Shadowing Practice: Learn Real-Life British English - In A Small Village! | English Comprehensible Input B1 Intermediate - Learn English Speaking with YouTube
B1
Do you want to learn English the natural way?
222 sentences
If sentences are too short or too long, click Edit to adjust them.
1
Do you want to learn English the natural way?
2
Well, in this video you're going to learn English with the Comprehensible Input Method.
3
All you need to do is just watch,
4
listen, and you will learn new English vocabulary.
5
Today we're in the village of Goring.
6
Now, Goring only has about 3,000 people living here,
7
but as you can see the village is on the River Thames.
8
This is the River Thames and if you keep walking in that direction you will eventually get to London.
9
Anyway, let's go and have a wander around the small village of Goring.
10
Let's go.
11
Right now it's actually about 1 p.m on a Tuesday so it's no surprise that it's basically empty.
12
There's basically not a soul in sight around these parts anyway.
13
It's basically empty because it's in the middle of the day on a Tuesday.
14
so I get the pleasure to walk around here by myself with nobody else here it's pretty cool
15
so we're more going into the town of Goring now over there is a real estate agents
16
so if you're interested in buying a house you can go there and spend all of your savings
17
on a really expensive house at the real estate agents.
18
Over there is goring food and wine,
19
so if you like food and if you like wine,
20
well, here's the perfect place for you, I guess.
21
As you can see we have the classic British post box,
22
the Royal Mail, the classic post box used in the UK.
23
And you can see it's from the Royal Mail and the Royal Mail is the postal service in the UK.
24
It's what we all use to send our letters and our packages and our parcels,
25
use the Royal Mail.
26
This sign up here says to let.
27
Well, if you've ever wondered what to let means,
28
it means that you can rent this place.
29
It means it's available for someone to rent.
30
That's what to let means.
31
So if you see a sign that says to let,
32
it means that this place can be rented right now.
33
So now you know.
34
Up here we have the arcade.
35
So in the arcade you will get lots of different kinds of things.
36
This is a cafe over here.
37
To the left we have cards and toys.
38
Then we have a barber's over there to get your hair cut.
39
If you want to get your hair cut you can go to this barber's.
40
Here we have an art store
41
and over there we have a pilates place where you can do pilates if you want and yoga,
42
pilates and yoga
43
this pub over here is called the Catherine Will
44
and it's about 350 years old this building here was built in like the 1700s something like
45
that and you can tell by looking at it
46
that it's an old building but yeah it's about 300
47
or 350 years old this uh this pub here
48
which is quite amazing
49
and over here on the other side of the road we
50
have a library it's just a little library for this town
51
and you can go
52
and get books to read from this library it looks like
53
it's closed right now there's a sign hanging on the front of the door saying
54
that it's closed but yeah there's a little local library here in Goring.
55
Now I believe if we walk down here
56
we're going to find a church I believe looks like this is a footpath in this direction
57
so So the church should be at the end of this footpath somewhere, I assume.
58
Let's take a look at this sign.
59
The sign says, why doesn't someone cut the grass?
60
Ah, it's because the church has chosen to allow space
61
for wildlife as well as people so the reason they haven't cut the grass here in this church yard
62
is because they want to allow the wildlife in the area to live here as well so having tall grass
63
helps the wildlife I suppose.
64
See they haven't cut the grass because I guess this helps the wildlife right
65
so they've let the grass grow long they've let it grow really long for the wildlife.
66
Okay it looks like we're approaching the church now as you can see we are in the graveyard right now
67
and there are lots of gravestones around this here is a war memorial
68
we have lots of poppies here this is a wreath a poppy wreath actually it's just made of plastic
69
but they look like poppies so you can see that down there we have the dates 1914 to 1918.
70
These are the dates for World War I
71
But around here We have the dates 1939 to 1945 And those are the dates for World War II
72
And here we can find the names of lots of soldiers Who passed away during one of the world wars here
73
As usual we have a notice board outside the church
74
some information about events that are happening inside this church
75
and here is an advert for a an event for little
76
children it's called little lights it's for preschool it's a free
77
preschool group looks like it's on wednesdays at 10 30 a.m so this is an event for preschool children so
78
three or four years old probably.
79
So it looks like there's nobody here.
80
I'm going to be speaking quietly again because although it seems like nobody's here,
81
if the door is unlocked it probably means that somebody is here somewhere.
82
If I had to guess I would say the vicar is probably on the premises somewhere.
83
The vicar is probably here around somewhere so I will keep my voice down.
84
And with churches you always get this echo in the room, this nice echo.
