Shadowing Practice: Learn English With a Book | The Great Gatsby | Deep Learning Session | Part 2 - Learn English Speaking with Video
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As you know, the best way to improve your language skills is through reading.
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The best way to improve your vocabulary and your grammar and to review everything you've already learned is by reading stories.
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So today we will continue our journey through The Great Gatsby by F.
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Scott Fitzgerald, one of the most famous books ever written in English.
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My name is Eric and I am an English teacher
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and I'm going to continue our journey through this book with you today.
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Last time we just did two pages.
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This time we'll go a little bit faster and so if you have any questions please comment below.
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Let's begin.
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My family have been prominent well -to -do people in this middle western city for three generations.
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The Caraways are something of a clan, and we have a tradition that were descended from the Dukes of Buclue.
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But the actual founder of my line was my grandfather's brother, who came here in 51, sent a substitute to the Civil War,
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and started the wholesale hardware business that my father carries on today. So, prominent.
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This means, let's say, socially important.
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Well -respected, famous, well -known, prominent, well -to -do.
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Well -to -do is another way to say rich.
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So his family is famous and rich in this middle western city.
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The Midwest of America is around Illinois, that area.
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So I believe he's from Chicago, but we'll see because we just see middle western city.
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His name is Nick Carraway, so the Carraways is his family.
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There's something of a clan.
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A clan, well this has a few different meanings.
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It's kind of like an extended family, but it's also a kind of political unit, more like a tribe.
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In Scotland the clans are very very important.
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They're the big families.
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And why am I mentioning Scotland?
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Well the dukes of Becluw, this is I believe an area in Scotland, so we're descended from.
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Descended from means that these people, these dukes, are his ancestors.
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So if we had a family tree, we would see that he's descended from these people.
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But the actual founder of my line, the real founder of my line, that is my family line,
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was my grandfather's brother who came here in 51.
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51. When is that?
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Well, that's actually 1851, because this book takes place in the 1920s.
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And so 51 is not 1951, because 1951 is in the future.
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So this is 1851.
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Sent a substitute to the Civil War.
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The American Civil War was not very long ago.
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It's a very important cultural context to remember
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when we're talking about American culture is that the Civil War where the North
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and the South fought against each other was not actually very long ago.
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But he didn't fight in the Civil War.
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His grandfather's brother didn't actually fight in the Civil War.
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He sent a substitute.
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Someone went instead of him and started the wholesale hardware business.
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So wholesale means large amounts at low prices.
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A good example of this today would be Costco, a very very famous place,
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store that you can go to in America and other places, which has large amounts of things at low prices.
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You can save money, but you have to buy a huge amount of something at Costco.
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So it's a hardware business hardware would be things related to construction and fixing things.
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And his father carries on that business.
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Carries on is continue.
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That's why we have those famous posters from the Second World War.
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Keep calm and carry on.
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It is continue.
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Continue your life is the idea.
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I just want to take a moment to say thanks to everyone who's commenting, encouraging me, asking questions, and to all of my subscribers.
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I never saw this great uncle.
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So, of course, the great uncle is the grandfather's brother.
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The great uncle.
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But I'm supposed to look like him, with special reference to the rather hard -boiled painting that hangs in father's office.
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I'm supposed to look like him.
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So, supposed here would mean thought.
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People think he looks like him.
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But this is actually something I'm going to recommend you spend more time on.
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Supposed to do.
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Because it's very common for people to make mistakes or to misunderstand what a native speaker means here.
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Because supposed Notice that I'm not even saying the uh sound there, I'm just saying supposed to.
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Sposed is kind of how it sounds.
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Really means something more like should.
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You're not supposed to do that.
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It means you shouldn't do that.
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You're not supposed to drink coffee at night, so I'm having some water instead.
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Supposed to do means should do.
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But here it doesn't really make sense to think of this as should.
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So in this case, this is just thought to.
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People say he looks like him.
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With special reference to the rather hard -boiled painting.
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So this is kind of an idiom here.
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Hard -boiled has to do with someone looking very serious and strong and rough.
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Let's say serious in this case.
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But of course, hard -boiled is referring to eggs.
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If you boil an egg in the shell, it's a hard -boiled egg.
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Hard -boiled egg.
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So it really means not showing very much emotion, being serious.
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And so he looks like his great uncle, specifically the hard -boiled version of his great uncle.
