Shadowing Practice: Let’s Talk About the Moment You Want to Quit | English Listening Practice - Speak Power Daily - Learn English Speaking with Video
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Hello, hello my wonderful friends.
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Welcome back to another episode of Speak Power Daily.
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I am Charlotte and I am so happy to have you here with me today.
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Whether you are listening on your way to work, while you are cooking dinner, or maybe while you are taking a walk, I want you to know that I appreciate you.
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You showed up today and that is the most important step.
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Today, we are going to talk about a feeling that we all know very well.
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It is a heavy feeling.
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It sits in your chest and whispers to you.
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It says, stop.
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This is too hard.
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You are not good enough.
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Just go watch TV and forget about this.
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We are talking about the temptation to give up.
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And more importantly, we are talking about the decision to say, No, I will not give up.
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Let me paint a picture for you.
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Imagine you are hiking up a very high mountain.
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At the beginning, the sun is shining, you have a lot of energy, and you are excited.
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You think, I am going to reach the top.
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This is great.
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This is how we feel when we first start learning English.
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Every new word is exciting.
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You learn hello and how are you and you feel like a champion.
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But then the path gets steep.
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The sun disappears behind some gray clouds.
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Your legs start to hurt.
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You look up but you cannot see the top of the mountain because there is fog everywhere.
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You look down and you see that you have walked a long way.
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But you are still in the middle of nowhere.
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This is the intermediate plateau.
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It is that frustrating place where you are studying, but you feel like you are not improving.
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You speak, but you still make the same mistakes with prepositions.
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You listen to a movie, and you still only understand 50%.
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In this moment, it is very easy to sit down on a rock and say, I'm done.
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I cannot do this.
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I want to tell you something very important.
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That feeling, that frustration, it is not a sign that you are failing.
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It is actually a sign that you are climbing.
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If the path was flat and easy, you wouldn't be climbing a mountain.
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You would just be walking in a park.
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The difficulty means you are doing something big.
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You are challenging your brain.
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So, if you are feeling tired today, or if you feel like your English is stuck, take a deep breath.
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That feeling is uncomfortable, but it is normal.
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It is just part of the weather on the mountain.
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And the thing about weather is, it always changes.
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The fog will clear, but only if you keep moving your feet.
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You see, giving up is a permanent solution to a temporary problem.
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You are feeling frustrated right now, but that doesn't mean you will be frustrated forever.
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But we often confuse tired with finished.
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Let's talk about why we actually want to quit.
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Usually, it is not because the work is too hard.
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It is because we don't see the results immediately.
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We live in a world that is obsessed with speed.
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If your internet page takes 3 seconds to load, you get annoyed.
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If your pizza delivery is five minutes late, you feel frustrated.
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We are used to getting what we want, exactly when we want it.
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We have a microwave mindset.
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You put the food in, press a button, and ping!
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Dinner is ready in two minutes.
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But learning a language is not a microwave meal.
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It is a slow-cooked stew.
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It takes hours, sometimes days, for the flavors to mix together perfectly.
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You cannot rush it.
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If you try to eat the stew after five minutes, the potatoes will be hard and the meat will be raw.
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It just doesn't taste good.
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The problem is that when you are studying English every day, you are looking at yourself in the mirror constantly.
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Imagine you decide to get fit.
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You go to the gym on Monday.
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You lift weights, you run, you sweat.
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You come home and look in the mirror.
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Do you see big muscles?
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No. You look exactly the same.
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You go back on Tuesday.
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You work even harder.
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You eat a salad.
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You drink water.
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You look in the mirror again.
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Still nothing.
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If you judge your success only by what you see in the mirror right now, you will quit.
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You will say, this is useless, I am suffering for nothing.
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But that is an illusion.
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Inside your body, your cells are changing.
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Your heart is getting stronger.
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Your metabolism is speeding up.
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The progress is invisible but it is real.
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It is the same with English.
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You might study phrasal verbs for a week and still forget them in a conversation.
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You might feel like you are standing still.
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But deep inside your brain, new connections are forming.
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Your ears are tuning into the rhythm of the language.
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Your brain is building a library of sounds and structures.
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Just because you can't see the change, doesn't mean it isn't happening.
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When you feel like giving up, it is usually because you are focusing on the gap.
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You are looking at the distance between where you are and where you want to be.
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That gap can feel huge and scary.
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Oh, I still make mistakes with the present perfect tense.
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I will never be fluent.
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But stop looking at the gap for a moment.
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Look at your feet.
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Look at the step you are taking today.
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Did you learn one new word?
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Did you understand one sentence in a song?
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That is progress.
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Giving up happens when we lose faith in the process.
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We think that if we are not moving fast, we are not moving at all.
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But nature doesn't rush.
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A tree doesn't grow five meters in one night.
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It grows silently, slowly, day by day.
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And one day, you look up and realize it has become a giant.
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So, the next time you feel stuck, remember the gym.
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Remember the slow-cooked stew.
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Remind yourself that stagnation is often just invisible growth.
