Shadowing Practice: 'I Was So Addicted..' : Tom Holland | [ ENGLISH SPEECH ] - Learn English Speaking with Video

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something that did really upset me i was in new york i was shooting the crowning crowded room

and i was having a really hard time with the job just because of how taxing it was the emotional

capacity that i was having to get to every day

and i decided to delete my instagram because i just felt like i was

so addicted to this kind of false version of my life

that it was just taking over i would be on set working i'd come

and sit in my chair and just scroll scroll scroll scroll scroll

and it was it was becoming a problem i was just obsessed with it

and i was obsessed to find out what people were saying

and how people what they thought about me

so i decided to make an announcement which unfortunately we have to do

and say that i'm taking a break from social media

and i and i try to position myself

and say like i'm taking a break from social media

because i feel like my mental health will benefit from it

and the thing that really upset me is the press ran with

that and they tried to make out that i was having this mental breakdown

and what upset me was

if i was having a mental breakdown

that's not for you to report on they they took the story in the wrong direction

and they tried they painted again

this negative light on mental health rather than saying oh he's doing it it's okay

that he's doing it

so we should all feel okay to do it too

they were saying oh look he's not the perfect happy -go -lucky kid

you think he is he's having nervous breakdown in new york

and i think that that was a really unfair line of journalism let's say

because i just think it again kind of painted people looking for help in the wrong light

if you know what i mean yeah yeah absolutely absolutely it almost sounds like you were actually preemptively

going i'm doing this so that i don't right go in

that direction totally at least i'm not trying to words in your mouth

but absolutely it's almost like i'm proactively seeing

that i could end up in a position where sure

i might have a breakdown i don't want to be in

that position and

so i'm responsibly saying guys i'm taking a break right in order to protect myself a hundred percent yeah

which makes a lot of sense and actually is quite admirable again totally

and that's kind of what the message of the show is about like the the message of our show is

that asking for help should be something that we celebrate yeah

if you're struggling if you need help if you feel bad

and you wake up and

and you go to a friend a therapist a teacher an employee

or a colleague and say i'm really struggling i need some help

that should be something

that we give you a pat on the back like i would love to help you

that i'm delighted that you asked me and that for me

that announcement was kind of my olive branch

and the press ran with it how they ran with it

but to be fair it kind of gave me a great drive to finish the crowded room in the way

that we did to like

if you're not going to listen to my personal message

then you have to listen to the message of my show yeah

so it kind of went hand in hand yeah

it doesn't have to be a professional yeah i go to my friends a lot

and and you know some friends are better than others in certain situations i've got some friends

that are very much like pull your socks up

and get on with it and then other friends who are like come here

and have a cry on my shoulder but like it it varies

so i just really hope

that that's what the show could do is sort of paint

this positive picture of asking for help is something to be proud of well that's a great message

and i think we all need to hear it my mum has always been really hands -on with our education

she you know really wanted us to just do our best our dad always said like look

i don't care what grades you get as long as you try your best you try your best

and that's all that we can ask for

but yeah my dyslexia it's really just my spelling i mean honestly it's just

that yeah you know like those sort of games

that you play at christmas have you ever played um the one we have to write down the answers

that is such a good game is it balderdash

i don't know balderdash is it uh it's basically a game where someone will read out a scenario

or um right ask a question

and then you have to answer the question to the best of your ability

but you can also bluff

and lie oh i've never played this game right somewhat a believing answer

and people vote for your answer you win oh cool okay i've never played it

which is great but when i play it everyone's like what does

that say that is definitely not spelt right good um but yeah

so my spelling was really the biggest hurdle um i worked really hard at school i didn't do particularly well

but again my parents said as long as you try your best

then that's all we can ask for i do believe in manifesting actually

i really do i think what's interesting about my career is this was never something

i wanted i just was a young kid

i loved dancing my mum would take me to a dance class every saturday

and i got spotted through

that dance class to to audition for a show on the west end

i ended up doing the show i loved it billy elliott

it was a time of my life i you know

it was such a cool experience i'm just by complete fluke an agent came to see the show the night

