Shadowing Practice: Social Media Does NOT Corrupt Human Interactions | Liam Hackett | Part 4 of 6 - Learn English Speaking with Video
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Reviewer.
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But now I look to Liam Hackett to continue the case for the opposition.
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Well, firstly, thank you so much for having me here this evening to talk about something that I'm really passionate about.
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Now, before I go into my points of why I'm such a huge advocate of social media, it's worth me just giving you a bit of background on me
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and my story and how I got into the world of social.
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So here I am, aged 15.
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I'd been bullied for 10 years at school.
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I didn't really have any mates.
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I'd been hospitalised.
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I had no social skills whatsoever, but I had a computer.
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And I turned to Myspace.
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I feel really old talking about Myspace right now.
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Hopefully some of you remember it.
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But I turned to Myspace and I posted this bulletin.
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And in this bulletin I said, hey look, I'm being bullied.
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And I talked a bit about my experience.
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And literally overnight I had hundreds of people reach out to me.
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People were telling me about their own experiences of being bullied, people were giving me advice, and some people were even asking me for advice.
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And so here I am, this 15-year-old kid, very nervous, no confidence on the internet, and suddenly I'm talking about an issue of bullying.
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And I realised quite early on that this was far greater than I was, and it was something that affected so many people.
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And so this community of practice started to organically grow as young people started to come together, many of which had never met anybody before.
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People from across the world were coming together to give
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and share advice and to talk about the real-life issues that they were having.
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And that was the infancy of Ditch the Label, which today is one of the largest anti-bullying charities in the world.
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Now, to put that into perspective, in the next 12 months, we're forecasted to help 1.5 million young people to overcome bullying and related issues.
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And that leads me on nicely to my first point, the fact that social media is such a powerful tool for anybody who is considered vulnerable in our society.
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Now, think about this for a moment.
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We've got a 14-year-old kid who's grown up in a small town.
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In this town, they're the only black person, or the only person in a wheelchair, or the only gay person.
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30 years ago, they had nobody who was similar to them to talk to.
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For example, when I came out as gay, I already had friends on the internet who were gay, who could give me advice and support.
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I didn't have that offline.
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Social media enables anybody who is considered vulnerable, who's being bullied or going through a difficult time,
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to instantly connect with people who are either going through that at that time, or have been through it to give and share advice.
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And that should never be overlooked.
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It is so powerful.
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Social media enables us to construct new friendships.
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Most of us in here will have friends who we've met on Twitter or Facebook before real-life situations.
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In fact, so many of my friends, my colleagues, my partners have been met through social media.
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Ditch the Label is an organisation that has grown online.
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We help people through social media.
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We help them through games and through our website.
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We've grown our organisation into an international organisation, an international movement through the power of social media.
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Which leads me on to my next point about the fact that social media significantly increases social mobility.
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Now, we've talked about the Women's March this evening and how millions of people internationally were engaging in that.
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This was a community that was built through social media.
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But there's so many other cases that we can relate to.
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Think about the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge.
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That raised millions of pounds for charity.
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It created huge awareness for such an important cause, and that was all through social media.
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Now, there's smaller examples.
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There's two mums in Essex right now who are campaigning for
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the Oxford Dictionary to redefine their prejudicial view of an Essex girl.
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Now, offline, they're not particularly influential, but what they have is a message that resonates with other people.
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They've got 10,000 signatories on this online petition.
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And what is so great about this is we're now seeing young people, and everybody can become an activist.
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The historic socioeconomic barriers to entry no longer exist.
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Young people are now affecting change in their schools, in their communities, in their countries, and even in the world.
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And I think as well, when we're talking about the internet as a tool for social capital,
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social media enables people to come together to share ideas to
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share a new vision for the world you can talk to
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pretty much anybody on social media whether they're your colleagues world leaders celebrities activists it is
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so so important
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and I think as well you know many of us in
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this room will have moved away for university some will have
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taken a gap year we've all pretty much been on holiday
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people move away parents move away friends move away it's a fact of life
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and when many of you graduate you'll move abroad
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and work somewhere else and I think what is
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so important is the fact that social media enables us to maintain relationships that we have in our lives.
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20 years ago it was very rare
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that you would stay in contact with people that you went to school or college or university with.
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Now social media enables you to do that and sometimes those interactions are passive but that's okay.
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It was my birthday last week and I had a birthday party
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and I had 40 friends who came to this cocktail party
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and some of them I hadn't seen in six to twelve months
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because you know
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when you're a professional you're trying to manage your work-life balance you just don't have the time
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but we've been able to maintain those friendships
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and those relationships through the power of social media and that's something
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that I think we can all relate to in here
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but I think ultimately when we look at relationships regardless as to whether not they're online or offline they're tough.
