Shadowing Practice: Stop Studying English Without a System - Learn English Speaking with Video
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180 sentences
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You sit down to study English and you start thinking, what should I do?
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Maybe today I watch a YouTube video.
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You watch a video, you take notes and done.
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You go away and you start thinking, did I learn anything?
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I don't know.
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I'll just keep going.
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Tomorrow, the same thing happens.
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You sit down and you start thinking, what should I do?
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Maybe I listen to a podcast.
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You find a podcast, you listen to the podcast, you take notes, you go away and it happens over
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and over and over again and then after two years you come to me
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and you say teacher I've been learning English for two years and I still can't speak English fluently.
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This is the most common problem I hear.
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I've studied a lot I can't speak
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and I have tried to talk about this topic in my previous videos
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but in this video I'm going to summarize everything for you.
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When you want to study English, there are a lot of things you need to cover.
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You need to cover grammar, vocabulary, reading, writing, listening, speaking.
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For each one of them, you need to learn, you need to practice, and you need to get feedback.
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And eventually, you need to know what to do next.
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This is the pyramid of the things you need to do.
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Now look, it's too much.
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And if every time you sit down to study, you have to decide what to do, you will end up learning things randomly.
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And in the long run, you're going to waste your time.
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Because none of the things you're learning are sitting together in relation to each other, helping you improve your communication skills.
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The thing is, you can spend years learning English,
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but make very little progress because you're not learning the right thing in the right way at the right time.
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These three elements are crucial.
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And do you know how you can have them?
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This is called a system.
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Do you know what a system does?
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A system tells you what to study, how to study it.
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It gives you feedback along the way, and it tells you what to do next.
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These are the four crucial elements of a system.
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If you don't have a system, that's why you have not made enough progress, you're not happy with your English, or you don't speak very fluently.
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Because you don't have a system.
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And probably you're wasting a lot of your time.
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So let me give you a few examples of a system.
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What is it and how can I have it?
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One example is a tutor.
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You get a tutor.
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The tutor will tell you what to study, how to study it he
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or she will provide feedback along the way and will tell you what to do next.
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Another example is a language school.
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You go and you register, you enroll yourself, and what happens is the language school will probably give you books and materials,
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teachers, and you will have to go and attend.
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They have the curriculum and they will cover everything.
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Another very good example is online courses
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and online academies where you will get a full system and using that system you will work on your English.
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From the comfort of your home, pros and cons.
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For example, if you think about a tutor, usually they're very expensive.
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One -to -one tutoring is the most expensive way to learn English.
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Additionally, it's hard to know if that teacher is the right teacher, is a good teacher.
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It's hard for you to understand.
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But language schools are better, they're cheaper, though there is a problem.
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You have to physically stand up, get ready, go, come back.
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You spend a lot of time on the commute.
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Or if it is online, you may register in an academy where all the students are from the same neighborhood
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or from the same city and you don't get enough exposure to international English.
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However, if you register in an online academy that operates globally, the story is different because you now have teachers,
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system, but also classmates from different countries.
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Though in this one there is a problem.
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Many of the online academies and online courses are video courses.
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They're just a bunch of videos given to the students.
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Okay the videos are numbered.
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Number one, number two, number three.
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And that's it.
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You don't get any feedback.
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There's no teacher -student relationship.
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Nothing.
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You're just left with a bunch of materials to study.
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Probably from your favorite teacher.
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And I know it's very hard to be a student
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and have so many options because another option is just to sit down
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and study yourself but I told you why that's a bad idea because you don't have a system.
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So what's the solution?
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The thing is I have spent about eight years now building a system
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that can provide everything you need in order to learn English and I've called that the POC English Academy.
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But what's inside the Academy and how are we different?
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Let me explain.
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When you register, you can log into your account.
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And once you do, you have different things available.
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First, we tell you what to study.
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I have provided four courses for you.
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The general English course, building your general English knowledge.
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That's the building blocks.
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That's the main, the important part of your English.
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Then we have the IELTS course
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that is for students who want to take the IELTS test and work on their four skills of reading, writing, listening, and speaking.
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We have the pronunciation course that helps you improve your accent and pronunciation clarity.
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And we have the English for leisure or vocabulary builder course that will teach you idioms, phrasal verbs, expressions, and collocations.
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So you get the four courses.
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Okay, I have the courses now, but I need to know how to study.
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In every lesson, there's a video of me teaching you the main lesson and telling you how to study.
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Immediately after that, you have the downloadable PDF file.
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You have the interactive quizzes and exercises that you can answer
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and get the explanation of why your answer was correct or wrong.
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Remember?
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Feedback.
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Feedback is very crucial.
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And then in every lesson, we have different steps.
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Grammar, vocabulary, reading, writing, listening, and speaking.
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Wait a second.
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Speaking and writing?
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Will I get feedback on my writing and speaking?
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Yes.
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In order to make sure you get the feedback you deserve in real time, so you don't have to wait for a teacher to go home,
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sit down, read your text, correct it for you, we have created our AI English Tutor
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that will immediately check your writing or speaking assignment and give you feedback.
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What you did well, what you should do next, how to improve, your grammar mistakes, and why you made those mistakes.
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And once you complete everything, you get a final quiz for that particular unit
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so we are sure that you have learned everything you need
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and that's just the general english course in the ielts course a similar thing happens
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so i teach you everything you need to know about your skills about the ielts test about the techniques
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that you need in order to get a band score above seven
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and we cover everything reading writing listening and speaking
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but what about feedback
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because ielts students need to know what score they can get for their writing
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and speaking in the ielts test in order to make sure you'll get
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that we have built an ai ielts examiner
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that will check your ielts writing task one ielts writing task two
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and ielts speaking tasks and will tell you what band score you are likely to get
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so you're not just learning from me.
