Shadowing Practice: Rock Candy! - Learn English Speaking with Video
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Have you ever wanted to make your own rock candy?
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Well, today I am going to teach you how with my rock candy science experiment.
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Hi everyone, I'm Emily Calandrelli, MIT engineer and host of Emily's Flunder Lab.
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And on my channel, we learn about all things space and science.
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So grab your sugar and get ready for some sweet science.
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Today I'm going to teach
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you how to make colorful rock candy sticks using science here's
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what you need rock candy sticks one cup of water three
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cups of white granulated sugar plus a little extra to sprinkle
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on your rock candy sticks a few different glasses some clothes pins
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and some food coloring the first thing
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you want to do is you want to get the bottom third of your rock candy sticks wet
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you can do this by running it under water in the sink
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i'm just going to do it like this here
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and then after you do
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that for a few seconds lay them out on a plate just like that
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and we are going to sprinkle some sugar on top of them
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you just want to completely coat your rock candy sticks get
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as much sugar on there as possible might be a little overkill
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but that's okay just go ahead
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and roll it around in the sugar set your rock candy
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sticks aside to dry for at least an hour ideally overnight once your candy sticks are completely dry
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you are ready to make your saturated solution of sugar here's how you do
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that add one cup of water to a pot
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and then add three cups of white granulated sugar one stir
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that in so that it dissolves
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and as we heat this up this will dissolve even better there's two stir
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that in what we are doing here is we are saturating the solution meaning
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we're adding as much sugar as humanly possible to this water at this temperature
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it will not be able to even
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if it wanted to dissolve more sugar stir
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that in now put your heat on high what we want to do is bring our solution to a boil
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and allow it to boil for two minutes.
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Now that your solution is boiling, give it a good mix.
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Make sure all of that sugar has dissolved.
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And after that two minute timer is up, go ahead and turn your soap top off.
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And we're going to let this cool for about 15 minutes before we transfer it to our glasses.
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As your solution cools, we can prepare our glasses with our rot candy sticks.
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So go ahead and we want it to look like this.
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We want it to be suspended in the glass not touching the bottom
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and not touching the sides and clothespins work really well for this.
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For bigger glasses I'll show you how to do it.
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So we have a rock candy stick that has dried overnight.
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One clothespin here I'm going to measure make sure it's not touching the bottom there.
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I'm going to do one of these and then a second one right here and place it right in the center there.
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So now that they are all prepared
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and they're not touching the bottom they're not touching the sides go ahead
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and take them out
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because we are going to put our sugar solution in the glasses one thing
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you can do to prepare your glasses for the still pretty
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hot solution is to run them under hot water to make sure
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that you're not going to break your glasses by pouring in the hot sugar solution
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because we were measuring our rock candy sticks in here just clean them out make sure
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there's no more sugar inside your glasses and just like
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that you are ready to pour in your saturated sugar solution
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so very carefully
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because it'll still be a little hot pour it into as many glasses as you like careful with the glasses
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because they will be hot
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and depending on the size of your glasses you may have more glasses
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you may have less now for the fun part we are going to make this colorful I'm going to use purple,
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stir it with a spoon.
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Oh, beautiful.
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Look at that.
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Stir it up. And then finally, blue.
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Now we are ready to put in our rock candy sticks into the solution
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and I recommend putting the glasses where you're going to leave them for the next seven days
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because we ideally you would leave these sitting letting them crystallize for a week.
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The science experiment takes patience but the end result.
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It's pretty amazing.
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So go ahead, once they're there where you want them, carefully, slowly place your rock candy stick in the solution.
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You want to cover up as much of the stick as possible.
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I have found that long skinny glasses work really well for this because you're not using as much solution, but you're covering that entire rock stick.
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Our beautiful blue one.
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So now we just wait.
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And what's going to happen as we wait over the next few days?
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Well, crystals are going to start building on your rock candy sticks because the solution is going to cool.
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Why does that matter?
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Well, hot sugar solution can hold more sugar than cold sugar solution.
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And as the solution cools, that sugar is going to want to jump out of the solution to undissolve from the solution.
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That's why we covered our rock candy sticks with sugar, because that sugar that wants to undissolve, it wants to hold on to something.
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And that little something was our seed crystals on our rot candy sticks.
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So day by day, you will see more crystals building on your sticks.
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And after the first day, they're a little bit small, but be patient because they get bigger and bigger and bigger.
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And at the end of a week, you'll have a very beautiful rot candy crystal.
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These were some rot candy crystals I prepared ahead of time.
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And after a few days of waiting, it'll look like this.
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You'll notice some crystals growing on your rock candy stick,
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but you'll also notice some sugar crystals on the bottom of the glass and right on the surface.
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So to get your rock candy out, you want to take your clothespin
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and just kind of break the surface of the sugar just like
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that because we just want to be able to pull our stick out easily.
