Shadowing Practice: Learn Real-Life British English - Bicester Village! | Comprehensible Input B1 - Learn English Speaking with Video

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Today, I'm in Bista Village.

So, Bista Village is a big shopping center, but it's a shopping center for luxury brands.

and also here in Bicester village today there's a special art exhibition by an artist called Beryl Cook

and I'm gonna take a look to see some of that art as well.

Anyway let's go take a look around Bicester village now.

here it says the village awaits entrance this way so

when it says the village awaits it means the The village is waiting for you.

The village awaits.

It's waiting for you.

So go this way.

The interesting thing is you hear people from all over the world here.

Seems to be mostly foreign people here.

Actually, a lot of Chinese people, a lot of people from Arabic speaking.

countries because I've heard a lot of Arabic here as well

so lots of people from all over the world will come here they will come to this shopping center

Bista Village I guess it's a really interesting for them to go shopping

it's not really my thing you know this kind of luxury shopping center

it's not really my thing you know it's not the kind of thing that I'm usually interested in you know

so I've just taken a seat I've just taken a seat here quickly on this bench

what is Bicester village what is this place why do people come to this place Bicester Village

it's just a shopping center it's a place to go shopping

and obviously some people are shopaholics you know some people are really shopaholics

and they really like to shop a lot

but the main draw the main draw for people to come here the main thing

that draws people here is

that you can buy luxury products luxury fashion products for a cheaper price than usual

so the products here are not second hand it's not like somebody else owned them

and then passed them on they're not second hand

but they're also not in perfect condition many of the products here will have a little mark on them,

a scratch, some kind of like small problem with them, which means that they are cheaper.

They're actually cheaper than usual.

So the main thing that really draws people here,

the main draw of this place is that you can buy luxury products at a cheaper price and bear in mind,

bear in mind these are not second -hand products.

These are first -hand, they're new but the product had something wrong with it and so the price is cheaper than usual.

Okay that is the main draw for people to come here to Bicester village.

now something else that's here in Bicester village is there is an artist I believe her name is Beryl Cook

and her art is all over Bicester village so we'll go

and take a look and we'll see if we can find all the different pieces of art she's done.

Her art sends quite a few messages.

Her art is supposed to celebrate regular people, so not special people or celebrities but regular people

and her art is also.. body acceptance body acceptance so

so most of the characters in her art are overweight

they are big they are not perfect looking you know they're overweight

so it's also about body exceptions as well

so I'm gonna go take a look

now let's go take a look at some of her art around Bissa village here

so here we have two ladies

and this one is wearing a fur coat big thick fur coat

and this one is also wearing a thick fur coat this one is wearing gloves

and here is a handbag they are both wearing boots this one is called bar

and barbara from 1984 this one we have another lady

and she's wearing a scarf so this is a pink scarf around her neck

she has two dogs she's holding a leash for the two dogs

and down here she's wearing high heels so these are pink high -heeled shoes

so yeah another piece of art here

so over here we have a lady in a telephone booth

so this is called a telephone booth okay a red telephone booth

and this lady is on phone and she's wearing a hat

and there are some feathers in her hat I think looks like she is wearing lipstick she's wearing lipstick

and she has a handbag as well as for these two ladies they have a dog down here

but the dog looks a bit aggressive it's an aggressive dog

but the two women they are trying to feed the dog biscuit they're trying to feed him

she's wearing an earring here and this lady is also wearing an earring

and I think she's wearing lipstick as well

and she's holding the dog leash in her hand

and they are both wearing heels see there's a heel there's a heel they're both wearing heels

this lady here is reading the newspaper so this is the newspaper

and down here you can see a crossword puzzle I think

this is supposed to be a crossword puzzle

there she is also wearing an earring she's wearing a pair of glasses I think she's wearing lipstick here

and on her feet she is wearing boots a pair of boots so here we can see

two characters doing a bit of gardening and this guy has his hands i think on a big lettuce

is that a cabbage i think it's a cabbage

so he's got his hands on a big cabbage

and this lady over here is digging something

so we have two a couple i guess doing some gardening here

and here we can see another one of Beryl Cook's pieces of art here you can see a couple here