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You are building the foundation, and you cannot build a skyscraper on a weak foundation.
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However, sometimes the problem isn't just that we don't see results.
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Sometimes, the problem is that we are actually afraid of what happens when we do try.
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We are afraid of looking foolish.
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Let's be honest, one of the biggest reasons we want to give up is because trying feels embarrassing.
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Have you ever been in a conversation where you completely froze?
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You knew what you wanted to say in your native language.
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You had a brilliant, funny, intelligent thought.
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But when you opened your mouth to say it in English, nothing came out.
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Or worse, you said something completely wrong.
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Maybe you wanted to say, I am embarrassed, but you accidentally said, I am pregnant, because of a false friend in your language.
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Everyone laughed.
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Your face turned red.
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You wanted the floor to open up and swallow you whole.
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In that moment, a little voice in your head whispered, See?
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You shouldn't try.
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It's safer to be quiet.
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Just give up.
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This fear of looking foolish is a huge monster.
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It tells us that making mistakes is dangerous.
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It tells us that if we aren't perfect, we are failing.
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But let me tell you a secret.
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Looking foolish is actually the price of admission.
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Think about a baby learning to walk.
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Does the baby stand up, walk perfectly across the room, and say, Hello, Mother?
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No. The baby stands up, wobbles, and falls down.
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Boom.
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Does the baby think, Oh, how embarrassing.
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I am never walking again.
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Walking is not for me.
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Of course not.
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The baby laughs, or maybe cries for a second, and then gets back up.
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Why?
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Because the baby doesn't have an ego yet.
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The baby doesn't care if it looks silly.
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The baby only cares about the goal.
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Moving.
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As adults, we have big, heavy egos.
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We carry them around like backpacks full of rocks.
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We think, I am a professional.
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I am smart.
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I cannot sound like a child.
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But when you learn a language, you must be willing to sound like a child sometimes.
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You must be willing to make funny noises and use simple sentences.
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Giving up is the easy way to protect your ego.
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If you stop trying, you stop making mistakes mistakes.
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If you stop speaking, nobody will laugh at your accent.
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You are safe.
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But you are also stuck.
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So, here is a challenge for you.
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What if you decided to embrace the awkwardness?
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What if you decided that looking foolish is actually a sign of courage?
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Imagine you are an actor in a comedy movie.
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When you make a mistake, don't hide.
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Laugh.
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Say, wow, my brain just went on vacation.
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Or, oops, that was a creative sentence.
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When you laugh at yourself, you take the power away from the fear.
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You show the world that you are confident enough to be imperfect.
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And guess what?
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People love that.
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They connect with your humanity, not your perfection.
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They will respect you more for trying than for staying silent.
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But even when we conquer the fear of looking foolish, there is another enemy waiting for us.
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It is the enemy of comparison.
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We look at other people and think, why is it so easy for them?
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We all do it.
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You are scrolling on Instagram or watching a YouTube video,
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and you see someone, maybe a non-native speaker just like you, speaking perfect English.
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They sound like they were born in London or New York.
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They use advanced vocabulary.
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They are confident, and they make it look so easy.
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and then you compare yourself to them you think wow look at them they are
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so talented i have been studying for years
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and i still struggle with basic verbs i am clearly not good at languages
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i should just stop comparison is the thief of joy it steals your happiness
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and replaces it with doubt it makes you feel small it makes your own progress feel insignificant
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but let me tell you something about
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that person you are watching you are seeing their highlight reel
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you are seeing the polished edited version of their journey you
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don't see the thousands of hours they spent practicing you don't
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see the frustration the mistakes the moments they wanted to quit
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you only see the result imagine you are looking at an
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iceberg you see the beautiful majestic tip above the water it looks perfect
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but underneath the surface there is a massive hidden mountain of ice
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that hidden part represents all the hard work the struggles and the time that went into their success
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When you compare your messy, imperfect beginning or middle to someone else's polished end, you are being unfair to yourself.
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You are comparing your raw ingredients to their finished cake.
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Every single person has a unique journey.
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Some people learn faster because they started younger.
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Some people have more time to study.
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Some people are just naturally good at mimicking sounds.
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But But that doesn't mean you cannot reach your goal.
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It just means your path looks different.
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There is a story about two seeds.
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One is a bamboo seed, and the other is a fern seed.
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You plant them both.
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You water them both.
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The fern grows quickly.
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Within a few weeks, it is lush and green.
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But the bamboo seed?
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Nothing happens.
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You water it for a year.
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Nothing.
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You water it for two years.
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nothing.
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After five years, suddenly, a tiny sprout appears.
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And then, in just six weeks, the bamboo grows 90 feet tall.
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Why?
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Because for five years, the bamboo was growing underground.
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It was building a strong root system to support its height.
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If you had dug it up after two years because you didn't see results, you would have killed it.
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Your English journey is like that bamboo.
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You are building roots.
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You are absorbing the language, understanding the culture, and training your brain.
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Just because you don't see the height yet, doesn't mean you aren't growing.
