Shadowing Practice: Speak American English Around Town - Learn English Speaking with Video

Today, you are coming with me to walk around my neighborhood

and go to the bank and the post office so that you can immerse yourself in real life English.

No amount of AI English classes or training will prepare you for the real world.

So by the end of this real life English lesson, you are going to be able to go out into the real world and use English with confidence.

If you're new here, hi, I'm Vanessa from SpeakEnglishWithVanessa.com

and I have been teaching real life English here on my

YouTube channel for over the past 10 years to now more than 7 million of you.

I can't believe it.

Thank you so much.

And like always, I have created a free PDF worksheet that includes everything valuable that you are going to learn today.

Every vocabulary phrase, every idea, and a lot more sample sentences to help you be able to use this in the real world.

But I have also included one special bonus that many of you have told me you have loved, and that is a speaking practice.

So when you download this worksheet, you will get access to the free speaking practice so that you can practice using this vocabulary out loud,

practice speaking and imitating my voice with me, and you'll be able to remember what you've learned.

So how can you get this worksheet plus the free speaking practice?

All you need to do is click on the link in the description, enter your name and email address, and voila, just like that,

the worksheet plus the bonus speaking practice will land in your email inbox.

This is my gift to you.

All right, are you ready to get started?

Let's go on a walk around my neighborhood

and remember back to a time when my daughter was just a tiny little baby.

Let's go.

So here we are.

Well, we are here with my baby.

We are here in a downtown neighborhood of Asheville, North Carolina.

And the only thing you can see right now is probably this gigantic retaining wall.

and on the other side are some grocery stores

and on this side there are some houses it's kind of

a busy area usually here people will park on the street

if you can see that here people park on the street

because they're they might have a garage but a lot of people just have driveways

So you can see up here as we walk by, there are some driveways.

There's some obstacles in the road.

My husband Dan is recording this and he's trying to not fall over.

So you can see here, there are some driveways, but usually downtown people don't have garages.

So they park on the streets.

We call this street parking.

Oh, look at this lovely mural.

I love you.

Yes, I think my city Asheville is kind of known for art,

known for some other types of like music on the street,

these types of things, but where we are is a neighborhood and not where people are playing music on the streets.

So let's keep going down this street.

Actually, what I would like to do is I'd like to cut across the street in just a moment, but let's keep going down here.

The sidewalk is nice and big so Dan doesn't fall on his face.

These people over here, they were our old neighbors and they used to have,

talking about music, they used to play music on their lawn out front and just the neighbors would come over and listen.

It's quite nice.

Do you remember this house?

They're always doing construction on it.

They painted it like four different times and it looks like they're still painting it.

I don't know if anyone actually lives there but certainly seems like an expensive endeavor.

All right we are coming to the end of the sidewalk.

Let's see if we can cross the street.

We'll go past the old apartment building we used to live in

and you will see one of the most exciting houses in all of Asheville in my opinion.

So let's see if we can cross the street.

All right, let's go over here.

We're going to go down the street away from the grocery stores.

And this is a lovely apartment complex.

This is where we used to live.

We don't live there anymore.

In the U.S., a lot of apartment buildings are new, as in they were built within the last 30 or 40 years.

But this building is over a hundred years old.

I think the 1920s, which for the US is pretty old.

All right.

Are you ready for something very exciting?

It is coming up right here.

Some might call this an eclectic house.

This is where a guy named Jesse used to live when we lived in this apartment building.

I'd come down here and he was always sitting on his front porch around his most precious possessions.

Do you know what these lovely things are called wind chimes.

So wind chimes have those little metal poles and they clang and dangle in the wind.

Well, when people heard that he liked wind chimes, he started collecting so many of them that now the entire front is covered with wind chimes.

I think it's pretty exciting.

It's not what I would want at my house, but I think it's pretty exciting.

And it's kind of one of those things that gives your city a little bit of excitement and flair, right?

Because as we walk, let's talk about it.

So I want to tell you about the two different types of people that live in Asheville.

