Shadowing Practice: Reading Selection " PICTURESQUE JOURNEYS " - Learn English Speaking with Video
Creating lesson...
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Picturesque Journeys by Inizia Canetti Travel to distant places can have a powerful effect on people.
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This is especially true of artists.
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As the lives of the three artists featured here show, different locations have inspired some of the world's greatest painters to create their best works.
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Many paintings by artists Frida Kahlo, Georgia O 'Keeffe, and Paul Gauguin were strongly influenced by their journeys.
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Visiting or living in different places inspired the themes of their works and their colors and painting styles.
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In their art, these artists captured the landscapes and everyday scenes that inspired their imaginations and affected their art.
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Frida Kahlo was born in 1907 in the town of Coyocan outside Mexico City, Mexico.
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Her father was hungarian and her mother was of spanish
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and mexican indian descent kalo's diverse background helped define both her identity
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and her vision of the world kalo showed her determined spirit from an early age
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when she was six she became ill with polio it made one of her legs thinner
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and weaker than the other however this didn't slow her down kalo still played sports and she won several swimming competitions.
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At age 18, Kahlo was in a bus crash and was seriously injured.
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She had to spend many months resting and recovering.
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Kahlo became bored lying in bed, staring at the ceiling.
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Her parents decided to give her a box of paints and an easel that she could use in bed.
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Kahlo began to paint everything she saw in her bedroom.
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Painting became her daily habit.
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Because she had a huge mirror in front of her bed, she started to paint images of herself.
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Kahlo would continue to create self -portraits throughout her life.
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After she recovered from the accident, Kahlo began going out and about again.
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One day, she passed by a building where the famous painter Diego Rivera was painting a huge mural.
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She decided to show Rivera some of her paintings and ask him for his opinion.
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Rivera agreed to take a look.
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He told her she was talented.
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That was the beginning of a long friendship between the two artists.
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A year after they met, Kahlo and Rivera married.
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Soon after that, they moved to the United States.
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Kahlo and Rivera lived in San Francisco, California.
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But it was time spent in another American city, Detroit, Michigan, that began to influence Kahlo's paintings.
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She passed many hours alone in Detroit while Rivera painted murals for a North American company.
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She found that she greatly missed her homeland of Mexico, so Kahlo began to paint images that related to how she felt.
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No matter where she went, she painted what she could identify with most—herself.
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Self -Portrait with Monkey and Parrot,
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1942, Frida Kahlo Many of Kahlo's paintings include things she missed about her childhood and her home in Mexico.
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An example is Self -Portrait with Monkey and Parrot, painted in 1942.
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To Kahlo, the spider monkey was a symbol of home.
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She kept spider monkeys as pets in the Garden of La Casa Azul, her blue house outside Mexico City.
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It was the house Kahlo was born in, and one that she kept and visited until she died there in 1954.
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To Kahlo, the spider monkey in the painting was also a symbol of the children she couldn't have
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because of her bus accident.
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The animals meant so much to her that of 181 works she made in her lifetime, 55 of them include spider monkeys.
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The parrot on Kahlo's shoulder and the fuzzy -leaved plants behind her also reflect the blue house and its garden.
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Kahlo herself is stern -faced and serious -looking, painted to enhance her trademark thick black eyebrows that meet in the middle.
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No matter where Kahlo lived, she made paintings that were like visual autobiographies.
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Every painting tells the story of something remarkable she lived through and how she felt about it.
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Her facial expressions, her clothing, and the colors and images around her help viewers understand what was happening at
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that moment in her life and in the world.
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Kahlo missed her colorful and warm homeland.
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That's why, in many of her paintings, she portrays herself wearing jewelry and surrounded by objects that identify her cultural heritage.
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Her use of color, too, often expressed her yearning for home as well as other powerful feelings yellow for example represents the sun
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and happiness of mexico but in some cases it also represents illness
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or fear cobalt blue represents electricity and purity her paintings often include green red
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and white too those are the colors of the Mexican flag.
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Even though she often lived in cities, Kahlo rarely painted urban scenes.
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She always preferred to paint the world she dreamed of returning to.
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Instead of skyscrapers and factory smokestacks, Kahlo painted tropical plants and animals from her homeland.
