Shadowing Practice: Spring Book Recommendations 🌱🌸 - Learn English Speaking with Video
Creating lesson...
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Hello it's Ruby and today I'm going to be sharing some spring book recommendations with you.
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These are some wonderful books to read in the spring and
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which I think have the greatest impact and like emotional weight in the spring.
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There is something really joyful about reading seasonally but especially in spring because there's so much anticipation in the season.
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Like today for example it's incredibly misty, we've had a lot of rain yesterday but because of the blossom
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and because of the kind of daffodils that are blooming and
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because of the catkins which lengthen so much
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and the birds are flying everywhere there's like an excitement around this growth
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and this newness and there are books I think
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that we can read to really multiply that anticipation and
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that kind of appreciation for spring and
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when we read pieces of writing about spring or kind of books
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that invoke a feeling of spring it lets us be more
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attentive to the season as it unfolds in front of us
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which is why I'm really excited to be sharing these recommendations with you.
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I'm going to start with this one
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which is quite maybe quite an obvious one excuse the fact
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that I hand pound this which is why it does not look wonderful complete with these beautiful endpapers.
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This is Far From the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy.
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Thomas Hardy is of course famous for his pastoral settings.
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His novels are set in the countryside.
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Thomas Hardy lived in the Dorset countryside and because of
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that pastoral setting his books are just really wonderful to read in the spring.
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Jude The Obscure is my favourite of the Thomas Hardy novels but Far From the Madding Crowd is my favourite spring one.
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This is about a woman called Bathsheba who inherits a farm and then runs it as a woman,
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as a young single woman at that and as you'd expect she runs into a number of problems running the farm,
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these like small but very very significant problems
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which like threaten the whole of her livelihood but also of the people
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that kind of work at the farm that she manages.
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The main plot is around love and three different suitors which like are all pursuing her.
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I just really love Bathsheba as a character though.
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It is a sorrowful book as again is the case with much Thomas Hardy
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but if you've been wanting to give Thomas Hardy a go this is the time to do it with this specific book.
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Next here I've got The Beautiful Years by Henry Williamson which I read while I was in Devon last month.
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This is the first in a four-part series
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which follows the main character through the whole of his life
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so this is the ages of seven to nine
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and even though it's obviously multi-seasonal
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because like we go through every season of his life in
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terms of how it's weighted there is much more writing in like the spring
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and summer sections more than spring there is summer writing in this
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which kind of reflects the childhood experience of the very long
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summers where you're away from school the reason though I still
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recommend it even though maybe this will be better suited under a summer read is
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because in terms of anticipation this book inspires that.
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Like I don't really love summer at all, it's my least favorite season but this made me excited for the growth,
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the abundance, the beauty naturally of summer and spring
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because it is a transitional state between winter and summer does embody that anticipation and I think this book heightens that.
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There are just such vivid natural descriptions and Henry Williamson clearly knows a lot about birds,
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a lot about nature, like the natural world in which he's writing.
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He was writing from rural North Devon and it's I just love how precise it is.
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It's not like he's just talking about birds, he's talking about chaffinches but then he's specifically talking about the way that their song sounds and it's so atmospheric,
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it feels nostalgic.
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I think it's a wonderful way to appreciate the coming of spring and appreciate the birds as they start to appear.
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These two books are also kind of bird related.
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So the first is 12 birds to save your life which I recently finished and loved.
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It's a story of grief but told through species of birds and so each chapter is about a specific bird.
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The book is part memoir as Charlie Corbett grieves the death of his mother
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and it's a story of grief told through these 12 species of birds
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so every chapter is a different bird like house sparrow,
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house martin and I also love how each chapter starts with pieces of literature which describe that bird.
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It's such a hopeful book you learn a lot about birds
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but it's also filled with such wisdom and it's that's so kind of intimate and personal as you could probably suspect.
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He talks about his own intimate relationship with each of these birds
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and specific memories that he has with these birds
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and then he uses the way that they interact in the world to help find solace in what he's dealing with.
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This is just- it's such a beautiful book and I can't believe it took me this long to read it.
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I also read this as I was grieving the loss of somebody and it was very comforting as a book.
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I just really love and appreciate how it uses these studies of birds
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and descriptions of birds to focus like outward
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and like focus on these very tiny things
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and like the the cycles of nature
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which return every year the other one is the lost bells um who also wrote the lost words
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and um this oh my gosh i i love this book it's part art book
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and then it gives you a poem about each of these birds
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and it's just so comforting to read um i read this a couple years ago
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but i've dipped into it since the poems are quite simple
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but they they read like lullabies or nursery rhymes
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so for example don't call her a crow or rook
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or raven for she's a jackdaw gray-headed outlaw fighting the class
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war dipping down on quick wings to hijack a wedding ring
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or ransack a knick-knack of course snatch up a gimrak while giving it the guffal.