One are the people who have lived here forever, like Jesse.

They have these older style houses.

And the second are people like this, who build either a fancy, gigantic new house, and they've moved from somewhere else.

And you know what?

For us, I haven't lived in Asheville forever so I'm technically part of the second group.

We moved here.

We are not Asheville natives but you know what?

It's something that is our new home.

This is where we live now.

So there's still some empty lots.

I guess nobody lives here in this special lot at the moment but there's other houses.

These houses have probably been here for a while and because it's the middle of winter there's scraggly grass.

Nothing's very green.

Well, there's some green grass, I guess, depending on your perspective.

In the US, we have these big trash bins that we use to collect trash and recycling.

And on certain days, the trash collector will come and you wheel them.

We use that verb to wheel.

We wheel the bin to the road and the trash collector comes

and dumps it into the back of the trash or recycling bin.

We never sort recycling in North Carolina.

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It's just everything in one recycling bin, glass, paper, anything like that.

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It's all just in one spot.

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Oh, you have to look over here and see this amazing tree.

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Isn't this tree so cool?

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Has this giant bulbous, I think it's probably not healthy because of that giant bulb.

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I'm not sure, but this tree is so magnificent, especially in the springtime with all of the leaves.

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And I love that it's on the hillside

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so cool i love those little things in a city all

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right let's go down here we are actually going to cross the street here now there's no street crossing

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so we're going to have to just be careful

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and maybe technically it's jaywalking

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but in the u.s people don't care i just have to be careful

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that nobody hits my baby let's take a look no one's coming let's go

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So here we're going to go down the street and cross what's called Five Points.

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This is the Five Points neighborhood in Asheville and

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that means there's five different roads going into it

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and we are going to attempt to cross the street without Dan smashing himself and recording at the same time.

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Let's give it a try.

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I appreciate how hard this is.

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Let's give it a try.

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Gotta push the button.

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I don't actually know which one goes where.

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I think this one is for here.

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I just pushed both of them.

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And we're going to cross the street,

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but we have to wait for the hand to turn green or the little man, little walking man to be over there.

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All right.

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I always try to look even though the signal says it's okay.

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In the U.S we always do right, left, right.

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At least that's what I was taught as a kid right, left, right.

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Right now we're walking along Broadway, which is one of the main streets.

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Wow, do you hear that hawk?

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I love hearing falcons, birds of prey.

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It's always so exciting.

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So we are headed towards the Greenway, and the Greenway is an area that has no houses on either side.

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It's just a public, almost like a park, but it's just a sidewalk going straight through a natural area.

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So we are walking down one of the main streets in order to get to that greenway.

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Let's go.

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All right, before we cross the street and go into the greenway, I wanted to show you this lovely iron fence.

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Back here is a little creek and the neighborhood behind me is called Montford.

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It's one of the historic neighborhoods of Asheville.

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There's a lot of big older houses and when I say older I mean older for the U.S.

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If you're from Europe and there's houses from the 1300s well it's not

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that old here but for the U.S it's old

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and I feel like the U.S doesn't really do a good job of preserving historical places

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so when there are historical places to see in the U.S it's kind of special.

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All right, let's cross the street and go to the Greenway.

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There is indeed a little crosswalk here, so hopefully it's okay.

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And this area, a lot of people jog here.

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I used to go for a run here when we lived in this neighborhood.

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It is really popular for walking dogs, just for going for a walk, but there is one thing that probably I wouldn't go here after dark still.

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That might just be my own personal preference, but it does feel a little bit like there might be sketchiness after dark.

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So I generally try to just do those types of things, especially where you're not near other people.

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Like this is somewhat isolated, especially other parts of the Greenway.

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You're kind of isolated from the neighborhoods and whatnot.

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I don't really want to be there after dark, alone or with my baby, but in the daytime, this is a great place to go for a walk.

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Thank you for joining me for that special walk around my old neighborhood.

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Now we are going to do some errands.

