Shadowing Practice: One in three Australian households going hungry | 7NEWS - Learn English Speaking with Video
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The annual Foodbank Hunger Report has revealed one in three Australian households went hungry over the past year,
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most of those experiencing food insecurity for the first time.
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Foodbank Australia CEO Carly Tink joins me now to discuss all of this.
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Your figures, Carly, are grim.
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3 .5 million Australian households experiencing food insecurity.
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Let's start by defining what exactly food insecurity means.
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Yeah, Chris, it is really grim, actually.
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To qualify as being food insecure under our survey you actually have to change the way
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that you interact with food
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so to be really clear
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this is not just worrying about whether you're going to be able to bring food into your house or budgeting
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which i would dare say most australians are doing
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this quite literally is families who are no longer able to afford to bring fresh food
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or vegetable into their home or high quality protein
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or in worst case scenario who are actually skipping meals
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or going whole days without eating i've got to say
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when i woke up this morning and read these stats I was sceptical.
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I looked at the data, 6 ,000 people surveyed.
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It's pretty comprehensive.
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Can you describe to us, you know, what does it actually look like?
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Cutting back on meals, on portion sizes, food quality?
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What actually happens?
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Yeah, you know, I think over a long time here in Australia,
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we've expected to see some level of food insecurity amongst the most vulnerable in Australia.
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And by that, I mean,
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families that are earning the lowest wages or households where there may be somebody with an illness or a disability living there.
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And for those families, for a long time, they have had a number of coping strategies,
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whether it's to skip meals or to change the food that they're bringing in.
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But the thing that really concerned us about this year's report is that food insecurity is becoming more mainstream.
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And, you know, what we actually found was
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that nearly one in two households with children reported that they'd experienced some level of food insecurity in the last 12 months.
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And that does look like parents feeding their children, telling the children that they'll eat later, but then actually never eating
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or it actually looks like whole days where somebody will not eat so that other people in the home can be fed.
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So you've identified one demographic there.
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Who else has been hit by this?
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It's usually renters, particularly the young and the elderly as well.
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Where are you finding the crisis hitting artists?
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Yeah, well, last year we really observed it in single -parent families where we found
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that seven out of ten were experiencing it
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and we also found it in households with somebody with an illness or a disability and those numbers haven't moved.
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So that's incredibly concerning.
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This year what we found is it is families with children.
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Fascinatingly, the largest age cohort that's impacted is actually 18 to 35 -year -olds,
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with the majority of people in that age group having experienced food insecurity at some point in the last 12 months.
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So these are kids that have finished school, that have finished TAFE, have finished their degrees, and they're just finding that no matter what they do,
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to ensure they're covering rent,
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their utilities, their transport, they're having to compromise on the food that they're eating and that has long -term implications for health,
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for productivity, for social participation.
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They're sobering figures and ones we hope will make a difference down the line.
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Thank you so much for joining us this morning, Kylie Teng.
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Thanks Chris.
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This speaking lesson is built on the video “One in three Australian households going hungry”. The speaker keeps coming back to these words: insecurity, households, families, experiencing, meals. This video has 51 sentences and 598 words to shadow. The speech runs for 2:59. The speaker talks fast, about 201 words per minute, so expect linked and reduced sounds. 84% 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
15 words from the video worth learning, with pronunciation and meaning:
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| insecurity noun | A lack of security; uncertainty. | |
| household adjective | /ˈhaʊshoʊld/ | Belonging to the same house and family. |
| meal noun | /ˈmiːl/ | Food that is prepared and eaten, usually at a specific time, and usually in a comparatively large quantity. |
| illness noun | /ˈɪl.nəs/ | An instance (episode) of a disease or poor health. |
| disability noun | /dɪsəˈbɪlɪti/ | A condition characterised by a significant limitation in a person's physical or intellectual powers or ability. |
| skip verb | /skɪp/ | To move by hopping on alternate feet. |
| grim adjective | /ɡɹɪm/ | Dismal and gloomy, cold and forbidding. |
| earn verb | /ɝn/ | To gain (success, reward, recognition) through applied effort or work. |
| hungry adjective | /ˈhʌŋ.ɡɹi/ | Affected by hunger; having the physical need for food. |
| wage noun | /weɪd͡ʒ/ | An amount of money paid to a worker for a specified quantity of work, usually calculated on an hourly basis and expressed in an amount of money per hour. |
| reveal verb | /ɹɪˈviːl/ | To uncover; to show and display that which was hidden. |
| incredibly adverb | /ɪŋˈkɹɛdɪbli/ | In an incredible manner; not to be believed. |
| comprehensive adjective | /ˌkɑm.pɹəˈhɛn.sɪv/ | Broadly or completely covering; including a large proportion of something. |
| participation noun | /pɑːˌtɪs.ɪˈpeɪ.ʃən/ | The act of participating, of taking part in something. |
| amongst | /əˈmʌŋst/ | Denotes a mingling or intermixing with distinct or separable objects. See usage note at amidst. |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| think over verb | To ponder or reflect on a subject. | |
| wake up verb | /ˌweɪk ˈʌp/ | To stop sleeping; to awake. |
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 | has revealed · we've expected · have had |
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | can be fed · has been hit |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 13 contractions and reduced forms, such as they're, haven't, I've. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: participation /pɑːˌtɪs.ɪˈpeɪ.ʃən/, implication /ˌɪmpləˈkeɪʃən/
- Long words — get the stress right: disability /dɪsəˈbɪlɪti/, incredibly /ɪŋˈkɹɛdɪbli/, comprehensive /ˌkɑm.pɹəˈhɛn.sɪv/, participation /pɑːˌtɪs.ɪˈpeɪ.ʃən/, utility /juːˈtɪlɪti/
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 insecurity, household, meal.
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.