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The next one I've got on here and this is actually really difficult to explain why this is a spring book.
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I wasn't initially going to put it on the list
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but it kept on coming back to me as like this is a great one for spring um
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so you're gonna have to just trust me on the links to spring
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because they are so so so tentative
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because there aren't any even any links to spring apart from the fact
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that this book is very hopeful and um it's budding
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and I think because of that in my head it feels like a book about spring.
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It's collected letters between Virginia Woolf and Vita Sacreville West
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and these are love letters and they are so beautiful like just I cannot even tell you how stunning these are.
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They're so tender and
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it's amazing to have both sides of the epistolarium because that's like a large problem when it comes to apostolary writing,
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like letters that remain, is that usually you will have like a lot from one person
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or all from one person but not from the other person
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and so the very fact that letters remain from both of them
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and that both kept the letters is just such a beautiful testament to the way
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that these letters were important to each of them, like you keep them because they're important to you.
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And just if you like Virginia Woolf this is fabulous, I think this is my favourite piece of wolf's writing.
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Next I've got another classic we've got Emma by Jane Austen.
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In general I feel like spring is the Jane Austen season
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and it's always the season that I crave reading a bit of Jane Austen.
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I also caveat I used to say very adamantly that I hated Jane Austen.
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I'm well aware of this I know that I would say this
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and I have had to admit and like very sheepishly now
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that I actually do like Jane Austen it's just
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that I didn't like Pride and Prejudice which then clouded my perception of whether I liked her.
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The problem is that I read Pride
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and Prejudice three times trying to like it and just didn't
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and I think it's more that I just didn't like Pride and Prejudice.
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I also then didn't like Persuasion which kind of clouded my head further but I did like Mansfield Park, I loved Sense and Sensibility,
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Northang Abbey was like okay and I loved Emma
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and I also I also loved her juvenile writing
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so I've read most of her corpus now
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and I do actually really like Jane Austen and
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so I have to like backtrack on what I said before about not liking her work
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and actually this spring I'm going to give Pride
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and Prejudice another go for the fourth time
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because I haven't read it since I was 16
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and I think your literary tastes change a lot between being a teenager
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and an adult so yeah I'm actually going to see
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if I like it
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and I will give you a review I might even do a whole dedicated review on Pride
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and Prejudice and whether I like it.
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Maybe I'll do a reading vlog of it.
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Anyway I'm getting distracted.
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I'd say the two best Jane Austen's to read in the spring are Emma and Sense and Sensibility.
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Of course I'm biased because they're my two favourite ones.
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Now Emma was, by Jane Austen's own admission, meant to be a character that you don't like.
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She was created to be unlikable.
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Emma Woodhouse, handsome, clever and rich with a comfortable home
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and happy disposition seem to unite some of the best blessings of existence
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and had lived nearly 21 years in this world with very little to distress or vex her.
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Emma is obsessed with pairing people up
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and she has a very high opinion of herself
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and her ability to do this pairing so she's a matchmaker within within this community where she lives.
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Where does she live actually?
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Oh it's Highbury of course in Surrey.
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It's in I think maybe it's clouded by the fact that the film adaptation from 2020 of Emma is,
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even with the scenes that are set at Christmas and autumn, it feels like a spring film
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and I think that's maybe also partially why I think of this as a spring-like book
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but again because things grow quite slowly
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and things are like blossoming in the same way as the spring blossoms it feels like a spring narrative.
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This is the most obvious book on the list which is The Secret Garden which is literally about spring, the whole point of this book is about spring,
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in which Mary Lennox comes from India after her parents die
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and she is living in this old ancient manor house in Yorkshire and she's very bored,
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she like doesn't know anybody, she's in the middle of nowhere and
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she is sent out every day into the gardens
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and she's just told to amuse herself and
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while she is exploring the gardens in the depths of winter she finds a garden, the secret garden, locked behind this locked door with these high brick walls
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and she goes inside she starts to plant things and she
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slowly as a result of this becomes like a better person and she becomes more agreeable and
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that's as she like sees the beauty in the natural world and just as spring grows and flourishes
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Mary also does and it's just it's such a beautiful such a beautiful book
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and it really makes you value spring
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because like the book is set over the course of one spring
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and you see it arriving
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and it's a really beautiful book to read in early spring as kind of spring is on the precipice about to arrive.
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I've got two poetry anthologies next I won't talk about these in much depth
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because I've talked about these to no end on this channel
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but the two best poets for spring are also my two favorite poets Mary Oliver and Emily Dickinson.
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Mary Oliver because she often writes about nature in her poetry
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and it's so hopeful like her poetry is beautifully hopeful
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and much of it especially her early works focuses on the natural world.
