Shadowing Practice: POLITICAL VOCABULARY 🇺🇸 Advanced Words & Phrases You Should Know - Learn English Speaking with YouTube

This is a bipartisan video to help you build your vocabulary with some advanced political words and phrases.

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This is a bipartisan video to help you build your vocabulary with some advanced political words and phrases.

And let's just start with that word right there, bipartisan.

This means supported by or consisting of two political parties.

And it really does have a positive connotation,

so I thought we would start and should start with something positive.

And there are some common collocations with this adjective,

and these are words that are frequently used together.

So you might hear somebody talk about bipartisan support or a bipartisan agreement,

a bipartisan vote, or even a bipartisan committee.

Speaker Kimball Hofstra has promised a bipartisan effort to amend the legislation and get it passed.

Number one, we need to reform,

but we can't do it without bipartisan support.

The president will announce a major bipartisan agreement in the state of the union.

Now, if you are someone who enjoys building your vocabulary on a variety of topics like politics and many others,

then please subscribe to the channel, turn on notifications.

That way I can become your teacher.

My name is Wes.

The channel is Interactive English.

It's all about trying to help you reach your fluency goals.

And if you subscribe, I'm not just going to treat you like any old other subscriber.

I'm actually going to listen to you.

I'm going to try to answer to you,

and I will treat you as though you were one of my constituents.

And that is the next word that I want to talk to you about.

Constituent.

This is basically a voter,

or a person who can vote in a particular area of the country.

And the opposite of a constituent,

or I guess it would be the opposite, would be a representative.

A representative represents voters or they represent their constituents.

And sometimes you may hear these words used in the same sentence.

So I could say the representatives in Washington will have to go home and answer to their constituents.

You're asking us to abandon a man who's inspired millions of our constituents.

Try to repair the damage done to my beloved family and my esteemed constituents.

Then we have incumbent.

This is a person who has or had a particular official position.

So in the United States,

which is where I'm from,

there are really two people who are running for an elected government position,

and that's a Democrat and a Republican.

And typically one person is the new candidate and the other person is the incumbent.

And in those situations, the incumbent definitely has the advantage.

And when an incumbent retires,

then there would just be two new candidates.

But the incumbent is the person who is in office now.

Breaking news out of North Carolina,

Democratic incumbent Cam Bray getting a run for his money by newcomer Marty Huggins.

The next word, it's a negative one, and that is demagogue.

Now, you may use this word in other contexts outside of politics,

but I think often it is used to talk about a politician.

So this This is a person,

especially a politician, who really gets support by exciting the emotions of ordinary people rather than by having good

or morally right ideas.

So this is how weird things are in the US because each side may accuse the other of being a demagogue.

People on the left may accuse Trump of being a demagogue.

People on the right may accuse Biden of being a demagogue.

And this is just the time that we live in.

Your leadership has raised the stakes of hate to a level

where we can no longer separate the demagogue from the truly inspired.

Then there's a word that is used a lot nowadays,

and that is the adjective polarized.

This word really just means divided,

but specifically divided into two opposing groups.

And you will certainly come across this adjective

if you are listening to the news or reading a newspaper

because people might talk about an issue that has become polarized or just saying that people nowadays are polarized.

So look for it, listen for it,

you will certainly come across this work.

We're more polarized now than ever.

That's understandable.

We're in a tribal moment.

We are frequently told that American politics are polarized.

On the right, Republicans work together with other Republicans,

and on the left, Democrats work with other Democrats.

Then there's filibuster.

This refers to a long speech in order to delay or prevent a law from being made or passed.

And you can use this as a verb or a noun.

So to filibuster something, I could say,

I plan to filibuster the proposed legislation.

Or as a noun, a filibuster,

I started a filibuster to stop the proposed legislation.

So in the US, this is just a legislative technique to stall or stop voting on something.

And in order to give you a better idea as to how this word is used in context,

I have some news headlines for you.

State Senators filibuster ahead of legislative deadline.

Filibuster returns to Nebraska legislature over bill targeting fentanyl crisis.

Senator Jeff Merkley on how to fix the filibuster.

Because, yeah, it's a little screwy.

It's kind of broken.

And here are some more examples because I love giving you a variety.

Article 7, Section 3 allows for a citizen filibuster.

If I stand here and refuse to yield my time,

you are prohibited from voting on the bill.

Let the filibustering begin.

Next is impeach.

This means to make a formal statement saying

that a public official is guilty of a serious offense in connection with their job.

And it's a word that,

once again, is used more and more often in the United States.

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So you could use it as a verb,

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to impeach someone, or as a noun,

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impeachment, or even as an adjective, impeachable.

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Saying something is an impeachable offense.

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And I want you to keep in mind that impeachment is a political process.

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You're not really going to go to jail,

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but you may lose your job.

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So now for a little trivia.

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How many U.S presidents have been impeached?

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I'll tell you the answer is three.

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And you may be able to think of two of the three.

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Well, the first one is Trump,

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who was twice impeached, once in 2019 and again in 2021.

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Bill Clinton was impeached in 1998,

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and then Andrew Jackson was impeached in 1868.

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And of the presidents who were impeached,

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none of them were convicted.

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So I pretty much ran the place into the ground after two months and got impeached.

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I changed my vote.

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I vote to impeach.

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Me too.

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I still have loyalty to my party tongue.

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And where's their loyalty?

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They were going to impeach you.

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Then we have referendum.

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This is a vote in which all people in a country

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or area are asked to give their opinion about or decide an important political or social question.

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And this noun may be followed by the preposition on.

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So in the U.S., in some states,

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there may be a referendum on marijuana legalization,

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or a referendum on abortion,

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or a referendum on school boards.

