Shadowing Practice: PATHWAYS 1 UNIT 6: HOUSING FOR THE FUTURE LESSON A - Learn English Speaking with Video
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Exercise A, page 104.
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Architect Comfortable Engineer Float
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Ground Look like
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Luxury Resident Safe
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Solution Exercise B.
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Meaning from Context Page 104
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The Burj Al -Arab The Burj al -Arab is a luxury hotel in the city of Dubai.
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From a distance, it looks like the sails on a ship, and the hotel seems to float on the water.
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But, in fact, it sits on a small, human -made island.
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When they started the project, engineers did not know how to create the new island, but they found a solution.
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They used concrete and rocks.
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It took three years to move enough sand and create safe ground above the water.
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Then an architect designed the famous hotel.
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Now, the Burj al -Arab has some of the most comfortable and expensive rooms in the world.
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Across from the hotel, local residents in Dubai often see helicopters arrive at the top of the building with rich
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and sometimes famous guests.
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Listening Housing Solutions Exercise B Main Ideas Page 106
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and Exercise C Details Page 107
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As you know, global warming is changing our world.
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Oceans and seeds are rising, so there are more floods.
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As a result, there isn't enough safe housing for people who live near water.
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So, many architects and engineers are designing new kinds of houses for wet weather.
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Let's take a look at some of their creative solutions to this problem.
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First, I'll talk about Vietnam.
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There's often heavy rainfall and flooding in the middle of the country.
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To solve this, one Vietnamese architect designed a house that is three meters above the ground.
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You climb a ladder to enter it.
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Water can go under the house when there's flooding.
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But when it's dry, you can use the area under the house as a storage space for plants, farm equipment, and animals.
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The house is made from bamboo.
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Bamboo grows in many places in Vietnam, so it's a cheap building material.
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The United States also has problems with housing and hurricanes.
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Hurricane Katrina in 2005 is a good example.
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After the hurricane, there was terrible flooding and water destroyed a lot of houses.
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90 % of the residents evacuated the city by car and drove to safer places further north.
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Afterwards, when they returned, there weren't enough houses for many of them.
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So, a U .S architect created the Float House.
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It looks like a normal house, but if there's a flood, the bottom of the house moves up and it floats like a boat.
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Dhaka in Bangladesh has a similar problem to New Orleans.
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In Dhaka, there can be a lot of rainfall, and that destroys housing.
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So, like the float house in New Orleans, there is the lift house in Dhaka.
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The lift house floats up when the water rises and goes back to the ground afterwards.
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Like the house in Vietnam, this house uses cheap bamboo, but it also uses old plastic water bottles.
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The bottles help it float and make it inexpensive.
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In Europe, the Netherlands has a long history of building in wet areas and near the sea.
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About one quarter of the country is below sea level.
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That's because Dutch engineers removed the seawater and created land to build on.
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About 75 % of Dutch people live in houses on this land.
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In addition, some people live on houseboats.
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There are 60 ,000 houseboats in the Netherlands.
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The typical houseboat is not big, about 5 meters wide and 20 meters long.
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Houseboats can move from place to place, but they usually stay in one spot.
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Now, many countries are turning to the Dutch to help with the problem of higher sea levels.
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One Dutch architect, Koen Oethwis, uses the basic design of a houseboat,
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but he builds comfortable and modern structures, even luxury homes.
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His company, Water Studio, has already built more than 200 floating homes and offices,
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and they are working on designs for floating cities.
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Pretty amazing!
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Exercise D.
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Focused Listening.
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Page 107.
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1. First, I'll talk about Vietnam.
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There's often heavy rainfall and flooding in the middle of the country.
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2. After the hurricane, there was terrible flooding and water destroyed a lot of houses.
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90 % of the residents evacuated the city by car and drove to safer places further north.
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3. So, a U .S architect created the Float House.
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It looks like a normal house, but if there's a flood, the bottom of the house moves up and it floats like a boat.
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4. In Europe, the Netherlands has a long history of building in wet areas and near the sea.
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About one quarter of the country is below sea level.
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5. One Dutch architect, Cohen Ulthuis, uses the basic design of a houseboat,
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but he builds comfortable and modern structures, even luxury homes.
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Exercise E, page 107 1.
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Water can go under the house when there's flooding.
