Shadowing Practice: Organizational forms and corporate issuer features (for the CFA Level 1 exam) - Learn English Speaking with Video
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In this video, we're going to talk about the different organizational forms in business, as well as the features of one of those forms,
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which is corporations, how corporations are legally kind of created,
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what's the relationship that they have with their owners, and so on and so forth.
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This is a very introductory lesson within the corporate issuer section of the curriculum,
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you'll find hopefully a lot of these things that I'm going to talk about here are quite basic.
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You probably know them already, hopefully with a few exceptions, especially in relation to partnerships.
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If you come from a country or a jurisdiction where partnerships are not necessarily a very common thing,
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then you need to pay attention especially to that section.
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Okay, now when we discuss organizational forums, so the way in which business can be carried out.
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We may analyze them across various dimensions.
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And what I'll do here on my board is basically recreate a table that you'll find in your curriculum text,
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a very important one, because it summarizes everything, almost everything that you need to know.
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So the dimensions across which I want to analyze different organizational forms are going to be as follows.
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We'll start off, and don't be surprised that I'm starting off sort of kind of in the middle of my
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on my board because I want to leave some space up here for drawings.
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I'm going to start with the legal identity of the business. So legal identity.
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And what I mean by this is, does the business have a separate legal identity, separate from its owners?
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Is it a separate entity in the light of law?
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Can the business enter into contracts?
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Can the business hire people?
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Can the business be sued by somebody?
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Or can the business sue someone?
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As opposed to the owners being the parties to contracts and so on.
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Now, the next point is going to be the owner and manager stroke operator relationship relationship.
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What's the nature of the relationship between the owners of the business and those who manage it?
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Because often the managers will not be the ones who are actually the owners, especially in the case of corporations.
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Now, the next point I want to have on the agenda is owner liability.
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What is the extent to which owners are responsible for various things that may go wrong in the business?
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The risks and debts and losses, etc. A very important criterion relates to taxation.
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Who pays taxes?
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At what level are taxes levied and charged?
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And finally, access to capital.
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How easy is it for the business to get access to extra funding?
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And you'll see that this varies across the different organizational forms.
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Okay, so let's explore the different organizational forms.
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I'm going to start off with this sort of that most basic one, which is called a sole trader,
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which means an individual in business.
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Now, instead of saying sole trader, you may also say sole proprietorship.
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How do you spell this?
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Proprietorship.
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Sorry.
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English is not my native language, so sometimes I get the spelling completely wrong.
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Proprietorship.
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Okay, an individual doing conducting business is really the most basic organizational form that, you know, business may take.
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In this case, the business and owner are not separate.
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The owner is the business and the business is the owner.
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Or we sometimes say that the business, I think your curriculum states this as well, the business is an extension of the owner.
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So the business doesn't have any separate legal identity.
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So when it's a contradiction like here, I'm going to use maybe the color red.
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No separate.
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Oh, I should be writing this here.
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Okay.
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No separate legal identity.
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Sorry.
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Identity.
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Got this in the wrong place.
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No separate legal identity.
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Good.
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We'll see this happen quite a lot here.
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What is the owner, manager, stroke, operator of the business relationship?
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Well, this one is quite obvious because if it's a sole trader, it's owner operated.
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So the owner is the person doing the work in the business.
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What about owner liability?
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Well, this is a legal thing, but it's extremely important because the business is not a separate legal entity,
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a separate legal person.
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It's an extension of the owner.
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Anything that goes wrong goes on the owner's account.
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And the owner is, from a legal perspective, fully liable and responsible for everything that happens,
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for all the debts, for all the damages that such a business may do to others and inflict on others.
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So I'm going to say here sole,
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meaning 100 % complete, unlimited liability,
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or rather sole meaning maybe not 100%, 100 % is indicated by unlimited,
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but sole meaning not shared with anybody else because we're alone in this type of venture.
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Now, from a taxation point of view, I'm going to introduce a very important concept, namely pass through.
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And you'll see this quite a lot appearing elsewhere here as well as we go along.
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So this is an H at the end, sorry, pass through.
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We don't pay any corporate income taxes.
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We don't have a company that would pay taxes itself.
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So whatever earnings, whatever income the business generates are taxed at the level of the owner.
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So the owner pays personal income tax based on the earnings generated by their business activity.
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So everything is taxed at the personal, meaning owner level.
