Shadowing Practice: ONE thing that will improve your English Listening Skills - Learn English Speaking with Video
Creating lesson...
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If you want to improve your English listening skills, don't try to understand each and every word.
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Let's find out what to do instead.
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Hello, it's Keith from the Keith Speaking Academy and the YouTube channel English Speaking Success, where you become a more confident speaker of English.
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You know, I think the biggest mistake that students make
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when listening to English is sometimes they try to understand every single word and you can't, even I can't.
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If you do that, you get lost quickly, you can't keep up and then you, you give up.
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And you give up my white towel.
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You must go beyond individual words, right?
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The secret, the secret, the one thing you should do is always focus on the gist first.
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The gist is the overall idea, right?
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Just try to understand the overall general idea.
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How can you do that?
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Focus on the stressed words in a text or in a sentence.
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These are the key ones that you really need in order to understand what someone is saying.
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Teachers, we call this sentence stress, right?
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And in this video, I'm going to show you how sentence stress works and how knowing sentence stress will help you
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understand much more when you listen to real English.
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Let's do it.
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So sentence stress refers to the words we stress in a sentence.
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Surprise!
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We stress the most important words, usually the nouns, the verbs,
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the adjectives, adverbs, not usually prepositions or pronouns or question words, right?
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Okay.
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For example, I live in a town near London.
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Live, the verb, town, the noun, London, a noun, a proper noun, a real noun.
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So why is this important?
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Because not all languages do this.
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So in that sentence, right, I live in a town near London.
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You can hear the rhythm.
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I live near it.
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I live in a town near London.
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Right?
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I live in a town near London.
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Now, we don't go around all the speaking like this all the time.
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Where are you from?
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Hello, my name is Keith.
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Hello, my name is Keith.
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We don't go around speaking like that.
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But to show you the stress, I live in a town in London, we stress these words.
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Some languages don't.
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Some languages stress each syllable almost with equal stress or weight, right?
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For example, Mandarin Chinese.
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我住在倫敦附近 Or Spanish, similarly, tend to stress every syllable.
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Vivo en una ciudad cerca de Londres.
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It's different.
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English tends to be, it's more of a stress-timed language, by and large.
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So we stress the words at the same time interval.
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Let me show you with two sentences, right?
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And listen for the stress.
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I live in a town near London.
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I've been living in this town just near London for years.
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Can you see or hear the stress is in the same place, even though the second sentence has many more syllables?
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And that's what makes English a stress-timed language, more or less, generally speaking.
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And I personally think that's why English works very well with music, because it has that beat, regular beat.
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And so you can fit the lyrics into that beat.
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Now, if you try and understand every word, you will fail.
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Even British people don't do that.
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I've been living in this town just near London for years.
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We hear living town London years.
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That's what we focus on.
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So that brings me to my second point, why this is important, because listening for sentence stress is a strategy native speakers use as well, right?
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We only focus on those key words, right?
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We are so used to the grammar that we will recognize the tense immediately, right?
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But, and this is interesting, imagine I'm in a disco or speaking to someone over the phone or on a noisy street.
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I will have strategies to help me understand what I cannot hear.
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I can't hear everything.
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So I use the strategies like one of them, focus on the key stressed words.
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Also, I will use the context to help me confirm the tense and to get the overall meaning.
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Sometimes I will guess.
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And all of these are listening strategies that you should develop as well.
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Listening for stress words, use the context and guess.
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Now, there's a third reason that sentence stress is really important.
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And it's because sentence stress can change the meaning of a sentence too, right?
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Let's go back to our example.
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I live in a town near London.
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Stress words provide the new and important information.
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But I could, or you might hear, I live in a town near London.
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We've changed, right?
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And maybe the person is saying this because they they want to make it clear that I don't live far away.
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So I live in a town near London, right?
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You probably still stress the word town, but less because it's less important.
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Near is the key information.
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Imagine somebody said to me, okay, so you live far away from London.
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I would probably They say, no, I live in a town near London.
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Can you see the stress has changed again?
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No is the key information to say, no, you're wrong.
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I live in a town near London.
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I stress near.
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The other words are not stressed so much and they almost disappear because we're repeating them.
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They're not important.
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Got it?
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Of course, do remember, right?
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Context and intonation play a very important role in deciding what the person means, what they're trying to say.
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But knowing sentence stress, it's essential.
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And it will really help you understand native English speakers or proficient English speakers.
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So to summarize, whatever your level of English, there will always be things you don't understand.
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Okay, accept it.
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Don't try to understand everything.
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Focus on the stressed words.
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Focus on understanding the overall meaning.