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But when it's dry, you can use the area under the house as a storage space for plants, farm equipment, and animals.
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2. 90 % of the residents evacuated the city by car and drove to safer places further north.
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Afterwards, when they return, there weren't enough houses for many of them.
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3. About one -quarter of the country is below sea level.
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That's because Dutch engineers removed the seawater and created land to build on.
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Pronunciation Sentence Stress Page 109
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You often stress one or two words in a clause or sentence.
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You usually stress content words, words with the most meaning.
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Verb We love nature.
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Adjective It's a beautiful apartment.
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Noun The house also has a garden.
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More than one word.
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The house has a garden and it has a swimming pool.
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Sometimes, you can also stress a conjunction to emphasize its meaning.
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Emphasize the contrast.
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It's a beautiful apartment, but it's expensive.
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Emphasize the addition.
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It has a beautiful kitchen and there's a garden in the back.
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Exercise E, page 109 1.
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This pizza is delicious.
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2. The apartment is in the city center.
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3. He loves music and he goes to concerts.
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4. I like the jacket, but it's expensive.
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5. You can live here, or you can live there.
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6. The bedrooms are comfortable.
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And they both have TVs.
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This speaking lesson is built on the video “PATHWAYS 1 UNIT 6: HOUSING FOR THE FUTURE LESSON A”. The speaker keeps coming back to these words: float, architect, page, Exercise, houseboat. This video has 99 sentences and 1000 words to shadow. The speech runs for 10:14. The speaker talks slowly, about 98 words per minute, so there is time to copy every sound. Only 80% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English, so the vocabulary is demanding.
Key vocabulary in this video
15 words from the video worth learning, with pronunciation and meaning:
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| float verb | /fləʊt/ | To be supported by a fluid of greater density (than the object). |
| flood noun | /flʌd/ | An overflow of a large amount of water (usually disastrous) from a lake or other body of water due to excessive rainfall or other input of water. |
| architect noun | /ˈɑɹ.kɪˌtɛkt/ | A professional who designs buildings or other structures, or who prepares plans and superintends construction. |
| resident noun | /ˈɹɛzɪdənt/ | A person, animal or plant living at a certain location or in a certain area. |
| luxury noun | /ˈlʌk.ʃə.ɹi/ | Very wealthy and comfortable surroundings; the state of being that they create. |
| hurricane noun | /ˈhʌɹɪkeɪn/ | A severe tropical cyclone; an intense storm rotating around a central eye. |
| afterwards adverb | /ˈæf.tɚ.wɚdz/ | At a later or succeeding time; after that; |
| meter noun | /ˈmitəɹ/ | A device that measures things. |
| rainfall noun | The amount of rain that falls on a single occasion | |
| emphasize verb | /ˈɛm.fə.saɪz/ | To stress, give emphasis or extra weight to (something). |
| bamboo noun | /bæmˈbu/ | Any of the fast-growing grasses of the Bambusoideae subfamily, characterized by its woody, hollow, round, straight, jointed stem. |
| evacuate verb | /ɪˈvæk.ju.eɪt/ | To leave or withdraw from; to quit; to retire from. |
| bedroom noun | /ˈbɛdˌɹum/ | A room in a house, apartment, hotel, or other dwelling where a bed is kept for sleeping. |
| contrast noun | /kənˈt(ʃ)ɹæst/ | The degree of this difference. |
| concrete adjective | /ˌkɑnˈkɹit/ | Real, actual, tangible. |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Meaning |
|---|---|
| go under verb | To descend into a body of water; to founder. |
| move up verb | To promote, put onto a higher level. |
| go back to verb | To stem from; to originate in. |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 5 contractions and reduced forms, such as I'll, weren't, isn't. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: luxury /ˈlʌk.ʃə.ɹi/, contrast /kənˈt(ʃ)ɹæst/, delicious /dɪˈlɪ.ʃəs/, conjunction /kənˈd͡ʒʌŋk.ʃn̩/, pronunciation /pɹəˌnʌn.siˈeɪ.ʃən/
- Long words — get the stress right: evacuate /ɪˈvæk.ju.eɪt/, helicopter /ˈheliːˌkɔptə(ɹ)/, inexpensive /ˌɪnɪkˈspɛnsɪv/, pronunciation /pɹəˌnʌn.siˈeɪ.ʃən/
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 float, flood, architect.
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.