Shadowing Practice: Ocean Vuong Tells Oprah What It Means to Live Only Once - Learn English Speaking with YouTube
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That's how the book begins.
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That's how the book begins.
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The hardest thing in the world is to live only once.
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Yeah.
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Well, in a sense, you know,
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the idea of YOLO, you only live once,
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has been really destructive to our world.
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You know, corporations think they only have one life to harvest the most profit out of the environment
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and therefore harm the environment.
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You know, we're told again and again,
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no regrets, just seize the day.
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and it's very self-centered in a way.
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But I think another way to think about you only live once is what
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if you only have one chance to live with care,
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consideration, a sense of obligation to each other?
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And it's not even like this,
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you know, goody, woo-woo, selflessness,
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but it actually makes your life much better when you live with the obligation that you owe each other everything.
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both strangers and family and your environment and your community.
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And so I wanted to just change the meaning of YOLO.
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And as a poet, I love that one phrase could have double meaning.
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You can approach it that if you only have one life,
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what if you didn't just grab everything you can in the candy store,
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leaving it a total catastrophe in your wake?
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But what if you did it so that other people can also inhabit that space and you can improve it?
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And, you know, our culture often thinks that's silly, that's childish, right?
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It's too wholesome and earnest.
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But I think earnestness is an incredible, courageous thing.
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I respect it immensely in the people I meet and the students I have.
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If you're earnest and sincere,
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it's the most greatest truth because it means that you're willing to risk vulnerability and ridicule.
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You're willing to be wrong and come off silly because you believe in everything.
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I think it's okay to believe in everything.
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It's okay to believe that if you have this one life,
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you should try to make it better for other people.
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Children just have that.
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It's not a question to them.
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But as you get older,
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we start to be more fearful of that because we think that if I believe in goodness too much,
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then I've fallen for something.
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I've been duped.
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I've been stymied into believing goodness.
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And sometimes it's really hard.
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There are days where I can't do it.
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But that's my North Star.
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And that's why I started the book with that North Star,
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is that the hardest thing is to live only once.
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So make it count and make it count for others as well.
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Thank you, Prashida.
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When you started the book,
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did you start it with high story?
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Because I've talked to authors,
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they start in the middle.
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Wally Lamb told me he started,
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you know, this much is true.
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He started it in the middle because he had the idea for the twins.
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Where did it start for you?
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It started with landscape.
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It started with the town.
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I write by hand.
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So I wrote this the day after the election in 2020.
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When the results were coming in,
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it was kind of chaotic.
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No one knew what was the results were.
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And I said, all right,
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I'm gonna rent a room.
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I live in Western Massachusetts.
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I'm gonna rent a little cabin and just go away.
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And when I come back,
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hopefully we'll know what's happening.
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But it got more and more convoluted,
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as you remember from that election.
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Yeah.
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And no one knew where the country was going to be headed,
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who was going to head it.
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And I turned off all the radios and TV.
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I went to this cabin.
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I started writing by hand.
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And I spent nine pages writing about the towns in the Connecticut River Valley that sustained me,
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that I grew up in.
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Because I wanted to really think,
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like, what is my America?
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What is America?
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and I want to really sink in to the town as a character, as description.
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I wanted to really love it in all of its difficulty to just present it and not go on with a plot.
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So it started with space.
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It started with land and the history of land because land is tied to history.
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And at the end of the day,
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I think I write historical fiction,
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not in the sense of a period piece,
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but I write fiction that has history involved in it,
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and land is a part of history.
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Yeah, this is on page three where you're just scribing the natural area,
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and you say, Look how the birches,
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blackened all night by starlings,
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shatter when dawn's first sparks touch their beaks.
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I went, holy Jesus, who is this guy?
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When dawn's first shadow touches their beaks,
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It felt like we were right there watching them disperse, right?
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Well, the sentence is a linear technology.
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So it's a kind of a track.
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And what you do as an author is that you're asking a reader for their trust to say,
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just stay with me in this track.
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Because it's a big leap of faith.
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It's almost like when you're riding on a roller coaster, it's one track.
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And as an author, you have to say,
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well, let's just come with me and we're going to zoom in on something
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that people often drive past and don't think about.
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And so the book is a wonderful opportunity to recalibrate value systems,
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to create a different hierarchy of values.
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And let's just stay on these starlings and love this landscape because it's so brutal,
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because it's so fruitful to the communities that live it.
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And also, what is America?
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You know, I was haunted by that.
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I don't know what next week is going to look like,
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but I know that this landscape in all of its paradoxes has sustained my imagination
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and I want it to be true to its history.
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Wow.
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Crystal is here.
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I hear the small town setting of this story.
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Really, you connected with this?
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Very much so.
