Shadowing Practice: Let's Talk About Fall 🍂 | Cozy Slow English Podcast (A2–B1) - Learn English Speaking with Video

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Hello everyone and welcome back to English Cozy Chat,

a slow English podcast which helps you to learn English in a fun and natural way.

I'm Maria and today we are going to have a very cozy chat about fall and fall traditions.

But before we get started,

as always, I am here with a nice cozy drink and today I have some ginger tea.

I really love to make ginger tea during the colder months,

especially when I don't feel good and this week I have been a bit sick

so I made some ginger tea for myself and all

that I do is I peel and cut up some fresh ginger

and I boil it in water for 10 minutes or so and I like to make it really strong so it's very

strong and acidic very gingery tasting and then I also add lemon

and sometimes if I feel like it I also add honey or something to make it sweet.

And I then pour it into a bottle and keep it in my fridge.

I love ginger tea and I really think it does help me to feel better when I'm not feeling well. So cheers!

Over the past few weeks I have been working really hard on the five -day shadowing challenge

which is going to be coming out in a couple of weeks.

I have been really putting so much effort into this

and I really hope that you guys enjoy it for a speaking practice

because of course on my channel you have lots of listening practice

but these shadowing videos can really help to give you some speaking practice

and I thought a five -day challenge would be a great way to practice your speaking for five days in a row.

So be on the lookout for that.

Today I really just wanted to talk about what I'm doing this fall,

some typical traditions, and really how I feel about the season.

Now one really important part of fall,

for me at least, is Halloween where everyone dresses up and I am really excited about it.

I always really like this holiday.

I was actually talking to my mom the other day

and she was telling me that when I was little I always really loved Halloween

and that I loved to make decorations and

that I was always talking about it during the month of October

and it was always just one of my favorite holidays and now that I live in Spain.

Of course, Halloween is different.

Here, it is more of a scary holiday where everyone dresses up as scary things,

whereas in the U .S., it is a holiday where people dress up as everything.

You can be anything on Halloween,

but here it's usually scary things that people dress up as.

My kids don't like scary things and don't like dressing up as scary things,

so they are not but most of the people here only dress up in very scary costumes.

But one difference is here everyone also celebrates

Carnival, which is in February or March.

And that holiday is more where people dress up as everything.

So I guess to make Halloween a little bit different here is Halloween is just scary and Carnival is everything.

Here are some Halloween decorations that I have made with my kids.

We have a bat.

Also jack -o' -lantern and a ghost,

a witch, and they wanted to cut these out and stick them on the wall as decorations.

So I really think it's fun to try to make your own decorations instead of buying them.

It's just a little bit more fun and it's cool to try to make something on your own.

I was really happy to find in a local

supermarket some fall squash squashes these really cool vegetables

which are the different fall colors and they're so kind of crazy looking

and I love having these as a decoration in my house.

I find them really beautiful in their own special way.

I really think these are really cool and they're all so different.

I have a couple more here, the little baby and also this one.

And I never eat these.

I always just like having them around.

One thing in Spain that are very very popular during this time are chestnuts

or here they're called castañas and here are some

that I also have in my decoration bowl

but you what you will see at this time of year is there are people in the streets

that roast the castañas over an open fire and they smell so delicious and they taste so yummy.

They are the shell is cut and the middle of the chestnut gets nice

and warm and it's a bit sweet and they taste so delicious when they give them to you.

Usually it is a bunch of these wrapped in a newspaper

and you hold it and they're warm and they just taste really good

and they smell good and it really feels like fall when that is happening.

I have roasted these a couple of times and I think I will try to do it again.

You can roast them in the oven just by cutting them and putting them in the oven and

they're really good that way too but they're kind of hard to cut.

You have to cut them really really hard and

that part is always the hardest but I think I might do that in the next couple of weeks.

So during the fall the weather also is a little bit cooler

and we have started to see that change a little bit.

It's not too cold yet, but where I live we have had lots and lots and lots of rain,

which has caused lots of damage in the area.

And sometimes when there is a lot of it can be quite scary.

Just being in a position where nature is really forceful and strong and

when we as humans can't do anything to stop it.

It's a bit scary to think of.

And in these times of floods, and sometimes there are hurricanes during the season,

for me, all of these things can be really, really scary.

I have also recently started making bread again.

I have been explaining to you guys my bread making journey for several months now,

but over the summer I kind of stopped.

I was not making bread as much.

It just doesn't seem right to have my oven on during a hot summer because I'm just trying to stay cool.

But now that the weather is a little bit cooler and that we are staying inside a bit more,

I do you really have this urge.

To have an urge is to really want to do something.

When there's something inside of you, you're like, oh, I have the urge to do this.

I've been having the urge to make bread again, also to try to make different kinds of bread.

I don't know why, but I love making bread

and I love experimenting with different flours making different kinds of bread

and for me it's really cool to share this with others last weekend

we went to a barbecue at our neighbor's house and I brought a loaf of bread and they were so appreciative.

They were like, wow, did you buy this?

There's no way you made this.

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You made this?

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I was like, yes, I made this.

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I baked it this morning.