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Focus on gist.
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Now, your next question is, great, Keith, how do I do this?
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How do I develop and practice this skill?
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Great question.
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Let me give you five tips to help you do this in the next part of the video.
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Oh, by the way, if you're enjoying this and finding it useful, do remember to subscribe.
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Give me a like as well.
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Okay, tips for practice.
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Number one, do dictations.
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A dictation is where you listen and you write down or type what you hear.
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So do dictations with very, very short audio texts, just two to three sentences.
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Okay, listen and write the key words the stressed words.
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Listen again and add any extra words if you can.
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Listen a third time and just try to write everything you can.
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Then go back and check with the tape script if you can get a tape script.
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Nowadays on YouTube videos, you can get the tape scripts very easily.
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Dictations.
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It's great.
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We do this a lot in the gold live lessons, in the gold course.
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Students enjoy it and find it very, very useful.
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I think.
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I hope so.
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Number two, do plenty of longer listening.
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news stories, podcasts, things like that, where you don't look up any words.
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You don't take notes.
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You just listen.
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So it doesn't feel like studying, right?
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It feels that you're more like a native speaker rather than a student.
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Number three, change your expectations.
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Don't expect to understand everything.
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Number four, listen to English at least one hour a day.
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Yes.
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As students, we don't listen enough.
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One hour a day.
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Now that can be fitting it into your daily routine.
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20 minutes in the morning when everybody's getting up, before everybody wakes up.
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Maybe on your commute for 10 minutes, maybe on your daily walk for 20 minutes, in the gym for 10 minutes,
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or just before you go to bed, another 20 minutes.
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Try and get in one hour a day.
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If you can do 10,000 steps, you can do an hour of English.
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The thing is, if you do, you will notice a huge improvement in weeks.
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Number five, stop using subtitles.
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I know, I'm sorry.
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And I know on Netflix, it's like, what did he say?
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What did he say?
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Because the noise is louder than the voice.
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But try and get into the habit, sometimes not using subtitles.
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Why?
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Because subtitles encourage you to focus on every single word as you're reading, right?
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Doesn't help you focus on the stressed words.
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That's it.
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Five easy tips. So there you go.
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Now you know what sentence stress is.
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You know why it's important and how to practice it.
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So what are you going to do now?
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Let me know in the comments below.
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Let me know what you think of this video.
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Oh, by the way, if you want to know more about the gold course I mentioned, there's also a link down below.
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But for now, Thank you so much for watching.
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And I will see you in the next video.
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Take care now.
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Bye-bye.
Why practice speaking with this video?
If you want to improve your English listening skills, this video serves a crucial purpose. It emphasizes the importance of focusing on the overall idea or gist of what you hear rather than getting bogged down by every single word. Many English learners tend to aim for perfection in understanding, leading to frustration and a lack of confidence.
This video encourages you to take a different approach: by concentrating on the content's key words, you can maintain your comprehension and keep up with natural conversations. Shadow speech, or shadow speaking along with the video, can significantly enhance your listening and speaking abilities. This technique allows you to mimic the natural rhythm and intonation of English speakers, providing a practical framework for IELTS speaking practice and daily conversations alike.
Grammar & Expressions in Context
Throughout the video, several key grammatical structures are utilized that highlight natural English speech patterns:
- Sentence Stress: The concept of stressing important words sets the foundation for effective communication. For example, in “I live in a town near London,” the focus is placed on “live,” “town,” and “London,” which are crucial for understanding the overall message.
- Present Simple Tense: The use of the present simple tense, as in “I live,” illustrates how to describe habitual actions or facts—key for beginners to grasp daily conversation.
- Prepositions: A phrase like “near London” teaches how to convey location, an essential aspect for learners needing to navigate daily interactions.
Common Pronunciation Traps
English pronunciation can be tricky, especially for non-native speakers. From the video, pay attention to these common challenges:
- Contrastive Stress: Not all learners recognize the importance of sentence stress in English. Practice by exaggerating and emphasizing the key words when you repeat sentences to master the rhythm.
- Weak Forms: In phrases like “I live in a town,” words like “in” and “a” may not be stressed and can be pronounced more softly. Recognizing this can aid in sounding more fluent.
- Linking Sounds: Notice how native speakers connect words smoothly in rapid speech. For example, “I live in” may sound like “I liv’n” in quick conversation. Shadowing these nuances will improve your own accent.
By engaging with this video, using shadow speak techniques, and actively practicing these structures, you can significantly enhance your English listening and speaking capabilities. Embrace the challenge and let this video be your stepping stone to greater fluency!
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.