breathe English 24-7.

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Now let's talk about the actual system that got me to C2 in English.

You can honestly just follow these steps and adjust them to your life.

Step one is flood your life with English.

What I did is I surrounded myself with English by watching TV shows and also reading books.

That was honestly my foundation and I also remember that I was constantly on Reddit.

That was another little tool that helped me produce the language because I was actively commenting,

messaging with people on Reddit and just writing my own posts.

And I know that you know that watching shows and reading books is amazing,

but not just any shows or any books because I believe that comprehensible input is key.

And comprehensible input is exactly something that made my foolproof method foolproof for me.

Because if I was watching shows that I could not understand,

you know, I would turn on the show and I would be like,

what is happening here?

Like, I have no idea what they're saying.

The same thing with books.

If I was reading very complicated books,

I would give up because that would not be comprehensible input.

And by comprehensible input, if you're new on my channel,

what I mean is it has to be information that you can mostly understand.

Like your current level plus one.

Just plus one.

Not plus 20, 30, 100.

Basically when you're reading something or watching something,

I think it's best to understand 95% of the information.

At least that's what I did and this is something that worked great for me.

Because the thing is, if something is too hard,

and you're constantly looking up words,

you'll get frustrated and quit.

And we don't want that.

We want you to enjoy it.

And if you notice that you get bored because it's too complicated,

like the book is too complicated,

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or the show is too complicated,

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then it is too complicated for you.

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Find something easier.

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So when I was in high school,

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I was probably already at this intermediate level and the show that I started watching was Desperate Housewives.

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Like these two shows were something that helped me so freaking much because they were fun,

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they were interesting, I could understand most of the information and the information that I couldn't understand.

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It was not too complicated, you know?

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I was actually interested in understanding that information.

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I would pause the show,

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I would look up the idiom or the phrase,

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and I would save it to my Anki deck,

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and this is basically how I progressed.

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And for books, I chose young adult fiction,

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because the language was engaging, but not too childish.

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And that is why I always talk about young adult fiction on my YouTube channel.

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It is something that is perfect if you're at this intermediate level,

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if you are experiencing this intermediate plateau and if you feel like everything is too boring,

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everything is too complicated, but you're not interested in watching Peppa Pig

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because it is also too boring because it's too simple, you know?

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The material can be too boring because it's either too simple for you

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or too complicated or if you're just completely not interested in it

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when it was my first year in college and I had to take a train from my apartment to my university,

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it was probably like 45 minutes to go there and also 45 minutes to go back.

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What I would do is I would read this series,

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Miss Peregrine's Peculiar Children.

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It's a book series that is a mix of fantasy,

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mystery, and adventure with a dark and eerie vibe.

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And guys, let me tell you,

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I was so freaking obsessed with those books

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that sometimes I would be reading the book so intently that I would just miss my stop.

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I like those books that much.

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The story in that series follows Jacob Portman,

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a teenager who discovers a hidden world of peculiars,

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children with strange and supernatural abilities,

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living in a time loop led by Miss Peregrine, a shape-shifting headmistress.

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And reason why this series became so known is for its creepy vintage photographs.

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Like, if you're actually gonna buy the books,

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you will see those interesting photographs and they inspired the story.

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Obviously, the language in those books was really informal, was really fun.

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I remember learning so many amazing expressions,

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so many amazing words, because there was a lot of dialogue in the books

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and usually the dialogue is how people actually speak.

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So that is why if you're right now stuck in this intermediate plateau,

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if you want to read something in English,

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I highly, highly recommend this book series.

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You have to make English your default mode.

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What I mean by that is that I basically imagined that I was a native speaker already.

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Like, let's play pretend for a second, okay?

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I switched all of my tech to English.

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My phone, my laptop, my social media, everything was in English.

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That is the first step,

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that is the most basic thing you can do.

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I'm a huge proponent of journaling,

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so I would journal exclusively in English.

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If there was something that I wanted to write in Russian in my native language,

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obviously I would do that,

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but most of my writing was done in English.

