Shadowing Practice: READING EXPLORER 2 Unit 5B The Stories in the Rocks - Learn English Speaking with Video
Creating lesson...
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Unit 5.
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B. The Stories in the Rock When he was just six years old,
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Jörn Höram turned his bedroom into a small museum.
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His shelves became filled with a growing collection of fossils.
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For Höram, these fossils were not just rocks, but things that could tell the history of life on this planet.
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He imagined them saying, I am not a rock, I am a fossil.
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I have a story to tell.
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B. Hurum earned a PhD in paleontology in his native Norway.
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Since then, he has been on expedition seeking fossils all over the world.
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Much of his work has been carried out in Svalbard, a group of Norwegian islands north of the Arctic Circle.
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In the hills of this cold and remote region, Hurum and his team have found the fossils of many sea creatures.
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It might seem surprising to find the remains of such animals at the tops of hills,
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but in prehistoric times, these areas were actually seabeds about 100 metres deep.
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See, Hurum has returned to Svalbard many times.
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The dig season in the region is very short, from July to August.
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During that time, the temperature is just about warm enough to soften the frozen ground, allowing easier access to the fossils.
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There is also less wind, and the midnight sun makes it easy for the scientists to have long, productive days.
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D, even a dream job, has its challenges, however.
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Sometimes we find explodosaurs, he says.
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The team may find many broken bone pieces spread across a hillside.
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Then it becomes impossible to recreate the entire animal.
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We have to identify the entire animal from individual pieces.
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Each of Huram's expeditions also requires a lot of preparation.
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We have between 15 and 20 people, tons of equipment, food, jackhammers, water, he explains.
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There's a lot of work before you start the cool thing.
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E for Hurum, the cool thing, is the act of discovery.
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In 2006, his team made its greatest discovery so far.
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After removing about 60 tons of rock by hand, Hurum and his team eventually dug out an enormous fossil.
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We knew immediately this was something special, says Huram.
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The large pieces of bone told us that this was big.
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It was a plesiosaur, a prehistoric sea monster with teeth the size of cucumbers.
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The fossil was not complete, but it included a front flipper, a shoulder, and pieces of skull and neck.
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F for Huram, the discovery of this 15-metre-long creature nicknamed Predator X, was an amazing moment.
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It's like one of those scratch-off lottery tickets every time you dig, he explains.
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Sometimes you start digging and you might just find part of a skull or other bone.
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Sometimes you find the skull and the vertebra.
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Then you know it's a jackpot.
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This B1 speaking lesson is built on the video “READING EXPLORER 2 Unit 5B The Stories in the Rocks”. The speaker keeps coming back to these words: fossil, Hurum, pieces, rock, skull. This video has 37 sentences and 463 words to shadow. The speech runs for 3:12. The speaker talks at a steady 144 words per minute, a comfortable pace for shadowing. Only 76% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English, so the vocabulary is demanding.
Key vocabulary in this video
The 15 most advanced words in the video, with pronunciation and meaning:
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| fossil noun | /ˈfɑsl̩/ | The mineralized remains of an animal or plant. |
| prehistoric adjective | /ˌpɹiː.hɪsˈtoɹ.ɪk/ | Of or relating to the epoch before written record. |
| metre noun | /ˈmiːtəɹ/ | The basic unit of length in the International System of Units (SI: Système International d'Unités), equal to the distance travelled by light in a vacuum in… |
| expedition noun | /ɛkspəˈdɪʃən/ | A military journey; an enterprise against some enemy or into enemy territory. |
| ton noun | /tʌn/ | The short ton of 2000 pounds (about 907 kg), 20 hundredweights of 100 pounds avoirdupois each. |
| cucumber noun | /ˈkjuˌkʌmbɚ/ | A vine in the gourd family, Cucumis sativus. |
| flipper noun | /ˈflɪpɚ/ | In marine mammals such as whales (or other secondarily aquatic animals such as sea turtles), a wide, flat limb adapted for swimming. |
| hillside noun | /ˈhɪlˌsaɪd/ | The side of a hill. |
| jackhammer noun | /ˈd͡ʒækˌhæmɚ/ | A portable percussive power tool that combines a hammer and chisel used to drill or break hard matter, for instance rock or concrete. |
| paleontology noun | /ˌpeɪli.ənˈtɑləd͡ʒi/ | The study of the forms of life existing in prehistoric or geologic times, especially as represented by fossils. |
| plesiosaur noun | /ˈpliːsiəsɔːɹ/ | Any of the order †Plesiosauria of extinct marine reptiles, from the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods. |
| seabed noun | The floor or bottom of the sea or ocean. | |
| soften verb | /ˈsɑfən/ | To make something soft or softer. |
| vertebra noun | /ˈvɝ.təb.ɹə/ | Any of the bony or cartilaginous segments which make up the backbone, consisting in some lower vertebrates of several distinct elements which never become… |
| jackpot noun | /ˈd͡ʒækpɒt/ | A money prize pool which accumulates until the conditions are met for it to be won. |
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | has been · has been carried · have found |
| Possibility with “might / may” might/may + verb — something that is possible but not certain | might seem · may find · might just find |
Pronunciation to watch
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: expedition /ɛkspəˈdɪʃən/, shelf /ʃɛlf/, preparation /ˌpɹɛpəˈɹeɪʃ(ə)n/
- Long words — get the stress right: prehistoric /ˌpɹiː.hɪsˈtoɹ.ɪk/, expedition /ɛkspəˈdɪʃən/, paleontology /ˌpeɪli.ənˈtɑləd͡ʒi/, preparation /ˌpɹɛpəˈɹeɪʃ(ə)n/
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 fossil, prehistoric, metre.
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.