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okay and as you imagine you may imagine when it comes to the access to capital
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well that's a little bit limited isn't it or actually we don't know it's limited to the
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access enjoyed by the owner if the owner has plenty of access to money no problem
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but as with many sole proprietorships that may not be the case so access to capital is limited to
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or limited to or by, let's say, the owner's access.
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Okay, good.
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That's the most basic form.
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I wouldn't really expect you to get questions on this.
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It's a little bit simple, although you never know.
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Maybe in a question which gets you to contrast this against something else, possibly, but not a standalone question, I wouldn't think.
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Now, the next two types of organization forms that we're going to discuss here relate to partnerships, or in fact, two different types of partnerships,
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a general partnership and a limited partnership.
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In fact, your curriculum talks about three different partnerships, but then explores only two of them realistically in more detail.
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So I'm going to start with the first one.
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the general partnership let's use a different color general partnership
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okay the first thing to say is
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that a general partnership is very similar in terms of the features to a sole proprietorship
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or a sole trader with the exception that there is more people involved
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but those people to a large extent you know they can bring more resources
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because there's more of them but other than that things are very similar
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so the general partnership is this one is formed by GP's general partners.
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Don't confuse this with GP general practitioner, which relates to a doctor in many countries.
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GP general partners.
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And these general partners are like sole traders in the sense that there is no separate legal identity for the business.
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separate legal identity.
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The partnership is not a legal entity in its own right.
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And when it comes to this owner -manager relationship, well, in a general partnership, everything is going to be run by the partners.
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So it's partner -operated.
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The partners get together and they contact business together.
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Now, over here we wrote sole unlimited liability.
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Here I'm going to say shared unlimited liability.
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So still, the partners, the owners are going to be faced with unlimited liability for all the debts
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and losses of the business and so on and so forth.
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So if anything goes wrong, they may lose their personal assets, possibly.
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And actually, the thing is, I said shared over here, but typically in the majority of jurisdictions where you find subgeneral partnerships,
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what's going to happen is even though we're supposed to share in the profits,
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but also the risks and therefore the losses and debts and so on,
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if one of the partners is unable to cover their share of those losses, let's say, the other partners still face unlimited liability.
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So if money cannot be recovered from one of them, the others are on the hook for that missing amount.
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Okay, same story applies over here to the taxation aspect.
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So pass through and you know what that means.
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The partners pay tax on the income of their business at personal level as individuals
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and just like before I guess you could say that access to capital is limited
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by this time not the owners but the partners access
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so how good they are at accessing capital and what resources they can get their hands on
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it's difficult to say up front or determine up front what that access could be.
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Now, the second type of partnership, which is going to be a bit more interesting from an organizational point of view,
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is what we call a limited partnership, or LP.
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Actually, LP is going to be the name of one of the partners, or the abbreviation we give to one of the partners,
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And watch out, there's a third one called Limited Liability Partnership, an LLP.
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That's a third form which your curriculum discusses.
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And we'll jot some notes on that as well.
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So what happens in a limited partnership?
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you're going to have over here at least one GP
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which as before stands for general partner
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and the GP is going to have or face unlimited liability for or everything that may go wrong in the business,
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losses, debts, etc. And this one GP, or at least one GP,
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who faces unlimited liability, may,
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however, may, doesn't have to, may have managerial responsibilities.
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so they may actually run the thing responsibilities okay at the same time you're going to have typically
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on top of that one gp or at least one gp you're also going to have many limited partners
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who are referred to as LPs.
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And these limited partners will have, as the name suggests, they've got limited liability.
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How much they can lose is limited to the amount of money they invest, they put in they cannot lose more.
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But at the same time, on the flip side let's say, they cannot be involved in managing.
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the business, but cannot have any sort of managerial involvement.
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They are the providers of capital, but they cannot run the thing, they cannot run the show, so to speak.
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So these are the features of a limited partnership, and if we were to condense this into these,
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let's say dimensions or analyze things across dimensions starting with legal identity.
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Well, once again, it's a partnership.
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Partnerships don't have a separate legal identity.
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So they are, once again, an extension of the partners, just like here.
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And here it was an extension of the sole owner.
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previously I said partner operated for a general partnership
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but this time I'm going to say GP operated
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because the GP is the single partner who can actually run things although I did say
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they may have managerial responsibility they sometimes outsource this managerial responsibility to a third party.
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This is especially true for funds who outsource
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this managerial responsibility to a sort of external fund manager who has a license and so on.
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Now, when it comes to owner liability, we're going to have a split because it depends on who you are.
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The GP has unlimited liability.
