Shadowing Practice: If You Feel Stuck In Survival Mode, Watch This - Learn English Speaking with Video
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I would love to have you speak to the person who's
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listening right now who feels like they're just reacting to life
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because 70 % of the millions of people that listen to this show every single week
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responded to a survey that we just put out saying, I feel like I'm reacting.
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I'm not really living my life.
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I'm not creating anything.
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Dr. Vietan, based on your research, could you speak to the person who's like, I'm just reacting.
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Could you tell them what is possible?
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What can they learn to do that will help them switch out of that mode of like, I'm just trying to survive here.
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I didn't even realize creating something different was possible.
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Yeah.
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I mean, first of all, it's not your fault.
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Society and culture right now has been set up in a way that is encouraging us to be reactive.
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I call it the great flattening and what I mean by that is twofold.
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One is the actual flattening of screens.
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I can't tell you how much of my day I spend in front of a zoom screen
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or in front of a tv screen or in front of my phone screen.
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So a lot of people are waking up in the morning
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and all the way until the evening all they're doing is reacting to what comes at them.
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So how does imagination help with this?
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Well I like to think of life as sort of like a tapestry.
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So So let's say you have threads that are weaving into the tapestry, and these are the actual constraints of your life, all of the stuff that you have no control over,
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as you know, with the let them theory, you know, you can't do anything about them.
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It's your genetics.
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It's what networks you have, what opportunities you have, etc. But then you've got the part of life that you create and you weave in,
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and a lot of that is imagined.
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I mean, first of all, some of the threads that come into your life that you perceive as reality, you're actually imagining.
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You think they're reality.
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Give me an example.
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What do you mean?
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Well, so how about the only thing that I can do to be successful is work at a 40, 50, 60 hour a week job.
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That's what it is.
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That's the deal.
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That's the only way that anybody's ever successful.
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That's not true.
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No, there are tons of different people who do work in many, many, many different ways so some of the limits
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that we think are hard and fast are either individually imagined
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or collectively imagined and you can decide i want to imagine something different
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but even more important there are real constraints there is reality
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but throughout our day when we encounter our reality i like to call it swiss cheese reality
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and so we see some things we observe them but there are a lot of gaps.
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So let's say I run into a new person at my job
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and she walks up and she's really well -dressed
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and extremely well put together and I look at her
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and immediately I'm observing
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but then I'm also imagining oh this is somebody who really has their shit together
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or you know they know what they're doing
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or they come from a lot of privilege
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or they probably think they're better than me or you know I mean I'm already off to the races.
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I'm not even noticing that imagination.
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I'm seeing that as reality, but I'm weaving that in to what reality really is.
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What could I do instead?
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I could decide that the threads of imagination that I weave into my reality, I want them to be something different.
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I want to imagine that everybody's pretty much doing their best, that most people are excited about helping if they are asked for help.
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As I was sitting here thinking about the example about meeting a new colleague that's dressed to the nines,
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you don't stop to consider that your opinion and immediate impression of this person is something you've imagined.
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You've imagined it.
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And it's a helpful example because when you hear the word imagination,
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I tend to think about Disney or Avatar or these worlds that don't exist,
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but you're challenging me and the person who's here listening to consider
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that a lot of the opinions that you have about yourself
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or the way that the world works or who other people are
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or are not are examples of things you've imagined and you just live as though it's fact.
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Yeah, we are inherently storytellers, and we only have a little bit of the available information at any given point in time.
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And so we can say to ourselves, I want to retrain the way I tell a story about my life.
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I don't want this to be my story anymore.
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Dr. Vieton, what are the specific mindset tools
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that you're going to teach us today
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that can help you stop reacting to your life and start creating the life that you want.
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Today I'm going to talk about visualization, manifestation, and imagination.
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How you can visualize, manifest, you know,
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do all of these practices to help you be more skillful about your imagination once you've recognized the science
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and you know you have it and it's influential.
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What is visualization?
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so for most people visualization is one of the easiest ways to access their imagination there's
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so much brain real estate that's dedicated to vision
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that we can actually use that even when our eyes are closed
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and i want to expand the definition of
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that to say it's not always pictures in your mind sometimes it's a feeling
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that you want to imagine or it's a movement or an environment.
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So when we talk about visualization, let's think about it in terms of where do I want to be?
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How does it feel?
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Not only what does it look like, because there's a lot of people out there who their visualization is kind of blocky, right?
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I always thought you had to picture it in your mind.
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No, and that's so, it's hard for people because when I used to teach workshops in the early days, I would make everybody visualize and we'd always have these four or five people who were like, I didn't see anything.
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And I had to learn not everyone visualizes.
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Some people are much better at storytelling.
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So let's say that your story of your life is
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that you're a pinball in a pinball machine and you get shot out of that little tunnel every morning and then bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, ching, ching, ching, ching.
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And you don't get to decide.
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You just get blasted around all the time.
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You might then say, I don't want my future to be the pinball machine future.
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I want my future to be the hiking through the Alps woman.
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I engage with everyone I encounter along the way.
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I have uphill battles, but when I do that, I breathe deeply and I walk methodically.
