Shadowing Practice: RE3 Unit 11B - Learn English Speaking with Video

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In recent years, the artistic achievements of two 20th century pioneers have been brought to a global audience.

The Picasso of Brazil.

In 2018, a major new exhibition opened at New York's Museum of Modern Art, MoMA.

The show brought together more than 100 works by a single Brazilian artist.

Tarsila do Amarão.

Although widely celebrated in her native country, the artist was relatively unknown outside Brazil.

So who was Tarsila?

Born in 1886 in a small town near Sao Paulo, Tarsila do Amarão is considered the mother of modern art in Brazil.

She first developed a love for art after her parents sent her to study in Spain.

She returned to Europe a few years later and settled in Paris.

Several artists there, including Picasso, were beginning to experiment with new forms, less realistic and more abstract.

The new approaches continued to influence Tarsila after she returned to Brazil.

Approaches to art in Brazil at the time were relatively conservative.

traditional European styles dominated, with works mainly featuring natural, religious or historical scenes in soft colours.

Tarsila decided to take a different direction.

I want to be the painter of my country, she wrote.

Her images began to reflect

Brazil's diverse identity, a mix of native, African and European peoples.

She used strong, vivid colours to paint real -life scenes of the nation's farmers, countryside and wildlife.

This had never been done before in Brazilian art.

One of Tarsila's most famous works is Abaporo, 1928.

The title combines two words from Tupi Guarani languages, meaning man who eats people.

The painting has a playful, surreal quality, but its look and feel are distinctly Brazilian.

The work and its title later inspired a Brazilian art movement called anthropophagia or cannibalism.

Brazilian artists began to take in or digest styles from other cultures and mix them with local influences.

The result was something uniquely Brazilian.

Tarsila do Amaral died in Sao Paulo in 1973, age 86, after a career spanning six decades.

But her artwork and legacy live on in her native Brazil.

For Brazilians, her recognition is kind of off the charts, says James Rondeau, director of the Art Institute of Chicago.

She is the Picasso of Brazil.

Now, with the MoMA exhibition and other international shows, Tarsila's art is being appreciated by a new audience of admirers around the world.

the secret photographer at first

they seemed like ordinary photographs a couple holding hands a child

standing by a dirty window a man daydreaming in a park

the images were hidden in boxes for years unseen except by the woman who took them vivian mayor but

when a collector bought some of the boxes at auction

he soon realized their contents were remarkable mayor's street scenes might seem ordinary, but they were actually very special.

Vivian Mayer was born in New York City in 1926, the daughter of French and Austrian immigrants.

For most of her early life, she moved between

New York and Europe.

In 1956, she moved to Chicago, where she worked as a nanny and caregiver.

In her free time, she walked the city streets, taking pictures and developing her photography skills.

It was a hobby she would continue for the rest of her life.

Mayer's black and white images mostly portray urban life, street scenes and regular people.

Residents carry out everyday tasks, shopping, riding on buses, walking in a park.

Often she took her pictures in secret.

People are caught acting naturally, unaware that they are being photographed.

Many of the photos reveal something personal and often deeply moving.

They show us the beauty, humor, pain and mystery of normal life.

In total, Mare took over 100 ,000 photographs, but she developed very few.

Instead, she kept most of the negatives and a few prints in boxes in a rented storage space in Chicago.

Toward the end of her life, she was unable to pay the rent to the storage company.

So the boxes, with her work inside, were sold at auction.

In 2007, John Maloof purchased the contents of one of the storage lockers.

Realising the quality of the images, he added a selection of Mare's photographs to an image -sharing website.

Thousands of people worldwide viewed the photos, and many went viral.

Mare's photos began to appear in books and exhibitions.

In 2015, a movie about her life, Finding Vivian Mare, was nominated for an Academy Award.

It is not known why

Mare kept her photo secret or how she might feel about her worldwide fame.

She died in April 2009 in a nursing home in the Chicago suburbs.

Much of Mare's life remains a mystery.

But her talent as a visual storyteller, for so long hidden in darkness, has finally seen the light of day.

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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson

This speaking lesson is built on the video “RE3 Unit 11B”. The speaker keeps coming back to these words: Brazilian, Brazil, Tarsila, image, boxes. This video has 63 sentences and 783 words to shadow. The speech runs for 5:44. The speaker talks at a steady 137 words per minute, a comfortable pace for shadowing. Only 78% 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
photograph noun	/ˈfoʊ.təˌɡɹæf/	A picture created by projecting an image onto a photosensitive surface such as a chemically treated plate or film, CCD receptor, etc.
exhibition noun	/ɛksɪˈbɪʃən/	An instance of exhibiting, or something exhibited.
mystery noun	/ˈmɪs.t(ə.)ɹi/	Something secret or unexplainable; an unknown.
ordinary adjective	/ˈɔɹdɪnɛɹi/	Having regular jurisdiction; now only used in certain phrases.
auction noun	/ˈɔkʃən/	A public event where goods or property are sold to the highest bidder.
colours noun		Flag denoting the nationality of a vessel, flown from the stern.
naturally adverb	/ˈnæt͡ʃ.(ə.)ɹə.li/	In a natural manner.
chart noun	/t͡ʃɑɹt/	A map illustrating the geography of a specific phenomenon.
everyday adjective	/ˈɛvɹiˌdeɪ/	Appropriate for ordinary use, rather than for special occasions.
recognition noun	/ˌɹɛkəɡˈnɪʃ(ə)n/	The act of recognizing or the condition of being recognized (matching a current observation with a memory of a prior observation of the same entity).
photography noun	/fəˈtɑ.ɡɹə.fi/	The art and technology of producing images on photosensitive surfaces, and its digital counterpart.
deeply adverb	/ˈdi(ː)pli/	To a deep extent or degree; very greatly.
reveal verb	/ɹɪˈviːl/	To uncover; to show and display that which was hidden.
skill noun	/skɪl/	A capacity to do something well; a technique, an ability, usually acquired or learned, as opposed to abilities that are regarded as innate.
nurse noun	/nɝs/	Anyone performing this role, regardless of training or profession.

Phrasal verbs you will hear

Word	Pronunciation	Meaning
bring together verb		To cause people to do something together; to bring about togetherness.
carry out verb	/ˈkæ.ɹi aʊt/	To hold while moving it out.
take over verb		To assume control of something, such as a business or enterprise, and sometimes by force.

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	have been brought · is considered · been done
Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now	have been brought · has finally seen
Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing	man who eats · woman who took

Pronunciation to watch

The “sh” and “zh” sounds: exhibition /ɛksɪˈbɪʃən/, auction /ˈɔkʃən/, recognition /ˌɹɛkəɡˈnɪʃ(ə)n/
Long words — get the stress right: exhibition /ɛksɪˈbɪʃən/, ordinary /ˈɔɹdɪnɛɹi/, naturally /ˈnæt͡ʃ.(ə.)ɹə.li/, recognition /ˌɹɛkəɡˈnɪʃ(ə)n/, photography /fəˈtɑ.ɡɹə.fi/

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 photograph, exhibition, mystery.

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.

Shadowing technique: read the full step-by-step guide →

Shadowing Practice: RE3 Unit 11B - Learn English Speaking with Video

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