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The word errand means those little necessary chores around town that you just have to do.

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I'm going to show you some important vocabulary, some common interactions, and that way you feel confident

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when you go out into the real world and you'll be able to understand these when you watch movies and TV shows.

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Let's go.

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The first errand that we're going to run is dropping off some books

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that my kids no longer read in our neighborhood's free book box.

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This is a pretty popular concept in the U.S where

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if you have books that you don't want anymore or your kids don't want anymore you can share them with your neighbors.

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So that's what I'm going to do.

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All right.

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I think today I'm not going to take anything for me

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but would you like to see what's going on inside the book box there are books for adults.

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These are the kids books that I just put in there.

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Sometimes there's magazines.

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Sometimes one time I even found some homemade vegetables in there, homegrown vegetables.

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Pretty cool.

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All right let's go to the next errand.

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All right our next errand.

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Hi everyone is we are going to be making some donations to the local charity shop

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and these are items that my family doesn't use anymore and other people might find them useful.

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Our trash might be other people's treasure.

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There is one item in our car that I don't know if they're going to accept.

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It is an old door.

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So I'm going to ask the lady if that's something that they'll accept and we'll see what happens.

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So if you want to know why we're giving away a door, it's because we bought a super cheap used door i think it was eight dollars from another thrift store

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and my husband made it into a table like a craft play table for my kids

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and they could draw on it they could do crafts on it

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and now we don't need it anymore

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so we took the table legs off of it

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and it's time to see

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if it can go back into the world of donations let's

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find out okay all right i have a couple things

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but i do have i have a question is something like this this door right is

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that something that we can donate it's like a one of those pocket doors i know

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if we don't then habitat will okay ask eric okay

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that would be great save us a trip if possible thank you let's see all right first thing is this old game.

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Second thing a dartboard another game.

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Third thing is this little basket.

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Okay well I'll just go over there then.

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Okay thank you.

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It's all right and this is for children.

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I know you guys don't take baby stuff

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but no we do kid stuff's okay yeah okay cool all right so one million

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maybe this can be some better there we go okay thank

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you thank you have a good day all right let's go across the street

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and donate this door to the other charity that takes doors apparently

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let's go so i was wondering a couple years ago a couple years ago i got this door here

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can i return it all right i mean you can donate

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it back yeah yeah we have we have loved it

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and used it well oh no um it does have some

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markings on it that's okay we used it as a table

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yeah absolutely okay awesome thank you you got it you have

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a wonderful day thanks you too all right our next errand is to go to the bank

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and i need to deposit some checks that we were given one of One of them is a tax check, one of them is a check given to Dan,

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my husband, from his grandparents for his birthday.

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It's kind of an American tradition.

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I don't know if it's a tradition, but in my family and in Dan's family, grandparents like to give their grandchildren some money for their birthday,

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and the older generation will often use a check to do that.

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So we have to deposit it in the bank, and let's go.

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Let's see what happens.

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I'm going to use the drive-through to show you the true American experience.

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And I'm not exactly sure what's going to happen, but let's just give it a shot.

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All right, so park.

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There's this little cool tube.

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Here it is.

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You take the tube out.

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It has a pen inside if you need to sign anything.

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I already signed everything.

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I was prepared.

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So I'm just gonna put my driver's license and the checks in here, close it up, watch this magic.

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Are you ready?

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I push send carrier, watch this tube up here.

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What?

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As a kid, this is always the most exciting part about going to the bank,

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watching the tube get sucked up into this area and go into the bank.

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I used to actually work at the bank a long time ago.

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It was a great job.

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And my bank that I worked at did not have this type of device.

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There was only one drive-through lane.

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And if you go to the closest drive-through lane where this other car is over here, there's just a door that opens in the wall and you put things directly in there

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and the bank teller grabs it directly out.

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There's no cool tube, but I wanted to show you the tube.

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All right, let's see if it's my turn to get serviced.

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Hi, good morning.

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How are you?

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Good, good.

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I just like to deposit those checks.

