Shadowing Practice: READING EXPLORER FOUNDATIONS UNIT 2 2A THE WORLD OF SPEED EATING - Learn English Speaking with Video
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27 sentences
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1
Tour the world of speed.
2
Eating a competitive eating or speed eating is exactly what its name suggests.
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Contestants won eat as much as they can, usually within a time limit.
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Eating competitions can involve various foods, pizza, pies, ice cream, chilli peppers.
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They can also offer large prizes to the winners.
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The biggest competition.
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B, the world's largest competitive eating event is Nathan's Famous Hot Dog Eating Contest.
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The event is held every 4th of July in Brooklyn, New York.
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According to legend, this tradition began over a hundred years ago.
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Four immigrants were arguing about who loved their new country the most.
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Finally, they worked out a way to decide.
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They would see who could eat the most of a famous American food, the hot dog.
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James Mullen, an Irish immigrant, won by eating 13 hot dogs in 12 minutes.
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Nathan's 4th of July tradition was born.
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Eating champions see the current champion of the contest is Joey Chestnut.
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Chestnut, an American, also holds the world record for hot dog eating, 74 in less than 10 minutes.
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That's just over 8 seconds per hot dog.
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For many years the Nathan's contest champion was Takeru Kobayashi from Japan.
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He is smaller and lighter than chestnut and doesn't look like an eating champion.
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However, he holds many world records for eating different types of food.
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Bad taste or just sport?
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D. Not everybody thinks competitive eating is a good thing.
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It can be unhealthy for the contestants and many people in the world are going hungry.
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Kobayashi first won the event in 2001 when he was 23 years old.
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So are eating competitions in bad taste?
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For competitive eaters, it's a sport like any other.
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As Kobayashi says, food fighters think of themselves as athletes.
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This B1 speaking lesson is built on the video “READING EXPLORER FOUNDATIONS UNIT 2 2A THE WORLD OF SPEED EATING”. The speaker keeps coming back to these words: eating, dog, hot, competitive, champion. This video has 27 sentences and 288 words to shadow. The speech runs for 2:10. The speaker talks at a steady 133 words per minute, a comfortable pace for shadowing. 83% 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
The 15 most advanced words in the video, with pronunciation and meaning:
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| immigrant noun | /ˈɪmɪɡɹənt/ | A non-native person who comes to a country from another country to permanently settle there. |
| argue verb | /ˈɑɹ.ɡju/ | To show grounds for concluding (that); to indicate, imply. |
| hungry adjective | /ˈhʌŋ.ɡɹi/ | Affected by hunger; having the physical need for food. |
| legend noun | /ˈlɛd͡ʒ.ənd/ | The life story of a saint (such stories are often embellished, but any kind is called a legend). |
| pizza noun | /ˈpi.tsə/ | A baked Italian dish of a thinly rolled bread crust typically topped before baking with tomato sauce, cheese, and other ingredients such as meat or vegetables. |
| fighter noun | /ˈfaɪtɚ/ | A person who fights; a combatant. |
| involve verb | /ɪnˈvɑlv/ | To have (something) as a component or a related part; to comprise, to include. |
| pie noun | /paɪ/ | A type of pastry that consists of an outer crust and a filling. (Savory pies are more popular in the UK and sweet pies are more popular in the US, so "pie"… |
| pepper noun | /ˈpɛp.ə/ | A plant of the family Piperaceae. |
| athlete noun | /ˈæθ.liːt/ | A participant in any of a group of sporting activities including track and field, road running, cross country running and racewalking. |
| chili noun | /ˈt͡ʃɪli/ | The pungent, spicy fresh or dried fruit of any of several cultivated varieties of capsicum peppers, used in cooking. |
| unhealthy adjective | /ʌnˈhɛl.θi/ | Characterized by, or conducive to poor health. |
| chestnut noun | /ˈt͡ʃɛs(t)ˌnʌt/ | An edible nut (technically a fruit) of the Spanish chestnut or sweet chestnut tree (Castanea sativa); also (chiefly preceded by a descriptive word), a nut from… |
| contestant noun | /kənˈtɛstənt/ | A participant in a contest; specifically, a person who plays a game, as on a TV game show. |
| eater noun | /ˈiː.tɚ/ | A person or animal who eats. |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| work out verb | /ˌwɝk ˈaʊt/ | To calculate. |
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 | is held · was born |
| Present continuous am/is/are + -ing — something happening right now or around now | are going · are eating |
Pronunciation to watch
- The “th” sounds: athlete /ˈæθ.liːt/, unhealthy /ʌnˈhɛl.θi/
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 immigrant, argue, hungry.
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.