Shadowing Practice: my (hopeful) reading list for march - Learn English Speaking with Video
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Hi and welcome back to my little corner on the internet.
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Hello and welcome back.
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Sooner than you may have expected.
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It was a little surprise.
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But because we're at the start of March, it's a new month.
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I just wanted to make a video about my March reading, my sort of plans,
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or at least I'm trying to like solidify myself into a general reading direction
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because i feel like my reading has been all over the place
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and i am just i need to lock in you know what i mean
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so that's what we're doing today that's what we're talking about
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today i'd say it's a humble stack ish we'll see and
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because it is a new month we all know what
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that means it means a new book of the month package i it's my favorite time of the month
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when my little blue box comes it's It's like Christmas every month for me.
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It's just so thank you so much book of the month for supporting today's video.
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So every month you get to select a brand new hardcover book from a very meticulously selected range of novels.
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Created specifically by the book of the month team and they ship it straight to your door.
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And I just I love book of the month just
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because they tend to focus on supporting new and upcoming authors
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and putting out quality books and it's just it's a nice thing to have
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and this month my two picks are i chose two books
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this time why not my first pick was kin by tayari jones this first of all gorgeous gorgeous cover
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and to give you a little sneak peek as to what this book is about it follows avernus
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and annie two motherless daughters raised in honeysuckle louisiana
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and they've been best friends and neighbors since earliest childhood but are fated to live starkly different lives.
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Raised by a fierce aunt determined to give her a stable home in the wake of her mother's death, Bernice leaves honeysuckle for college at Atlanta where she joins a sisterhood of powerfully connected black women
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and discovers a world of affluence, manners, aspiration, and inequality.
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Annie, abandoned by her mother as a child and fixated on the idea of finding her,
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sets off on a journey that will take her into a world of peril and adversity as well as love and adventure, culminating in a battle for her life.
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I love reading about books of, I guess, self-discovery, identity, growing in the wake of grieving and loss and,
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you know, trying to overcome these hurdles of life.
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This sounds like a beautiful, beautiful book and I'm very, very excited.
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And my other selection for the month, which I'm extremely excited for as well, is Almost Life by Kieran Millwood Hargrave.
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Also So, an amazing book.
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And for you to get a little understanding and a little sneak peek as to what this book is about,
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it follows Erica and laura who meet on the steps in a sacre corps i don't know
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if i'm saying
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that right in paris 1978 erica is relishing her first summer
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abroad before beginning university at home in england laura is studying for her doctorate drinking
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and smoking far too much and sleeping with a married woman the moment
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that you the moment the two women meet the spark is
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undeniable their encounter becomes far more than a passing summer fling evolving into a relationship
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that will define their lives in the decades to come erica
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and laura will constantly be pulled into each other's orbit they will experience heart wrenching losses
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and dreams realized and crushed and other great loves
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and heartbreaks each time they meet they will be faced with the same choice their love
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or another life sounds perfect to me it really focuses on
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the sort of power of love how there are certain people in our lives that just
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no matter what happens they kind of come in
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and out of your life throughout your life
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and you have to just kind of question you know what
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is the significance what does it mean to choose a certain someone it just seems
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so endearing and i'm very very excited especially
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because it's set in like hello i love books
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that are set in like diverse countries like
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so those are my two book of the month picks
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so you can join today
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and you can use my code lucky to get your first
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book of the month book for just $9.99 along with free gift
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and you can click the link down below and thank you
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so much book of the month again for supporting today's video I'm gonna take my hat off
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because I'm gonna start sweating anyways along with those two
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that I really do want to get into very soon I have a currently reading stack
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that I've been jumping between these three books for a hot second
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because I've just been in different moods every time and
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so hopefully I will finish these within the next week or
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so i would say these three books being final exam by julio cortazar
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which i have mentioned i think these three books before in past videos
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but this follows a couple students preparing for their final exam set in argentina
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and then there's this mysterious fog that falls over the city
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and it kind of follows all these students kind of going
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about life preparing for their final exam along with this mysterious mysterious character called abel
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and they're They're having these very interesting conversations about life, writing, poetry, alongside this fog that's kind of plaguing the sort of atmosphere that they're living in.
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And it just provides really, it's been really interesting reading about how kind of on the brink everything feels.
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And it kind of feels like an academia book.
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I'm not going to lie.