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Now, in reality, especially in the world of funds, there are ways to kind of circumvent that.
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But it's not relevant for the CFA exam, at least not this level of the CFA exam.
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However, the LPs, the limited partners,
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face limited liability, limited to the amounts which they invest.
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Now taxation is once again going to be a pass -through affair,
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meaning the partners pay tax at their individual personal level.
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And what can we say about access to capital?
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As before, it's going to be limited or in some way bounded by the partners.
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partners access the wealth and ability of the partners to get their hands on some much -needed, potentially, capital.
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Now, I've got space, quite a lot of space over here still, but I want to tell you about one more partnership.
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I'm not necessarily going to analyze it in this table.
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Maybe I'll just use the space that I've got up here to talk about it.
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So this is going to be an LLP.
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It's the third type of partnership that you need to know.
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So this was the first one, the general partnership.
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This was the second.
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This is going to be the third, and it stands for Limited Liability Partnership.
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Now, please, whatever you already know about LPs, if you know about partnerships,
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you know, don't take that to be indicative of what you should use on the exam as knowledge,
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because you have to go with what the curriculum tells you, which is very sort of jurisdiction specific and in different jurisdictions,
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these things work sometimes very differently.
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So in the world of the level one curriculum, you need to understand the difference between limited, general, and limited liability partnership.
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Now, this one is going to be a bit similar to this, but not really.
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There's going to be important tweaks.
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It has no GP, so no general partner, nobody who take unlimited responsibility or liability.
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That's not needed.
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It has LPs only, limited partners only.
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Okay.
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So only those who have limited liability for what the partnership does it's these guys,
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these LPs who will be involved.
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in the management of the partnership.
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So this time the LP has no restrictions,
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or LPs then have restrictions about how involved they can be in the day -to -day management of the business.
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Here it's absolutely kind of expected that they would be sharing the managerial duties.
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LPs only and they get involved in managing the business, the partnership.
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And what typically happens is they will be typically selecting one of the partners,
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one of the LPs to act as the managing partner to kind of lead the partnership
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and if you hear the word managing partner, you may be thinking of professional services firms, for example, US -based ones,
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that this is a very common setup, the LLP in the US and other countries as well,
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to have professional services companies like accountancy firms,
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law firms, architecture firms, engineering firms run by managing partners, but surrounded by many other partners as well.
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And actually in the US, what your curriculum talks about is that the possibilities to use
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that LLP structure are limited to certain professions or certain sort of industries only,
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professional services mainly, firms, but not everything else.
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Okay, so know the difference, appreciate the difference to limited partnership.
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The difference is no GP, LPs only, and LPs have limited liability because they are limited partners,
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but they can be involved in the management of the company, which is a considerable change to what we saw before.
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And I've still got lots of space over here on the right -hand side,
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which is great because I'll need it to discuss the most complicated of all the forms, and that's a corporation.
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Okay, over here.
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So I'm going to write corporation.
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But I'm also going to need a bit of space up here to draw stuff related to corporation.
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So bear with me for a moment.
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I'm going to clean my board and come back to you in a second.
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So generally, I wrote down corporation here,
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but we're going to talk about limited companies in the sense of entities that have a separate legal identity.
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They're no longer going to be an extension of the owner.
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There are going to be companies that can sign agreements, sign contracts, hire people, be sued,
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get sued, everything I wrote about before,
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issued that, and so on and limited companies actually coming to varieties.
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At least, you know, this is the context on which your curriculum is written,
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which is, I guess, going to be very much inspired by an American context, but not just American.
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Also, a lot of European examples are thrown we're going to have private limited companies
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okay as well as public limited companies
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and it's this second type that's also going to be referred to as corporations at least in your,
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sorry, corporations in your curriculum.
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So that's where we get the corporation idea over here, right, from this notion.
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Now, I'll tell you the difference between the two in just a moment.
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It's quite technical, what you'll see.
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And hopefully you'll also be able to relate this to kind of your knowledge of business life.
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Let me draw a bit of an extension over here, a bit of a separator, because I just want to draw some things.
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It's not going to be a separate organizational form.
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It's just some ideas.
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You see, in a limited company,
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you're going to have owners who are typically referred to as shareholders and these owners will typically elect
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what we call a board of directors.
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Now, I know boards of directors don't exist in every country, but in the context of what you need to know for the CFA exam,
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this is the way to go.
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A board of directors, on the other hand,
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appoints executive managers, executives, well, executive directors, executives, e .g.
