Shadowing Practice: Learn any language with point-of-view stories - Learn English Speaking with Video
Creating lesson...
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Today I wanna talk about my upcoming trip to Portugal.
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Upcoming is, like, November, but I'm starting to prepare language-wise And I wanna talk about how I use our mini-stories, or call them point-of-view stories, and AI to create an ideal situation to refresh my Portuguese.
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Because, you know, I have sometimes struggled with Portuguese 'cause it's so similar to Spanish, and there's also the issue of Portuguese from Portugal, which is where I'll be going, versus Portuguese in Brazil.
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So I wanna get myself sort of ramped up for this trip.
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Obviously, I'm gonna use my mini-stories technique, which is really part of a thing that's known as a POV, point of view, form of storytelling, which I didn't originate.
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I think it came perhaps from AJ Hoge of Effortless English, and it's part of a tradition, especially the way we do it at LingQ, where we combine the point-of-view story with circling questions.
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And I think it was a professor of Spanish in California called Blaine Ray who developed these circling question techniques.
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And all of these things work because we are constantly re-engaging with the language, listening and reading, and every time we re-engage, we're regenerating the language, and it's kind of an effortless way to acquire vocabulary and to acquire a sense of the structure of a language.
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And I have used them to begin in a language from zero in languages as different as Greek and Arabic and Persian, and I use them to refresh.
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And this is the thing about these, um, mini-stories or point-of-view stories, circling questions, is that it can be an opportunity to start from scratch.
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But it's also… I've often called it my gym, where I go to work out in a language.
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Some of my statistics at LingQ will show that I have listened to some of these mini-stories 30, 40 times.
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And of course, the key is you wanna listen and read, and you are regenerating the language in your mind.
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The structure is very simple.
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So a story, a simple story, and I will explain to you later on how I can use AI to z- to design the story at the level that I want to be at in the language.
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Or in the case of my upcoming trip to Portugal, I design it around the town that I will be visiting in Portugal and that area.
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But the, the gist of it is that there are 6 or 10 sentences, relatively simple, usually, especially, uh, at a beginner level, where version one of the story uses, uh, one per- person, like the first person, like I, and then another version uses the third person, or version three might use the future tense.
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So you are changing the point of view of the story, but essentially, you're dealing with the same story and the same vocabulary.
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So there's an element of novelty, but a lot of repetition.
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And then typically, I like to follow these with circling questions.
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These are not questions testing my ability to recollect what was in the story.
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Instead, I make a statement about the story, then I ask a question about the story based on that sentence.
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So John went to the store.
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Did John go to the store?
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And the answer is either positive or negative.
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So you're, again, refreshing the same vocabulary in different tenses, in different persons, positive, negative, interrogative, all of these things are great.
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So that's the package that I'm going to be using to prepare for my trip to Portugal.
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Now, in Portugal, we're staying in a little town.
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I haven't yet booked it, but my intention is to go to a town on the border between Portugal and Spain called Vila Real de Santo António.
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And so I was in, uh, LingQ, and I asked our AI bot, LingQs, saying, "Can you create a story similar to a mini story, uh, based on this town, Vila Real de Santo António?" You know, it takes work to develop something in AI that's exactly what you want, so sometimes it won't do the whole job, the AI bot, or it will only deal with the content that's in our story, for example.
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And I said, "No, no, I want you to go search for other information about this area," the river, the golf courses, whatever it might be.
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So, uh, and the f- the fun thing was that my interaction with our AI bot, I would sometimes interact in English, I would sometimes interact in Portuguese, but everything ended up as a lesson for LingQ.
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And I was able to also define that I wanted this in European Portuguese.
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So out of my interaction, I was able to develop a point-of-view story, a series of point-of-view story, not quite exactly what I want yet, but getting closer.
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But even my interaction with the bot is a form of involvement with the language and are my first pass at the vocabulary and the structures that will be in this eventual lesson.
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So then subsequently, I will go in there, and I will listen to it.
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I will listen to it many times.
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I will read it, and I'll develop more and more stories around the theme of what there is to do in that area, or I could even direct it to delve into the history of that region, the history of that region, uh, in relationship to Spain, which is just next door, or whatever I want.
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So the interesting thing is that the point-of-view story and circling questions, which are very effective when it comes to learning, and which you can use in order to get into the language, or you can use at a later stage as practice, and you can define how difficult you want the story to be.
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So all of the good reasons why this is excellent learning- Uh, content and stories we know are powerful.
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With AI now, we can define with a greater degree of, of refinement the accent we want, the kind of content we want.
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Uh, I could even ask it to use certain parts of speech or certain structures.
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Uh, so i- in this way, because of the quality… Now, I think this is the key part that I should've mentioned up front.
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The quality of the text-to-speech audio now is so good that it, it's actually not unpleasant to listen to the generated audio.
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And you can refine the kind of content you wanna listen to, food, eating, history.
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You can have it in this format of point of view, uh, stories with certain questions so that we can refine our compelling input to where it becomes very sort of targeted language learning material.
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And so that's what I wanted to share with you today, and I look forward to your comments.
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You'll notice, by the way, today I'm experimenting with just using natural lighting and not using the lights that I have been using in the past.
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Thanks for listening.
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Bye for now.
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How Point-of-View Stories Boost Language Learning (and How You Can Use Them)
The video shares a practical approach to refreshing language skills—like Portuguese—using point-of-view (POV) stories and AI. The speaker, preparing for a trip to Portugal, explains how these stories combine repetition with novelty, making vocabulary and grammar stick. This method isn’t just for beginners; it’s a "gym" for maintaining or improving fluency, even in languages you already know.
Top 5 Phrases to Practice from the Dialogue
- "Upcoming trip" (a great phrase for talking about future plans)
- "Ramped up" (to prepare or get ready, e.g., "I need to ramp up my English before the test")
- "Point of view" (key for understanding story structure, but also useful in daily chat)
- "Circling questions" (a technique, but the phrase itself is handy for explaining learning methods)
- "Text-to-speech audio" (relevant for discussing language tools, like a shadowing app)
Step-by-Step Shadowing Guide for This Video
Shadowing—repeating audio immediately after hearing it—is perfect for this dialogue. Here’s how to try it: 1. Listen once to grasp the main idea. Notice how the speaker talks about "regenerating the language"—this is the goal of shadowing! 2. Pick short segments (10-15 seconds). Pause and repeat, focusing on rhythm and stress. For example, practice "I wanna get myself sort of ramped up for this trip" to mimic natural intonation. 3. Use a shadowing site or app to slow down the audio if needed. This helps with tricky phrases like "Vila Real de Santo António." 4. Focus on questions. The video mentions "circling questions" (e.g., "Did John go to the store?"). Repeat these to practice interrogative structures—great for IELTS speaking practice. 5. Record yourself and compare. Notice gaps in fluency, then repeat. This active practice beats passive listening for English speaking practice. Whether you’re prepping for a trip or just want to improve, this method turns simple stories into powerful learning tools. Try it with the video, then create your own POV stories—AI can even help you tailor them to your goals!
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 | have sometimes struggled · I've often called · have listened |
| Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing | Portugal, which is · technique, which is · Spain, which is |
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.