Shadowing Practice: Learn English Through Stories | The Dream I Can't Explain - Learn English Speaking with Video
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Hello everyone, I'm Shylet, and welcome back.
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Last night, I dreamed I was late for a flight, but the airport was inside a shopping mall,
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and nobody seemed concerned about this except me.
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There were people eating ice cream.
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A woman was trying on shoes.
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And I was running through the whole thing with a suitcase that kept changing size, which, if you've ever had that kind of dream,
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you know is exactly as exhausting as it sounds.
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I woke up tired. From sleeping.
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That shouldn't be possible.
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But the strange part, and this happens to me more than I'd like to admit, was that I couldn't stop thinking about it.
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Not because it meant something deep or mysterious, just because it felt so real while it was happening.
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That particular flavor of dream stress, where everything is slightly wrong, but your dream self is fully committed to figuring it out anyway.
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I mentioned it to someone during the day, almost without thinking.
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Just said, I had the weirdest dream last night.
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And they immediately leaned in.
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Because that's what dreams do in conversation.
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They pull people in.
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Everyone has them.
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Everyone finds them strange.
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And almost nobody fully understands them.
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Which makes them oddly wonderful to talk about.
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And here's what I find interesting from an English perspective.
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Talking about dreams is actually a really rich space for language practice.
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Not because dreams are complicated to describe — they're not,
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usually — but because they push you to use a very specific kind of language: uncertain language.
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imaginative language.
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The language of things that felt real, but weren't.
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Phrases like, "I was somewhere that looked like…" or
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i'm not sure why but in the dream i thought that
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or it didn't make any sense but somehow i knew that These are real,
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natural English constructions, and they come up constantly when people talk about dreams.
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There's a lovely vagueness to them that actually makes them easier to say because you're not expected to be precise.
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Dreams don't have to make sense, so your description doesn't either.
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Which is, honestly, a very relaxing change of pace.
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So, here's something I noticed.
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When people talk about dreams in English, they almost always use the past tense, Which makes sense, the dream already happened.
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But they also do this interesting thing where they switch into the present tense mid -story without realizing it.
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Like, someone will say, "I was in this huge house, and I didn't recognize it." And then suddenly,
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and there's this door at the end of the hallway, and I don't want to open it, but I do anyway.
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Present tense, right in the middle of a past story.
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Because the dream still feels alive, somehow.
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Still immediate.
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Still happening in some corner of your memory.
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And that's completely natural in spoken English.
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It's called the historic present, if you want the grammar name for it.
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But honestly, you don't need to remember that.
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You just need to know that switching tenses while telling a dream story doesn't make you sound confused confused,
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it makes you sound like a real person telling a real story the way humans actually tell stories.
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What I love about dream conversations is that they're genuinely low pressure.
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Nobody can fact check your dream.
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Nobody's going to say, "Are you sure that's what happened?" You are the only witness.
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You are the only source.
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That means you can speak with total confidence about something that was entirely made up by your own sleeping brain.
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There's something freeing about that, especially if speaking English sometimes makes you feel like you might say the wrong thing or get corrected.
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In a dream story, there is no wrong thing.
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Some phrases that work beautifully here.
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The strange thing was that I felt completely calm, even though… or I knew it was a dream, but I couldn't wake up.
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or Everything looked normal, but something felt completely off.
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That last one, by the way, "something felt off," is such a useful everyday English phrase, not just for dreams, for situations,
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for people, for places that give you a slightly uncomfortable feeling you can't quite name.
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Worth keeping Worth using.
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Dreams teach you things.
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Even the weird airport shopping mall ones.
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There are two kinds of dreams people talk about: the strange ones: flying, falling, missing an exam for a class you never attended.
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and the ones that feel so real and so close to actual life that when you wake up,
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you spend a few seconds genuinely unsure which side of sleep you're on.
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Those second ones are the ones that stay with you.
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I had one once where I had a long, warm conversation with someone I hadn't spoken to in years.
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We were just sitting somewhere, talking the way we used to, and everything felt completely normal and easy and right.
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And then I woke up, and remembered that things between us weren't like that anymore.
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And the dream felt like a gift and a bruise at the same time.
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I'm not sure there's a clean English phrase for that feeling.
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Maybe that's why people reach for things like, "It felt so real," or, "I woke up and I couldn't shake it," or,
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I didn't want to wake up, actually.
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That last one carries a lot, doesn't it?
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I didn't want to wake up.
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Three words that can mean something very simple or something much heavier depending on the dream and the person saying it.
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Language does that, especially emotional language.
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The same sentence can be light or heavy depending on what's behind it, and this is something worth paying attention to as you build your English.
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It's not just about finding the right word.
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It's about noticing how much a simple phrase can hold.
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How "I'm fine" can mean a hundred different things.
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How It was okay.
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is sometimes the saddest possible review of something, How… I keep thinking about it.
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Tells you everything without explaining anything.
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Dreams are actually a wonderful way into this kind of emotional vocabulary.