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I graduated from New Haven in 1915, just a quarter of a century after my father,
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and a little later I participated in that delayed Teutonic migration known as the Great War.
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This is an important fact that the First World War,
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World War I, is also called the Great War.
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The Great War.
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Teutonic here is referring to the Germans.
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Teutonic migration.
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German people's moving around is what he's calling the Great War.
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It's an interesting way to talk of it.
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I enjoyed the counter -rage so thoroughly that I came back restless.
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So a counter raid is an attack in response to an attack.
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An attack in response to an attack.
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Think of counter as being contra. As in contradict.
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Contra means against.
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So both of these mean against.
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So it's a response, it's against a raid.
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A raid is an attack.
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So he might be talking about the response or individual raids during his time as a soldier.
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So this confirms what we said over here, that this was probably about the war,
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that he wanted the world to be in uniform.
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He wanted a sort of moral attention forever.
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He wanted people to be more serious. So we were right.
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He was fighting in the war.
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So he enjoyed fighting so much, so thoroughly, thoroughly.
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thoroughly, that is completely or totally, that he came back restless.
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Restless means that someone really wants to do stuff.
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They don't want to rest.
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They want to just do something. So, restless.
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Instead of being the warm center of the world, the Middle West now seemed like the ragged edge of the universe.
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So I decided to go east and learn the bond business.
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The Middle West, again, that's the area where he is in the middle of America. And the ragged edge.
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Notice I said ragged, two syllables.
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It's not ragged, it's ragged.
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Ragged.
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So ragged really means that something is worn out by use worn out by use.
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So for example, a very old sock, a very old shirt, could be ragged.
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If we're talking about people, it means they're very tired and they don't look so healthy.
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So the ragged edge of the universe.
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So this is negative.
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He's not happy about where he lives.
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So, that is, therefore, if you've never studied the word so,
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I would highly recommend that you do that after this video.
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Do a word study on so and write yourself an example of every different use of the word so.
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Because so can be used for the result of something, for the purpose of something, and for the degree of something,
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like it's so cold outside, something like that.
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But here it has to do with therefore.
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So because the Middle West is kind of boring.
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Seems like it's on the periphery of things, the ragged edge.
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He decides to go east and learn the bond business.
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A bond.
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Bond has lots of words, lots of meanings,
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and bond here is talking about an official piece of paper which tells you that you've lent money to the government.
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Paper for Or lending, or a company.
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Lending money.
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So you can redeem that.
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You've invested in the government or in a business.
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A bond.
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A bond.
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Everybody knew I was in the bond business, so I supposed it could support one more single man.
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So again, here means therefore.
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Supposed here just means thought.
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But this time it just means thought.
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How do you decide the meaning of a word?
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If a word has more than one meaning.
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We said that supposed can mean should, supposed to.
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How do you decide what a word means?
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The three rules of understanding, of interpretation, are context, context, and context.
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I'm not being funny.
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It's true.
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Context trumps all.
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Context is the most important thing when you're trying to understand what something means.
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All my aunts and uncles talked it over as if they were choosing a prep school for me, and finally said, why, yes,
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with very grave, hesitant faces.
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To talk it over is to discuss it.
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That's a phrasal verb.
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Talk something over.
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They talked it over as if they were choosing a prep school for me.
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Prep is preparatory for preparation.
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As if, as though.
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So are they choosing a prep school?
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Are they choosing a prep school?
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No. As if means that something is hypothetical.
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This is another phrase that you should do a study on
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or ask me about in the comments as if this is for hypotheticals.
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It is not a conditional.
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And they finally said, why yes.
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with very grave, hesitant faces.
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So here grave is an adjective.
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Grave.
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And if you're trying to understand it, think about gravity.
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Gravity is weight, what brings us down to the earth.
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Grave means serious.
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heavy in an emotional way.
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So their faces look very serious.
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Hesitant means you don't want to do something.
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You're you're hesitating.
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You're holding back.
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Father agreed to finance me for a year and after various delays I came east permanently.
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I thought in the spring of 22.
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So permanently, I thought it would be permanently.
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So maybe he leaves.
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We don't know yet.
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In the spring of 1922.
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In English, you probably know it's very common to talk about years by just saying 22,
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53, 55, etc. And it was true to talk about the previous century that way as well.
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But we have not started to say 21 and 22 to talk about 2021 and 2022.
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So if someone says 22, they're probably talking about 1922.
