Shadowing Practice: Leaving America Changed the Way I See Everything - Learn English Speaking with Video
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America does a very good job of making survival mode look normal.
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And it's one of the things that I, for the first time in my entire life, over the past few months, I have realized that I am finally,
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for once, not living in survival mode.
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After living in the United States my entire life, and then leaving for the first time with my family, and we've been out of the U .S.
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for two years now.
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And I did not even realize
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that I was living in this constant state of just survival and what that actually does to your overall well -being,
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your ability to even think into the future and make plans
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and the shift that we have had since leaving has been profound and is something that
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even if we ever do go back to the United States, like I think that we have finally broken free of that
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and is something that I can look back on and just I didn't even know, I did not know that I was living in such a state of survival
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and what effect that has on your entire life.
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How dysregulated my nervous system was just from constantly being worried about finances.
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You know, what it does when you're afraid
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that you won't be able to go to the doctor and get treated for any sort of health problems.
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Not only in the U .S are there financial struggles, but there's also this overall just culture of hustle to the point
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that it makes it really difficult to feel like you can even relax.
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There's really no free time available to really figure out what it is you want to do with your life
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or who you want to be or who you are
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because there's always that constant pressure of I need to try
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and get ahead when I am doing good because what if you never know what's going to happen in the future.
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And when you've constantly had those what ifs happen and you've lived the result of those,
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it's just this state of literal survival.
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Leaving the U .S wasn't the only way I think that I could have gotten out of it.
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It just gave me a completely different perspective.
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And it's not like other countries are perfect or they have it all figured out.
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It's just being able to zoom out and step outside of that culture, the hustle culture part aspect of the US,
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the blame, if you are, you know, having a hard time financially, there is a lot of blame, not only from other Americans,
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but from the rest of the world.
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I hear that a lot in the comment section here is if you live in the United States, you have all the opportunities in the world,
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and you should be able to get out of negative financial situations or,
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you know, there's all these opportunities available to you.
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One of the reasons why we are able to travel is
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because of the income that we make in the U .S and how,
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for now at least, like the U .S dollar does go a lot further in a lot of other countries.
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And yes, that has made life much easier.
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And that is an opportunity that we have been provided because we are Americans.
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So I'm not lost on that aspect of it.
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Using that opportunity that we had to leave and go somewhere else where we could reset our lives,
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where we didn't have to be so stressed out and we could get out of survival mode, has made all the difference in the world.
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Over these last few months, we've been able to relax
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and truly relax to the point where we've been able to really think about our future
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and to do some things that we were never able to do
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or we didn't feel like was the best use of our time
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while in the U .S some things like my husband is
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going back to school instead of constantly working to improve our life.
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It is an investment, but a lot of times when you're poor
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and you're struggling just every day to keep up with the day -to -day task, you can't invest in yourself.
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It makes it really hard.
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Who has the time?
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That's a lot of time that you're taking away from other things.
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I've always wanted to write homeschool curriculum and write and develop things that I know that
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right now are not going to make me money.
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It's something I have to work on and build up.
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And I have the opportunity now to be able to spend my time doing things
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that in the long run might make me money, but are not making me money right now.
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It's important to acknowledge that it is in fact very hard to be poor in the U .S.
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and that there are some real struggles and just changing your mindset isn't going to make everything better.
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There are some real barriers there.
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Absolutely, you have control of your life and you can make changes.
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For us, one of those changes was to figure out a way to leave
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and get out of that situation and do something extreme, like leave, you know, where our money goes further.
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And it might mean some extreme changes.
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But one thing that anybody can do across the board is to realize
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that there is a deep culture there in the U .S
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that makes it really hard to escape the system of being poor,
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being in poverty, struggling, living in
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that survival mode it's really hard to get out of it
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and if you were someone who has never lived
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that struggle of not knowing where your next meal is going to come from
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or being afraid
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that you're not even going to be able to pay for gas to get to work
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and then your whole world will just slowly fall apart it is a fact
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that things are harder in that situation
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if you miss a payment you have late fees
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that you have to pay being in a position to maybe have to go
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and get a payday loan to just to pay your electricity bill so your electricity doesn't get shut off.