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Because when you try to describe a dream, you're almost always reaching for feeling words, not fact words.
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Not, "The building was 14 floors tall,
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but the whole place felt wrong somehow." Feeling words are the ones that connect people,
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in any language, but especially in English, when you're brave enough to use them.
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I once read somewhere that the most common dream in the world is showing up somewhere important and realizing you're completely unprepared.
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Exam you didn't study for,
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presentation you forgot about, stage with an audience waiting and absolutely no idea why you're there.
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And I thought, "Of course." Of course that's the most common one.
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Because that feeling, that specific stomach drop panic of not being ready,
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is so universally human that even our sleeping brains can't leave it alone.
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There's something oddly comforting about that, actually.
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Your anxiety dream is everyone's anxiety dream.
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You're not alone in it.
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And here's where I want to bring this back to English.
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Not in a forced way, just honestly.
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A lot of people who are learning a new language have dreams about it.
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Dreams where they're speaking English perfectly and effortlessly, and everyone understands them, and it feels incredible.
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And then they wake up, and it feels slightly unfair that their dream self is more fluent than their awake self.
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But I want to offer you a different way to look at that.
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Your brain is practicing while you sleep, genuinely.
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Language learning happens in rest as much as it happens in study.
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The fact that English is showing up in your dreams means it's settling somewhere deeper than memorization.
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It's becoming part of how you think.
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That matters more than any grammar exercise.
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So, if someone asks you, in English, in conversation, casually,
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"Do you ever dream in English?" You now have something real to say.
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You can answer honestly.
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You can describe a dream, use the past tense, reach for feeling words, let the story be a little vague and imperfect and human.
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And that conversation, that small, ordinary exchange about something as strange and personal as a dream,
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that is real English.
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That is connection.
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That is exactly what language is supposed to do.
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You don't have to be perfect.
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You just have to show up, awake or otherwise.
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Charlotte's been here with you today, and she'll be here tomorrow, too.
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Sleep well.
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Dream something interesting.
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This video has 123 sentences and 1412 words to shadow. The speech runs for 10:34. The speaker talks at a steady 134 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 |
|---|---|---|
| phrase noun | /ˈfɹeɪ̯z/ | A short written or spoken expression. |
| tense noun | /tɛns/ | The property of indicating the point in time at which an action or state of being occurs or exists. |
| genuinely adverb | /ˈd͡ʒɛn.ju.ɪn.li/ | In a genuine manner; truthfully, truly. |
| confused adjective | /kənˈfjuːzd/ | unable to think clearly or understand |
| anxiety noun | /æŋˈzaɪ.əti/ | An unpleasant state of mental uneasiness, nervousness, apprehension and obsession or concern about some uncertain event. |
| mall noun | /mɔːl/ | A pedestrianised street, especially a shopping precinct. |
| examination noun | /ɪɡˌzæm.ɪˈneɪ.ʃən/ | The act of examining. |
| depend verb | /dɪˈpɛnd/ | To be contingent or conditioned; to have something as a necessary condition |
| grammar noun | /ˈɡɹæm.ə(ɹ)/ | A system of rules and principles for the structure of a language, or of languages in general. |
| awake verb | /əˈweɪk/ | To become conscious after having slept. |
| oddly adverb | /ˈɑdli/ | In a peculiar manner; strangely; unusually. |
| complicated adjective | /ˈkɑm.plɪˌkeɪ.tɪd/ | Difficult or convoluted. |
| everyday adjective | /ˈɛvɹiˌdeɪ/ | Appropriate for ordinary use, rather than for special occasions. |
| ordinary adjective | /ˈɔɹdɪnɛɹi/ | Having regular jurisdiction; now only used in certain phrases. |
| stomach noun | /ˈstʌmək/ | An organ in animals that stores food in the process of digestion. |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| wake up verb | /ˌweɪk ˈʌp/ | To stop sleeping; to awake. |
| show up verb | To appear, arrive, or attend, especially suddenly or erratically. | |
| come up verb | To emerge or become known, especially unexpectedly. | |
| make up verb | /ˌmeɪk ˈʌp/ | To constitute, to compose. |
| run through verb | To summarise briefly. |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 38 contractions and reduced forms, such as you're, didn't, don't. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: examination /ɪɡˌzæm.ɪˈneɪ.ʃən/, shake /ˈʃeɪk/, presentation /ˌpɹɛzn̩ˈteɪʃn̩/, shoe /ˈʃu/, casually /ˈkæʒuəli/
- Long words — get the stress right: genuinely /ˈd͡ʒɛn.ju.ɪn.li/, anxiety /æŋˈzaɪ.əti/, examination /ɪɡˌzæm.ɪˈneɪ.ʃən/, complicated /ˈkɑm.plɪˌkeɪ.tɪd/, ordinary /ˈɔɹdɪnɛɹi/
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 phrase, tense, genuinely.
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 | you've ever had · Charlotte's been |
| Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing | tense, Which makes · people who are |
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.