85
You hear that?
86
I'm stamping my foot on the floor and you get this this nice echo in the room.
87
Sounds good.
88
We have this nice thing which looks like a kind of golden eagle.
89
See it's a really nice golden eagle with a beak,
90
with a golden beak there.
91
So the golden eagle has a golden beak as well and And we have a nice stained glass window over here.
92
If I was more educated,
93
I could tell you exactly what the images in these stained glass windows were showing.
94
But sadly, I'm not educated enough to explain what is being shown on these windows.
95
Would you like to live in a house like this?
96
In a little cottage you can see this is called the mill cottage.
97
Would you like to live in a cottage like this?
98
Crossing over the River Thames now So Goring is a small town which is on the River Thames.
99
So yes, this is the River Thames right here.
100
And this river will go all the way to london but
101
if you want to go to london you need to go in
102
that direction if you keep going in
103
that direction down there you will end up in london
104
so just keep following that river and you will get to london eventually
105
if we walk past here we go into the town of Streetly
106
so it's kind of Goring and Streetly are very close together
107
so past this way is Streetly but back over this bridge
108
that is Goring in that direction see there's the sign for Goring so there's Streetly and there's Goring
109
hence the name of the station being Goring and Streetly.
110
Goring and Streetly are right next to each other hence the name Goring
111
and Streetly hence the name of the train station being Goring and Streetly.
112
So we're heading back over the bridge back away from Streetly back into the town of Goring.
113
Unfortunately it is actually quite a busy road this one even
114
though the views are very nice right the views are very pleasant there's actually a lot of cars
115
that go up and down this road.
116
Let's go for a little walk by the river Thames now.
117
If I had to describe the village of Goring in one word it would definitely be peaceful.
118
It's a very peaceful place.
119
It's definitely a big change of pace.
120
It's a change of pace from London.
121
It's a big change of pace from the hustle and bustle of London.
122
In London you get people rushing around.
123
People in London are rushed off their feet,
124
rushing around trying to go to work trying to make money and there are sirens and noise and chaos
125
but here in Goring it's very relaxing you could even use
126
the word tranquil to describe Goring I think we have some signs over here this one says caution
127
slippery surface when wet it means that
128
when it rains the surface can be very slippery right and
129
that you might slip over just like this man here you might slip over
130
because it's a slippery surface this is very important for elderly people you know they need to be careful
131
when there's a slippery surface because they might hurt themselves.
132
Down here is another sign.
133
This sign says no fishing from the 15th of March to the 31st of October.
134
So you're not allowed to fish here between those dates.
135
Why?
136
I don't know.
137
I have no clue why.
138
But that's what the sign says.
139
Over here there's another sign.
140
This sign says Goring Visitor Mooring.
141
You're probably wondering what does mooring mean?
142
Well, this boat here is moored.
143
This is a moored boat.
144
It's kind of like parked,
145
like a car is parked.
146
The boat is moored.
147
And there are some more moored boats up here.
148
you can see that this one there's a rope down here now the rope is wrapped around
149
this thing here
150
and then the rope is attached to the boat over there the rope is tied around
151
that thing there so the rope is tied to the boat
152
and then it's wrapped around this thing
153
and also the rope is quite taut yeah it's quite a taut rope there it's not loose
154
it doesn't sag there's no sag in this rope it's very
155
taut right there's not much sag in it the same is
156
true with this boat over here this boat is called the snapdragon there and it's got a rope
157
wrapped around this thing here
158
and the rope is taut yes there's no sag in the in the rope
159
if the rope had sag in it then it would be loose you know there would be extra rope
160
but this is taut which means like it's tight it's completely tight and there's no sag in the rope.
161
I think you'll agree with me when I say that the views here are very picturesque.
162
These views are incredibly picturesque here.
163
They could almost be on a postcard or something, right?
164
It's almost like the perfect picture here.
165
It's very picturesque.
166
The scenery around here is very picturesque now actually
167
if you keep walking in that direction you will eventually reach London
168
and there is a path there's a path here
169
that goes all the way to London the problem is it will take about 30 hours
170
to to get there
171
so probably not what I'm going to do today it will probably take 30 hours of total walking time
172
and probably about three to five days of walking but
173
if you were slightly insane you could maybe decide to walk all the way to London from Goring
174
if you really felt the need to do that.
175
the thing with learning English with comprehensible input is that
176
if you focus on listening during the beginner and intermediate stages
177
and you focus on just acquiring lots of new words lots of new vocabulary.
178
This is a good way to do it because you will end up with really good pronunciation.
