Shadowing Practice: Learn English Vlog - A Beautiful British Weekend in Historical City 🇬🇧 (B2-C1) - Learn English Speaking with Video
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359 sentences
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Today we are going to be showing you some very interesting places in the UK
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and teaching you some English at the same time.
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This weekend we are in Canock and Litchfield.
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You might not have heard of these places but they're less than an hour away from Birmingham.
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They're very central in the country.
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Today we are in the beautiful Canock Chase which is an area of natural beauty.
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So if you're in Birmingham and you want to get out in nature come to Canock Chase.
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During this video if we say some words
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that I think might be new to you they will appear on the screen with the definitions.
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Okay action verbs time.
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Show me skipping.
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Show me marching.
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Show me stomping.
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Show me leaping.
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Show me strutting. Is that quite good?
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Yeah.
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That sounds quite good.
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Show me tiptoeing.
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Okay, plan for this weekend.
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I'm excited for this weekend.
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It's going to be really nice.
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Me too.
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Me too.
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So we're starting in Canuck, Canuck Chase specifically.
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We're having a lovely walk.
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We're getting out into nature.
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I think the UK is brilliant for that.
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If you love a walk, if you love nature, if you love being in the fresh air, try to get to some area of natural beauty.
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And we will visit London on this channel, but we want to show you some other places as well, you know, some places that might be a bit quieter, you know, because London's very busy, it's very expensive.
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Yeah, a bit of a hidden gem.
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I do think that somewhere like Cannock Chase is just one of those places where if you came here, you'd feel like you were in...
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Wuthering Heights.
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Yeah, Wuthering Heights.
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I feel like Cathy, you could be Heathcliff.
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Cheers.
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And I need a big skirt.
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Heathcliff, it's me, I'm Cathy, you come home now.
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So cold, cold, I'm here, you're in the home.
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What is that song?
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It's Ruthering Heights by Kate Walsh.
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So today we're here in Cannock Chase first.
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Then I fancy just having a little bit of a go at the driving range, golf.
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So we're going to go to the driving range.
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Go to the driving range.
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Then we're going to go to Lichfield, have some food, have some dinner.
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I fancy some Thai food.
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And then tomorrow morning, we're going to go to one of the most beautiful cathedrals in the country.
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And it's outside of London.
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I know everyone thinks of St Paul's Cathedral, which is beautiful, but we have a lot of amazing cathedrals.
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So we want to show you Lichfield Cathedral because it's beautiful.
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It's getting a little bit steep here, isn't it, Laura?
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It is a bit steep, but I go to the gym, I exercise my legs, I can handle a steep hill.
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Oh, my bell!
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Did you see that?
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Yeah.
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That's funny.
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Imagine if I just...
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So we are currently walking on a path.
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A path.
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And there is a nice idiom where we say, don't stray from the path.
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To stray means to go off somewhere else, to not stay on the path.
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So don't stray from the path.
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I saw a sign just here.
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I don't know what bird it was.
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But it did say to not let your dog stray from the path, Laura.
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Because they said that not all birds nest in the trees.
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Some of the birds nest on the ground between the months of like April and June.
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Something like that.
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The trees right now look quite bare because it's only the beginning of March.
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So the trees are still quite bare.
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The leaves have fallen, but very soon it's going to start being spring.
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We're going to get the blossom and the leaves are going to come back.
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I'm very excited for that.
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I do associate Canic Chase with more of those kind of autumnal colours though.
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Yes.
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Coming?
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I've got my best white trainers on.
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These are your best?
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Yeah.
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Oh, you should have come better prepared, Laura.
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I did.
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You are ill prepared.
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I know I'm ill prepared, but I didn't think we'd be in a bog.
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I thought we were having a lovely, a lovely...
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Well, it's been raining, isn't it?
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Typical British weather.
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How are we supposed to get over this?
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I'm going to stand on this.
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There's no way.
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Yeah, Laura.
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Okay.
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And now I'm going to stand there.
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Do we have to come back this way?
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No, no, no, no, no. This is...
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No, it's looping around.
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Okay.
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So stand there, hang on.
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Then there.
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So you know what to do.
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Go there. And then here.
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Good thing I've got long legs, innit?
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There's actually a lot of deer that live in Canik Chase.
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Notice how I said deer and not deers because the plural of deer is deer.
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So there are a lot of deer and we've seen a lot of them
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and they're beautiful and sometimes if you go to the right places
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and if you're very quiet you can see them we actually um i always feel
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that being amongst the trees is really good for perspective um
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and kind of uh perspective on life and things and things like
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that i think there's some kind of research into that of like, when you're in trees in particular, because the trees are so tall and big,
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it kind of makes you realise that the problems you have are quite small in comparison.
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Okay, back in the car.