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So stop looking at other people's gardens.
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Focus on your own plant.
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Water it every day.
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Trust that your roots are growing deep.
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And when you finally shoot up, you will be strong and resilient.
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But there is one final piece to this puzzle.
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It is the secret weapon that separates the people who quit from the people who succeed.
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It is not talent.
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It is not intelligence.
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It is something much simpler.
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So we have reached the end of our journey today.
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We climbed the mountain of frustration.
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We cooked the slow stew of patience.
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We laughed at our mistakes like a baby.
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And we learned to grow our roots deep like the bamboo.
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We have talked about all the reasons why we want to quit.
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But I promised you the secret weapon.
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I told you there is one thing that separates the people who succeed from the people who don't.
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It is not magic.
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It is not a special brain.
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It is simply the decision to stay.
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Think about a bus stop.
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If you wait for the bus for 10 minutes and it doesn't come, what do you do?
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If you walk away, you will never get on the bus.
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But if you stay, even if it is raining, even if you are tired, even if you are annoyed,
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eventually the bus will arrive.
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The only way to miss the bus is to leave the stop.
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Success in English is exactly the same.
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You cannot fail if you do not quit.
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Let me repeat that because it is vital.
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You cannot fail if you do not quit.
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You can take a break.
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You can rest.
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You can have a bad week where you don't study at all.
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That is okay.
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That is just a pause.
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But you must not walk away from the bus stop.
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I want to give you one final tool to help you stay.
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It is a tiny word with massive power.
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It is the word, yet.
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When you catch yourself saying, I don't understand this movie, I want you to immediately add, yet.
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I don't understand this movie, yet.
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I cannot speak fluently, yet.
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I don't feel confident, yet.
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Do you feel the difference?
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Without yet, the sentence is a closed door.
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I cannot do it.
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Boom.
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End of story.
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But with yet, the door is open.
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It implies that it will happen.
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It is just a matter of time.
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It tells your brain that success is inevitable.
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It is just waiting for you in the future.
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My friends, I know it is hard.
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I know there are days when your brain feels like mush.
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But I want you to imagine your future self.
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Imagine the version of you five years from now.
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That person is traveling, making jokes in English, understanding movies without subtitles, and feeling proud.
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That future version of you is real.
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They are waiting for you.
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They are cheering for you right now, saying, Keep going.
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Don't stop.
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We are so close.
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Don't let that future version of you down.
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You have come too far to drop the microphone now.
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You have invested too much time, too much energy, and too much hope to walk away.
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So, make a promise to yourself today.
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Not a promise to be perfect.
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Not a promise to study for 5 hours a day.
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Just a simple promise.
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I will not give up.
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I will rest if I need to, but I will not quit.
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Thank you for letting me be a part of your journey today.
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Thank you for your courage.
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Keep climbing that mountain.
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Keep watering your bamboo.
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And remember, the view from the top is going to be spectacular.
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This is Charlotte, reminding you that your voice has power, and your persistence has power.
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Go out there and use it.
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I will see you in the next episode.
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Bye for now.
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Enjoyed this episode?
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Why Practice Speaking with This Video?
Practicing your English speaking skills is essential for becoming fluent and confident in communication. This video provides a rich listening context that captures the emotional highs and lows of learning a new language. Charlotte's message about not giving up resonates with many learners, particularly when facing challenges. By listening to her experience and reflecting on the journey of learning English, you can engage in active shadow speech—mimicking her words and intonation—which is an effective way to improve English pronunciation. This practice helps you build resilience against the frustration that often accompanies the learning process and reinforces your commitment to keep going.
Grammar & Expressions in Context
Throughout the video, Charlotte uses a variety of sentence structures and expressions that are valuable for English learners:
- “I want to tell you something very important.” – This phrase showcases how to introduce key points. It's a useful structure for learners when they want to emphasize something in conversation.
- “Imagine you are hiking up a very high mountain.” – The use of the present continuous tense helps convey ongoing action, a vital element in storytelling.
- “That feeling is uncomfortable, but it is normal.” – This structure uses contrasting adjectives, which is important for expressing complex thoughts and emotions.
- “Giving up is a permanent solution to a temporary problem.” – This statement exemplifies the use of abstract nouns and is a great template for expressing philosophical views.
By practicing these expressions in context, you can enhance your IELTS speaking practice and engage more effectively in conversations.
Common Pronunciation Traps
As you engage with this video, pay attention to specific words and phrases that may present pronunciation challenges:
- “Frustration” – Be aware of the stress on the third syllable. Practice exaggerating the “-stration” part to master it.
- “Mountain” – The vowel sounds can be tricky. Ensure you articulate the “ou” sound clearly, so it doesn't come out as “manten.”
- “Weather” – Notice how Charlotte pronounces this word quickly. Make sure you practice it slowly at first, focusing on the “w” sound, to ensure clarity.
Consider using a shadowing app to practice these words by mimicking the cadence and emotion in Charlotte's delivery. This exercise can significantly improve your fluency and confidence.
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.