179
You see, when you learn new vocabulary by listening,
180
you learn the correct pronunciation and even the correct stressed syllable.
181
For example, if you take a word like development,
182
just a random word off the top of my head,
183
development, in this case the stress on this word needs to
184
go on the second syllable you need to say development like this however
185
if you learned this word by reading it on the page
186
you would not know actually where the stressed syllable goes
187
and you might accidentally put the stressed syllable on the first syllable and you might say
188
development or you might put it on the third syllable
189
and say development or maybe you would put it on the fourth syllable
190
and say development like that but
191
if instead you learn new vocabulary through a process of listening
192
to hundreds of hours of English before you start focusing on
193
speaking then you're going to feel like yeah the word development is supposed to be pronounced like
194
that development and that will feel correct to you
195
if you haven't heard that word
196
if you haven't done lots of listening then it's possible
197
that you will put the stressed syllable in the wrong place and you may do this with lots of different words.
198
If you like to read in your head a lot then it's quite possible
199
that you will not pronounce them correctly in the end which is why
200
at English Sponge we recommend a heavy focus on listening during the beginner and intermediate stages.
201
You listen, you acquire words through the process of listening so
202
that you get the correct pronunciation and for example the correct stressed syllable in each word.
203
At English Sponge we believe that if people learn English through the process
204
that we offer on EnglishSponge.com they will end up sounding very natural
205
and with good pronunciation whereas when people follow the traditional method of learning English,
206
which is doing lots of speaking,
207
reading and writing, even as a beginner,
208
we believe that people end up with pronunciation issues because of this,
209
because they haven't focused on listening to the correct pronunciation in the beginning.
210
So that is just one more reason to learn English through the comprehensible input method.
211
And
212
if you do like learning English with comprehensible input on english
213
sponge.com we have nearly 600 videos right now at all levels
214
and the website will track your time it will track how long you've been listening for
215
and lots of other good stuff okay guys that's the end
216
of this video i hope you've enjoyed watching me walk around
217
the village of goring i hope you've enjoyed watching me wander around stroll around this village here in southern England.
218
If you do like this kind of video where I walk around a village specifically as opposed to a town
219
or a city, check out this video where I walk around the village of Dorchester on Thames,
220
a village with only about a thousand people living there.
221
Thanks for watching guys and I'll see you in the next one.
222
Bye-bye.
Download App
AI scoring for every sentence you speak
TRENDING
Popular
Context & Background
In this video, the speaker takes you on an engaging journey through the charming village of Goring in the UK, highlighting its unique characteristics and local features. With a population of around 3,000 people, Goring provides a picturesque setting to learn British English through the Comprehensible Input Method. This natural approach to language acquisition focuses on watching and listening to real-life conversations, allowing learners to absorb new vocabulary and phrases in context. The speaker artfully navigates around the village, pointing out various local businesses and cultural landmarks, which can serve as excellent learning opportunities for English students.
Top 5 Phrases for Daily Communication
- "To let" - Indicates that a property is available for rent, a phrase commonly seen on rental signs.
- "Royal Mail" - Refers to the postal service in the UK, essential for sending letters and parcels.
- "Food and wine" - A phrase conducive to discussing dining preferences, especially in a local setting.
- "Get your hair cut" - A casual way to express the need for a haircut, useful in social interactions.
- "About 350 years old" - Describing the age of buildings can lead to discussions about history and culture.
Step-by-step Shadowing Guide
Improving your English speaking skills can significantly benefit from engaging in shadow speech techniques. Follow this step-by-step guide using the video content:
- Watch and Listen: Begin by watching the video the first time without pausing. Focus on the speaker's pronunciation and intonation as they explore the village.
- Break it Down: Rewatch the video and pause after each segment. Repeat what the speaker says out loud, mimicking their rhythm and flow. This is where shadow speak comes into play.
- Vocabulary Practice: Take note of new phrases from the “Top 5 Phrases for Daily Communication.” Try using them in sentences related to your own life.
- Engage with the Content: Discuss the village features mentioned in the video with a language partner or write about them in a journal. This will enhance your IELTS speaking practice.
- Create Your Own Tour: Pick a place in your community and describe it aloud, as the speaker did. Record yourself and listen for any pronunciation improvements.
By utilizing these techniques and engaging with a variety of content on dedicated shadowing sites, you can boost your confidence and fluency in English, paving the way for lifestyle conversations, enhancing cultural understanding, and enriching your overall learning experience.
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.
☕ Buy us a coffee
ShadowingEnglish remains 100% free thanks to your support. Server and AI costs are high — your coffee keeps us going! 🙏