Shadowing Practice: Learn English by making mistakes - Learn English Speaking with Video
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99 sentences
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What is freedom?
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Where does it come from?
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Freedom is the same as love
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When we love something, we can't bear to see it tempered.
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A free person chooses who to love, what to wear, and where to live.
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A free person has the right to do whatever they want.
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To create their own set of rules for life to say, think, and act without limits.
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But the concept of freedom is not that simple.
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There are limits to our freedoms.
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We are not allowed to drive too fast, damage other people's property, or kill people.
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And as a society, we accept these limits to our freedoms because we have decided that they are necessary and good.
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But how did we decide that?
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How do we know what is good and bad?
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This question is something that philosophy has asked for thousands of years.
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but we can all agree on one thing mistakes are bad our mistakes are punished from the moment
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we are able to make them mistakes keep us up at night mistakes
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we made in high school make our faces flush red
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when we think of them mistakes are the red crosses on exams mistakes cost us opportunities
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and jobs and why why do we always keep making the same mistakes
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but what if mistakes are connected to freedom Gandhi said freedom is not worth having
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if it does not include the freedom to make mistakes
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but I would go a step further and say
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that mistakes are a necessary part of freedom in fact they are a sign
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that freedom is functioning and healthy but why
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because mistakes are always a result of choices you can only make mistakes if you have the freedom to choose poorly.
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A person who doesn't make mistakes is a person who makes no choices.
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That person is not free.
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Now, all of this might seem completely unrelated to language learning, but it's not.
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So many students are not free.
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Prisoners in their own minds, enslaved by their education.
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How many times have you rejected your freedom and avoided a conversation
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or not put your hand up or not shared your idea because you were worried about making a mistake?
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The mistake of not having the right answer or the right accent
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or the right level or the right passport or the right color skin
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and I understand as adults
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we have reached a point in our lives where we are afraid of making mistakes we avoid them
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and we choose to do things that we know we can succeed at but every time you avoid making a mistake,
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you avoid learning because every good teacher knows and the research shows that all learning occurs by mistakes.
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Getting fluent in English will require you to make millions of mistakes,
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so the level of your English directly reflects how many you have made
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if someone has a higher level of English than you it's because they made more mistakes and you haven't experienced all
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of the painful learning experiences that they have.
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So making newer and bigger mistakes more often is a sign that you're learning.
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Now, I want to make something clear.
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I am not saying that you should ignore your mistakes.
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Quite the opposite.
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The research shows that being aware of your mistakes is vital to avoid repeating them in the future
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but you have to give your attention
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and energy to the right kinds of mistakes as a teacher I encounter hundreds of mistakes every day
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but I hardly correct any of them I know from bitter experience
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that if I corrected every single mistake I would kill the motivation and the fluency of my students.
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Now to help you think differently about mistakes I want to introduce you to the mistakes pyramid.
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At the top of the pyramid we have the mistakes that are the least common but the most serious,
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mistakes that cause offence.
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Under that we have another type of mistake, mistakes that cause understanding problems.
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And finally we have the most common type of mistake, the type that causes no problems with communication.
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These are the mistakes that you should focus on the least.
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They don't affect communication and studies have shown
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that the people you're communicating with won't even notice them because people's brains only care about meaning.
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But unfortunately they are the mistakes that are the focus of every bad grammar book,
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every bad exam and every bad YouTube lesson.
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And they also invade and imprison the minds of many learners.
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Bad English teaching tells you that there is only one right way to express something.
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It tells you that if you follow the rules, you won't make mistakes.
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It tells you to stop making choices.
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It tells you to give up your freedom.
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But the characteristic of language that makes it so special is that it is infinite.
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It is infinite because it is made up of pieces that we combine to express every thought,
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idea, and feeling.
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It is infinite because we are free to combine those pieces as we like.
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And that makes language a true democracy.
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So next time you want to say, I can't, because you are worried about making mistakes,
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just remember that those words mean you have the freedom to make mistakes.
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And that freedom is incredibly precious.
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And you have a duty to exercise that freedom because it was earned by the blood,
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sweat and tears of your ancestors.
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You should never give it up or take it for granted.
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I want to finish this video by telling you an ancient story.
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Once there was a woman who collected water from the river every day using two large jugs.