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Thank you so much, Ocean,
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for giving us this book.
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It was incredible.
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I loved it.
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Thank you.
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So I know that this is set in New England,
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but it felt like East Gladness could be any small town really suspended in time.
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I grew up in middle America in and around towns that were left behind.
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And it immediately transported me in chapter one when I was really feeling something deeply familiar.
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So I felt really life at the edge of nothing,
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the looming presence of addiction,
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the randomness of tragedy, working poverty, fast food.
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And this isn't the first time that you've written about small towns and near rural life.
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And I wanted to know what draws you to this kind of setting
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and what continues to inspire you about places like this.
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I grew up in Hartford and Hartford is interesting because if you drive,
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you're in the middle of the city and it's the city that's often been forgotten.
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We often have a saying that all the good things are sucked up by Boston and New York.
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And so it is a place where when you come to it,
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the people there are the people who can't get out.
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They're what's left over.
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We have that mentality.
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And Hartford's interesting.
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You drive 20 minutes and you'll be in a cornfield.
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You could be in the middle of skyscrapers,
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drive 20 minutes in any direction.
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You'd be in a smack dab in a cornfield.
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I was surprised to hear that because I used to go to Hartford.
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My friend Gail started her career there in Hartford.
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Really?
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WFSB in Hartford, yes.
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And so I was thinking,
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I didn't know there were cornfields near Hartford at all.
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Yeah, yeah.
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It's right across the river.
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And a lot of people work in the fields and then live in the city and vice versa.
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And I realized that when you live in a small town,
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a small community, you owe respect to everybody.
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Because you can't be, pardon my French, an asshole.
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If you are, people know your name and they know your family and they know your grandmother.
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And I felt like there's an incredible obligation that you have by offering each other dignity because there's nowhere to hide.
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You can be a jerk in New York and you just fade into the subway and then that's it.
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But there's no anonymity.
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You have to stand by what you believe.
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You have to defend and argue yourself.
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And then you have to face each other when you don't agree.
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You might have to work side by side.
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And so I wanted to see that that's actually not a place left behind.
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That's an advantageous, even innovative way to relate to people.
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When you cannot hide behind anything,
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you have to face each other with respect,
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dignity, and a kind of proximity that so much of America really is.
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If you talk to people,
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everybody kind of wants the same thing.
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Even though we have vastly chaotic and disparate political beliefs,
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at the end of the day,
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we want to live with dignity and respect for each other.
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And living in a small town forces you to do that.
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And it allows you dexterity with the language.
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You know how to talk about something without offending each other, right?
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You talk so that you can see each other again at the laundromat, because you will.
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Because you will.
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Everybody knows your business.
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Yeah.
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Thank you.
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Why practice speaking with this video?
Engaging with the insights of Ocean Vuong in his conversation with Oprah provides a rich context for English speaking practice. This video is an excellent resource for learners who wish to improve their speaking skills through shadow speech techniques. By practicing alongside Vuong's articulate expressions and thoughtful reflections, you'll not only enhance your vocabulary but also gain confidence in your ability to express deep emotions and nuanced ideas in English. Seizing the opportunity to speak and reflect on poignant themes such as living with care and community obligation can transform your practice into a meaningful exercise that resonates with real-life experiences and conversations.
Grammar & Expressions in Context
Within the transcript, several grammatical structures and expressions stand out that can enrich your English speaking abilities:
- Present tense for general truths: The phrase “the hardest thing in the world is to live only once” demonstrates how the present tense is often used to state facts or universal truths.
- Conditional phrases: “What if you only have one chance to live with care” showcases how to construct hypothetical situations effectively, a key skill for IELTS speaking practice.
- Expressions of obligation: Phrases like “you owe each other everything” illustrate the use of modals to express necessity, which can help articulate moral duties in discussion.
- Adverbial modifiers: The usage of adverbs such as “sincerely” or “earnestly” in “it's okay to believe in everything” adds depth to your speech by reflecting your attitude or emotion towards a subject.
Common Pronunciation Traps
As you practice, pay attention to specific words and phrases that may pose challenges in pronunciation:
- Obligation: Take note of the syllable stress in this word; it’s pronounced with an emphasis on the second syllable (ob-LI-ga-tion).
- Earnestness: The soft 'r' in this word can be tricky, so practice saying it slowly: ear-nest-ness to ensure clarity.
- Vulnerability: This challenging word emphasizes how important it is to articulate complex terms clearly, especially in an IELTS speaking context where nuanced discussion is valued.
Using a shadowing app or my shadowing techniques can support your practice, helping you mimic the speaker’s intonation and rhythm. By integrating these elements into your English speaking practice, you can navigate the intricacies of the language more confidently and effectively.
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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