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If you enjoy Dark Academia, I feel like that's a good, good book to get into.
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The prose is really amazing.
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And it feels very dreamlike.
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It's very rhythmic at times, especially with the structure of the writing itself.
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I'm really, really enjoying that book.
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And I'm probably going to finish it within the next couple of days because I don't have much left.
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My other one is Zami, A New Spelling of My Name by Audre Lorde.
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I've been reading this for a bit as well i'm taking my time with it
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because it is very i guess stagnant there's not like very epic
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or anything it's more it is a biomythography biomethography where it
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is almost like a fictionalized biography of audrey lord's life
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and experience as a black woman and it's been
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so beautiful her writing is just it's perfect it's
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so easy to read but it's also there's this sort of elevated sense to it
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and i'm really really enjoying it
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and just reading about her specific experience has been very like eye-opening
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because you know i will never be able to experience anything
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that she's experienced to that extent so i've been enjoying
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that one and then also lastly also finishing this one up
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which is The Exes by Leodora Darlington
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which is it's more of a thriller type of book I don't typically read this genre
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but it's been really really entertaining it kind of bounces between
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timelines of this woman's life of her experiences with her exes
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and what she's done to them
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and upon getting into this new relationship with this guy at this big company
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that she works for at this brewery company she's kind of brought back to reflect on
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and fight back on these like inner demons that she's dealt with
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because of her past relationships and what she's done to these people
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and some points i'm reading this book
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and i'm like oh oh you you did that okay okay
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but it's really really entertaining it's kind of crazy
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but it's really fun and i'm really enjoying that one
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so i'll probably finish that one also very soon
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and then for my last two picks
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that i really want to get to this month that I've been eyeing for the longest time.
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And because, if you can see, my shelves have a very interesting structure to them.
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And there's this one section where I've read every single book on there except for this one book, and that is Common Decency by Susanna Dickey.
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I've had this book on my shelf for the longest time, and I need to get to it.
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And I just thought, I'm going to finish off this section of my bookshelf and read all of it.
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In an apartment building in Belfast, two women wrestle with the sorrows and specters of love and loss.
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since her mother's death lily has withdrawn from the world trapped between grief
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and anger she has to break out of this damaging cycle
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but how upstairs ban is consumed by an affair with a
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married man her days revolve around the sporadic texan rave rare
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visits she barely notices the strange girl who lives below
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and dawdles in the foyer
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but lily is keeping a close eye on her neighbor whose life seems
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so much better and more fulfilling than her own when resentment revolves evolves into something darker and more urgent, she decides to teach Subban a lesson.
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It seems very very endearing and I find
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that this whole idea of how you perceive someone else's life based off of just simply what you see
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and what you assume for someone is so interesting and again alongside with obsession and kind of going a bit crazy probably.
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I don't know.
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It seems really interesting.
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Set in Belfast, which I don't think I've read anything set in Belfast before.
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So I'm excited to get into that.
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And I feel like books in that genre that explores these themes of, I guess, intense anger, obsession, and somewhat darkness
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and violence is just really nice for the transition period of going from summer into autumn
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which is what is happening right now even though it's still pretty hot outside we're technically in autumn over here
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so i'm slowly trying to transition the vibe of my books into
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that to suit the weather and because of
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that i'm going to finish off by saying
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that i need to get back into brutes by dis tate i had started reading this ages ago
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and then i forgot it at my friend's house
