Shadowing Practice: Slow English Coffee Chat ☕ My Weekend! Parties, gardening, and projects! - Learn English Speaking with Video

Hello everyone and welcome back to English Cozy Chat,

a slow English podcast which helps you to learn English in a fun and natural way.

I'm Maria and it's time to grab a coffee,

sit back, get cozy, and let me tell you about my weekend.

I have to start off by showing off.

To show off is to show something proudly.

So I really want to show off my new coffee cup,

which I made with my bare hands.

I have a friend who does pottery,

and sometimes I go to her house to make things and this was my latest creation.

I really love it because I know that I made it

and for that reason I feel like it just feels extra special in my hands.

I love it.

Cheers to that.

So I had a very eventful weekend.

An eventful weekend means that it was full of lots of events.

Or it doesn't have to be events.

It could also just mean a busy weekend.

And it all started on Friday evening when my kids got out of school.

I have a friend who is American and she is actually moving back to the United States.

And we had a little going away party for her.

A going away party is a party that you have for someone when they are leaving or going away.

and we all just got together at one of my friends house and celebrated.

We had drinks and snacks and our kids played and it was really nice.

To be honest, having a friend that is also American

move back to the United States feels kind of weird

because I am American and I live in Spain and

when someone who is just like me moves back it kind of makes me feel like oh I should move back

but the problem is I don't want to move back.

I really like living here even though Spain is not where I grew up.

So I would say this party was kind of bittersweet.

When you say something is bittersweet,

that means in some ways it feels good and in some ways it feels hard.

So in this case for me, I'm happy for my friend that she's going back,

but I'm sad because I'm going to miss her.

And I also have mixed feelings because sometimes I feel like I should do that too.

Either way, it was a really fun, nice party, and we all had a really good time.

Now on to Saturday.

Saturday and Sunday were both really big days for me because I did something new.

Something that I have been wanting to do for a really long time.

I'm talking years.

And what I did was I planted a garden, a small garden.

I have been wanting to do this for a long time,

but I've honestly just been so intimidated to do it,

mainly because I am not really sure exactly the right way to do this,

but I have always thought it would be so cool to grow my own food.

To actually eat something that you grew yourself to me seems like it would have

so much more meaning than to just eat something that you bought at the supermarket.

So what happened was whenever I went to the United States,

I went to my parents' friend's house and she had this beautiful garden.

She had tons of fruits, vegetables, flowers

planted and it was gorgeous and it really inspired me

and gave me motivation to try to do something on my own at my house.

So I started just with plants in pots.

That's the word, pots.

I planted two different cherry tomatoes and a red pepper and a green pepper and also rosemary and mint.

I am not sure how this will all turn out, but the The process was really fun.

I did this with my kids.

We took the dirt and filled the pots up and planted these plants.

And there is something about getting your hands dirty and just getting dirty when you're doing something outside that feels really good.

It was a beautiful weekend and a good time to do this.

In the middle of doing all of this, I realized we needed some more things from the plant store.

So then I took my kids to not one,

but two plant stores to look for the things we needed.

And then we came home and planted more plants.

At the end of the day, I was absolutely exhausted.

I knew that gardening was tiring,

but this day I really experienced it for myself.

However, I felt really productive doing this and actually doing something that I had been wanting to do for years.

Do you guys have anything like that, something that's at the back of your mind.

To have something at the back of your mind means something that you've always kind of been thinking about,

but you never really do it or act on it.

You just kind of think about it back there.

That was me with gardening.

I thought about it.

I wanted to do it, but I never actually did it.

And this weekend I started.

And already I am so excited about these plants that I have.

I feel like I have more children that I need to take care of

and it's exciting to see them grow and so far it seems like they're doing well.

it's just a really exciting process.

Now on Sunday morning I woke up and made some bread or I started the bread making process.

It had been several weeks since I last made bread and it really felt good to do it again.

I still haven't baked it but I'm really looking forward to eating

that fresh loaf of bread that I have not had in a while.

Now in a few months I am going camping with my family and we have bought a camping tent,

a really big camping tent,

and we wanted to try it out outside to make sure it all worked.

But we weren't actually able to do that because the space where we tried to set it up was not big enough.

We will have to try that again.

All I know is this is a huge camping tent and I'm really excited to see how it turns out.

On Sunday I actually had to help my kids work on their first project ever.

They are still really young,

but their class had these projects for the kids to work on.

So we got big poster boards and they each worked on their project.

One of them had a project on turtles and how turtles are born.

And the other one had a project on astronauts and how astronauts eat in space.

This was really fun for me because it was the first time

that I've worked on a real project with my kids since they are really young.

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But it was really fun and it was neat to see how they really wanted to do it all on their own.

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They are just learning how to write,

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but they wanted to try to write everything themselves and decided what they wanted to say.

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And for me, it was exciting,

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especially because this is all in Catalan because I live in Catalonia and Catalan is not the language of our household,

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but I am now fluent in it and my girls are too.

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So that is always an added challenge in these kinds of activities

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when you have to do something that is not in your native language.

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So it was definitely a learning experience for all of us.

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So that is what my weekend was all about.

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I would love to know how was your weekend or do you have a garden or do you go camping?

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Please let me know in the comments

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and do not forget to sign up for my membership

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if you would like members only content and other resources to help you with your English learning journey.

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Thank you all so much.

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I hope you have a wonderful day and I cannot wait to see you in the next episode.

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Bye.

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 Practice: Slow English Coffee Chat ☕ My Weekend! Parties, gardening, and projects! - Learn English Speaking with Video

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What is the Shadowing Technique?