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once you've done that wiggle your candy stick around
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and take it out and you'll notice it's still dripping
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that sugar liquid there get your clothespin bring it to another glass
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and let it drip for just like 10 minutes that's all you need
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and then once
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that happens you'll be able to have a delicious rock candy crystal this one has been waiting in
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that solution for about three days
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so you can tell it's not very big that's why patience is key with this experiment
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this one has only been in there for about two days so it's quite small and a word to the wise
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use rot candy sticks instead of skewers we use skewers here and you'll notice some variability
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because they have a hard time holding on to the sugar
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when we coated our sticks with sugar at the start for our seed crystals.
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Some of them stayed on.
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Some of them fell off.
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Rot candy sticks are much better at this.
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So when you're shopping, get rot candy sticks.
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Our sugar solution became super saturated as it cooled down and created all of these beautiful crystals.
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This one was waiting for two days.
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This one was three days.
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These were all four days.
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And this big guy was eight days.
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You can see it mostly collected at the top here
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because again we used a skewer and all of those seed crystals fell off of the bottom.
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So none of the crystals grew down here, but they very much grew up there, creating quite the unique crystal.
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Very cool.
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These sugar crystals have these beautiful geometric shapes because crystals occur when atoms arrange themselves in highly organized repeating patterns,
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creating these beautiful geometric shapes thank you for making rock candy with me today
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if you like this one be sure to check out my best -selling stay curious
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and keep exploring book series for 99 more science experiments i'm emily calendrelli subscribe for all things science
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and space and remember stay curious and keep exploring i'll see you next time
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
The speaker keeps coming back to these words: candy, sugar, stick, solution, rock. This video has 121 sentences and 1436 words to shadow. The speech runs for 8:52. The speaker talks at a natural 162 words per minute, close to everyday conversation. 85% 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
15 words from the video worth learning, with pronunciation and meaning:
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| candy noun | /ˈkæn.di/ | Crystallized sugar formed by boiling down sugar syrup. |
| crystal noun | /ˈkɹɪstəl/ | A solid composed of an array of atoms or molecules possessing long-range order and arranged in a pattern which is periodic in three dimensions. |
| stir verb | /stɝ/ | To disturb the relative position of the particles (of a liquid or similar) by passing an object through it. |
| 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… |
| pour verb | /poɹ/ | To cause (liquid, or liquid-like substance) to flow in a stream, either out of a container or into it. |
| boil verb | /bɔɪ(ə)l/ | To heat to the point where it begins to turn into a gas. |
| saturated adjective | Full; unable to hold or contain any more. | |
| carefully adverb | /ˈkɛɹf(ə)li/ | With care; attentively, circumspectly. |
| curious adjective | /ˈkjʊɹ.i.əs/ | Tending to ask questions, or to want to explore or investigate; inquisitive; (with a negative connotation) nosy, prying. |
| coat noun | /ˈkoʊ̯t/ | An outer garment covering the upper torso and arms. |
| explore verb | /ɪkˈsploɹ/ | To examine or investigate something systematically. |
| patience noun | /ˈpeɪ̯.ʃəns/ | The quality of being patient. |
| overnight adverb | /əʊvə(ɹ)ˈnaɪt/ | During or throughout the night, especially during the evening or night just past. |
| colorful adjective | /ˈkʌl.əɹ.fl̩/ | Possessing prominent and varied colors. |
| ideally adverb | /aɪˈdi.ə.li/ | In an ideal way; perfectly. |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| go ahead verb | /ˌɡoʊ əˈhɛd/ | To proceed with; to begin. |
| check out verb | To record the departure or withdrawal of someone or something (such as guests, employees, books, etc.). | |
| cool down verb | /kuːl ˈdaʊn/ | To become cooler; to be reduced in temperature. |
| cover up verb | To conceal or disguise. | |
| fall off verb | To become detached or to drop from. | |
| grow up verb | To mature and become an adult. | |
| stick around verb | To stay; to linger; to remain. | |
| stick out verb | To protrude. |
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 | Have you ever wanted · has dissolved · has dried |
| Possibility with “might / may” might/may + verb — something that is possible but not certain | might be · may have |
| Past continuous was/were + -ing — an action in progress at a moment in the past | were measuring · was waiting |
| Verb + -ing enjoy, keep, stop… + -ing — verbs that are followed by the -ing form | keep exploring |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 29 contractions and reduced forms, such as I'm, you'll, you're. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: patience /ˈpeɪ̯.ʃəns/, delicious /dɪˈlɪ.ʃəs/
- Long words — get the stress right: experiment /ɪkˈspɛɹ.ə.mənt/, ideally /aɪˈdi.ə.li/, geometric /ˌd͡ʒiː.əʊˈmɛt.ɹɪk/, variability /ˌvæɹ.i.əˈbɪl.ə.ti/
How to practise with this video
- Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
- Start at 0.75× speed, shadow it sentence by sentence, then go back to normal speed once it feels easy.
- Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like candy, crystal, stir.
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.