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One of the jugs had a crack in it, while the other jug was perfect.
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The perfect jug was always full of water at the end of the long walk from the river to the house.
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But the cracked jug only arrived half -full.
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This continued every day, with the woman carrying only one and a half jugs full of water to the house.
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The perfect jug was proud of itself, perfect for the task for which it was made.
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But the cracked jug was ashamed of its own imperfection,
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and miserable that it was able to accomplish only half of what it had been made to do.
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One day, the cracked jug spoke to the woman.
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I am ashamed of myself, and I want to apologize to you.
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Why? asked the woman.
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What are you ashamed of?
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For all these years I've only been able to deliver half of my potential because of this crack in my side
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Because of my imperfections you do all the work and you don't get full value from your efforts
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The woman smiled and she said
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Next time we walk to the house I want you to notice the beautiful flowers on your side of the path
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Next time they went up the hill the cracked jug saw
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the sun warming the wild flowers on its side of the path
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and realized that it was responsible for watering those beautiful flowers every day.
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Your English might not be perfect, but just think about the beauty that you are going to bring to the world with your imperfections.
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Thank you.
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This speaking lesson is built on the video “Learn English by making mistakes”. The speaker keeps coming back to these words: mistake, freedom, jug, learning, English. This video has 8 sentences and 1218 words to shadow. The speech runs for 10:56. The speaker talks at a steady 111 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 |
|---|---|---|
| crack noun | /kɹæk/ | A thin and usually jagged space opened in a previously solid material. |
| flower noun | /ˈfloʊɚ/ | A reproductive structure in angiosperms (flowering plants), often conspicuously colourful and typically including sepals, petals, and either or both stamens… |
| infinite adjective | /ˈɪnfɪnɪt/ | Indefinably large, countlessly great; immense. |
| ashamed adjective | /əˈʃeɪmd/ | Feeling shame or guilt. |
| combine verb | /kəmˈbaɪn/ | To bring (two or more things or activities) together; to unite. |
| pyramid noun | /ˈpɪɹ.ə.mɪd/ | An ancient massive construction with a square or rectangular base and four triangular sides meeting in an apex, such as those built as tombs in Egypt or as… |
| earn verb | /ɝn/ | To gain (success, reward, recognition) through applied effort or work. |
| ignore verb | /ɪɡˈnɔː/ | To deliberately not listen or pay attention to. |
| lesson noun | /ˈlɛs.ən/ | A section of learning or teaching into which a wider learning content is divided. |
| occur verb | /əˈkɜː/ | To happen or take place. |
| reflect verb | /ɹɪˈflɛkt/ | To bend back (light, etc.) from a surface. |
| arrive verb | /əˈɹaɪv/ | To reach; to get to a certain place. |
| connect verb | /kəˈnɛkt/ | To join (to another object): to attach, or to be intended to attach or capable of attaching, to another object. |
| incredibly adverb | /ɪŋˈkɹɛdɪbli/ | In an incredible manner; not to be believed. |
| vital adjective | /ˈvaɪtəl/ | Relating to or characteristic of life. |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Meaning |
|---|---|
| give up verb | To surrender (someone or something); to inform on (someone). |
| go up verb | To move upwards. |
| hand up verb | To deliver an indictment (e.g. to a judge). |
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| Conditional sentences if + clause, will/would + verb — a condition and its result | if you follow the rules, you won't make |
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | have decided · has asked · have reached |
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | are not allowed · are punished · are connected |
| Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing | person who doesn · woman who collected |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 11 contractions and reduced forms, such as can't, don't, won't. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: ashamed /əˈʃeɪmd/, examination /ɪɡˌzæm.ɪˈneɪ.ʃən/, motivation /ˈmoʊ.tə.veɪ.ʃən/, accomplish /əˈkɑm.plɪʃ/, punish /ˈpʌnɪʃ/
- Long words — get the stress right: incredibly /ɪŋˈkɹɛdɪbli/, examination /ɪɡˌzæm.ɪˈneɪ.ʃən/, differently /ˈdɪf.ə.ɹənt.li/, motivation /ˈmoʊ.tə.veɪ.ʃən/, communicate /kəˈmjuːnɪkeɪt/
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 crack, flower, infinite.
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.