Shadowing Practice: On freedom - Alan Macfarlane - Learn English Speaking with Video
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48 sentences
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On freedom.
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I've spent a lot of time through my life wondering what freedom is and what we should do about it.
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I think I must have thought about it obviously as a child.
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Was I free to go out and play?
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Was I free to take this money from my grandmother and so on?
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But it's really obviously later in school and then at university
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when I started to study political philosophy and heard the great cry of the French Revolution, Liberté and so on.
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And one of the breakthroughs in thinking about it was reading an essay by the political philosopher Isaiah Berlin,
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two concepts of liberty because liberty and freedom obviously are closely connected.
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What this helped me to do was to see that there are two really kinds of freedom and I will
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express this and explain this in relation perhaps to concrete examples.
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In China the major concern is what
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Berlin calls negative liberty, that is freedom from.
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And the kinds of things that certainly recent governments are being concerned with is freedom from poverty.
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So they've raised 800 million people out of poverty.
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Freedom from ill health.
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So they've built a very big extensive national,
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well a health service free for everyone at a basic level and freedom from recent disease.
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So Covid only six or seven thousand deaths compared to a million in America.
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Freedom from ignorance.
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So there's been a huge amount of outreach of schools to remote areas and beefing up the universities and so on.
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Freedom to travel.
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So the communications systems have been improved hugely and the virtual ones as well.
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So those are the kinds of freedoms.
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Not so much concerned with freedom from surveillance or direction from the centre,
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the political freedoms, but the social freedoms are of great concern and they're of a negative kind,
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freedom from things.
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The other kind of freedom that
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Berlin talks about is positive freedom, that is freedom to do things.
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And here you could look at America.
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You have the freedom, the right to bear arms and therefore,
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as happened yesterday, 19 school children in the preparatory school were gunned down with a semi -automatic rifle.
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But you have that freedom to go out as an 18 year old
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and buy a gun and you have freedoms to express yourself as freely as you possibly can
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and many positive freedoms like that.
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And so Berlin himself and I think I myself feel that in our lives it's best to concentrate on the negative freedoms,
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the rules about what you can and can't do.
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And these rules are often quite simple.
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For example, in games there are rules
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that you can't say in football you can't pick up the ball and that's a simple rule.
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There are four or five simple rules like that.
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Whereas if you started to try and make positive rules you must do this,
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you must do that and so on and so on and you have the right to do this, the game would get enormously complicated.
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So I find that this kind of distinction allows me to show some preference towards negative freedoms
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and to see a world in which within responsibility
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and within constraint we can be as free as any animal can be free in this troubled world.
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So those are just a few starting thoughts about freedom.
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Thanks very much.
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This speaking lesson is built on the video “On freedom - Alan Macfarlane”. The speaker keeps coming back to these words: freedom, rule, Berlin, negative, liberty. This video has 48 sentences and 565 words to shadow. The speech runs for 5:01. The speaker talks at a steady 113 words per minute, a comfortable pace for shadowing. 87% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English, so the vocabulary is easy to follow.
Key vocabulary in this video
15 words from the video worth learning, with pronunciation and meaning:
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| liberty noun | /ˈlɪbəti/ | The condition of being free. |
| poverty noun | /ˈpɑːvɚti/ | The quality or state of being poor; lack of money |
| complicated adjective | /ˈkɑm.plɪˌkeɪ.tɪd/ | Difficult or convoluted. |
| compare verb | /kəmˈpɛɚ/ | To assess the similarities and differences between two or more things [“to compare X with Y”]. Having made the comparison of X with Y, one might have found it… |
| concrete adjective | /ˌkɑnˈkɹit/ | Real, actual, tangible. |
| remote adjective | /ɹəˈməʊt̞/ | At a distance; disconnected. |
| whereas | /(h)wɛɹˈæz/ | In contrast; whilst on the contrary; although. |
| connect verb | /kəˈnɛkt/ | To join (to another object): to attach, or to be intended to attach or capable of attaching, to another object. |
| automatic adjective | /ˌɔː.təˈmæt.ɪk/ | Capable of operating without external control or intervention. |
| virtual adjective | /ˈvɜɹt͡ʃuəl/ | In effect or essence, rather than in fact or reality; also, imitated, simulated. |
| relation noun | /ɹɪˈleɪʃ(ə)n/ | The manner in which two things may be associated. |
| beef noun | /bif/ | The meat from cattle or other bovines; especially, that from adults. |
| essay noun | /ˈɛs.eɪ/ | A written composition of moderate length, exploring a particular issue or subject. |
| rifle noun | /ˈɹaɪfəl/ | A firearm fired from the shoulder; improved range and accuracy is provided by a long, rifled barrel. |
| surveillance noun | /sɚˈveɪ.ləns/ | Close observation of an individual or group; person or persons under suspicion. |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Meaning |
|---|---|
| go out verb | To leave, especially a building. |
| pick up verb | To lift; to grasp and raise. |
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | I've spent · they've raised · they've built |
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | have been improved · were gunned |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 7 contractions and reduced forms, such as can't, they've, I've. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “th” sounds: grandmother /ˈɡɹæn(d)ˌmʌðɚ/, breakthrough /ˈbɹeɪk.θɹuː/
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: relation /ɹɪˈleɪʃ(ə)n/, distinction /dɪˈstɪŋkʃən/
- Long words — get the stress right: complicated /ˈkɑm.plɪˌkeɪ.tɪd/, automatic /ˌɔː.təˈmæt.ɪk/, philosopher /fəˈlɑsəfɚ/, preparatory /ˈpɹɛp(ə)ɹətɔɹi/
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 liberty, poverty, complicated.
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.