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So his father is giving him money,
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he's financing him to help him start in the bond business in the East, New York.
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The practical thing was to find rooms in the city.
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So if we're talking about New York City, the city is Manhattan.
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So if someone lives in, let's say, Brooklyn, and they say they're going to the city,
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well, they already live in a city, but the city is Manhattan.
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Now, if I say I'm going to the city, I don't mean Manhattan.
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I mean whatever big city is near me.
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Whatever big city is near me.
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I live in Canada, so the city is Toronto or Montreal, something like that. But here, it's Manhattan.
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But it was a warm season, and I had just left a country of wide lawns and friendly trees.
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So when a man, a young man, at the office suggested that we take a house together in a commuting town,
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it sounded like a great idea.
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So, in a commuting town, commuting is driving to work.
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So you have the city, wherever that is, and you have the commuting town.
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Another term for this is a bedroom community.
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A bedroom community.
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Because people live there, but they work somewhere else.
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He found the house, a weather -beaten cardboard bungalow at 80 a month, but at the last minute the firm ordered him to Washington,
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and I set out to the country alone.
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Weather beaten.
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Beat, beat, beaten.
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So this is literally hit by the weather, so it's damaged by the weather.
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Cardboard is a particular type of material.
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A bungalow is a house of only one level.
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A bungalow.
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So there's maybe an attic, but there's just one main floor bungalow.
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Which would be a different category to a two -story house or a three -story house.
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At $80 a month, $80 per month.
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At the last minute, the firm.
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The firm.
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What is a firm?
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A firm is a company,
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let's say a company, which offers a professional service.
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An example would be a law firm.
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That's the best example.
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So let's go EG which means example a law firm.
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So his company ordered him to Washington.
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So here we don't know if this is Washington D .C.,
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the District of Columbia, or if it is Washington State.
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But if it were Washington State, they would probably say F.
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Scott Fitzgerald would probably have written Washington State.
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And I went out to the country alone.
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I had a dog, at least I had him for a few days until he ran away, and an old
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Dodge and a Finnish woman, who made my bed and cooked breakfast and muttered, Finnish wisdom to herself over the electric stove.
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So this is kind of strange because he says he has a dog and he has a car, a Dodge, it's a type of car,
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and he has a Finnish woman.
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So he has someone he's hired to be his maid and his cook.
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So she's taking care of him and she muttered Finnish.
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M -m -muttering is speaking low.
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Speaking low.
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Soft.
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It was lonely for a day or so, until one morning some man, more recently arrived than I, stopped me on the road.
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How do you get to West Egg Village? he asked helplessly.
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I told him.
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And as I walked on I was lonely.
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No longer.
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I was not lonely any more.
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I was a guide, a pathfinder, an original settler.
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He had casually conferred on me the freedom of the neighborhood.
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Conferred on, given to.
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He had casually given to me the freedom of the neighborhood.
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Now, this is something a little confusing about this book.
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West Egg is not a real place.
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I didn't know that before I started reading this book.
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The West Egg and the East Egg are fictional places near
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New York, which F.
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Scott Fitzgerald invented for this book.
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I would love to be corrected if I'm wrong, but I do not think I am wrong about that.
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So West Egg is a fictional place.
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It's not an egg.
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It is supposed to be a kind of peninsula that goes out into the water,
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and it's a neighborhood.
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And so, with the sunshine and the great bursts of leaves growing on the trees, just as things grow in fast movies,
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I had that familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer.
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Conviction is like a feeling
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But it's a feeling of being sure
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Feeling of certainty
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Conviction So it feels like life is starting again
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With the summer
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There was so much to read for one thing Isn't there always?
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and so much fine health to be pulled down out of the young, breath -giving air.
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I bought a dozen volumes on banking and credit and investment securities,
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and they stood on my shelf in red and gold like new money from the mint,
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promising to unfold the shining secrets that only Midas and Morgan and Mycanus knew.
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He bought a dozen volumes on banking and credit and investment securities.
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Volumes are books and securities.
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So there's two meanings here that we can talk about.
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If you give someone something as a deposit of goodwill,
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let's say, it shows that if you do not pay back your loan to somebody,
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they get this thing.
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You could give them a nice watch as a security.
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If I don't come back, keep my watch.
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If I don't pay you back, keep the watch.
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It's a security.
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But when we're talking about investment, it's a little bit more complicated than that.
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It's an investment in a company or in government debt that can be traded or that produces income.