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the chief executive officer, the CEO, the CFO, and so on.
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And it's obviously these people who will be responsible for the day -to -day running of the company.
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So in the case of limited companies,
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you're going to typically have a separation of owner and operator.
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It's going to be the executive who run the show, but it's the shareholders who are the owners of the company.
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And the shareholders' interests are supposed to be represented by these people, right?
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The board of directors and executives should look after and should act in the best interest of the owners,
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which doesn't always happen but owners, shareholders have voting rights and they can,
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using the formalized process that takes place, for example, at the annual general meeting of shareholders,
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they can vote or they can elect different members to the board, different directors to the board,
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or they can influence the decisions of the board in various ways.
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Right.
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But because the owners are not generally involved in the day -to -day running of the business, there's that separation of ownership and management.
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This allows companies to access a much deeper pool of funding
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because whoever provides capital into the business doesn't have to automatically be involved in running it.
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So this is going to definitely open up space over here when it comes to access to capital.
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But I want to go up here to the top, and I want to talk about the difference between public limited companies and private limited companies.
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Well, the difference as stated in your curriculum is such that typically in a private limited company,
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you're going to have restrictions, and these are sort of legally imposed,
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on the number of owners, the number of shareholders.
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So, in terms of the number not growing beyond a certain level.
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But also, on top of that,
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there may be restrictions on the transfer of ownership.
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So if one of the owners wants to sell their stake, they can't necessarily do it just like that.
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They typically need to, often need to get the consent of the other owners, etc. It's not like it's impossible to sell,
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but you typically have to get some kind of okay from the other owners, which makes it a little bit restrictive,
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at least to some extent.
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But at the same time, so these restrictions already noted,
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private limited companies, your curriculum states,
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in many jurisdictions enjoy that pass -through concept or the benefit of
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that concept meaning tax is paid not at the corporate company level, but at the level of the owners.
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Now, in the case of public limited companies, and I do want to emphasize that this is how your curriculum portrays it,
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which may not be the way it works in your country.
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It's definitely not the way it works in my country, where I come from.
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But in the case of public limited companies, there will be no restrictions on the number of owners, no restrictions on the transfer of ownership.
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So no restrictions over here.
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But this is the big one.
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There will be no pass through.
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The corporation, the company, will have to pay corporation tax or company tax, corporate income tax.
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And then the owners will have to pay tax again when they receive a dividend,
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which is a distribution out of the profits made by a business,
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which gets, so corporate income tax at corporation level.
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And then again, when dividends are paid and received by the shareholders,
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by the owners, well, these are going to be subject to personal income tax.
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which gets us into a very important concept referred to as double taxation.
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And your curriculum talks about it quite a lot.
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Now, this is obviously a drawback of having a corporation.
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But at the same time,
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the fact that there are no restrictions on the number of owners and no restrictions on those owners selling their stakes, the shares,
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means this is a very suitable form for those companies who want to list on a stock exchange and give their owners,
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the shareholders, the co -owners of the business the possibility to trade, buy in, sell their shares without any limitations.
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The downside is a double taxation, but for those companies that plan to not necessarily pay a lot of dividends,
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but retain a lot of their profits in -house and reinvest those profits within the business, this will be a very suitable form.
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Now, from the point of view of summing things up in our table,
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I'm just going to go with this corporation concept because your curriculum doesn't really examine the private limited company
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in any way beyond these drawbacks and benefits.
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I mean, this is still applicable to any company.
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It doesn't matter whether it's private limited or public limited.
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So this ownership, board of director and executive management structure.
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But here, let's summarize some of the features of the corporation being the one that we really need to focus on.
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So, in this time around, we're going to have a separate legal entity for the first time.
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The corporation, in its own right, is a separate legal person.
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It's going to be board and management.
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So executive means the management, the executive team.
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So it's going to be board of directors plus management operating the thing, operated.
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And on top of this, in terms of the owner liability,
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here, the owners, the shareholders, have absolutely limited liability.
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That's why they're called limited companies.
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There doesn't have to be somebody who takes full responsibility.
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So unlimited, like with general partner.
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No, limited liability.
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The flip side is this idea of,
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you know, over here, corporate income tax.
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I think being paid.
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And then the consequence of that is double taxation when owners receive their dividend payments.
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Although there are ways to relieve this there may be tax credits, but they're very jurisdiction specific.
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And the big plus here is these kinds of entities enjoy unlimited access to capital.