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Now we are going to a driving range.
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Woohoo!
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So Perwin can practice his swing and I can watch.
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You can have a go.
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I'll have a go.
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I'm not...I tried before.
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Horrific.
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So let's see if I'm any better now.
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Let's go!
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Woohoo!
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I'm just a spectator today.
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I'm just enjoying the fact that it's not raining.
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You can have a go.
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Huh?
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Can have a go.
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I will have a go at the very end.
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Well, don't expect anything good.
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Because it's not gonna be...
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I think I've hit two golf balls in my life.
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Yeah, you've got to have a lot of control.
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Oh, I just missed that one.
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Try again.
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This is probably my favourite design of buildings in the UK, this kind of Tudor, black and white
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style it's very classic in this country you get some areas where you see buildings like this everywhere
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but obviously when you go to places like London you don't see as much
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because everything was burnt down in the fire of London
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so you don't really see a lot of that but in places like Litchfield, York, places like that you see a lot of this and I just think it's stunning.
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So it's actually a Sunday today so most shops are closed I think
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so we'll have a proper look at the shops tomorrow
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because we're going to come back right now we just need to find somewhere to eat
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so this is a very interesting place um as english learners
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i'm sure you'll be interested in this this is where dr
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samuel johnson was born he wrote the dictionary i don't know if it was the first dictionary.
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I don't think it was the very first, but it was definitely the most popular and universally used one.
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So we have just checked in to our hotel for the night and surprisingly they gave us a complimentary upgrade.
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Yeah, very surprising.
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That's never happened to me before.
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Never.
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But loving it.
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Have a look at this.
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Ooh.
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Ooh.
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Lovely.
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We can sit here and have some chats.
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And then there's the lovely bed here.
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Oh, it's lovely.
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I haven't looked at the bathroom.
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Yeah, the bathroom.
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Let's have a look.
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What have we got?
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Ooh.
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This is nice. Is there a bath?
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There's a bath!
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Oh!
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Bathrobes!
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Ooh!
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Yeah, yeah, yeah!
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I'm definitely putting that on.
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And these biscuits.
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These biscuits in a hotel room just hit the spot.
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What's the pink thing?
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That's hot chocolate.
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I think, yeah.
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So we can have a cup of hot chocolate.
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I'm gonna have a hot chocolate tonight.
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And these biscuits.
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Oh my gosh!
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How exciting!
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That's perfect!
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I told you I would wear this bathrobe.
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Let's learn some useful hotel English.
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So one thing I really want to look at is the room service menu.
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I don't often get room service because I think it's a little bit overpriced.
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But this doesn't look too dear though.
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It looks okay.
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You can get a margarita pizza?
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Is there a mini bar?
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I don't know.
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I haven't seen one.
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It doesn't look like there's a mini bar.
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There's a safe.
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Every hotel needs a good safe.
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If anything it's probably a good thing there's no mini bar
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because then we won't accidentally drink a 10 pound bottle of water or something.
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But there is free toiletries!
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Yeah!
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I love little free toiletries from a hotel.
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Good night everybody.
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Oh that's so soft actually, that's really nice
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Good morning, how did you sleep?
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Like a log though, like a log It was a very comfortable bed actually I've slept about eight hours
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and we've got a lovely view out of the window, which is great.
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Again, it's looking very Wuthering Heights.
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It is.
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It's very misty.
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It's lovely.
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We're going to go down for breakfast now.
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I've heard the breakfast is really good, so I'm really excited.
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It's one of your favourite meals of the day, is breakfast.
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I love breakfast.
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I love fruits and pastries, and I like a continental breakfast.
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I've just come to explore the outside of this hotel, and it's beautiful.
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It feels like...
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Yeah, I love misty mornings.
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I love misty mornings.
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I think they feel so atmospheric and so haunting, but in a really beautiful way.
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Oh, look at this.
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I bet getting married here is so nice.
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I bet you feel like a gothic princess.
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This morning is actually quite exciting because Bez is being interviewed on the radio.
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So I've left him in the hotel room because,
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yes, he's being interviewed on the Welsh BBC radio station about the videos he makes.
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Because he's made a channel similar to this one about learning Welsh.
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And they want to interview him about it.
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So he's doing that.
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We are back in Litchfield today, going to the cathedral which was built.
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Well, this building was completed in 1340.
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Wow, wow, wow.
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That's so old.
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That is really old.
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Do you know what I find very strange?
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Me?
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Yes, of course.
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And this fact.
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Oh yeah.
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Well, not this fact.
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It's very normal for us to see these things every day that are so old.
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but to people like from America or something.
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Yeah.
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For them, they would consider something in like the 1800s really old.
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And this is like 700 years old basically.
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That's ridiculous.