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So this is a kind of investing, a special kind of investing.
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You can look that up if you want to know more about it.
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And they stood on my shelf in red and gold like new money from the mint.
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The mint is the place where money is made.
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A mint is a money factory.
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Why is it called a mint, you may ask?
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That's an excellent question.
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Promising to unfold the shining secrets that only Midas and Morgan and Mycanus knew.
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Midas would be the mythical king who was given the power by the gods to turn anything into gold.
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Anything that King Midas touched turned into gold.
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Morgan, J .P.
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Morgan, very important financial company in the U .S., J .P.
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Morgan, and Mycanus.
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Mycanus is a famous figure from the rule of the Emperor Augustus.
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Back in ancient Rome, Mycanus was someone who had a lot of money,
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and he provided money for people to write things at the time.
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I studied classics myself, so Mycanus is a very familiar name to me.
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but these three are heavily associated with money. With money.
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So Midas, Morgan, Mycanus.
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So these books, he thinks these books, are going to help him a lot.
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I was rather literary in college.
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One year I wrote a series of very solemn
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and obvious editorials for the Yale News
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and now I was going to bring back all such things into my life
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and become again that most limited of all specialists, the well -rounded man.
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He had the high intention, the plan, he planned to do this thing, of reading many other books besides, additionally.
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I was rather literary.
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Literary has to do with books and literature.
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One year I wrote a series of very serious, solemn is serious.
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And obvious means they weren't very interesting.
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They're obvious.
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Everything he said was obvious.
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Editorials, a kind of article for the Yale News.
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And now I was going to bring back all such things into my life and become again a well -rounded man.
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That most limited of all specialists, which is a well -rounded man.
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A well -rounded person is someone who has lots of skills.
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This isn't just an epigram, a title.
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Life is much more successfully looked at from a single window, after all.
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So when he says that most limited of all specialists, he's saying it's not just a title that he's saying.
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He actually believes that being well -rounded limits you.
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So he believes that you should specialize.
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Life is more successfully looked at from a single window.
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It was a matter of chance, a thing of chance, a thing of chance,
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that I should have rented a house in one of the strangest communities in North America.
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It was on that slender, riotous island which extends itself due east of New York, and where there are, among other natural curiosities,
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two unusual formations of land.
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Twenty miles from the city, a pair of enormous eggs, identical in contour and separated by only a courtesy bay,
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jut out into the most domesticated body of salt water in the western hemisphere, the great wet barnyard of the Long Island Sound.
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So, Slender, that is thin.
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Riotous, let's say full of energy.
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It's not so negative as the word riot.
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You see the word riot there, which is like a violent kind of protest.
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Riotous just means full of energy.
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Full of energy.
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Natural curiosities, interesting things.
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Two unusual formations of land.
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So again, these are kind of peninsulas that go into the water, that jut out into the water.
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That is, stick out into the water.
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A pair of enormous eggs.
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So it's just the shape that he's saying.
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It's not actually an egg the east egg and the west egg is what he's talking about
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the most domesticated body of salt water domesticated is tame that is not wild
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in the western hemisphere of course the hemisphere is a half of the earth whether we're talking about the west,
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the east, the north or the south hemisphere.
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The great wet barnyard just a yard of Long Island sound.
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They're not perfect ovals.
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An oval would be an egg shape.
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Like the egg in the Columbus story.
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They're both crushed flat at the contact end.
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So, the egg in the Columbus story.
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So, how will you get to North America, Columbus?
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And Columbus smashes the egg.
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He was probably being asked about India, really.
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How will you get to India?
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You smash an egg.
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So he smashes the top of an egg in the story.
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So he's saying that they're flat on the contact end,
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but their physical resemblance must be a source of perpetual wonder to the gulls that fly overhead.
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To the wingless, that is, those without wings, so human beings, I know you've never seen me, but I don't have wings.
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A more interesting phenomenon is their dissimilarity in every particular, except shape and size.
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So these two bodies of land are very similar in shape and size,
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but they are very dissimilar.
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They are not similar.
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They are very different in every other way.
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Anyway, I lived at West Egg, the, well, the less fashionable of the two,
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though this is a most superficial tag to express the bizarre and not a little sinister contrast between them.
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Superficial.
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Shallow. Or surface level.
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Superficial.
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So it's not a very deep name.
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Tag here is simply a name.
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to express the bizarre and not a little sinister contrast.
