Shadowing Practice: I went to an Ancient British Festival - Learn English Speaking with Video

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I went to an ancient British festival called Flora Day.

Flora Day is an event which happens in Helston down in Cornwall and it is hundreds and hundreds of years old.

Flora Day is a festival which celebrates the coming of spring.

So traditionally this was a festival which arose from Celtic culture.

It came from Celtic culture to celebrate the end of winter

and the beginning of summer so

when you see we decorate the streets with lots of greenery

with lots of flowers it's to celebrate it's to celebrate the

summer the first recorded mention of floridae is from 1790

and every single year since then the town has celebrated floridae

on the 8th of May by having dances go through the town where people dance in and out of shops,

they dance all the way through the town to this one iconic song called the Furry Dance.

There are four dances, one at seven o'clock, one at ten o'clock, one at twelve o'clock and one at five o'clock.

There is also something called the Hallantau which I will describe more later on.

The dances are made up of partners

and in order to dance you have to have some kind of connection to the town of Helston.

The five o'clock and the seven o'clock dances were traditionally the servants dance

so these were dances which were made to fit around people's work day

so you could dance before and after going to work.

They then have a dance at midday which is for the lords and the ladies.

It's for the gentry, the posh people, the rich people of the town and I will explain a little bit more about this later.

The first dance is at seven o'clock in the morning

so in order to see the dance we we had to leave the house very early.

I think we left the house at about 6am to get to the town of Helston

and to have a good position to watch the dance begin.

We parked on a street

but there are also car parks you can park in a car park

but we we parked at a friend's house And when you walk into the town, it was like 6.30, something like this.

And you could already hear the atmosphere.

You could already hear that things were exciting.

The church bells were ringing in the churchyard.

And this is such a beautiful clip, I think.

So I'll let you enjoy the sound of the bells.

There are lots of people walking into town because lots of people like to see the first dance of the day.

A few days in advance, they decorate all of the shops with greenery, with sort of green stuff, and they decorate the streets with bunting,

so like flags over the top of the street.

people wait to watch the dances in the windows people wear

lily of the valley flowers on their lapel your lapel is

here on your shirt now for about half an hour we

were just waiting for the seven o'clock dance to start there

were lots of people who were doing the same thing so the band was waiting,

the dancers were waiting, people were waiting to see the dance begin.

About 10 seconds before it turned seven o'clock it was very

very quiet as everybody waited for the town clock to strike seven and as soon as that happened the dance began,

the furry dance began.

All is it just as good as Ndra?

Yeah yeah.

Honestly, I was really emotional watching the band begin.

So this is a festival which as a child I would go to all the time.

I used to go to Florida every single year, but I've not been now for 10 years.

So I was really excited.

And when the band started, I cried.

I literally cried.

That's why you can hear this man go, she's crying.

It's true.

I was, I was crying.

As the band goes by, you can see the mayor leads the dance.

So this lady with the chain of office around her neck, that is the mayor of the town.

And behind her are the dancers the couples who are dancing together.

And what they will do is when the band strikes up this kind of second melody,

they all switch, they all switch partners, which you can see here.

This dance goes on for I think it's just under two hours

and the dancers will go to various different areas of the town

so we were able to move about the streets and find them in different places which was so amazing.

I'm so excited.

Food and drink is another really, really big part of this festival.

So even though it's seven o'clock in the morning, you can see that some people are drinking already.

Some people have beers or gin or whatever.

It's kind of part of the day.

I did not start drinking yet.

First, it was time for breakfast.

So we decided to let the dancers go and we went to breakfast at a nearby restaurant.

And here I had a cranberry juice and like a full English breakfast on toast,

like a vegetarian full English on toast with halloumi and avocado and poached eggs.

It was really good.

Once the seven o'clock dance is over, you have something called the Hall and Tao.

And this is probably the craziest part of all of Florida because this is the tradition that is most Celtic,

the most kind of pre-Christianization in the UK.

What you see with the Hall and Tao is two things.

one you see a lot of people waving branches of sycamore

sycamore is a type of tree you see people waving branches of sycamore around

and they are making a lot of noise a lot of noise they have whistles they have horns they have drums

the reason for this is they are trying to scare away the demons of winter they are scaring away winter itself.

You will also notice that lots of these people are dressed in costumes.

Some people are dressed as hedges but some people are dressed as dragons, as knights.

Loads and loads of crazy costumes.

Robin Hood, Cornish saints as well.

Somebody is dressed as the Saint Pyrrhon.