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And if you have never lived that,
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then it is important to have empathy and understand the experiences that somebody else is going through.
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Because I lived that life in the U .S.
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I left and almost instantly I became,
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I went from being poor in the U .S to being at least very comfortable in other countries.
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And flipping that switch overnight has made me realize that
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people who are wealthy and don't have those same struggles quite literally have never experienced those things
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or probably have never experienced those things and do not understand.
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If you are somebody who lives in a country and you've always had access to health care,
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you've never had that fear of not being able to be treated when you're sick,
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to have to sit at home and worry and get sicker
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and sicker and sicker because you cannot afford to go to the doctor or the constant fear of,
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you know, what if something happened and you cannot take care of your health.
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If you are in a country that has access to decent quality public transportation, not to understand that people in the U .S.
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mostly do not have access to public transportation.
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They have to own a vehicle in order to get groceries, to get to work, to do all of these things.
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And the rural areas in the U .S
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that are less expensive to live in are miles and miles and miles away from your necessities, from their jobs.
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Like poor people have to live further away from work.
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They can't live in the cities where the jobs are because housing is unaffordable.
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So they have to commute to work, but they don't have access to buses and trains and all of these things that other countries have.
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They have to own a vehicle and it has to function.
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They have to pay for gas.
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And when these gas prices go up, they're the ones who are driving further just to get to work, just to meet their basic needs.
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They don't have the option of just taking affordable public transportation.
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Leaving has honestly made me more passionate about the struggles
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that even we experienced in the U .S and
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that other people are experiencing because I know that it doesn't have to be that way.
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I know that if people were able to get out of that survival mode,
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that they would have the time to pursue things that would be meaningful to them.
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And they would improve even their work that they're doing.
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It's not that they would become lazy or, or whatever.
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It was just, they would get out of that hamster wheel of constant just you know survival.
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And I also recognize that that's not the goal because when people are trapped in that hamster wheel of surviving,
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they will work harder.
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They will spend more money as a consumer because they're unhappy, because they're afraid, because they're trying to keep up.
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If more people would get out of this survival mindset
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and see things from a different perspective and zoom out and see what is possible,
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then things would change dramatically.
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And so that's one reason why it's become
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so important to me to discuss all of these issues within the U .S is
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because I know that they can change and they don't have to be that way.
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And they're that way on purpose,
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intentionally there's no need for them to change from a financial aspect from an economic aspect
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Why Practice Speaking with This Video?
This video offers a rich, conversational context for english speaking practice, perfect for honing real-life communication skills. The speaker shares personal reflections in a natural, unscripted tone, making it ideal for shadow speak—a technique where you mimic the rhythm, intonation, and pacing of native speakers. Discussing relatable themes like lifestyle, culture, and personal growth, it helps learners practice expressing complex ideas, a key skill for IELTS speaking practice. By engaging with this dialogue, you’ll not only improve fluency but also learn to convey emotion and nuance, essential for meaningful communication.
Grammar & Expressions in Context
The video uses several practical structures worth analyzing:
- "I did not even realize that...": This phrase is useful for expressing sudden insight. Practice it to talk about personal discoveries, e.g., "I did not even realize that I had been using the wrong tense."
- "What it does when you're afraid...": A common way to explain cause and effect. Use it to discuss consequences, such as "What it does when you skip practice is slow progress."
- "It's not like other countries are perfect...": This structure softens a statement, making it ideal for balanced arguments. Try it in debates: "It's not like technology solves all problems, but it helps."
Common Pronunciation Traps
To improve english pronunciation, watch for these tricky areas in the video:
- "Dysregulated": The stress falls on the second syllable ("dis-REG-u-lated"). Avoid overemphasizing the first syllable.
- "Hustle culture": The "h" in "hustle" is soft, and the "t" is often flapped (sounding like a quick "d") in casual speech. Practice saying it smoothly: "hus-dul culture."
- "Financial struggles": The "i" in "financial" is short ("fi-NAN-shul"), not long. Don’t stretch it to "fee-NAN-shul."
Using shadowspeak with this video will help you master these nuances, making your speech sound more natural and confident.
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 | have realized · we've been · have had |
| Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing | someone who has · people who are · somebody who lives |
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | have been provided · be treated · are trapped |
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.