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The monkeys, parrots, and lush tropical plants she included in her paintings represented Mexico's past and present.
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They also represented Kahlo's dreams of a different life.
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Much as she missed Mexico, however, Kahlo's travels had a major effect on the art she created.
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Travel helped her better understand her own identity and develop a distinct artistic style.
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That style made her one of the world's most famous artists, one who has influenced many others.
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Like Kahlo, the American artist Georgia O 'Keeffe was deeply influenced by her cultural background and her travels.
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O 'Keeffe was born in 1887 in the rural town of Sun Prairie, Wisconsin.
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Her parents were dairy farmers of Irish and Hungarian backgrounds.
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O 'Keeffe grew up in a farmhouse surrounded by trees, wildflowers, and grasslands.
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O 'Keeffe was surrounded by a big family, but she was quiet and independent.
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Growing up, she enjoyed spending long hours observing the natural environment.
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When she was in eighth grade, O 'Keeffe decided to become a painter.
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She took art lessons and began to focus on flowers as one of her favorite subjects.
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She was fascinated by their soft colors and irregular forms.
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This early experience strongly influenced her paintings years later.
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After high school, O 'Keefe decided to study painting at the Art Institute of Chicago in Illinois.
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After further study in New York, she spent some time as a teacher at West Texas A &M University.
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There she first saw the Palo Duro Canyon near Amarillo, Texas.
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It would become an important landscape in her paintings.
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O 'Keefe's style and ideas about art took a turn in 1912
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when she attended a summer school class at the University of Virginia.
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There, she was inspired by the ideas of Arthur Wesley Dow, who believed that artists should express themselves using color, lines, and shading.
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This was very different from the realistic style of painting, known as realism, that O 'Keefe had studied until then.
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As a result, the young artist found a new way to share her feelings and ideas through her art.
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In 1915, she began a series of abstract drawings.
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Abstract art is a painting or other art form that doesn't try to show people, places, or things in a realistic way.
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The new style of these artworks represented her breakup with realism.
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Soon, she became one of the first American artists to practice a purely abstract style of art.
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The famous photographer and art gallery owner, Alfred Stieglitz, saw O 'Keeffe's abstract drawings and was very impressed.
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In 1916, in New York City, Stieglitz opened the first exhibit of O 'Keeffe's work.
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Over time, Stieglitz and O 'Keeffe became friends as well.
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In 1924, Stieglitz and O 'Keeffe were married, and they lived in New York.
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Petunias, 1924, Georgia O 'Keeffe Living in New York City, O 'Keefe was captivated by skyscrapers.
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She made these tall buildings the subjects of such paintings as The Shelton with Sunspots,
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NY, City Night, and Radiator Building Night, New York.
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O 'Keefe spent summers at her husband's family home, in the village of Lake George in the Adirondack Mountains of New York.
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While there, she began making large -scale paintings of nature at close range, as if she were looking through a magnifying glass.
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In 1924, she made her first large -scale flower painting, Petunia No. 2.
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There were many more giant, expressive, and colorful flowers to come.
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Red and Yellow Cliffs, 1940, Georgia O 'Keeffe O 'Keeffe's curious nature led her to travel often.
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In the late 1920s, she became fascinated with the landscapes of the Southwest.
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In the deserts of New Mexico, she found rough terrain with monumental rocks and animal bones that were partly buried in the arid ground.
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She also admired the distinct local art and the unique style of adobe architecture.
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Soon, O 'Keeffe began to spend almost all of her time in the Southwest.
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In New Mexico, she felt inspired and felt a new freedom to paint.
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In 1934, O 'Keeffe bought a home in New Mexico, in the desert she so often painted.
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Then, after 1946, O 'Keeffe decided to move to New Mexico permanently.
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O 'Keeffe's famous paintings of New Mexico include Black Cross, New Mexico, and Dead Tree with Pink Hill.
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She said of the Southwest, to me, it is the best place in the world.