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So bizarre here means strange, very weird, and not a little sinister.
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Sinister.
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This is kind of evil in a way.
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Sinister.
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My house was at the very tip of the egg, only 50 yards from the sound,
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And of course the sound is a body of water, Long Island Sound.
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A sound is a kind of thin part of water, sort of like a fjord.
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Squeeze between two huge places that rented for $12 ,000 or $15 ,000 a season.
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So his place is $80 per month, but these other places are $12 ,000 or $15 ,000 per season.
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So it's a very, very wealthy place.
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The one on my right was a colossal affair by any standard.
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It was a factual imitation of some hôtel de ville in Normandy, with a tower on one side,
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spanking new under a thin beard of raw ivy,
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and a marble swimming pool and more than 40 acres of lawn and garden. So, colossal.
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Colossal.
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Huge.
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Very big.
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Colossal.
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Colossal.
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Affair.
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Affair.
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Thing.
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Thing.
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This is just a sort of joking way to talk about a thing.
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Factual imitation So it's a fake version
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Like so many things So many things
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An imitation of the real thing
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Which is over in Europe Hotel de ville in Normandy, in the north of France.
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The tower on one side, spanking new.
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Spanking new.
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Brand spanking new.
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It's a very American idiom.
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Totally new.
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So a few days ago I got this.
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It is brand spanking new.
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Totally new.
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I just got it.
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I like it.
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So brand new.
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You can say brand new.
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It means very new.
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It's not really talking about the brand of something, but that's the connection.
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Spanking.
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Why do we say brand spanking new?
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I'm not entirely sure.
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Spanking is physically disciplining a child.
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Usually it's a child by hitting them.
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So this is not a nice thing, but it's not really talking about spanking.
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It simply means very new, a very new thing.
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Under a thin beard of raw ivy, ivy would be a plant which is a kind of vine that grows,
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I don't know if this really looks so much like ivy, but it is a plant which grows a vine ivy.
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A beard, so this is just kind of poetic, a beard of ivy.
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A marble swimming pool and more than 40 acres of lawn and garden.
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It was Gatsby's mansion.
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A mansion is a huge house, a huge house.
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You can remember this perhaps if you speak French, maison, mansion, you can see the connection.
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Except in English, a mansion is always big and very nice.
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Or rather, as I didn't know Mr. Gatsby, it was a mansion inhabited by a gentleman of that name.
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So at this time, he hasn't met Gatsby yet.
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My own house was an eyesore, but it was a small eyesore, and it had been overlooked.
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So I had a view of the water, a partial view of my neighbor's lawn, and the consoling proximity of millionaires, all for $80 a month.
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An eyesore, something that looks bad.
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Something that looks bad.
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Looks bad.
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It had been overlooked.
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That is, not noticed.
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Not noticed.
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Nobody noticed it and therefore he had a view of the water partial view of the lawn
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and he's close to millionaires proximity is closeness
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and consoling is making someone feel better making feel better
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Across the Courtesy Bay, the white palaces of fashionable
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East Egg glittered along the water and the history of the summer really begins.
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On the evening I drove over there to have dinner with the Tom Buchanans.
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So the Courtesy Bay, simply a bit of water between these places, between the two eggs in this case,
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and it glittered, the palaces glittered,
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that is, shined or sparkled.
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The history of the summer really begins on the evening
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I drove over there to have dinner with the Tom Buchanan's
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so this is an older way of talking about a couple this is a man named tom buchanan
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and his wife so this is a older way people don't usually use this anymore
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so they call both people by his name both of his names
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so some people today will have well some women will take their husband's name
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but it's usually just the last name
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and it used to be fashionable to use both names so really we're talking about two people here not just one.
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Daisy was my second cousin once removed so
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Daisy Buchanan, that is Tom's wife, was my second cousin once removed, and I'd known
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Tom in college.
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What does that mean, my second cousin once removed?
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Well, that is one of the most confusing things in the English language, and if you really want to know,
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I suggest that you look for an infographic about that.
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Google second cousin once removed for pictures and you'll see
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that this is actually something that helps us understand the structure of families.
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Your first cousin is your parents siblings child.
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Second cousins would be their children.
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So this gets really complicated, really complicated.
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And I'd known
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Tom in college.
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And just after the war, I spent two days with them in Chicago.
480
While I'm here, I'm going to make sure that you know that it's Chicago and not Chicago.