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I would also write my grocery lists in English.

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Like today, I have to go grocery shopping and here is what I have to get.

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Like literally guys, it is so easy to do in English instead of your native language

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and most of us go grocery shopping maybe every week or maybe even more than once a week.

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And I also planned my day in English,

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like everything I had to do today,

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maybe my workout plans, the videos I was watching to help me work out,

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to do yoga, maybe like a gym workout plan,

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like all of those things,

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they were all in English.

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And also, whenever I had a free moment,

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I consumed content in English instead of my native language.

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Of course, I still lived in Russia, right?

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So I didn't live in an English-speaking country.

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So I would still talk to people outside in Russian,

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I would hear Russian outside,

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I would talk to my family,

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my friends, only in Russian,

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but everything I had control over,

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I would do that in English.

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And the final step, step number three,

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is understanding the difference between active learning and passive learning.

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Because for a while, I was only relying on passive learning,

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and I couldn't really see results,

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especially when I hit that intermediate plateau.

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I was like, what is happening?

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I don't see any results,

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even though I'm watching stuff in English,

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TV shows, movies, I'm listening to podcasts,

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but I'm still not improving.

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Like, what do I do?

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And the thing is, watching shows is great,

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but for me, it wasn't enough.

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I had to be actively engaging with the material.

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Let's say I'm watching a show and instead of just kind of like watching it,

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being on my phone, responding to messages and at the same time listening to the show a little bit,

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I switched this approach and I became a hundred percent focused on the show I was watching.

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I would pause, I would practice shadowing,

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I would repeat the sentences after the speakers and yes,

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this approach makes your movie watching experience a little bit different because instead of just flopping on your couch and relaxing,

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you kind of have to study,

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like you're watching a show in this nerdy way.

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So for movies, to recap,

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what I did was I would replay scenes,

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I would mimic accents, and I would try to understand the conversation first with subtitles,

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and then I would turn the subtitles off,

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and then I would replay the same scene again to make sure that I could understand what they were saying without subtitles.

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And for books, I would read and listen at the same time.

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And then I would actually read the book out loud.

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I would use Audible.

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Honestly, I still use Audible.

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Like when I read books,

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I prefer to listen and read.

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I'm kind of reading my book and I have my audiobook playing and I kind of read with my eyes,

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if you know what I mean.

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But if I really want to practice my pronunciation,

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if there are some words I'm not sure how to pronounce,

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I would pause the audiobook and I would read the sentence out loud.

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This approach, when you are reading and listening at the same time,

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when you're trying to read the sentences out loud,

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helps you internalize all of the structures,

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all of the new words,

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all of the grammar you're learning by reading this book.

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So yes, I was practicing exposure.

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I was exposed to the language by reading books and watching shows,

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but it was a little bit more than that.

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I was actually absorbing the language like a sponge.

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And guys, you probably know that I'm a huge organization nerd and organizing all of my materials,

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my study sessions, keeping track of all of the new vocabulary is also something

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that helped me so much with my English learning journey.

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I have a notion template that I use for all of my languages,

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so if you want to check it out,

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I will leave a link to the Notion template in the description.

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So I think it's going to be it for today's video.

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If you liked it, please don't forget to give it a thumbs up and subscribe to my YouTube channel.

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I know that a lot of language learners also want to improve their accents,

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and as you can hear,

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I did change my accent from a very typical Russian accent to a more American one.

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And I did it consciously because I really wanted to sound more American.

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But in this process, there were a lot of moments that made me feel like I was losing a part of myself,

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a part of my identity.

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And that is something that I actually talked about in this video right here.

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So if you want to see my experience,

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just click right here and keep on watching.

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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.

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Shadowing Practice: I learned English to a C2 level, so you can just copy me - Learn English Speaking with YouTube

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Shadowing Practice: I learned English to a C2 level, so you can just copy me - Learn English Speaking with YouTube

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Why practice speaking with this video?

Grammar & Expressions in Context

Common Pronunciation Traps

What is the Shadowing Technique?