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And they were like, wow.

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And this is for me,

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a really special thing that I can share that really means something to people.

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I think it means something to people always if you put time into making something and bringing it.

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But I don't know what it is about bread, but it touches people in a special place.

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People always just love it so much and I feel happy

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that I can make something that really makes other people happy as well.

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Going back to the topic of Halloween,

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I wanted to also mention that I have a really fun episode on Halloween

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that I did last year where I talk about Halloween traditions around the world.

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I really loved this episode and if you feel like listening to more fall

114

or Halloween content then also check that episode out.

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I think it is a really fun one.

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So guys let me know what do you like about fall?

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What are you doing this fall season?

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Is there anything you are looking forward to

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or is there anything in your country that you do that is special in the fall?

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I would love to know.

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I love to hear all of your comments

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and I really thank you all for watching and I hope you have a wonderful day.

123

See you in the next one.

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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson

This speaking lesson is built on the video “Let's Talk About Fall 🍂”. The speaker keeps coming back to these words: fall, Halloween, scary, bread, decoration. This video has 123 sentences and 1489 words to shadow. The speech runs for 14:03. The speaker talks slowly, about 106 words per minute, so there is time to copy every sound. 84% 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
scary adjective	/ˈskɛə.ɹi/	Causing fear or anxiety
decoration noun	/ˌdɛkəˈɹeɪʃən/	The act of adorning, embellishing, or honoring; ornamentation.
ginger noun	/ˈd͡ʒɪnd͡ʒɚ/	The pungent aromatic rhizome of a tropical Asian herb, Zingiber officinale, used as a spice and as a stimulant and acarminative.
urge verb	/ɜːd͡ʒ/	To press; to push; to drive; to impel; to force onward.
oven noun	/ˈʌ.vn̩/	A chamber used for baking or heating.
roast verb	/ɹoʊst/	To cook food by heating in an oven or over a fire without covering, resulting in a crisp, possibly even slightly charred appearance.
shadow noun	/ˈʃædəʊ̯/	A dark image projected onto a surface where light (or other radiation) is blocked by the shade of an object.
delicious adjective	/dɪˈlɪ.ʃəs/	Pleasing to the sense of taste; tasty.
squash noun	/skwɔʃ/	Cucurbita maxima, including hubbard squash, great winter squash, buttercup squash, and some varieties of pumpkins.
topic noun	/ˈtɑpɪk/	A subject; a theme; a category or general area of interest.
ghost noun	/ɡoʊst/	A disembodied soul; a soul or spirit of a deceased person; a spirit appearing after death.
whereas	/(h)wɛɹˈæz/	In contrast; whilst on the contrary; although.
shell noun	/ʃɛl/	The calcareous or chitinous external covering of mollusks, crustaceans, and some other invertebrates.
experiment noun	/ɪkˈspɛɹ.ə.mənt/	A test under controlled conditions made to either demonstrate a known truth, examine the validity of a hypothesis, or determine the efficacy or likelihood of…
honey noun	/ˈhʌni/	A sweet, viscous, gold-colored fluid produced from plant nectar by bees, and often consumed by humans.

Phrasal verbs you will hear

Word	Meaning
dress up verb	To put on special or fancy clothes.
come out in verb	to be afflicted by (a visible disruption of the body)
cut up verb	To cut upward.
go back to verb	To stem from; to originate in.
look forward to verb	To anticipate, expect, or wait for, especially with a feeling of approval or pleasure; to be excited or eager to.

Sentences worth repeating

Short, complete lines from the video that you can reuse in everyday conversation:

They were like, wow, did you buy this?
There's no way you made this.
What are you doing this fall season?

Grammar in this video

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

Structure	In the video
Present perfect continuous have/has been + -ing — an action that started earlier and is still going on	have been working · have been explaining · I've been having
Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now	have been · have made · have roasted
Past continuous was/were + -ing — an action in progress at a moment in the past	was actually talking · was telling · was always talking
Verb + -ing enjoy, keep, stop… + -ing — verbs that are followed by the -ing form	love having · started making · love making

Pronunciation to watch

The speaker uses 19 contractions and reduced forms, such as they're, don't, I'm. Say them the short way, as you hear them.

The “sh” and “zh” sounds: decoration /ˌdɛkəˈɹeɪʃən/, shadow /ˈʃædəʊ̯/, delicious /dɪˈlɪ.ʃəs/, squash /skwɔʃ/, shell /ʃɛl/
Long words — get the stress right: decoration /ˌdɛkəˈɹeɪʃən/, experiment /ɪkˈspɛɹ.ə.mənt/, supermarket /ˌsupɚˈmɑɹkət/, appreciative /əˈpɹi.ʃətɪv/

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 scary, decoration, ginger.

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: Let's Talk About Fall 🍂 | Cozy Slow English Podcast (A2–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

Sentences worth repeating

Grammar in this video

Pronunciation to watch

How to practise with this video

What is the Shadowing Technique?

Preparing for FALL! 🍂 Fall Shopping, Pumpkin Chai, Decorating my Room, HUGE Haul, Cozy Fall Baking