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Yeah, sure.

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Do you want to end your checking?

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That would be great.

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Thank you.

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Success.

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She might ask, because we have a couple different checking accounts, she might ask me which checking account do you want to get it deposited into.

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I don't know.

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Maybe Maybe she'll just guess and put it in one of them.

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Let's see.

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While we're waiting for the checks to get deposited, I wanted to let you know that

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if you do live in the U S and you want to go to the bank, if you want to just deposit a check, or if you want to get some cash out, you don't need to go into the bank.

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You can use the machine over here or you can just drive up like this.

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But if you want to open a bank account, you have to go into the bank and you can just go into the bank and say,

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I'd like to open a checking account or I'd like to open a savings account or I'd like to open an account.

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What's your recommendation?

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Something like this.

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So if you want to open an account, you need to go inside and don't worry if you can't understand everything they say because you can always ask, Hey, can you say that a little slower?

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Or could you repeat that please?

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And from my experience, most people who work at the bank are very nice.

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I used to work at the bank, but many people who work at the bank are nice so they'll be willing to help you.

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Okay.

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Thank you.

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Here it comes.

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Are you ready?

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All right.

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So let's see what I got.

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Did I get any treasure today?

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Um, I got my driver's license back and a receipt and the pen is still in there.

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Don't steal the pen.

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I will just put it back.

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click send carrier, which closes the door.

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Oh, dang it.

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I sent the empty carrier.

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Run away.

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Run away.

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Oops.

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I guess you just put it in there and the door automatically closes.

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Don't listen to me.

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Okay.

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Let's go to our next errand, which is if I can move this.

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Our next errand is to drop off something at the post office.

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Now unfortunately I'm not going to be taking you into the post office with me

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but we will drive up to the post office and you'll see what happens.

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Let's go.

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Our final errand is going to the post office.

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Unfortunately this is not one of my favorite errands but the people who work here are really nice.

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I'm going to be sending these little chocolate packages to some of my team members who had birthdays recently.

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I like to try to send them local chocolate.

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It's something I would love to receive for my birthday.

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So I'm sending this to them and I need to go into the post office to do that, but I'm not going to take you with me.

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Sorry about that.

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So you'll have to be satisfied with just this shot outside the post office and I'll see you after I go in.

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All right.

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I just finished at the post office and I sent those lovely gifts to two of my team members.

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Thank you so much for joining me today to run some errands.

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Running errands isn't my favorite activity, but it's certainly a necessary part of life.

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So I hope that you learned some useful English phrases for daily life in today's lesson.

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Thank you for joining me for these errands around town in English.

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Don't forget to download today's free PDF worksheet.

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It includes all of vocabulary you saw come up on the screen, plus the bonus speaking practice.

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This is an essential part of helping you actually to become a fluent English speaker.

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You need to practice speaking in English, and with this speaking practice, you'll imitate with my voice and you'll be able to use fluent pronunciation,

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vocabulary, and grammar, and you will be well on your way to using English with confidence.

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So how can you get this worksheet?

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All you need to do is click the link in the description.

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Enter your name and email address and voila, just like that, it will land in your email inbox.

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It is my gift to you to help you speak fluent English.

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Well, thank you so much for learning English with me

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and I'll see you again next Friday for a new lesson here on my YouTube channel.

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Bye.

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But wait, do you want more?

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I recommend watching this video next where you will join me around town at the grocery store, the pharmacy, and the gas station so that you can

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and continue to immerse yourself in the real world to be able to use real life English.

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I'll see you there.

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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson

This B1 speaking lesson is built on the video “Speak American English Around Town”. This video has 318 sentences and 3628 words to shadow. The speech runs for 22:21. The speaker talks at a natural 162 words per minute, close to everyday conversation. 88% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English, so the vocabulary is easy to follow.

