Shadowing Practice: LITERATURE - Charles Darwin - Learn English Speaking with Video
Creating lesson...
1
It's completely understandable that we're often maddened by what might be called normal humanity.
2
The way in which emotions so regularly triumph over careful reasoning.
3
The power of group loyalty, even when the group doesn't seem to deserve much devotion.
4
The vast mechanisms of status-seeking that drive so much excess consumption.
5
widespread selfishness and indifference to the greater needs of distant others.
6
And we can find ourselves in the privacy of our heads
7
or in the occasional late-night outburst railing against the fools and idiots who,
8
so unfortunately, seem to occupy so many of the prominent places of power, wealth and influence in our world.
9
In such moods, the 19th century naturalist Charles Darwin has much to say to us.
10
He was born in England in 1809 into a well-to-do and intellectually distinguished family.
11
He was much influenced by visiting in his twenties the Galapagos Islands,
12
where he could see first-hand species remarkably different from those that existed elsewhere.
13
In later life, he was a quiet, rather withdrawn man.
14
He became the world's leading expert on barnacles.
15
He achieved worldwide fame for his great work on the origin of species by natural selection.
16
But Darwin felt that people had not quite understood the implications of his ideas and in 1871, when he was in his 60s,
17
he brought out a title called The Descent of Man.
18
Darwin liked to say that he had thought of calling his book The Ascent of Man, but that that would suggest some idea of progress,
19
a concept he did not believe in.
20
Rather, what Darwin wanted to do was to show that despite the obvious technical advances of past centuries,
21
modern people are still fundamentally at exactly the same moral level, or even perhaps a slightly worse level, than their remote ancestors.
22
Darwin's big point is that the basic psychological characteristics of human beings evolved to aid survival in the very remote past.
23
At the simplest level, we are generally attracted to sweet things because, in the very extended period of early human development,
24
that meant eating wild berries, which are great for our health.
25
It's only been in very recent times
26
that this in-built desire has turned against us and given us a craving for manufactured sugar,
27
which by Darwin's time had become a major industrial commodity.
28
We also evolved to be highly conscious of our own position within our immediate group,
29
since so much of our early survival in the past depended on that.
30
So today, being liked feels as if it is a life or death issue, precisely because in the past, it precisely was that.
31
It indicated when you would be served when the spoils of the hunt were being distributed.
32
Practically everything back then depended on having a mate and reproducing and so our minds are massively preoccupied by questions of reproduction,
33
even though today this is not actually central to our own individual survival or even happiness.
34
And obviously, emotional behaviour is much earlier and much more deeply rooted than elaborate reasoning,
35
which is a very recent and still terribly fragile development in human culture.
36
We can put on clothes and drive in cars, but we are still carrying, Charles Darwin insists, our primate heritage.
37
And that, though disappointing, is not really our fault, it is simply a fact we need to get used to.
38
Charles Darwin teaches us in his great work The Descent of
39
Man to feel compassion for the very large primitive part of who we all are and will always be.
40
Thank you.
📺 Same Channel
C2483
The Purpose and Benefit of Emotional Education
British AccentBusiness EnglishUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
B22
The Childish Behavior That Ruins Adult Relationships
Daily ConversationWorking Adults
B24
Why Religious Beliefs Aren't Just Silly
British AccentIELTS PrepTOEFL PrepUniversity Students
B22
How to Love without fear
British AccentBusiness EnglishDaily ConversationUniversity Students
C17
What Years of Heartbreak Actually Teach Us
British AccentDaily ConversationUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
C2385
What's Education For?
British AccentBusiness EnglishUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
C11
How to Get Over Someone
British AccentUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
B247
What is The School of Life?
British AccentBusiness EnglishDaily ConversationUniversity Students
C148
Don't Despair
British AccentUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
B26
Why Heartbroken People Make the Best Lovers
British AccentDaily ConversationUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
B22
Why Some Breakups Hurt So Much More Than Others
British AccentDaily ConversationUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
C13
How to Spot the Loveliest People in the World
British AccentDaily ConversationUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
B21
Are You Neurotic or Psychotic? How to Tell the Difference
British AccentDaily ConversationUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
C16
Why We Should Refuse to Get Into Arguments
British AccentBusiness EnglishDaily ConversationUniversity Students
C111
When Love Isn't Easy
British AccentDaily ConversationUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
C13
PHILOSOPHY - Plato
British AccentDaily ConversationUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
B26
Who Dreams of the Greatest Love? (it's not who you expect)
British AccentDaily ConversationUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
B2How to Find Out What's Really on Your Mind
British AccentDaily ConversationUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
C13
How to Be Strong and Resilient
British AccentBusiness EnglishUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
B24
What to think of the Rice Theory of the Japanese Character
British AccentBusiness EnglishUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
✨ Recommend Video
B21
18 sentences
Bài đọc Mother Nature
IELTS PrepTOEFL PrepUniversity Students
B2291 sentences
Why did white men conquer the world?