481
Chicago is pronounced with an SH sound.
482
This probably is because the first people who wrote this name were French.
483
I don't know.
484
It is not a French name.
485
It is a Native American word, but it was probably first written by a French person, and they called it Chicago.
486
I think.
487
I think.
488
But it is Chicago.
489
Her husband, among various physical accomplishments, had been one of the most powerful ends that ever played football at New Haven.
490
A national figure, in a way,
491
one of those men who reach such an acute limited excellence at twenty -one that everything afterward savors of anticlimax. So, acute, limited.
492
Acute here, you could think of it like specialized, very precise.
493
Acute has lots of meanings.
494
You can read all about them if you'd like.
495
Limited excellence.
496
So he's very specialized.
497
He's playing football.
498
And he was very good at it at 21.
499
And so everything after in his life doesn't feel so great.
500
It savors, sort of tastes like anticlimax.
501
something which is anticlimactic, seems like it's going to be very, very interesting, and then it's not.
502
It's not so interesting.
503
His family were enormously wealthy.
504
Even in college, his freedom with money was a matter for reproach.
505
But now he'd left Chicago and come east in a fashion that rather took your breath away.
506
For instance, he'd brought down a string of polo ponies from Lake Forest.
507
A matter, again a thing, for reproach, criticism.
508
So he spent money so much that people criticized him for it.
509
Now he left Chicago and come east in a fashion.
510
Remember that fashion just means way.
511
That rather, almost, or did really take your breath away makes you go,
512
wow, taking your breath away.
513
For instance, he brought down a string of polo ponies.
514
Polo being played on horses.
515
Right?
516
A pony is a type of small horse.
517
And so it takes a lot of money to bring polo ponies with you.
518
It was hard to realize that a man in my own generation was wealthy enough to do that.
519
Why they came east, I don't know.
520
So, let's finish by talking about what happened in this sentence, grammatically.
521
Why they came east, I don't know.
522
So think about the order.
523
Let's divide this simply into two pieces.
524
This means I don't know why they came east.
525
So why did we change the order?
526
Why they came east?
527
This type of questions.
528
indirect or embedded question.
529
We could call it a a noun clause.
530
It's a type of noun clause.
531
Why is it first?
532
Well, this is called fronting.
533
And this is simply for emphasis.
534
I want to say this is very important, so I put it at the beginning.
535
They had spent a year in France for no particular reason, and then drifted here and there unrestfully wherever people played polo and were rich together.
536
Unrestfully you can see without rest.
537
Drifted, that is, they moved here and there,
538
but drift is like what something does on the wind or on the water.
539
And so this seems like they don't really have a plan.
540
They were in France for no real reason.
541
And then they just moved here and then they moved there.
542
Wherever people played polo and were rich together.
543
This is kind of a joke.
544
It sounds kind of weird to say people were rich together.
545
This was a permanent move, said Daisy over the telephone, but I didn't believe it.
546
I had no sight into Daisy's heart, but I felt that
547
Tom would drift on, forever seeking, a little wistfully, for the dramatic turbulence of some irrecoverable football game.
548
I felt that
549
Tom would drift on, so again, drifting is moving, but it's like the wind is blowing, and the leaves are drifting on the wind,
550
or the boat is drifting on the water forever looking for something, seeking, a little wistfully.
551
Wistfully is sort of sadly remembering.
552
Sadly remembering.
553
The dramatic turbulence of some irrecoverable football game.
554
Turbulence.
555
Turbulence is when things were shaking.
556
So in this case, it's talking about excitement.
557
Really, this is talking about excitement.
558
Irrecoverable.
559
You can't recover it.
560
You can't get it back.
561
There's no way to go back to those football games because they're over.
562
He had that limited excellence when he was 21.
563
Now he's older.
564
And he's never going to get that excitement back in his life.
565
all right so here's where we stopped we're on page five
566
if you have questions ask them i will answer i would be happy to answer you i'm sure
567
that people have questions this is not a simple book
568
but it is a book that you can learn a lot of vocabulary from
569
and this is one of those books that is so important for culture that it's important for language.
570
Some of the idioms and the phrasing that's used in this book is
571
so influential that it became a part of the American way of speaking.
572
And so, if you're learning English, particularly American English, this is a great resource for you.
573
But it's not simple.
574
So let's do this together.
575
Let's do this together.
576
Ask me your questions.
577
If you like this content, subscribe to the channel and share the video with your friends who are learning English.