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And then when I see a beautiful view or a moment of joy, a small little flower coming up from a rock,
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I sit and spend time with that that the walker becomes your new story.
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I think it's so helpful to know
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that you could use the power of visualization by writing a story versus closing your eyes
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and trying to see the movie scene of it.
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I'll give another example because this is something
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that I've been working on for a long time
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which is I think for a very long time like a
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lot of people I had a story it's all up to me.
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It's all up to me.
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All up to me.
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Like it always comes back to me.
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It's up to me.
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Like there's, you know, if I don't do it, nobody's doing it.
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Oh, you know, they didn't do it.
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So I got to do it.
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And it's not empowering.
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And it just plays on repeat.
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And I have been, I didn't realize it was visualization.
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I have been working on a different story, which is I don't have to do it alone.
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Right.
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There's a lot of help.
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All I have to do is ask for help.
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There's a lot of people that want to help.
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This is, it is not all up to me.
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Yeah.
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And it's not even skillful to have it be all up to you.
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Like I was working with a client the other day where we were using the metaphor of an obstacle course.
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And you know those military obstacle courses where you're like crawling underneath the ropes
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and then you got to get over this gigantic wall.
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How do they get over that gigantic wall?
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Somebody else pushes you up.
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That's right.
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Yeah.
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So you could say I got to do it all myself, but you could also be stuck at that wall for many many years
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because you simply will not ask someone to give you the boost
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i've never thought about visualization as writing a different story i've
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always thought i have to close my eyes crisscross applesauce with my feet
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and try to see the movie and it's very frustrating
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if you're in a position in your life where you want things to change
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but you can't actually see the movie of the change.
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But I do think it's accessible and easy if you start with, okay, what about my current story do I hate and I'm tired of?
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And if it were just the opposite of that, what would that look like?
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If I weren't a pinball, if I didn't have to do it all alone, what's the opposite story?
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And then write that out.
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And here's a super fun exercise because part of imagination is also what we call thought experiments.
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And that does kind of use the thinking mind.
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So let's say that you are stuck in a situation that is really, really difficult, whether it's a job or a family matter, whatever it is.
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Write down 10 ways that you could make it worse.
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You could make it worse?
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Write down 10 ways that you could make the situation worse,
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and the exercise is after you write down the 10 ways flip it what are the things
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that you what's the opposite of the thing you wrote
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that would make it worse and it is fascinating
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because you come up with answers that you wouldn't come up with by just saying what should I do
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you force yourself to be like okay let me make this
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as bad as it could possibly be I could light the
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house on fire that's pretty bad I could spend all my money gambling well that would make this a lot worse.
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And then you write the polar opposite and when you look at that list of opposites you have a roadmap.
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Wow and that's a form of visualization.
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Yeah that's a poor form of imagination.
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Yeah.
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So is imagination the big category and visualization is a technique?
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That's right.
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That's okay.
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Understanding the Struggle: Reactivity in Modern Life
The video features a conversation between a host and Dr. Vietan, exploring why many people feel stuck in "survival mode," reacting to life instead of creating it. They discuss how societal pressures and screen - dominated routines contribute to this state, using relatable examples like overworking and misjudging others. This dialogue is a goldmine for learn english with videos, as it blends everyday language with deeper concepts, making it ideal for building both fluency and critical thinking.
Top 5 Phrases for Daily Communication
- "I feel like I'm reacting" – A common way to express being overwhelmed by life's demands.
- "hard and fast limits" – Describes rules or beliefs we think are unchangeable (e.g., "There are no hard and fast limits to success").
- "off to the races" – Means quickly forming opinions without evidence (e.g., "I saw her and was off to the races with assumptions").
- "swiss cheese reality" – Refers to life's gaps in information, where we fill in the blanks with imagination.
- "weave in" – To add something to a larger picture (e.g., "We can weave creativity into our daily routines").
Step - by - Step Shadowing Guide for This Video
The shadowing technique (or shadow speak) is perfect for this video, as its conversational pace and natural pauses make it easy to follow. Here's how to practice:
1. Break Down the Dialogue
Start by watching 30 - second clips. Pause after each speaker and repeat their words immediately, focusing on improving english pronunciation and intonation. The video's calm tone helps you mimic stress and rhythm, key for sounding natural.
2. Focus on Connected Speech
Phrases like "I didn't even realize" or "what I mean by that" have linked sounds. Use shadowspeak to copy how words flow together. This trains your mouth to move like a native speaker.
3. Analyze Imagination vs. Reality
After shadowing, reflect on the content. Ask: "How does the speaker explain 'swiss cheese reality'?" This connects language practice to critical thinking, making learning more meaningful.
4. Repeat Daily
Spend 10 minutes daily on this video. The shadowing technique works best with consistency, helping you internalize vocabulary and sentence structure without memorization.
By combining learn english with videos and the shadowing technique, you'll not only improve your speaking but also gain insights into navigating life's challenges. Start small, stay patient, and watch your fluency grow.
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 | I've been working · have been working |
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | has been set · you've imagined · you've recognized |
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | has been set · is imagined · are asked |
| Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing | people who do · somebody who really · people who were |
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.