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It's mental.
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Look at that!
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So this is the only medieval cathedral in the UK with three spires.
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Spires.
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And they call them the Ladies of the Vale, which is quite nice.
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There are around 113 statues on the facade.
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Most of the original ones were destroyed, so most of these were recreated in the Victorian era.
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It's amazing that every corner you go into there's like these incredible marble statues or these intricate designs in the stone.
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Like every single corner there's something amazing.
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like the time and attention to detail that goes into building some place like this.
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I just don't think we do it anymore.
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Like, we don't make buildings like this.
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It's just amazing to walk around.
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The craftsmanship in every corner of this building blows my mind.
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I think a place like this is a lesson for lots of people, well, people all over the world,
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that there are things on your doorstep that other people would appreciate and love.
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Like a place like this is such an amazing building and tourists would come here.
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But then, I'm not saying it's not appreciated by British people, of course not, but it's interesting how much people can normalise what's on their doorstep
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and it's interesting that people always want to go abroad.
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I'm sounding like my dad now.
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My dad always used to say when I was a kid that we don't need to go abroad.
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There's lots in the UK to see.
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And it is true.
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The UK is amazing.
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There's lots of things to see in the UK.
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So this is the chapter house and it's estimated to have been built around 1249,
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which is insane to be inside a room that was built in 1249.
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You just can't get your head around it.
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Like, look at this.
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Someone painted this and did this with their hand and now I'm looking at it with my fancy technology and my camera.
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Crazy.
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So this is where the cathedral's clergy met daily to discuss business.
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I'm sure there was a lot of business to discuss.
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Okay, so this is the Litchfield Angel, and it was discovered in 2003 under the floor during an excavation,
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and it dates to around 800 AD.
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So apparently it originally formed part of a stone shrine to St Chad.
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You can still see traces of red paint which suggests that medieval sculptures used to be very brightly coloured.
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Okay, useful English words we can learn in this cathedral.
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So, hallowed, sacred, holy.
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They're very common words to describe a cathedral.
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This hallowed place, this sacred place, this holy place.
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In terms of the actual architecture, majestic, magnificent, and grand.
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We use those not necessarily to talk about the religious side of it, but just what it looks like.
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Majestic, magnificent, grand.
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A lot of cathedrals can be quite echoey.
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So you say something and you hear, hello, hello, hello, hello, very echoey.
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And a really nice one, which I think applies to this place.
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Awe-inspiring.
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Awe-inspiring.
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It makes you feel awe.
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And right opposite this amazing cathedral is Erasmus Darwin's house, who is Charles Darwin's grandad.
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I don't know why I love British history.
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I just love it.
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So behind me, Bez is dressing up.
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There are two different types of dress up.
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You can dress up to be really formal.
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You can dress up in a nice dress or a suit, or you can dress up to look like someone else.
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Like at Halloween, you dress up as a skeleton.
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You dress up as whatever this is.
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I do find it interesting that there's so many figures in British history that the average Brit wouldn't know about.
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Like the woman in the reception on the way in, she said that at one point he was the most famous man in Britain, which is mad.
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And we didn't know about him.
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Until today.
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I think I can pull this off.
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I think weirdly I'm pulling this off.
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Do you think I pull this off?
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I think I need to take this off.
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Try your hand at Georgian Skittles.
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If you try your hand at something it's just like you're just gonna try it.
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You're gonna attempt this thing.
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You're gonna try your hand at something.
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So I am gonna try my hand at some Georgian Skittles.
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That's, yeah, I feel very educated that, to be honest.
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Turns out he invented loads of things.
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He was part of the Lunar Society, with like Benjamin Franklin and people like that,
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and they kind of invented so many things that were mind-blowing at the time.
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They kind of discovered that the Earth was older than 4,000 years old.
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It's like he was part of this kind of society of just rearing intelligence.
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Carbonated water.
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I think there's a lot of places in the UK, there are lots of like little museums.
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So there'll be like a house where someone used to live and they've turned it into a museum.
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So you can find loads of places like that.
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If you're anywhere in the UK, just look up museums and there will be some really interesting places you can have a look around.
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And I would just say like ask questions, go in there.
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The people are happy to talk to you and to educate you.
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I'm exceedingly happy because I got a coffee with pistachio syrup in it.
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And if you know me, there are two flavours in this world I love more than any other.
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And it's pistachio and matcha.
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Oh my goodness, this is really good.
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I could have about seven of them.
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So, yes, we're going to the theatre after this.
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I love going to the theatre.
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Okay, it's time to head on into the Litchfield Garrick Theatre.
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We're gonna go see this children's show.
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And then see our friend.
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And then see our friend.
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For a coffee.
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I feel like I've had so much coffee today, I'm gonna be bouncing off the walls, Laura.