and the man here is waving and this lady is carrying a handbag

and she is wearing a stripy t -shirt see it's a stripy t -shirt with black

and white stripes she is also wearing lipstick here as well

and the man is waving to somebody and over here we have another older couple being served breakfast

it looks like we've had an english breakfast here with sausages fried eggs and baked beans

with some ketchup over here and this couple

is at a restaurant getting breakfast can you see how the art is celebrating regular people here

it's just a couple getting breakfast and they are celebrating this couple

you can see here that they have a dog bar

so they leave a little bowl here there's a little bowl for

filled with water and it's for people's dogs to come

and have a drink

if the dogs are thirsty

they can come to the dog bar drink a bit of water

that's what it's here for over here we have the children's play area

so this is the children's play area you see there are a couple of slides there's a child playing there

and the sign actually has uh how many languages three languages

we have the english here we have the mandarin chinese here

100

and we have the oh which language is this is that arabic

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i'm not sure

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and we have some signs here we have a symbols

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we have some symbols here this is a symbol for the wi -fi this says

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that there's cameras in the area this says don't take any photos

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which i will try not to do this says no smoking this says no dogs

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and this says no drinking in the park so there you go

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so why is it called a bistur village i don't really know it's not a village i can tell you

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that now people this is not a village there is a town called Bista we are in the town of Bista

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by the way notice the pronunciation of Bista okay

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I know the spelling is b -i -c -e -s -t -e -r

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the actual pronunciation is Bista Bista like that

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and even the word village the pronunciation is village village the pronunciation is not village

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or village or however you might think

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that you need to say the word based on the spelling

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the pronunciation is village almost like there's an i letter there instead of the a

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and that's one of the reasons why i really suggest to get to focus on a massive amount of listening

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and not not until you're at the more advanced level should you really be focusing a lot on reading

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you can you can do lots of reading when you are

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at the more advanced level of English but at the intermediate stages

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and definitely at the beginner stages it should really be a listening

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which is your number one focus

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because you need to focus on listening to the sounds of English

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and not focus on the way words are spelt in English.

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If you read the word village it's spelled v -i -l -l -a -g -e

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and you look at the spelling and you think okay it's village or village or something like that.

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If you listen to native speakers you listen to how they really talk you can hear it's village village

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so in many ways with english you have to

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when you're listening you want to spend a lot of time listening without subtitles

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and just listening to the sounds that you're hearing you know village

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that is how we say it and

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so this is why on english sponge we recommend a massive amount of a massive amount of listening

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and that's why on EnglishSponge .com we have I think more than 800 videos right now nearly 900 videos

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so that you can focus on a huge amount of listening before you go

134

and focus on speaking and reading later on right

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when you're a beginner and even

136

when you're an intermediate student the best thing to do is

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to spend a massive amount of time listening to comprehensible input

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but you will end up with better pronunciation this way

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because you are focusing a lot on the sounds that you hear

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and you're not really paying too much attention to the written version of English.

141

Anyway, let me go and continue looking around Bicester Village now.

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I imagine there are probably two kinds of people here.

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I imagine there's probably two kinds of people who have come here to shop today

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and that's probably the first kind are probably here to really splash out

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you know they're here to splash out on really expensive products

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to buy something extra nice something really expensive something really nice

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and they just want to splash out on something really expensive

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and really luxury i imagine probably the other kind of person who has come here today

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they're probably just window shopping right they're probably just here to do a bit of window hello

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so i actually just got stopped by security they came over

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and they asked me a few questions they said what are you filming what are you doing here

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and i just told them

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that i'm filming for an english learning youtube channel i'm filming for you guys

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and so it's all okay i have permission to keep filming here.

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Vista Village now.

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So as I was saying before

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I think a lot of people are just here window shopping yes

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they probably are not going to buy anything today

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they're just coming here to look at some of the luxury products

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that are on offer they're probably not gonna buy anything

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they're just here to do a bit of window shopping just

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to take a look around at what is on offer in these shops.

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Some people are here to splash out

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and buy expensive stuff some people are here just to do a bit of window shopping.