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o 'keefe took many exploratory drives across the southwest after one
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of her trips she said such a beautiful untouched lonely feeling
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place it is a place i have painted before even now i must do it again o 'keefe continued traveling
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and discovering new places some of her artworks reflected these journeys
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she painted lava bridges in hawaii the mountain peaks of peru and mount fuji in japan
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o 'keefe was attracted to big open spaces
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so her work often includes paintings of clouds
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and endless skies o 'keefe's paintings were of oversized flowers cityscapes rugged landscapes remote hills lonely crosses
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and images of bones against the desert sky through them o
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'keefe greatly influenced other artists of the 20th century today her
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paintings can be found in museums all across the country including
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one dedicated solely to her work the georgia o 'keefe museum in santa fe new mexico o 'keefe lived
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and worked in abiquiu from 1949 to 1984.
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like both frida kahlo
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and georgia o 'keefe the french artist paul gauguin was greatly influenced by his cultural background and travels
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Gauguin was born in Paris, France in 1848.
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His family left Paris to move to South America while he was still very young.
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Paul spent his childhood in Lima, Peru, surrounded by South American pottery and other objects that his mother loved.
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His mother also liked to dress in colorful traditional costumes of Lima.
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All of these things helped spark Gauguin's interest in art and creativity.
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When Gauguin was seven, his family moved back to France.
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Ten years later, he joined the French Merchant Marine, traveling on ships that carry cargo and people from place to place.
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During this time, Gauguin sailed twice to Brazil.
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He discovered that he loved traveling and learning about other cultures.
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These passions would become important parts of his life and art.
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After working for the Merchant Marine, Gauguin returned to France.
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He started a new way of life.
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He got a job as a stockbroker and married a Danish woman named Mette Gad.
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In 1873, he began painting as a hobby.
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He quickly showed great talent, and his paintings were displayed in major art shows.
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In 1882, the stock market crashed in France, and Gauguin lost his job.
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He decided to take the risk of becoming a full -time painter.
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He moved to Brittany, in the north of France.
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Gauguin felt that many French artists imitated each other rather than trying to create something new and different.
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He didn't want to imitate anyone.
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In Brittany, he started to move away from the Impressionist style that was so popular at the time.
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Impressionist art often used pastel colors and focused on the effects of light.
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Gauguin instead started painting scenes of Brittany's countryside in bold colors with strong lines.
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Sparked by Europe's growing interest in other cultures, especially Japanese culture, Gauguin continued to experiment in his own painting.
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He also began to travel outside France again to find new inspiration for his art.
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In 1887, after a brief trip to Panama, Gauguin visited the island of Martinique in the Caribbean.
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The beauty of the Caribbean landscape amazed him.
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He also became friendly with people on the island.
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As the result of this experience, he started to include both tropical landscapes and symbols in his artwork.
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Martinique Landscape and Among the Mangoes are two of the paintings that Gauguin created during his stay on the Caribbean island.
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After he left the island, he used sketches he made in Martinique as the basis of many more paintings.
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The people of Martinique remained a popular subject in his artworks.
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Gauguin was eager to find another exotic destination that would inspire his creativity.
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He was tired of European culture.
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He found it artificial and dull.
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In 1892, he decided to sail for the island of Tahiti, also known as French Polynesia, in the South Pacific.
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He left his old life behind.
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He thought that this Polynesian island might offer him personal and creative freedom.
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He moved into a bamboo hut and started to paint the scenery and people of Tahiti.
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Along with new subjects, he experimented with new techniques and formats.
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I am leaving in order to have peace and quiet, to be rid of the influence of civilization, he wrote at the time.
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I want only to do simple, very simple art.
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Gauguin was fascinated by the strength and simplicity of art from Africa, Asia, and Latin America.
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In Tahiti, he strived to use these qualities in his own artworks.
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He used vivid colors and simple compositions to paint the tropical environment.
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Gradually, he began to focus more on the Tahitian people themselves.
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He painted many scenes of Tahitians doing everyday tasks, such as weaving baskets.
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Gauguin was also inspired by the history and the stories of the Pacific Islands.
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He began to add elements of these stories, such as religious symbols, to his paintings.
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His style began to break away more and more from the traditions of European art.
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Soon, Gauguin's use of colors and lines was like no one else's.
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Gauguin not only used intense, bright colors to reflect the landscape of the Polynesian islands, but he also used colors with great freedom.