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and i completely forgot and i just decided before it gets cold
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and it's not the vibes anymore i want to try again
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and read this book it's not very long at all i can probably finish it very soon
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so i'm really excited to get to this because i've seen
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so many good things about this book this follows a group
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of teenagers who peer out at their scorched swampy fame hungry
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town taking turns with the binoculars their gaze sweeps across the highway
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and the abandoned construction site to the lake figures drift across
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the landscape mothers fathers a preacher's daughter these girls know everything about everyone
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perhaps too much so i've seen a lot of people say
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that this book kind of gives preacher's daughter by ethel kane
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which i freaking love that album so i'm really excited to get into
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that and i think having
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that sort of religious undertone to it really asks this sort of country gothic vibe that's going on
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and I really really enjoy sort of observatory books like books
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that kind of focus on storytelling through observation
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and I think also having it be from this sort of teenage perspective is always really fun
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because there is that certain level of youth and naivete
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that feels very nostalgic and it makes it just makes it for a more interesting book I think sometimes but yes
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that that's my march tbr those are my hopeful plans it's kind it's somewhat humble in my opinion
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but we will see how we go i also don't like to pressure myself too much
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because i know that life can get too much sometimes
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and i just can't get to it
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but that's okay i hope you guys enjoyed me yapping away about the books
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that i want to read
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if you guys have read any of these books let me know what you think i love to hear thoughts
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and opinions but yeah you guys should also go ahead
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and follow me on instagram at longing for literature
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because i've been posting way more often on there really just trying to like chill out more
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and just review more stay more in touch you know what i mean
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and again thank you so much for book of the month for supporting today's video
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and i will see you guys next week in the next video
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This B2 speaking lesson is built on the video “my (hopeful) reading list for march”. This video has 171 sentences and 2160 words to shadow. The speech runs for 11:32. The speaker talks fast, about 187 words per minute, so expect linked and reduced sounds. 82% 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
The 15 most advanced words in the video, with pronunciation and meaning:
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| vibe noun | /vaɪb/ | An atmosphere or aura felt to belong to a person, place or thing. |
| mysterious adjective | /mɪˈstɪɹi.əs/ | Of unknown origin. |
| endearing adjective | /ɪnˈdɪɹɪŋ/ | Inspiring affection or love, often in a childlike way. |
| honeysuckle noun | /ˈhʌn.i.sʌk.əl/ | Any of the many species of arching shrubs and climbing vines of the genus Lonicera in the Caprifoliaceae family, many with sweet-smelling, bell-shaped flowers. |
| revolve verb | /ɹɪˈvɑlv/ | To cause (something) to turn around a central point. |
| academia noun | /ˌæk.əˈdi.mi.ə/ | The scientific and cultural community engaged in higher education and research, taken as a whole. |
| peek verb | /piːk/ | To look slyly, or with the eyes half closed, or through a crevice; to peep. |
| evolve verb | /ɪˈvɑlv/ | To move (something) in regular procession through a system. |
| entertain verb | /ˌɛntəˈteɪn/ | To amuse (someone); to engage the attention of agreeably. |
| obsession noun | /əbˈsɛʃən/ | The quality of being obsessed; an unshakeable feeling that one topic or activity must be pursued above other interests. |
| sneak verb | /sniːk/ | To creep or go stealthily; to come or go while trying to avoid detection, as a person who does not wish to be seen. |
| shelf noun | /ʃɛlf/ | A flat, rigid structure, fixed at right angles to a wall or forming a part of a cabinet, desk, etc., and used to display, store, or support objects. |
| abandon verb | /əˈbæn.dən/ | To give up or relinquish control of, to surrender or to give oneself over, or to yield to one's emotions. |
| stack noun | /stæk/ | A large pile of hay, grain, straw, or the like, larger at the bottom than the top, sometimes covered with thatch. |
| humble adjective | /ˈhʌmbəl/ | Not pretentious or magnificent; unpretending; unassuming. |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| finish off verb | To finish completely. | |
| fall over verb | To fall from an upright or standing position to a horizontal or prone position. | |
| go ahead verb | /ˌɡoʊ əˈhɛd/ | To proceed with; to begin. |
| put out verb | To blind (eyes). |
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 | I've been jumping · I've been reading · i've been enjoying |
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | has been · they've been · I've just been |
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | are fated · be pulled · will be faced |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 52 contractions and reduced forms, such as I'm, I've, don't. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “th” sounds: rhythmic /ˈɹɪð.mɪk/, thriller /ˈθɹɪ.lə/, withdraw /wɪðˈdɹɔ/
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: obsession /əbˈsɛʃən/, shelf /ʃɛlf/, genre /ˈ(d)ʒɑnɹə/, aspiration /ˌæspəˈɹeɪʃən/, bookshelf /ˈbʊkˌʃɛlf/
- Long words — get the stress right: mysterious /mɪˈstɪɹi.əs/, honeysuckle /ˈhʌn.i.sʌk.əl/, academia /ˌæk.əˈdi.mi.ə/, adversity /ædˈvɜː.sɪ.ti/, aspiration /ˌæspəˈɹeɪʃən/
How to practise with this video
- Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
- Start at 0.75× speed, shadow it sentence by sentence, then go back to normal speed once it feels easy.
- Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like vibe, mysterious, endearing.
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.