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I know.
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I have decaf coffee, so I'm safe.
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I know, I'm feeling a bit...
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You might be stuck to the ceiling in the theatre.
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I'm feeling a bit woozy, to be honest.
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Right, wish us luck.
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Bye.
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What a lovely weekend we've had.
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It's been so nice, very relaxed.
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I feel like I've, I feel like a new man.
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Look at that.
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Thank you so much for watching.
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If you enjoyed this, please subscribe and give it a like.
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And don't forget that members get a PDF for every video, which will have all the vocabulary you've learned in this video, along with some quizzes and questions.
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So click join to become a member.
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Head to smashingenglish.com to see our amazing courses.
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Thank you so much for watching and we'll see you next time.
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Ta-ta!
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This C1 speaking lesson is built on the video “Learn English Vlog - A Beautiful British Weekend in Historical City 🇬🇧”. This video has 359 sentences and 2960 words to shadow. The speech runs for 21:00. The speaker talks at a steady 141 words per minute, a comfortable pace for shadowing. 83% 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 |
|---|---|---|
| cathedral noun | /kəˈθiːdɹəl/ | The principal church serving as the office (and some as place of residence) of an archdiocese's/a diocese's archbishop/bishop which is symbolized by an… |
| stray verb | /stɹeɪ/ | To wander, as from a direct course; to deviate, or go out of the way. |
| biscuit noun | /ˈbɪs.kɪt/ | A small, flat, baked good which is either hard and crisp or else soft but firm; a cookie. |
| misty adjective | /ˈmɪsti/ | Covered in mist; foggy. |
| steep adjective | /stiːp/ | Of a near-vertical gradient; of a slope, surface, curve, etc. that proceeds upward or downward at an angle approaching vertical. |
| bathrobe noun | /ˈbæθ.ɹoʊb/ | A robe usually made of terrycloth intended to be worn when one is still damp from bathing or when there is no immediate need to dress fully. |
| echoey adjective | That echoes; having an echoing quality. | |
| excite verb | /ɪkˈsaɪt/ | To stir the emotions of; to cause to feel excitement. |
| hallow verb | /ˈhæloʊ/ | To make holy, to sanctify. |
| pistachio noun | /pɪsˈtæʃioʊ/ | A deciduous tree (Pistacia vera) grown in parts of Asia for its drupaceous fruit. |
| spire noun | /ˈspaɪ.ɚ/ | A young shoot of a plant; a spear. |
| toiletry noun | /ˈtɔɪlɪtɹi/ | Any item used for personal hygiene or grooming (for one's toilet). |
| woohoo | /wuːˈhuː/ | Used to express sudden or exuberant joy, happiness, excitement, approval or delight. |
| doorstep noun | /ˈdɔː(ɹ)stɛp/ | An outside step leading up to the door of a building, usually a home. |
| majestic adjective | /məˈd͡ʒɛstɪk/ | Having qualities of splendor or royalty. |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| dress up verb | To put on special or fancy clothes. | |
| come back verb | To return to a place. | |
| bounce off verb | To test (ideas) on someone. | |
| get over verb | To overcome. | |
| go off verb | To explode. | |
| look around verb | To inspect a building or area. | |
| look up verb | /ˌlʊk ˈʌp/ | To have better prospects. |
| turn out verb | To end up; to result. |
Sentences worth repeating
Short, complete lines from the video that you can reuse in everyday conversation:
- How are we supposed to get over this?
- Do we have to come back this way?
- Good thing I've got long legs, innit?
- You can get a margarita pizza?
- Good morning, how did you sleep?
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| “Used to” used to + verb — a past habit or state that is no longer true | used to say · used to be · used to live |
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | have fallen · we've seen · I've hit |
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | was burnt · are closed · was born |
| Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing | Chase which is · Cathedral, which is · window, which is |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 105 contractions and reduced forms, such as I'm, don't, we're. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “th” sounds: cathedral /kəˈθiːdɹəl/, bathrobe /ˈbæθ.ɹoʊb/
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: pistachio /pɪsˈtæʃioʊ/, dictionary /ˈdɪk.ʃəˌnɛ.ɹi/, craftsmanship /ˈkɹæfts.mən.ʃɪp/, excavation /ˌɛkskəˈveɪʃn/, shrine /ʃɹaɪ̯n/
- Long words — get the stress right: dictionary /ˈdɪk.ʃəˌnɛ.ɹi/, magnificent /mæɡˈnɪfəsənt/, carbonated /ˈkɑɹ.bəˌneɪ.təd/, complimentary /ˌkɑmplɪˈmɛnt(ə)ɹi/, exceedingly /ɪkˈsidɪŋli/
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 cathedral, stray, biscuit.
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.