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For example, he painted grass red if he felt it should be red.
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Comings and Goings, Martinique, Allee et Venue, 1887, Paul Gauguin Near the end of his life,
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Gauguin moved to the more remote Marquesas Islands in the Pacific.
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He continued painting there until his death in 1903.
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Gauguin had a huge influence on modern art.
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He inspired artists such as Vincent van Gogh, Henri Matisse, and Pablo Picasso, among others today he is known for his unique style
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and technique as well as for his experiments with color all of
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which were strongly affected by the places he visited
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and lived Frida Kahlo Georgia O 'Keeffe
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and Paul Gauguin are among the many artists whose works have
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been influenced by their journeys it is impossible to imagine how different these artists lives
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and art would have been if they had never traveled.
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This video has 185 sentences and 2521 words to shadow. The speech runs for 17:27. 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
15 words from the video worth learning, with pronunciation and meaning:
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| landscape noun | /ˈlan(d)skeɪp/ | A portion of land or territory as defined by its landform, its geographical (and architectural) features. |
| monkey noun | /ˈmʌŋki/ | A member of the clade Simiiformes other than those in the clade Hominoidea containing apes, generally (but not universally) distinguished by small size, tails… |
| artwork noun | /ˈɑɹtˌwɝk/ | A painting, drawing, sculpture or other piece of creative, visual art. |
| symbol noun | /ˈsɪmbəl/ | A character or glyph representing an idea, concept or object. |
| spider noun | /ˈspaɪ̯dɚ/ | Any of various eight-legged, predatory arthropods, of the order Araneae, most of which spin webs to catch prey. |
| tropical adjective | /ˈtɹɑ.pɪ.kəl/ | Of or pertaining to the tropics, the equatorial region between 23 degrees north and 23 degrees south. |
| abstract noun | /ˈæbˌstɹækt/ | An abridgement or summary of a longer publication. |
| southwest noun | /saʊθˈwɛst/ | The intercardinal compass point halfway between south and west; specifically at a bearing of 225°. |
| painter noun | /ˈpeɪntɚ/ | An artist who paints pictures. |
| surround verb | /səˈɹaʊnd/ | To encircle something or simultaneously extend in all directions. |
| strongly adverb | /ˈstɹɔŋli/ | In a strong or powerful manner. |
| desert noun | /ˈdɛz.ɚt/ | A barren area of land or desolate terrain, especially one with little water or vegetation; a wasteland. |
| reflect verb | /ɹɪˈflɛkt/ | To bend back (light, etc.) from a surface. |
| experiment noun | /ɪkˈspɛɹ.ə.mənt/ | A test under controlled conditions made to either demonstrate a known truth, examine the validity of a hypothesis, or determine the efficacy or likelihood of… |
| greatly adverb | /ˈɡɹeɪ̯t.li/ | To a great extent or degree. |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Meaning |
|---|---|
| break away verb | To leave suddenly. |
| go out verb | To leave, especially a building. |
| grow up verb | To mature and become an adult. |
| live through verb | To survive a difficult period or event |
| look through verb | To take a view of the contents of; search in, either with the eyes or by hand. |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 4 contractions and reduced forms, such as didn't, couldn't, doesn't. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “th” sounds: southwest /saʊθˈwɛst/, clothing /ˈkloʊðɪŋ/, thin /ˈθɪn/, thick /θɪk/, eighth /eɪtθ/
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: passion /ˈpæʃən/, capture /ˈkæp.(t)ʃɚ/, inspiration /ˌɪn.spɪˈɹeɪ.ʃən/, friendship /ˈfɹɛn(d)ʃɪp/, composition /ˌkɑm.pəˈzɪʃ.ən/
- Long words — get the stress right: experiment /ɪkˈspɛɹ.ə.mənt/, creativity /kri.eɪˈtɪv.ᵻ.ti/, realism /ˈɹi.əlɪzəm/, electricity /ɪˌlɛkˈtɹɪsɪti/, architecture /ˈɑː.kɪˌtɛk.t͡ʃə/
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 landscape, monkey, artwork.
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 | was born · was talented · was surrounded |
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | have inspired · has influenced · have painted |
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.