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Anyway guys thank you for coming with me around Bista Village today.

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Here I'm going to wrap up the video here

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and like I said

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if you do want more comprehensible input videos at your level then go to englishsponge .com and you will find them there.

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If you would prefer to stay here on YouTube then just click the playlist here

170

and there are many more videos of me traveling to different places in the UK.

171

That's it thank you for watching and I'll see you in the next video.

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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson

This speaking lesson is built on the video “Learn Real-Life British English - Bicester Village!”. The speaker keeps coming back to these words: village, wearing, dog, english, shopping. This video has 171 sentences and 2117 words to shadow. The speech runs for 16:25. The speaker talks at a steady 129 words per minute, a comfortable pace for shadowing. 85% 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
luxury noun	/ˈlʌk.ʃə.ɹi/	Very wealthy and comfortable surroundings; the state of being that they create.
heel noun	/hil/	The rear part of the foot, where it joins the leg.
pronunciation noun	/pɹəˌnʌn.siˈeɪ.ʃən/	The formal or informal way in which a word is made to sound when spoken.
lipstick noun	/ˈlɪpˌstɪk/	Makeup for the lips.
splash verb	/splæʃ/	To hit or agitate liquid so that part of it separates from the principal liquid mass.
telephone noun	/ˈtɛləˌfoʊn/	A telecommunication device which converts data or sounds (usually speech) into electrical signals which are then transmitted to enable two or more people to…
coat noun	/ˈkoʊ̯t/	An outer garment covering the upper torso and arms.
input noun	/ˈɪnpʊt/	The act or process of putting in; infusion.
symbol noun	/ˈsɪmbəl/	A character or glyph representing an idea, concept or object.
boot noun	/but/	A heavy shoe that covers part of the leg.
booth noun	/buθ/	A small stall for the display and sale of goods.
arabic adjective	/ˈæɹəbɪk/	Only used in arabic acid
spelling noun	/ˈspɛl.ɪŋ/	The act, practice, ability, or subject of forming words with letters, or of reading the letters of words; orthography.
await verb	/əˈweɪt/	To wait for.
cabbage noun	/ˈkæbɪd͡ʒ/	An edible plant (Brassica oleracea var. capitata) having a head of green leaves.

Phrasal verbs you will hear

Word	Meaning
look around verb	To inspect a building or area.
come over verb	To affect in a sudden, unprecedented or surprising manner; to overwhelm a person's ordinarily contrary impulse.
wrap up verb	To cover or enclose (something) by folding and securing a covering entirely around it.

Grammar in this video

The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:

Structure	In the video
Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now	I've heard · I've just taken · we've had
Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it	is called · being served
Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing	them, which means · people who have · person who has
Comparatives -er than / more … than — comparing two things	cheaper than

Pronunciation to watch

The speaker uses 40 contractions and reduced forms, such as they're, I'm, you're. Say them the short way, as you hear them.

The “th” sounds: booth /buθ/, thick /θɪk/, thirsty /ˈθɝs.ti/, feather /ˈfɛðə/
The “sh” and “zh” sounds: luxury /ˈlʌk.ʃə.ɹi/, pronunciation /pɹəˌnʌn.siˈeɪ.ʃən/, splash /splæʃ/, exhibition /ɛksɪˈbɪʃən/, exception /əkˈsɛpʃən/
Long words — get the stress right: pronunciation /pɹəˌnʌn.siˈeɪ.ʃən/, intermediate /ɪn.tə(ɹ)ˈmi.di.ət/, exhibition /ɛksɪˈbɪʃən/, celebrity /səˈlɛb.ɹɪ.ɾi/, vocabulary /vəˈkæb.jə.lə.ɹi/

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 luxury, heel, pronunciation.

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.

Shadowing technique: read the full step-by-step guide →

Shadowing Practice: Learn Real-Life British English - Bicester Village! | Comprehensible Input B1 - Learn English Speaking with Video

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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson

Key vocabulary in this video

Phrasal verbs you will hear

Grammar in this video

Pronunciation to watch

How to practise with this video

What is the Shadowing Technique?