578
I'm just about to start recording more of The Wizard of Oz, so if you'd like something else,
579
you can try the playlist for The Wizard of Oz, which at the time was a children's book,
580
so it is a little bit easier in some ways.
581
But this one is so famous and so good that we're going to do this as well,
582
even though we have to go a little bit slower when we're reading
583
The Great Gatsby.
584
Thank you for watching.
585
I'll see you next time.
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This speaking lesson is built on the video “Learn English With a Book”. This video has 585 sentences and 5538 words to shadow. The speech runs for 48:50. The speaker talks at a steady 113 words per minute, a comfortable pace for shadowing. 82% 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
15 words from the video worth learning, with pronunciation and meaning:
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| drift noun | /dɹɪft/ | Anything driven at random. |
| boil verb | /bɔɪ(ə)l/ | To heat to the point where it begins to turn into a gas. |
| polo noun | /ˈpoʊloʊ/ | A ball game where two teams of players on horseback use long-handled mallets to propel the ball along the ground and into their opponent's goal. |
| uncle noun | /ˈʌŋ.kl̩/ | The brother or brother-in-law of one’s parent. |
| cousin noun | /ˈkʌz(ə)n/ | Chiefly with a qualifying word: Any relation (especially a distant one) who is not a direct ancestor or descendant but part of a person's extended family; a… |
| grave noun | /ɡɹeɪv/ | An excavation in the earth as a place of burial. |
| mansion noun | /ˈmæn.ʃən/ | A large luxurious house or building, usually built for the wealthy. |
| mint noun | /mɪnt/ | Any plant in the genus Mentha in the family Lamiaceae, typically aromatic with square stems. |
| sinister adjective | /ˈsɪ.nɪ.stəɹ/ | Inauspicious, ominous, unlucky, illegitimate. |
| thin adjective | /ˈθɪn/ | Having little thickness or extent from one surface to its opposite. |
| hardware noun | /ˈhɑɹdˌwɛɹ/ | Fixtures, equipment, fasteners, tools, and devices used for general-purpose construction and repair of a structure or object. Also such equipment as sold as… |
| thoroughly adverb | /ˈθʌɹ.ə.li/ | In a thorough or complete manner. |
| beard noun | /bɪɹd/ | Facial hair on the chin, cheeks, jaw and neck. |
| acute adjective | /əˈkjut/ | Brief, quick, short. |
| lawn noun | /lɔːn/ | Ground (generally in front of or around a house) covered with grass kept closely mown. |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| come back verb | To return to a place. | |
| bring back verb | /ˈbɹɪŋ bæk/ | To fetch something. |
| bring down verb | To make (a ruler or government) lose their position of power. | |
| wear out verb | To cause (something) to become damaged, useless, or ineffective through continued use, especially hard, heavy, or careless use. | |
| go back to verb | To stem from; to originate in. | |
| hold back verb | To act with reserve; to contain one's full measure or power. | |
| move around verb | To relocate to new homes repeatedly; to not live in any one place for long. | |
| pay back verb | /peɪ bæk/ | To pay (a debt or the lender) so as to provide the entire amount of money owed. |
Sentences worth repeating
Short, complete lines from the video that you can reuse in everyday conversation:
- How do you decide the meaning of a word?
- How do you decide what a word means?
- Why is it called a mint, you may ask?
- Why do we say brand spanking new?
- What does that mean, my second cousin once removed?
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 it were Washington State, they would probably |
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | were descended · is just thought · is also called |
| Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing | places, which has · someone who had · specialists, which is |
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | you've already learned · have been · you've never studied |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 87 contractions and reduced forms, such as don't, I'm, we're. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “th” sounds: thin /ˈθɪn/, thoroughly /ˈθʌɹ.ə.li/, wealthy /ˈwɛl.θi/
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: mansion /ˈmæn.ʃən/, specialist /ˈspɛʃəlɪst/, conviction /kənˈvɪkʃən/, smash /smæʃ/, fashionable /ˈfæʃənəbl̩/
- Long words — get the stress right: complicated /ˈkɑm.plɪˌkeɪ.tɪd/, literary /ˈlɪt.(ə.)ɹə.ɹi/, permanently /ˈpɜː.mə.nənt.li/, superficial /ˌsupɚˈfɪʃəl/, successfully /səkˈsɛs.fə.li/
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 drift, boil, polo.
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.