Shadowing Practice: Ocean Vuong Shares with Oprah What She Meant to Him and His Mother - Learn English Speaking with YouTube

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When you called me, this is Oprah.
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131 sentences
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When you called me, this is Oprah.
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How are you?
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What?
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This is Oprah Winfrey.
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How are you?
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I recognized the voice right away.
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I just didn't believe that you were talking to me for any real reason.
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But when I heard your voice,
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I said, this is the voice I heard all my life at 4 o'clock when I answered the phone.
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And you know, I wanted to tell you this,
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that your voice was a kind of mediation for all of these women in the nail salon,
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both the workers and the people who went there to get their nails done.
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Because I saw them when they came in with their husbands
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and the husbands would wait for a while and then they would leave.
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And after a while, it would just be all women.
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And I found that their voices changed with your voice among them.
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And as a child, it was so interesting to hear speech,
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everyone talking differently, They were more vulnerable,
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they were more open with each other.
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And I got to see my mother kind of use the show
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as a way to open up for herself and to learn the language.
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She would not always understand what was happening,
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but she would have this little trick where she would,
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every time there was like an inflected moment in the show with your voice,
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my mother would work on a client and she would go, Oh boy.
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And then the client would, it always works.
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You could, any given time,
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you could just say, oh boy.
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And then the client would say, isn't that right?
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And then she would learn what was happening from them because her voice,
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her head is down.
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She couldn't hear it.
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But I saw this kind of town square that your voice created and the themes and what was really touching for me,
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and I didn't understand it at that time.
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For a community that I grew up in,
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working poor, immigrants, reading was very intimidating.
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We didn't step into bookstores or libraries.
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It felt like an impenetrable world that was not for us.
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And it was aligned with elitism and power and institutions and higher learning that we thought,
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well, that ship has sailed for us.
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But when you held up the books in your show,
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my mother recognized that and says, oh, this is accessible.
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making the act of reading both accessibly dignified,
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but also fruitful for people who are outside of these realms of institutional elitism.
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And I saw the women talk about books in your show,
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and then they would walk across the Barnes & Noble,
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across the mall, and they would have language.
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And they would come in and they would say,
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this is the book I want.
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I know how to talk about it.
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And there's a kind of dignified confidence to literacy.
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I don't know if anyone has talked about that,
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but I think that was the major byproduct
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that your show did is that it made working class people who don't have access to centers of knowledge.
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They don't get to be in a classroom and have high philosophy around craft or what have you.
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They get to participate in the vehicle of culture and you make culture legible to them who often don't have that chance.
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So I just want to say thank you so much for that.
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Oh my God.
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Now I'm going to cry.
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Well, I think your mother is with us in spirit today.
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She would be so proud that it is now your book that I'm holding up and telling the world about her son.
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And when you were, you know,
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working in the nail salon,
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you're working at the Boston Market,
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How did you get to be Ocean Vong, the celebrated writer?
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Well, my mother knew I was a nerd.
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And we came up in Vietnam as rice farmers.
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I was the first to go to college, the first to read.
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And we've been rice farmers very happily for hundreds of years.
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It was the war that ejected us from that idyllic world into this one.
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And so by geopolitical violence and accident,
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I'm now a professor in a way.
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But she knew that in this country,
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the sentence will be the medium that can make us change and change our lives.
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She didn't understand it, but she knew it was powerful.
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So she would drop me off before her shift at the nail salon,
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at the public library, and she gave me this mandate.
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She said, you go in there and you read everything,
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especially what you don't understand.
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Wow.
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And it's so interesting because that's what I give my students now.
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I said, you have to move towards the unknown, the mystery.
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The condition of not knowing is the first step of knowledge.
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Wow.
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Don't be afraid of not knowing.
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You owe it to yourself to go to the root of the mystery.
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And that is to work not only a pedagogy and education,
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but also of life.
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It goes beyond books.
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When I called you, I told you that when I told you I was choosing this as a book club,
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I said, I still think about High.
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I still think about Sony.
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I still think about these characters.
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Readers, didn't you love these characters?
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And don't they stay with you?
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And so I am just wondering how this story came to be.
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I'm always fascinated by the process by which authors come to tell their story.
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It feels like the emperor was always inside you somewhere.
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How did it come to be?
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Yeah, you know, America has often been founded on the idea of the nuclear family.
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And one antidote to that might be the found family.
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Yeah.
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But I actually think when we look at the history of our culture,
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it's the circumstantial family founded around labor.
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And so when I worked at Boston Market as a teenager,
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I found that it was actually the relationships that you had with people you don't choose.
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people who are cobbled together working through a shift,
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and you start to know their footsteps.
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You start to feel the cologne they wear,
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the gum, and when that gum will expire.
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You can hear how they cough, how they talk.
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And the intimacy that comes from the circumstantial labor cobbled together is actually the foundation of so much of our country.
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So much of it is founded on labor,
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loneliness, and love in the midst of all that.
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I think that's so powerful, don't you all?
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You have your chosen family.
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You have your family that you're born into.
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Many people have a chosen family that they found.
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But all of us who work,
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and certainly I remember during certainly all the years that I spent here in Chicago,
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25 years just down the street,
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that we were our own circumstantial family
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and were integrated in each other's lives in a way
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that you weren't integrated in the lives of all the people who were your biological family.
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And I have to say,
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you've created the most memorable,
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misfit, motley crew of characters.
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And I love that each one of them had their own level of kindness in their own unique way.
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And I think that that kind of group uh,
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happens all over the world.
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People create camaraderie with each other.

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Why practice speaking with this video?

This captivating conversation between Ocean Vuong and Oprah Winfrey provides a rich context for English speaking practice. The exchange illustrates the importance of communication in personal and community growth, particularly among immigrants and working-class individuals. As Vuong shares his experiences, you gain access to authentic dialogues that highlight emotional depth and vulnerability. This makes it an excellent resource for those looking to learn English with YouTube, as it showcases real-life context where language is both a barrier and a bridge.

Listening to and repeating phrases from this video not only improves your vocabulary but also enhances your ability to express complex emotions and ideas, which is particularly useful for individuals preparing for IELTS speaking practice. By shadowing Vuong’s speech patterns, you train your mind and mouth to produce sounds and sentences that reflect genuine conversation.

Grammar & Expressions in Context

During the discussion, several key structures and expressions can be observed:

  • "When I heard your voice, I said..." - This structure shows how to express reactions to events, making it a useful phrase in storytelling.
  • "It felt like an impenetrable world..." - This metaphor demonstrates how to convey feelings about barriers, which is beneficial for discussing challenges in learning.
  • "I found that their voices changed..." - Noticing changes over time is important in conversation and can help articulate personal experiences of growth.
  • "This is accessible..." - This phrase emphasizes the importance of comprehension and relatability in discussions, which public speakers often aim for to connect with their audience.

These phrases are not only practical but also embody the themes of empowerment and belonging, setting a framework for learners to practice their own narratives using similar structures.

Common Pronunciation Traps

As you practice with this video, pay attention to some potentially tricky pronunciation points:

  • Intonation: Observe how Ocean Vuong varies his pitch to convey emotion and emphasis, especially in phrases like "Isn't that right?"
  • Vowel Sounds: Words such as "mediating" and "intimidating" can pose challenges due to their longer vowel sounds, which may differ from your native language.
  • Contractions: The casual use of contractions like "didn't" and "wouldn't" reflects informal speech patterns that are common in conversations.

Focusing on these elements while shadowing Vuong’s speech will enhance your pronunciation and overall fluency, ensuring you can communicate effectively and confidently in English.

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.

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