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Some of her poetry anthologies
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are more political so American Primitive for example is a more political collection and I personally don't like that one as much.
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I really like her nature poetry.
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This is a lovely one for the spring
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and just again appreciating the natural world which is at the crux of enjoying spring I think.
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And then the other one is Emily Dickinson.
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Emily Dickinson is so attentive to the seasons, to flowers, to birds and those images often feature in her poetry,
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especially her early works, which are are very nature focused
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and even though like her later works are my favourites of her poems,
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her early works are still wonderful and her early works are lovely to read in the spring.
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There is this particular one about, I think it's February, it's called February.
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Oh also, sorry, this leaf is from her house in Amherst.
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I took it when I was there and pressed it between the pages of my copy.
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So her most famous spring poem is maybe Dear March, Come In, which is beautiful.
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I'm going to read you the first two stanzas of this.
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Dear March, come in, how glad I am, I looked for you before.
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Put down your hat, you must have walked, how out of breath you are.
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Dear March, how are you, and the rest?
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Did you leave nature well?
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Oh March, come right upstairs with me, I have so much to tell.
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I got your letter in the birds, the maples never knew that you were coming.
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I declare how red their faces grew, but March, forgive me
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and all those hills you left for me to hew there
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was no purple suitable you took it all with you." Another of my favorites for spring is Beatrix Potter.
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I reread the Beatrix Potter stories every single year, not necessarily all of them but they're so comforting and
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because they're so rooted in the natural world and
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because she's literally using the animals that she sees
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and she's using for inspiration uh her house in the lake district
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and like the views out that she sees
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and the little details of like the ponds
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and like all of this is based on her real life um
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which i realized when i visited her house over the spring
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and so reading reading her stories just it feels like the embodiment of spring
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and i feel like i never feel more ready for spring
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and exciting for spring than when I'd just read one of these and they're
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so nostalgic oh my gosh like I reread a bit to
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explore the story for the first time in maybe like 2021 I started reading them every spring
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and it was so like I got this this wave of nostalgia
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when I read it because I hadn't read them since I was six
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and like I just can't recommend going back to these enough even their stories from children like they're still
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so wise and they're funny and they're clever and they're dark
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and you forget just how dark they are and the other thing
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which again I've spoken about a lot on here but I loved this little biography of Beatrix Potter, The Tale of Beatrix Potter by Margaret Lane.
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There are more famous biographies out there and
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I'm gonna try- I want to read another of her biographies
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but this is a very quick one
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and you can kind of get a sense of her life
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and a sense of the natural world that she loved
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so much in the Lake District and the way that even though she lived in London she was enamored with
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with the lakes and with the natural world of England
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and it's again just a beautiful one to read in the spring
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because it makes you appreciative of nature and I think we enjoy spring most when we are appreciative of nature.
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The penultimate book was I think this was the best book I read in 2024,
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Ophelia Swam by Kelly Swain which is also almost impossible to find
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because they only stock it at Blackwell's in Oxford but I think you can order it on Blackwell's online.
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It's so wonderful like just this book needs so much more attention and like I just it's so good.
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So it's based on Hamlet as you can probably guess from the title Ophelia.
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In the story Ophelia doesn't drown and instead she swims downstream and she's taken in by this group of nuns in Godstow.
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She is enlisted into this nunnery where she learns the botanical craft
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and in particular she's shown a tremendous amount of kindness by Lady Grace,
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Sister Grace, who is based on Lady Grace Mildmay who was a real 16th century female botanist
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and apothecary and I love the fact that it's kind of harkening back to an actual incredible woman from the 16th century.
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It's so clever there are so many allusions to like Shakespeare
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and 16th century life
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and I think the writing is beautiful again there's lots of lots of nature writing in here
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and because she's learning botany she's so like sensitive to the touch of the flowers
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and it kind of fits as well with Ophelia
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because the image of the flowers is very much associated with Ophelia in Hamlet.
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It goes through several years and so you do get descriptions from several springs
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and even though the whole book isn't about spring it's the spring parts
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that for me in my memory at least really shine through.
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I cannot recommend this book enough and I really hope you're able to get your hands on a copy of this.
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Then the very final book is more of a pamphlet but it's fantastic and I don't have a copy of it.
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I keep on meaning to buy a copy
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and I need to buy a copy but called The Nettle Eater by Tom Heron.
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I borrowed this from the library at Arvon
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when I was on a writing course
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and it's- I read it in a morning
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and it just- it was unlike and it is unlike anything I've ever read before.
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It's so strange, like it feels psychedelic.
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It's basically the story of this man who abandoned civilization
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and goes to live in the wild for a year and he survives exclusively on nettles.