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You know, they can attract as many owners, as many shareholders as they want to provide equity funding.
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Your curriculum talks, you know, in this reading or the learning module a little bit about the difference between equity
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and debt but I don't think this is something we really need to go into.
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That's so basic.
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Equity is non -returnable.
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I'm just going to summarize.
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I'm not even going to write this down.
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Equity is the funding you get from your shareholders.
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It's non -returnable.
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And it doesn't have to come necessarily from direct injections by shareholders.
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Equity can also, in a business,
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be the earnings generated by the company that have been kept by the business instead of being paid out as a dividend.
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So when you pay a dividend to shareholders, that dividend must come out of profit, but anything that's kept by the business makes equity grow.
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Obviously, corporations typically also have access to the debt market, so they may issue bonds,
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which obviously constitute returnable funding.
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Bond investors are compensated with interest in coupons, which you should know about from your studies of fixed income.
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And this is all available to, especially to corporations, limited companies, corporations.
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Right.
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But as a final point in this lesson, I want to show you an example of a question
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that's inspired by an example in your curriculum of this double taxation and what could possibly be asked.
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It's going to be very simple, but still, I want you to be ready for it.
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So let's check out a really basic curriculum -inspired question on the concept of double taxation, a numerical question.
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The total tax rate experienced by investors in a profitable public limited company,
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which pays corporate income tax at a rate of 20%, has a policy of maintaining a dividend payout ratio of 100%,
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meaning that all the profits the company generates are paid out as a dividend to investors
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and nothing is kept and also
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that a company operates in a jurisdiction where dividends received are taxed at 30 percent
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and what is
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that total tax rate closest to well the total tax rate is what is effectively felt by investors once
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you take into account everything all the deductions that they suffer due to corporate income tax,
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but also the personal income tax that they get levied on their dividend payouts.
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So, I mean, you could do this using percentages only, but you could, for example, imagine that a company has,
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let's say, taxable income, so income that is subject to taxation of 100,
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million, thousand, billion, whatever.
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And obviously the first deduction that we're going to make is one for corporate income tax.
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So from that minus corporate income tax.
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Now in the exam don't write this out like this.
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Use shorthand.
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Use, you know, do this in your head however you wish.
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So that's going to be 20 % of the taxable income
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So effectively the net profit of the business,
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the one that can be distributed as a dividend or kept in the company is just 60.
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Now in our case retained earnings are not going to be a thing because this company doesn't retain its earnings.
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It pays things out as a dividend.
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Right, it's not the most usual of policies, but never mind.
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Okay, as a dividend to shareholders.
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But, sorry, over here I've made a very, very huge mistake.
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This shouldn't say 60, it should say 80.
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100 minus 20 is 80.
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Sorry for that.
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Probably left you confused and staring at your screen for a moment.
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So 80 dividend to shareholders and now,
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you know, that 80 is subject to tax at the personal level.
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And that's taxed at 30%.
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So tax on dividends.
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It's going to be 30 % of this.
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If you do 80 times 30%, I mean, I've got my calculator out,
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but I think it's going to be 24 because that's 8 times 3 is 24.
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80 times 0 .3, yeah, 24.
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But, you know, given the blunder I made here, I don't want to risk it anymore. That was embarrassing enough.
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So, yeah, that's going to be 24 deducted.
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So ultimately, what the shareholders receive is 80 minus 24.
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Let's get this one right.
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56 cash flow to the shareholders.
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And when they ask you about the total tax rate, as they do in this question, what they're effectively thinking about is going for is,
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you know, what's the total deduction?
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That goes from over here down to here.
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And it's 44%, right?
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It's 44 of 100 that gets deducted, meaning 44%.
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So total tax rate is these two deductions combined, I guess.
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The 20 and the 24.
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20 plus 24 on original income of 100
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so 44 over 144 percent yeah and this is nicely in line with answer a
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and you may think to yourself you know
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there surely is an easier way of solving this yeah
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there is um you know whatever is the taxable income doesn't really matter
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i i imagined it to be a nice round 100
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but you could just as well have solved this by doing taking one minus
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and now in a bracket although we don't really need the bracket to be honest arithmetically
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or algebraically i'm going to take the
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whatever is 1 minus 0 .2 multiplied by 1 minus 0 .4.
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So this is a 3, although it doesn't really look like a 3.
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So let's write this down properly.
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1 minus 0 .8 times 0 .7,
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which is basically what's left after you deduct tax of 20 % and tax of 30 % over here.