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It is a case of give and take.
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People have fallouts, people break up, people backstab.
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It is the fact of human nature.
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And I don't think social media corrupts human interactions.
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I think the humans who are engaging in those interactions corrupt it.
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I think actually social media is such a powerful tool that has revolutionized relationships.
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It's revolutionized the world.
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It's given people who otherwise wouldn't have a platform, vulnerable people, a platform.
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It's enabled people to access support that they wouldn't otherwise get.
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For example, we know that half of young people who experience bullying don't tell anybody because they're scared,
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they're embarrassed, they have a lack of faith in support systems.
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What we found at Digital Label is overwhelmingly young people are far more likely to access and gain support online.
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That is so, so important.
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Everybody deserves to feel part of a community regardless of what their demographic is.
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And social media breaks down those socioeconomic and the geographic barriers to entry.
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And I hugely support social media.
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And I think it's a very powerful thing.
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Thank you.
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This video has 100 sentences and 1246 words to shadow. The speech runs for 6:57. The speaker talks at a natural 179 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 |
|---|---|---|
| enable verb | /ɪˈneɪ.bəl/ | To make somebody able (to do, or to be, something); to give sufficient ability or power to do or to be; to give strength or ability to. |
| bullying noun | /ˈbʊ.li.ɪŋ/ | An act of intimidating a person to do something, especially such repeated coercion. |
| bully noun | /ˈbʊli/ | A person who is intentionally physically or emotionally cruel to others, especially to those whom they perceive as being vulnerable or of less power or… |
| organisation noun | /ˈɔː.ɡə.naɪˌzeɪ.ʃən/ | Non-Oxford British English and Australian standard spelling of organization. |
| interaction noun | /ˌɪn.təˈɹæk.ʃən/ | The situation or occurrence in which two or more things act upon one another to produce an effect; the effect resulting from such a situation or occurrence. |
| vulnerable adjective | /ˈvʌln(ə)ɹəbl̩/ | More or most likely to be exposed to the chance of being attacked or harmed, either physically or emotionally. |
| offline adjective | /ɔfˈlaɪn/ | Of a system, currently not connected (generally electrically) to a larger network. For example, a power plant which is not connected to the grid, or a computer… |
| regardless adverb | /ɹɪˈɡɑɹd.lɪs/ | Without attention to warnings or indications of bad consequences. |
| charity noun | /ˈtʃæɹɪti/ | An organization, the objective of which is to carry out a charitable purpose. |
| friendship noun | /ˈfɹɛn(d)ʃɪp/ | The condition of being friends. |
| engage verb | /ɪnˈɡeɪd͡ʒ/ | To engross or hold the attention of; to keep busy or occupied. |
| relate verb | /ɹɪˈleɪt/ | To tell in a descriptive way. |
| barrier noun | /ˈbæɹi.ə/ | A structure that bars passage. |
| corrupt adjective | /kəˈɹʌpt/ | Willing to act dishonestly for personal gain; accepting bribes. |
| activist noun | /ˈæk.tɪ.vɪst/ | One who is politically active in the role of a citizen; especially, one who campaigns for change. |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| move away verb | To go away from a place, especially when permanently changing one's residence. | |
| go through verb | To travel from one end of something to the other. | |
| break down verb | To stop functioning. | |
| break up verb | To break or separate into pieces. | |
| come out verb | /ˌkʌm ˈaʊt/ | To be discovered; to be revealed. |
| come together verb | /ˈkʌm tʊˈɡɛðɚ/ | To assemble; to congregate; to combine. |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 34 contractions and reduced forms, such as they're, we've, I'm. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: organisation /ˈɔː.ɡə.naɪˌzeɪ.ʃən/, interaction /ˌɪn.təˈɹæk.ʃən/, friendship /ˈfɹɛn(d)ʃɪp/, petition /pəˈtɪʃ.ən/, influential /ɪnflʊˈɛnʃəl/
- Long words — get the stress right: organisation /ˈɔː.ɡə.naɪˌzeɪ.ʃən/, interaction /ˌɪn.təˈɹæk.ʃən/, celebrity /səˈlɛb.ɹɪ.ɾi/, influential /ɪnflʊˈɛnʃəl/, mobility /mə(ʊ)ˈbɪlɪti/
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 enable, bullying, bully.
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 | been bullied · been hospitalised · being bullied |
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | have been · we've met · have been met |
| Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing | anybody who is · people who are · friends who we |
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.