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It's not realistic at all, it's not like a realistic narrative and it moves very fast,
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it's so lyrical, you're never quite sure what's happening but it's just beautiful and again just in terms of connection to nature,
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connection to the natural world, this showcases that but in the most unique, poetic, beautiful way.
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I cannot recommend enough if you love like lyrical writing and
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if you maybe like the grotesque or Tim Burton perhaps you might like this.
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It's also very witchy, it kind of has a witchy feel to it.
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I am actually also going to do a shameless self promo with this
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because people have been asking me to bring this back and I'm going to because it is spring.
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This is a spring nature journal that I kept
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in 2023 and I wrote these kind of like daily poems
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and letters and observations of how the spring was coming
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and changing and I sold a very limited print run of these in 2023
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and because lots of people have been asking me about it I'm going to re-release 50 of these.
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Honestly it makes me so like I'm so honoured and
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so like grateful that people are actually interested to read this as well.
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I wasn't going to print it at all at first
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but I was showing it often in my videos
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because I'd always be keeping it and I had
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so many people asking like would you consider printing it as a facsimile
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and like I've had so many lovely messages from people who did read it
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so I will leave a link below
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but the delivery time will be two weeks
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because I will get them printed in the meantime but I'm sorry self promo done I will not talk about that again.
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But anyway those are my top spring book recommendations.
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I hope you were able to walk away with a new book from this list
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and I hope that you have more than just a productive week.
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This video has 273 sentences and 3545 words to shadow. The speech runs for 20:49. The speaker talks at a natural 170 words per minute, close to everyday conversation. 83% 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 |
|---|---|---|
| poetry noun | /ˈpoʊ.ə.tɹi/ | Literature composed in verse or language exhibiting conscious attention to patterns and rhythm. |
| poem noun | /ˈpoʊ.əm/ | A literary piece written in verse. |
| hopeful adjective | /ˈhoʊpfl̩/ | feeling hope |
| anticipation noun | /ænˌtɪs.əˈpeɪ.ʃən/ | The act of anticipating, taking up, placing, or considering something beforehand, or before the proper time in natural order. |
| cloud noun | /ˈklaʊ̯d/ | A visible mass of water droplets suspended in the air. |
| comfort noun | /ˈkʌm.fət/ | Contentment, ease. |
| clever adjective | /ˈklɛv.ɚ/ | Nimble with hands or body; dexterous; skillful; adept. |
| recommendation noun | /ˌɹɛkəmɛnˈdeɪʃən/ | An act of recommending. |
| grief noun | /ɡɹiːf/ | Suffering, hardship. |
| biography noun | /baɪˈɑɡɹəfi/ | A person's life story, especially one published. |
| blossom verb | /ˈblɑ.səm/ | To have, or open into, blossoms; to bloom. |
| narrative noun | /ˈnæɹ.ə.tɪv/ | The systematic recitation of an event or series of events. |
| arrive verb | /əˈɹaɪv/ | To reach; to get to a certain place. |
| explore verb | /ɪkˈsploɹ/ | To examine or investigate something systematically. |
| poet noun | /ˈpoʊ.ət/ | A person who writes poems. |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Meaning |
|---|---|
| go through verb | To travel from one end of something to the other. |
| go back to verb | To stem from; to originate in. |
| put down verb | To insult, belittle, or demean. |
| send out verb | To issue, dispatch or transmit. |
| set over verb | To assign; transfer ownership of something. |
| walk away with verb | To win (a competition or contest) handily or by a large margin. |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 68 contractions and reduced forms, such as I'm, I've, they're. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “th” sounds: threaten /ˈθɹɛt.n̩/, anthology /ænˈθɑləd͡ʒi/, apothecary /əˈpɑθəˌkɛəɹi/, lengthen /ˈlɛŋθən/
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: anticipation /ænˌtɪs.əˈpeɪ.ʃən/, recommendation /ˌɹɛkəmɛnˈdeɪʃən/, gosh /ɡɑːʃ/, inspiration /ˌɪn.spɪˈɹeɪ.ʃən/, partially /ˈpɑɹʃəli/
- Long words — get the stress right: anticipation /ænˌtɪs.əˈpeɪ.ʃən/, recommendation /ˌɹɛkəmɛnˈdeɪʃən/, biography /baɪˈɑɡɹəfi/, naturally /ˈnæt͡ʃ.(ə.)ɹə.li/, necessarily /ˌnɛs.əˈsɛɹ.ə.li/
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 poetry, poem, hopeful.
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| Present perfect continuous have/has been + -ing — an action that started earlier and is still going on | you've been wanting · have been asking |
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | are set · was created · is obsessed |
| Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing | this which is · list which is · world which is |
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | i've dipped · I've read · haven't read |
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.