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And this should work properly.
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0 .8 times 0 .7 on my calculator is 0 .56
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and obviously that's nice and in line with what we've got left after those two taxes are applied.
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Make that negative, plus one, okay, 0 .44%.
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Now, this is not something supplied in your curriculum, but I find this to be a much more intuitive way of thinking about it,
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or maybe much quicker than going and doing all these steps.
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There isn't a huge chance you'll get a question on this, but you never know.
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So, now you know the concept.
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This speaking lesson is built on the video “Organizational forms and corporate issuer features”. The speaker keeps coming back to these words: owner, limited, partnership, partner, tax. This video has 412 sentences and 4917 words to shadow. The speech runs for 42:22. The speaker talks at a steady 116 words per minute, a comfortable pace for shadowing. 85% 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 |
|---|---|---|
| partnership noun | /ˈpɑɹtnɚʃɪp/ | The state of being associated with a partner. |
| liability noun | /laɪəˈbɪlɪti/ | An obligation, debt or responsibility owed to someone. |
| curriculum noun | /kəˈɹɪk.jə.ləm/ | The set of courses, coursework, and content offered at a school or university. |
| shareholder noun | /ˈʃɛəˌhəʊl.də(ɹ)/ | One who owns shares of stock in a corporation. |
| dividend noun | /ˈdɪvɪdɛnd/ | A cash payment of money by a company to its shareholders, usually made periodically (e.g., quarterly or annually). |
| sole noun | /səʊl/ | The bottom or plantar surface of the foot. |
| unlimited adjective | /ʌnˈlɪm.ɪ.tɪd/ | Limitless or without bounds; unrestricted. |
| taxation noun | /tækˈseɪ.ʃən/ | The act of imposing taxes and the fact of being taxed. |
| restriction noun | /ɹɪˈstɹɪkʃən/ | The act of restricting, or the state of being restricted. |
| organizational adjective | /ˌɔː(ɹ)ɡənɪˈzeɪʃənəl/ | Of, relating to, or produced by an organization. |
| jurisdiction noun | /d͡ʒʊɹɪsˈdɪkʃən/ | The power, right, or authority to interpret and apply the law. |
| minus | /ˈmaɪ.nəs/ | Made less or reduced by (followed by an expression of number or quantity). |
| extension noun | /ɪkˈstɛnʃən/ | The act of extending; a stretching out; enlargement in length, breadth, or time; an increase. |
| equity noun | /ˈɛk.wɪ.ti/ | Fairness, impartiality, or justice as determined in light of "natural law" or "natural right". |
| entity noun | /ˈɛn.tə.ti/ [-tʰi] | That which has a distinct existence as an individual unit, often used for organizations which have no physical form. |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| pass through verb | To go through, to travel through, to transit or lie across a place or from one place to another. | |
| pay out verb | To distribute money; to disburse. | |
| start off verb | To begin. | |
| carry out verb | /ˈkæ.ɹi aʊt/ | To hold while moving it out. |
| check out verb | To record the departure or withdrawal of someone or something (such as guests, employees, books, etc.). | |
| get together verb | To meet, to gather together, to congregate. | |
| get up verb | To move in an upward direction; to ascend or climb. | |
| go along verb | To participate, cooperate, or conform. |
Sentences worth repeating
Short, complete lines from the video that you can reuse in everyday conversation:
- How do you spell this?
- We'll see this happen quite a lot here.
- We don't pay any corporate income taxes.
- It's a little bit simple, although you never know.
- Here I'm going to say shared unlimited liability.
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | can be carried · is called · is indicated |
| Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing | those who manage · ones who are · one, which is |
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | have been kept · I've made · have solved |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 87 contractions and reduced forms, such as I'm, don't, doesn't. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: partnership /ˈpɑɹtnɚʃɪp/, shareholder /ˈʃɛəˌhəʊl.də(ɹ)/, taxation /tækˈseɪ.ʃən/, restriction /ɹɪˈstɹɪkʃən/, organizational /ˌɔː(ɹ)ɡənɪˈzeɪʃənəl/
- Long words — get the stress right: liability /laɪəˈbɪlɪti/, curriculum /kəˈɹɪk.jə.ləm/, unlimited /ʌnˈlɪm.ɪ.tɪd/, organizational /ˌɔː(ɹ)ɡənɪˈzeɪʃənəl/, jurisdiction /d͡ʒʊɹɪsˈdɪkʃən/
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 partnership, liability, curriculum.
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.