Shadowing Practice: I'll Never forget this Night in New York City - Learn English Speaking with Video
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Everyone that was in New York City
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when the Knicks won the finals has is a story of
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when they were in New York City when the Knicks won the finals.
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This is my story.
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Not going well.
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Still can't get it up.
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They can't seem to get the game, the live game up.
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My little girls wanted to go to like a watch party, but the watch parties are just, they're too chaotic.
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Court.
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So the wife and I thought, why not throw our own watch party?
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So I came to the studio, we got the projector, I got a speaker,
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got the battery, and then we found a nice spot and we set things up.
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This is what it looked like when we started.
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We found a nice spot on a street where cars can't drive down, three little kids, and four chairs.
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One of the chairs was for me.
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Important detail here.
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When I'm with my kids, I don't have cameras and stuff because I like to be present with them.
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So this whole night, like the greatest
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New York City night, I didn't film anything.
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Like I had a point shoot I got a couple clips
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but everything else is just like photos
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and videos from my friends phone maybe we'll see a Nick's win at the watch party
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almost immediately people started joining our little projector party fantastic
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but there were some technical snafus see the projector didn't have a Bluetooth
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and then the speaker didn't have like cable in so I had to connect the speaker to Candace's phone,
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stream it from Candace's phone to the speaker, and then line that up with the projector, but we got it to work.
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Working great.
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Then I realized every time I looked over my shoulder the crowd had doubled.
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That would have been fine.
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We're gonna get a second look at...
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Like exponentially.
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Come back in for the last 225.
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Everyone was having just the greatest time.
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I can't believe you put this all together.
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Towards the end of the third quarter, the crowd had grown to like several hundred.
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But I noticed something catastrophic.
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When we got there, the battery's at 100%.
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That was at the beginning of the second quarter.
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At this moment there was two minutes
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and 25 seconds left in the third quarter and the battery was at 22 %
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So in my head I did some quick battery math
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With 225 left in the third quarter the battery is at 22 %
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So if you have the second quarter plus the third quarter minus the 225 left in that quarter
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You get a total of 21 minutes and 35 seconds of gameplay watch that equals
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1295 seconds 1295 seconds equals 78 % of the total battery life T equals 1295 over .78,
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which is about 1660 .26 seconds.
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Divide that by 60 and you get the total battery life, which is 27 minutes and 40 seconds.
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Take 27 minutes and 40 seconds minus the battery life used.
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You're left with 6 minutes and 5 seconds before the battery hits zero.
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Now with 225 left in the third, 12 minutes in the fourth, you have 14 minutes and 25 seconds of gameplay left.
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And you take that 14 minutes and 25 seconds of gameplay left,
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you minus the 6 minutes and 5 seconds that the battery is left in it.
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And it means with 8 minutes and 20 seconds of gameplay left, the battery is dead.
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Catastrophic.
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Nixon fire!
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Nixon fire!
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Nixon fire!
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This was when the magic that is the people of New York City came together.
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First, this dude sitting right behind me. That guy.
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He ran all the way back to his apartment and grabbed every extension cord he had.
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We conjured up about 35 feet of daisy -chained extension cords.
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Then I went and got my car, but NYPD wouldn't let me get anywhere near a closed -down street that had 300 people on it.
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I begged them.
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Very precarious situation.
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In any event, I got my truck close enough to plug an extension cord into my truck,
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and then run that from my truck back to the projector. But...
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In order to switch power from the battery to the extension cord,
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I had to unplug it and undo all that stuff that I set up at the beginning.
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I did that.
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The power worked.
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But then nothing else worked.
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We were down for like five or six minutes.
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The crowd was getting tested.
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I was able to get the audio back up because
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that was coming off Candace's phone and I felt like that bought me a couple of minutes, but the pressure was on.
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This is how it works.
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I was like covered in sweat.
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There was like this huge dude next to me helping me, but I, there was a moment I didn't think it was going to happen.
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Not going well.
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Then just like that as if God himself Jalen Brunson reached down from the clouds
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and blessed us it came back on with five minutes left in the fourth quarter Yes!
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Good class!
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Yes!
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Yes!
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Yes!
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Yes!
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Yes!
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Yes!
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Yes!
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Yes!
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Yes!
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Oh, he, oh, he, oh, he!
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Hey!
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This speaking lesson is built on the video “I'll Never forget this Night in New York City”. The speaker keeps coming back to these words: battery, quarter, projector, gameplay, cord. This video has 93 sentences and 838 words to shadow. The speech runs for 6:24. The speaker talks at a steady 131 words per minute, a comfortable pace for shadowing. 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
15 words from the video worth learning, with pronunciation and meaning:
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| extension noun | /ɪkˈstɛnʃən/ | The act of extending; a stretching out; enlargement in length, breadth, or time; an increase. |
| cord noun | /ˈkoɹd/ | A long, thin, flexible length of twisted yarns (strands) of fibre (a rope, for example). |
| gameplay noun | /ˈɡeɪmˌpleɪ/ | The totality of player experiences during a game, such as the gaming environment and the competitive interaction with other players; often with reference to a… |
| minus | /ˈmaɪ.nəs/ | Made less or reduced by (followed by an expression of number or quantity). |
| catastrophic adjective | /ˌkætəˈstɹɑfɪk/ | Of or pertaining to a catastrophe. |
| audio adjective | /ˈɔ.di.oʊ/ | Focused on audible sound, as opposed to sight. |
| cloud noun | /ˈklaʊ̯d/ | A visible mass of water droplets suspended in the air. |
| connect verb | /kəˈnɛkt/ | To join (to another object): to attach, or to be intended to attach or capable of attaching, to another object. |
| clip noun | /klɪp/ | Something which clips or grasps; a device for attaching one object to another. |
| bless verb | /blɛs/ | To make something holy by religious rite, sanctify. |
| mathematics noun | /mæθ(.ə)ˈmæt.ɪks/ | An abstract representational system studying numbers, shapes, structures, quantitative change and relationships between them. |
| plug noun | /plʌɡ/ | A pronged connecting device which fits into a mating socket, especially an electrical one. |
| sweat verb | /swɛt/ | To emit sweat. |
| divide verb | /dɪˈvaɪd/ | To split or separate (something) into two or more parts. |
| daisy noun | /ˈdeɪ.zi/ | A wild flowering plant of species Bellis perennis of the family Asteraceae, with a yellow head and white petals |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| back up verb | To move backwards, especially for a vehicle to do so. | |
| close down verb | /kləʊzˈdaʊn/ | To stop trading as a business. |
| come off verb | To become detached. | |
| come together verb | /ˈkʌm tʊˈɡɛðɚ/ | To assemble; to congregate; to combine. |
| drive down verb | To cause or force a price, quantity, rate, etc. to decrease. | |
| look over verb | To check quickly; to make a brief or cursory visual inspection of. |
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| Past continuous was/were + -ing — an action in progress at a moment in the past | was having · was getting · was coming |
| Superlatives the -est / the most … — the top or bottom of a group | the greatest |
| Obligation: must / have to / need to saying that something is necessary | had to connect · had to unplug |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 16 contractions and reduced forms, such as can't, didn't, don't. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: extension /ɪkˈstɛnʃən/, exponentially /ɛkspə(ʊ)ˈnɛnʃəli/
- Long words — get the stress right: catastrophic /ˌkætəˈstɹɑfɪk/, mathematics /mæθ(.ə)ˈmæt.ɪks/, exponentially /ɛkspə(ʊ)ˈnɛnʃəli/, precarious /pɹɪˈkɛəɹi.əs/
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 extension, cord, gameplay.
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.