that i was on she signed me

she sent me to an audition for a film

i was lucky enough to get the part all of a sudden i was on set with ewan mcgregor

and Naomi Watts and we made the impossible

and to be perfectly honest with you it was it was just a hobby it was something

that my mum would let me do on the summer holidays she was very keen

that I kept my schooling up and there sort of came

that time in England where you're in between GCSEs and A -levels

and you're trying to figure out when I was going through

that you could still drop out at A -levels obviously now you have to do A -levels

and I had that moment where I was like what do I want to do I could try

100

and stay at school and figure out what I want to do

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or this thing that's been a hobby but my sort of summer holiday activity

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which is acting I could try and do that for a living

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and I've been so lucky that I've been you know offered jobs and all that sort of stuff

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I decided to go with it I joined the Brit school

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because you know my mum was keen

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that I didn't go for school for an education

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but went to school to expand my social skills

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and meet kids my own age all my friends

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when i was 15 were like 30 year old people

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because they're all adults from the business um

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so i think my mom was keen that i had some friends

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that are my age who are now my best friends today

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so i never really wanted this i just sort of never stopped doing it

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and i love it i absolutely love it i love the creativity i love the building blocks

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that are required to put a film together

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i love the collaboration on set between people from all different walks of life

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you know a film set is a melting pot of all sorts of different people um

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so i love it i absolutely love it yeah wow and

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and i i read something

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that you said you were bullied for like doing ballet yeah right

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which obviously got you into the playing the role of billy ellick

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because it's ballet and tap right it's both so was was

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that was that tough at the time

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or like were you trying to hide it

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and then you end up on you know you end up at the west end

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and you're on the main stage and everyone's seeing it

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or was it kind of easy to navigate and how did

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that go down because i feel like as a kid doing ballet

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and tap must have been a little challenging yeah i mean it was it wasn't easy

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but it also wasn't tough you know i went to a rugby school

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so you can imagine like the one kid in the school

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that does ballet there's going to be comments here

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and there it wasn't the easiest thing in the world there were kids

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that didn't understand why i was doing it

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or what i was doing it for no matter how many times

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i explained like i'm the only guy in a class of 30 girls in tights

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i was like guys this is what you want to be doing like rugby is not it

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but i nah it was tough

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but again like it goes back to what we were saying about resilience

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and keeping your head down

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and crowded room was the hardest job i've ever had for all sorts of different reasons

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and there was a point in time where we were talking about do we shut this down

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and walk away from it because of how challenging it was

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and you know i dug my heels in i put my head down was like no

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i'm going to finish this i'm going to see it through

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and i think you know you learn from past experiences like

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that so i really am proud of the way we everyone handled the crowded room

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and i think that stems from my childhood my dad's experiences

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and all that sort of stuff yeah me as an actor i realize

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that my job is a high pressure job

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because it reaches millions of people but that said there are

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so many people

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that help me get to where i need to be i

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get picked up someone makes me breakfast someone writes the words

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i'm supposed to say someone chooses my costume someone does my hair

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and makeup someone sets the camera up ultimately I walk onto set

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and I do my bit but I'm a small part in a massive machine

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but when you look at someone like Djokovic or Federer

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or you know this new Alcaraz you know or the golfers or Lewis

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Lewis is slightly different because Formula One is so much about the team

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and the car and all

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that sort of stuff they have to do it themselves at a certain point there's only

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so much help they can get but then when they walk onto

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that court for the first time when they walk into the ring

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or into the octagon it's them by themselves they're under

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that amount of pressure it's up to them whether they deliver

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or not and i just have always been admiring of seeing some of the greats lose their win streak

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and come back even stronger i've always really been an admirer of people

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that are able to do that i think it's a folly

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when you see these win streaks of 50 and 0

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and all that sort of stuff and you're like well

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that to me isn't what a champion is a champion is someone who had it all lost it all

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and got it right back again Tyson Fury's story is a crazy one I'd love to see AJ come back

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and be on top again because I'd love to be alive to witness

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that legacy that he would leave behind you know I feel sorry for him what happened to him