They basically, the Halantau, the group,

they move about the town of Helston and in various different places they put on a play,

kind of a play or a show with a song which covers like,

honestly, I didn't really understand it but it was about like George St. George and the dragon,

Robin Hood, the Spanish Armada.

It's just various kind of historical characters all combined into this one song.

A ball is your own, your spirit is ready to go A ball is your own,

love is your own, love is your own Love is your own, love is your own Love is your own,

love is your own Something you hear a lot during the hal and tau is a chant which goes Oggy,

oggy, oggy, oi, oi, oi

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And you might know this chant actually,

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maybe you've heard this before.

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It's very, very popular at football games, for example.

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And this is a chant which originates in Cornwall.

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In Cornwall, we are famous for our pasties

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which is a type of food it's like our national dish

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and we also call pasties oggy and oggy so

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when you shout oggy oggy oggy it's like our national dish

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and people use this chant to like celebrate being cornish being from cornwall

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so after all of that noise uh the Palantau ends and another dance begins.

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This dance is the children's dance at 10 o'clock in the morning.

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Now the children's dance we did not go to.

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I did not go to the children's dance this year

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but all of the schools in the town have the children

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dance from I think literally like five years old to 18 and they all wear white with flowers in their hair.

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We didn't see it this year because we went to get some food.

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We went to the church, like the church has a little hall next to it,

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like a building where some local women had baked homemade cakes.

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They were amazing.

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So I bought a Cornish cream tea.

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A cream tea is a scone which is kind of halfway between like bread

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and cake and you have it with a layer of jam

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and then some cream on top and it was really really delicious

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but after the cream tea we went to a friend's house to get ready for the midday dance.

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I mentioned earlier that the midday dance was the, it's like the lord and the ladies dance,

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so everything about it is bigger and grander.

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In the midday dance there are two bands, that's why when you see the bands go by they have blue and black jackets,

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they bring in a band from a neighbouring town

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and all of the people dancing have to wear full top hat

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and tails like a full suit and the ladies need to wear a hat,

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a full length gown and opera gloves up to up to here.

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And this year was super exciting because my mum, my mum was in it, my mum was doing the midday dance.

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We have been so excited.

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Like for weeks, we have been planning, we have been dress shopping,

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we've been buying hats, I sewed her gloves, like everything was happening.

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It was a really, really big deal for my family.

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We were really excited, which is why at this point in the morning at probably 10 a.m we started drinking champagne

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so we we started early this is some slang but

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when you're drinking in the UK you're on the lash

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so we were on the lash from 10 o'clock okay

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but my mum she looked beautiful she was wearing this gorgeous floral gown with like a coral pink colour

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and this amazing coral pink hat and matching gloves.

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She looked so beautiful.

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I was so excited and she was dancing with our family friend.

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So for the midday dance, you dance again for about two hours with a break halfway

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and the break happens in the garden of a nearby like

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it's kind of like a small manor house it's a really grand beautiful house in the middle of the village

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so we went to the gardens to watch them

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and luckily we managed to catch everybody dancing by

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so I will show you some of those clips as well you can listen to to the music In the

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midday dance, there are 190 couples dancing.

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So these couples are split into two groups so that everybody can hear the band.

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So there's a band at the front, more dancers, another band and more dancers.

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And when my mum came by, she was in the first group.

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I was so freaking excited.

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I was so excited.

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So you can hear me like screaming.

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I was screaming and yelling.

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I was so, I was so excited.

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Woo!

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Woo!

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Run!

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Woo!

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Yeah!

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These two groups

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come together in the big garden.

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So when they get onto the lawn, onto the grass in the garden, they start doing a massive spiral so that everybody can fit.

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That lasts for a little while, but so many people were waiting in the garden.

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It had an amazing atmosphere.

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And when the dance ended for halfway, everybody was cheering.

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It was so nice.

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It's so beautiful.

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Now, after this moment when we had the break, my mum and the partner she was dancing with,

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Brett, who's probably watching, actually, hi Brett, my mum and her dance partner came to get some champagne, more champagne.

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Yeah, we had champagne and we had some food as well.

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Eventually, everybody leaves the garden and the dance starts again through the rest of the town.

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They literally dance everywhere.

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They go on all of the streets.

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They go to the bowling green.

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I managed to catch a video of them as they went through the memorial, the memorial archway.

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The band leads the way with the 190 couples behind

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and yeah we just spent the rest of the afternoon in

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the pub that's what you do on floridae you just drink you just drink

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and um have a good time and and see people

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and dance and it's lovely i have to be honest i did want to video the last dance of Florida Day,

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the five o'clock dance, but I was in the pub.