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But this year, there are going to be a number of different referendums.

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You know, to some, a simple schoolhouse whiteboard.

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But to those in the know, a referendum on democracy.

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But ultimately, this was a referendum on the leadership of George W.

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Bush.

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The state of Nevada is trying to pass a referendum where state and local government employees cannot have mustaches.

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Then we have ballot, which is a pretty common word.

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You may be familiar with it already,

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but it has a couple of different meanings and there are some common collocations with this now.

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So the first meaning is just a system of secret voting and collocations.

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You could say that someone was elected by ballot

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or something was done by secret ballot or you could say that you're going to hold a ballot.

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It also refers to a piece of paper on which you write your vote.

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So I could say that the referendum is going to appear on the ballot

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or a collocation would be to cast your ballot.

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A very common noun, definitely one you should know.

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Americans are heading to the polls to cast their ballots for the next US president.

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All 48,000 voters and who each one of them voted for.

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I thought this was a secret ballot.

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Next is winner take all.

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And this is really about a competition in which the winner takes the entire prize.

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So it really means what it says.

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But you may be wondering,

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how does this word relate to politics?

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So, in the US, we have this screwy system called the Electoral College.

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And this is actually the way that we choose our president.

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It's not by the popular vote.

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The person has to win 270 Electoral College votes.

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That is the magic number.

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So, each state is given a number of electors based on the size of the state.

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And within the state, whoever wins the popular vote wins them all.

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And that's why we say winner take all.

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Because even if it's very close,

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if one person wins by one vote,

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they get all of the electors.

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Winner take all.

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It's screwy.

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To me, it doesn't make any sense.

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But this is the way it's done in just about every state.

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So, let me give you some more non-political examples using this phrase.

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Okay guys, one match, winner take all.

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One more time, winner take all.

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Last game coming up, winner take all, agreed?

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Think tank.

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This is the next phrase that I want to teach you

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because it refers to a group of experts that are gathered together by an organization,

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especially a government, in order to consider different problems and try to come up with ways to solve these problems.

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So you might hear someone say that a study or some research was done by a think tank.

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Now even though think tanks may consist of different experts,

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they're not really without bias

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because some think tanks have been created to support a progressive agenda while other think tanks support a conservative agenda.

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And here are some well-known think tanks.

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The Brookings Institution, the Heritage Foundation, Pew Research Center.

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Whenever you hear these names,

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you now know that they are think tanks.

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I think it's exciting.

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Springfield is the center of the political universe.

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I feel like a pundit in a think tank.

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Think tanky.

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I thought you would be a tremendous addition to this think tank.

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This woman, Simone Leclerc, is the president of a think tank called European Independence League.

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Then there's to lobby.

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This means to try to persuade a politician or the government

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or some official group that something should or should not be done or that some law should be changed.

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So someone may lobby someone else for something.

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And to give you a better idea as to how this verb is used in context,

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here are some more news headlines.

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Nebraska high school students lobby legislators on a new program with a focus on diverse perspectives.

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Spain set to lobby EU partners to recognize Palestinian state.

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And student leaders chancellor lobby in DC for increased financial aid and stable research funding.

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I should also tell you that this word is commonly used as a noun,

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a lobby, to refer to the group that tries to persuade politicians.

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So in this case, you have the gun lobby,

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the meat lobby, the telecom lobby.

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There are many different lobbies.

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Our president is prepared to lobby Congress to lift the NASA exclusion policy.

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Welcome to the grand opening of our whatchamacallit,

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which thanks to the lobbying of Lisa Simpson,

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we built instead of a new baseball stadium.

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And then we have poll.

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This is a study in which people are asked to share their opinions about a subject or person.

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And in an election year,

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this is a word that you're going to hear quite often.

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So you may hear statements like the polls show that Biden is ahead or the polls show that Trump is ahead.

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And I'm also using this as a noun, a poll.

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But you can use this as a verb as well.

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If I were to say,

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we polled a thousand people to ask their opinions on free speech.

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In my personal opinion, I think polls are really for reporting news and just capturing people's attention.

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I think in the U.S they've been somewhat inaccurate.

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But what I think is more interesting are the exit polls.

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This is the activity of asking people how they voted after they leave a polling station,

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which is where people vote,

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in order to discover what the results will likely be.

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Of course, these polls are more reliable because people have already voted,

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but it kind of helps you understand where people are at as far as what they think about certain topics and issues.

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But these are words that you will hear a lot.

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A poll or exit poll.

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Oh, don't worry about the polls.

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They're just a sampling goals change.

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Don't get ahead of yourself.

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We did a flash pull.

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68% of Punians now believe you're lying about where you were born.

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Well, the exit pulls are good.

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The West Coast exit pulls are looking bad.

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And now for a little review,

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because of course, I am going to lobby you to watch another video lesson.

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As my constituent, that is what I would recommend.

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And I suppose that if there were a study done by all think tanks.

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The research would show that watching interactive English just helps you reach your fluency goals.

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But in all seriousness, I would love it if you hit the like button.

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And you could think of it like a secret ballot.

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And later on, I will check the results.

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And really, it's going to be a referendum on my teaching abilities.

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So I'm not going to keep talking because then I'll just sound like I'm filibustering,

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which is not what I want.

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So I'm going to wrap things up,

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but I really would appreciate it if you hit that like button,

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if you enjoyed the lesson and learned something new.

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But as always, thank you so much for watching and I will see you next time.

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So long.

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Shadowing Practice: POLITICAL VOCABULARY 🇺🇸 Advanced Words & Phrases You Should Know - Learn English Speaking with YouTube

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