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when he sort of seemed to really lose it a little bit in the ring

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when he took the microphone and I'd love to see him back on top

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and to to have some clarity and to be a champion again

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because I admire him as an athlete

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so I save most of my admiration for athletes

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and musicians i love musicians

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i see someone like ed sheeran yeah 80 000 people in the palm of his hand

183

i think comedians are equally as talented the ability

184

that they can just go on stage and make people laugh that is terrifying

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262 sentences

Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson

This speaking lesson is built on the video “'I Was So Addicted..' : Tom Holland”. This video has 184 sentences and 2201 words to shadow. The speech runs for 9:52. The speaker talks fast, about 223 words per minute, so expect linked and reduced sounds. 84% 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
scroll noun	/skɹoʊl/	A roll of paper or parchment; a writing formed into a roll.
breakdown noun	/ˈbɹeɪkˌdaʊn/	A failure, particularly one which is mechanical in nature.
ballet noun	/bælˈeɪ/	A classical form of dance.
keen adjective	/kin/	Often with a prepositional phrase, or with to and an infinitive: showing a quick and ardent responsiveness or willingness; eager, enthusiastic, interested.
rugby noun	/ˈɹʌɡbi/	A form of football in which players can hold or kick an ovoid ball; rugby football. The ball cannot be handled forwards and points are scored by touching the…
billy noun	/ˈbɪli/	A highwayman's club, billy club.
announcement noun	/əˈnaʊns.mənt/	An act of announcing, or giving notice.
athlete noun	/ˈæθ.liːt/	A participant in any of a group of sporting activities including track and field, road running, cross country running and racewalking.
streak noun	/stɹiːk/	An irregular line, as is left from smearing or motion.
musician noun	/mjuˈzɪʃən/	A composer, conductor, or performer of music; specifically, a person who sings and/or plays a musical instrument as a hobby, occupation, or profession.
spelling noun	/ˈspɛl.ɪŋ/	The act, practice, ability, or subject of forming words with letters, or of reading the letters of words; orthography.
admire verb	/ədˈmaɪɹ/	To regard with wonder and delight.
hobby noun	/ˈhɑ.bi/	An activity that one enjoys doing in one's spare time.
audition noun	/ɑˈdɪʃən/	A performance, by an aspiring performer, to demonstrate suitability or talent.
skill noun	/skɪl/	A capacity to do something well; a technique, an ability, usually acquired or learned, as opposed to abilities that are regarded as innate.

Phrasal verbs you will hear

Word	Meaning
come back verb	To return to a place.
figure out verb	To come to understand; to discover or find a solution; to deduce.
end up verb	To bring to a conclusion.
find out verb	To discover, as by asking or investigating.
get on with verb	To proceed with; to begin or continue, especially after an interruption.
go back to verb	To stem from; to originate in.
go down verb	To descend; to move from a higher place to a lower one.
go through verb	To travel from one end of something to the other.

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	has always been · i've never played · that's been
Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it	are required · were bullied
Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing	friends who are · someone who had

Pronunciation to watch

The speaker uses 46 contractions and reduced forms, such as I'm, I've, you're. Say them the short way, as you hear them.

The “th” sounds: athlete /ˈæθ.liːt/, therapist /ˈθɛɹəpɪst/
The “sh” and “zh” sounds: musician /mjuˈzɪʃən/, audition /ɑˈdɪʃən/, collaboration /kəˌlæbəˈɹeɪʃən/, admiration /ˌæd.məˈɹeɪ.ʃən/, balderdash /ˈbɔːldə.dæʃ/
Long words — get the stress right: collaboration /kəˌlæbəˈɹeɪʃən/, creativity /kri.eɪˈtɪv.ᵻ.ti/, comedian /kəˈmiː.di.ən/, admiration /ˌæd.məˈɹeɪ.ʃən/, resilience /ɹɪˈzɪl.ɪ.əns/

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 scroll, breakdown, ballet.

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 →

Shadowing Practice: 'I Was So Addicted..' : Tom Holland | [ ENGLISH SPEECH ] - Learn English Speaking with Video

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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?