Key vocabulary in this video

The 15 most advanced words in the video, with pronunciation and meaning:

Word	Pronunciation	Meaning
errand noun	/ˈɛɹənd/	A mundane mission of no great consequence, concerning household or business affairs (dropping items by, doing paperwork, going to a friend's house, etc.)
excite verb	/ɪkˈsaɪt/	To stir the emotions of; to cause to feel excitement.
greenway noun		A corridor of undeveloped land or parkland, set aside for environmental protection or recreational and primarily nonmotorized use, such as bicycle paths.
worksheet noun		A sheet of paper or computerized document on which problems are worked out or solved and the answers are recorded.
deposit noun	/dɪˈpɑ.zɪt/	Sediment or rock that is not native to its present location or is different from the surrounding material. Sometimes refers to ore or gems.
vocabulary noun	/vəˈkæb.jə.lə.ɹi/	A usually alphabetized and explained collection of words e.g. of a particular field, or prepared for a specific purpose, often for learning.
chime verb	/tʃaɪm/	To make the sound of a chime.
recycle verb	/ɹəˈsaɪkəl/	To break down and reuse component materials.
fluent adjective	/ˈfluənt/	That flows; flowing, liquid.
driveway noun	/ˈdɹaɪvˌweɪ/	A short private road that leads to a house or garage.
sidewalk noun	/ˈsaɪdwɔk/	A paved footpath located at the side of a road, for the use of pedestrians.
donate verb	/ˈdoʊˌneɪt/	To make a donation; to give away something of value to support or contribute towards a cause or for the benefit of another.
grocery noun	/ˈɡɹəʊ.s(ə.)ɹi/	Retail foodstuffs and other household supplies.
carrier noun	/ˈkæɹi.ɚ/	A person or object that carries someone or something else.
grandparent noun	/ˈɡɹæn(d)pɛəɹənt/	The parent of someone's parent.

Phrasal verbs you will hear

Word	Meaning
go down verb	To descend; to move from a higher place to a lower one.
walk around verb	To walk with no planned destination; to meander.
drop off verb	To fall asleep.
go over verb	To look at carefully; to scrutinize; to analyze.
run away verb	To flee by running.
cash out verb	To reconcile at the end of a shift; to compare receipts of items sold to records of credit card, check and cash placed into the drawer, verifying that correct…
come down verb	To descend, fall down, collapse.
come over verb	To affect in a sudden, unprecedented or surprising manner; to overwhelm a person's ordinarily contrary impulse.

Sentences worth repeating

Short, complete lines from the video that you can reuse in everyday conversation:

All right, are you ready to get started?
Do you remember this house?
Are you ready for something very exciting?
Wow, do you hear that hawk?
Do you want to end your checking?

Grammar in this video

The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:

Structure	In the video
“Used to” used to + verb — a past habit or state that is no longer true	used to have · used to play · used to live
Conditional sentences if + clause, will/would + verb — a condition and its result	if that's something that they'll accept · if we don't then habitat will okay
Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now	have created · have also included · you've learned
Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it	were built · are called · is covered

Pronunciation to watch

The speaker uses 82 contractions and reduced forms, such as don't, I'm, we're. Say them the short way, as you hear them.

The “sh” and “zh” sounds: donation /doʊˈneɪʃən/, treasure /ˈtɹɛʒəɹ/, garage /ɡəˈɹɑʒ/, pronunciation /pɹəˌnʌn.siˈeɪ.ʃən/, smash /smæʃ/
Long words — get the stress right: vocabulary /vəˈkæb.jə.lə.ɹi/, technically /ˈtɛk.nɪˌkəl.i/, pronunciation /pɹəˌnʌn.siˈeɪ.ʃən/, magnificent /mæɡˈnɪfəsənt/, recommendation /ˌɹɛkəmɛnˈdeɪʃən/

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 errand, excite, greenway.

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 technique: read the full step-by-step guide →

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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson

Key vocabulary in this video

Phrasal verbs you will hear

Sentences worth repeating

Grammar in this video

Pronunciation to watch

How to practise with this video

What is the Shadowing Technique?

2 Tips For Improving Your Listening Skills