IELTS PrepTOEFL PrepUniversity Students
C1175
24 sentences
The uncomfortable truth | Yuval Noah Harari
IELTS PrepTOEFL PrepUniversity Students
C13
19 sentences
Literature Might Not Save You — Ocean Vuong
IELTS PrepTOEFL PrepUniversity Students
C12
63 sentences
Unit 6: ANTHROPOLOGY/BIOLOGY: The Science of Love (Note-taking)
IELTS PrepTOEFL PrepUniversity Students
C11
364 sentences
Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari | Read by Derek Perkins | Penguin Audiobooks
IELTS PrepTOEFL PrepUniversity Students
C11
105 sentences
POLITICAL THEORY - Karl Marx
British AccentIELTS PrepTOEFL PrepUniversity Students
C13
86 sentences
Who Am I?
British AccentIELTS PrepTOEFL PrepUniversity Students
C145
66 sentences
What science can’t answer, according to physicist Jim Al-Khalili | Big Think
IELTS PrepTOEFL PrepUniversity Students
![Tanya's Speech: Humans prefer emotions over logic.[Youjo Senki]](https://img.youtube.com/vi/QN5yBjPqSwY/mqdefault.jpg)
B24
41 sentences
Tanya's Speech: Humans prefer emotions over logic.[Youjo Senki]
IELTS PrepTOEFL PrepCambridge Exam Prep
B219
167 sentences
Why do Humans Have Different Skin Colors?
IELTS PrepTOEFL PrepUniversity Students
C11
114 sentences
Education in America
IELTS PrepTOEFL PrepUniversity Students
Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This video has 40 sentences and 593 words to shadow. The speech runs for 4:10. The speaker talks at a steady 142 words per minute, a comfortable pace for shadowing. Only 81% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English, so the vocabulary is demanding.
Key vocabulary in this video
15 words from the video worth learning, with pronunciation and meaning:
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| survival noun | /sɚˈvaɪ.vəl/ | The fact or act of surviving; continued existence or life. |
| remote adjective | /ɹəˈməʊt̞/ | At a distance; disconnected. |
| depend verb | /dɪˈpɛnd/ | To be contingent or conditioned; to have something as a necessary condition |
| precisely adverb | /pɹɪˈsaɪs.li/ | In a precise manner; exactly. |
| evolve verb | /ɪˈvɑlv/ | To move (something) in regular procession through a system. |
| vast adjective | /væst/ | Very large or wide (literally or figuratively). |
| elsewhere adverb | /ˈɛlsˌʍɛɹ/ | Synonym of somewhere else: in, at, or to some other place. |
| moral adjective | /ˈmoɹəl/ | Of or relating to principles of right and wrong in behaviour, especially conforming to principles of rectitude. |
| deeply adverb | /ˈdi(ː)pli/ | To a deep extent or degree; very greatly. |
| happiness noun | /ˈhæpinɪs/ | The emotion of being happy; joy; elation. |
| mood noun | /muːd/ | A mental or emotional state, composure. |
| rail noun | /ɹeɪ(ə)l/ | A horizontal bar extending between supports and used for support or as a barrier; a railing. |
| behaviour noun | British standard spelling of behavior. | |
| heritage noun | /ˈhɛɹ.ɪ.tɪd͡ʒ/ | An inheritance; property that may be inherited. |
| privacy noun | /ˈpɹaɪ.və.si/ | The state of being secluded from the presence, sight, or knowledge of others. |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Meaning |
|---|---|
| bring out verb | To elicit, evoke, or emphasize (a particular quality). |
Pronunciation to watch
- The “th” sounds: withdraw /wɪðˈdɹɔ/, cloth /klɒθ/
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: consumption /kənˈsʌmp.ʃən/, emotion /ɪˈməʊ.ʃən/, conscious /ˈkɑn.ʃəs/, occasional /əˈkeɪʒ(ə)nəl/, compassion /kəmˈpæʃ.ən/
- Long words — get the stress right: humanity /hjuˈmænɪti/, mechanism /ˈmɛk.ə.nɪ.zəm/, psychological /ˌsaɪ.kəˈlɑː.d͡ʒɪ.kl̩/, practically /ˈpɹæk.tɪ.k(ə.)li/, occasional /əˈkeɪʒ(ə)nəl/
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 survival, remote, depend.
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.