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I was in the pub getting pissed.

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So I didn't film the last dance of the evening, but there are some amazing videos online.

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Everyone at this point is very, very jolly because they've been drinking.

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I hope you get the point here.

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But I just wanted to share some of this Floriday event with you.

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It's such an amazing festival that happens in the UK and we sadly, we do not have many festivals like this.

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Floriday is a very, very special event.

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So if you come to Cornwall in May, definitely check out Floriday on the 8th of May.

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I also, I'm really interested if you have a similar festival

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or event in your hometown where for the whole day the town is a party.

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Is there anything like that in your hometown?

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Write down below.

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Practice.

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Practice your English.

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This is a difficult thing to explain.

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So see if you can do it.

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And I will read your comments and I'll let you know if you did good.

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I'll let you know.

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But in general, that is everything.

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That is everything from me.

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It was an amazing day.

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That just leaves me to say thank you so much for watching and I will see you in the next video.

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Bye!

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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson

This B1 speaking lesson is built on the video “I went to an Ancient British Festival”. The speaker keeps coming back to these words: dance, town, band. This video has 208 sentences and 2333 words to shadow. The speech runs for 20:40. The speaker talks at a steady 113 words per minute, a comfortable pace for shadowing. 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

The 15 most advanced words in the video, with pronunciation and meaning:

Word	Pronunciation	Meaning
bind verb	/ˈbaɪ̯nd/	To tie; to confine by any ligature.
oggy noun		An own goal.
midday noun	/mɪdˈdeɪ/	Noon; twelve o'clock during the day.
dancer noun	/ˈdænsəɹ/	A person who dances, usually as a hobby, an occupation, or a profession.
chant verb	/t͡ʃænt/	To sing, especially without instruments, and as applied to monophonic and pre-modern music.
champagne noun	/ʃæmˈpeɪn/	A sparkling white wine made from a blend of grapes, especially Chardonnay and pinot, produced in Champagne, France, by the méthode champenoise.
cornish noun		One of several decorative rings around the barrel of a cannon; the next ring from the muzzle backwards.
decorate verb	/ˈdɛkəɹeɪt/	To furnish with decorations.
sycamore noun	/ˈsɪkəmoɹ/	Any of several North American plane trees, of the genus Platanus, especially Platanus occidentalis (American sycamore), distinguished by its mottled bark which…
glove noun	/ɡlʌv/	An item of clothing, covering all or part of the hand and fingers, but usually allowing independent movement of the fingers.
halfway adverb	/ˌhæfˈweɪ/	Half of the way between two points.
excite verb	/ɪkˈsaɪt/	To stir the emotions of; to cause to feel excitement.
greenery noun	/ˈɡɹiːnəɹi/	Green foliage or verdure.
lapel noun	/ləˈpɛl/	Each of the two triangular pieces of cloth on the front of a jacket or coat that are folded back below the throat, leaving a triangular opening between.
lash noun	/læʃ/	The thong or braided cord of a whip, with which the blow is given.

Phrasal verbs you will hear

Word	Meaning
go through verb	To travel from one end of something to the other.
check out verb	To record the departure or withdrawal of someone or something (such as guests, employees, books, etc.).
strike up verb	To start something with somebody else, such as a conversation or relationship.
write down verb	To produce or set (something) down in writing; to record something.

Grammar in this video

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

Structure	In the video
Present perfect continuous have/has been + -ing — an action that started earlier and is still going on	have been planning · we've been buying · they've been drinking
Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it	are made · were made · are dressed
Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing	dances which were · midday which is · people who were
Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now	has celebrated · I've not been · you've heard

Pronunciation to watch

The speaker uses 14 contractions and reduced forms, such as didn't, I'll, I'm. Say them the short way, as you hear them.

The “sh” and “zh” sounds: champagne /ʃæmˈpeɪn/, lash /læʃ/, traditionally /tɹəˈdɪʃ.ə.nə.li/, dish /dɪʃ/, comprehension /ˌkɑmpɹɪˈhɛnʃn̩/
Long words — get the stress right: traditionally /tɹəˈdɪʃ.ə.nə.li/, avocado /ˌɑvəˈkɑdoʊ/, originate /əˈɹɪd͡ʒɪneɪt/, vegetarian /vɛ.d͡ʒɪˈtɛ.ɹi.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 bind, oggy, midday.

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 went to an Ancient British Festival - 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?