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You're also getting feedback and you know what to do next based on the feedback you get.
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But let's put the courses aside.
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I need to see my classmates.
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I need to know with whom I'm learning English because after all, you learn English because you want to have human to human connections.
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I need to talk to other human beings.
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Can I do that?
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Of course this is one of my favorite features.
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We have created a community of students and
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so far more than a thousand two hundred students are actively participating in the community space.
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You can connect with other classmates, make friends, and
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whenever you have free time you go
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and you attend a let's talk session with whoever is available from all around the world
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so you can make international friends as you are learning English.
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But I don't want to only learn from videos.
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What about live classes and live lessons?
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We do have that and that's why I'm telling you POC English Academy is a complete academy.
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We have live classes and you can check the live hub and see what classes are available, who's the teacher, what's the topic,
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and what time is it going to be.
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So whichever fits your schedule, you register and you join a Zoom session with other classmates and a teacher,
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so you are there to speak in real time with other people using Zoom.
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So it's face -to -face, real time.
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There is another thing that I'm very proud of and is very helpful.
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Do you know what that is.
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Everything you do in the academy, every right or wrong answer you have, every mistake you make in AI writing tasks
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or speaking tasks will get evaluated and you will see your level in real time
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and you can see how much you have improved by checking the my progress tab.
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You can see your strongest skill, you can see which skills are still weak and you need to work on.
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But more importantly, every Monday you will get a personalized test.
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a personalized quiz based on your last week's mistakes.
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So if I've been studying for a week now and I've made 12 mistakes or 13 mistakes,
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this Monday I will get a quiz from my mistakes.
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Other students will not see that, only you will see that and that is only for you coming from your mistakes.
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And you know this is something that many people haven't paid enough attention to.
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You need to learn from your mistakes.
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Because if you keep making your mistakes and you don't learn from them, it's not complete.
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So our system will get to know you over time, will get to know your level over time,
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and will be able to give you personalized exercises based on your needs.
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So what you see in the platform is different from what I see in the platform
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and is different from what others see in their platforms.
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It's a personalized learning experience.
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I have thought about everything, guys.
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Over eight years, I've obsessively designed this experience for you.
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And the good news is, because today is our five -year anniversary of our channel, it's been five years, guys,
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that we have the PUC English YouTube channel, and we're at 4 .2 million subscribers,
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I am going to give you a special offer to celebrate this day and to help you get started with our courses.
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For the next five days, you can register and get a 50 % discount.
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The discount is already applied and will disappear after five days.
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If you want to learn more about what we offer, if you want to learn more about how the Academy works,
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and if you want to register, and if you are serious about improving your English and making the right move, this is your chance.
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Click on the link above this video or go to app .pocenglish .com slash offer.
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The link is also in the description of the video.
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Or you can also scan this QR code over here and see for yourself.
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I hope I can see you all in the academy.
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If you have any other questions, let me know in the comments.
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I'm gonna check the comments too.
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See you soon.
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Bye.
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This speaking lesson is built on the video “Stop Studying English Without a System”. The speaker keeps coming back to these words: english, feedback, study, teacher, writing. This video has 180 sentences and 2022 words to shadow. The speech runs for 12:07. The speaker talks at a natural 167 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
15 words from the video worth learning, with pronunciation and meaning:
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| feedback noun | /ˈfiːdˌbæk/ | Critical assessment of a process or activity or of their results. |
| tutor noun | /ˈtjuːtəː/ | One who teaches another (usually called a student, learner, or tutee) in a one-on-one or small-group interaction. |
| skill noun | /skɪl/ | A capacity to do something well; a technique, an ability, usually acquired or learned, as opposed to abilities that are regarded as innate. |
| lesson noun | /ˈlɛs.ən/ | A section of learning or teaching into which a wider learning content is divided. |
| quiz noun | /kwɪz/ | A competition in the answering of questions. |
| crucial adjective | /ˈkɹuː.ʃəl/ | Essential or decisive for determining the outcome or future of something; extremely important; vital. |
| grammar noun | /ˈɡɹæm.ə(ɹ)/ | A system of rules and principles for the structure of a language, or of languages in general. |
| podcast noun | /ˈpɑdˌkæst/ | A program, especially an audio program, produced on a regular basis, delivered over the Internet in a compressed digital format and designed for playback on… |
| 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. |
| topic noun | /ˈtɑpɪk/ | A subject; a theme; a category or general area of interest. |
| element noun | /ˈɛləmənt/ | One of the simplest or essential parts or principles of which anything consists, or upon which the constitution or fundamental powers of anything are based. |
| discount noun | /ˈdɪskaʊnt/ | A reduction in price. |
| bind verb | /ˈbaɪ̯nd/ | To tie; to confine by any ligature. |
| pronunciation noun | /pɹəˌnʌn.siˈeɪ.ʃən/ | The formal or informal way in which a word is made to sound when spoken. |
| technique noun | /tɛkˈniːk/ | The practical aspects of a given art, occupation etc.; formal requirements. |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Meaning |
|---|---|
| sit down verb | To assume a sitting position from a standing position. |
| go away verb | To depart or leave a place. |
| come back verb | To return to a place. |
| end up verb | To bring to a conclusion. |
| stand up verb | To rise from a lying or sitting position. |
Sentences worth repeating
Short, complete lines from the video that you can reuse in everyday conversation:
- You go away and you start thinking, did I learn anything?
- You sit down and you start thinking, what should I do?
- Do you know what a system does?
- What is it and how can I have it?
- Will I get feedback on my writing and speaking?
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 | I've been learning · I've been studying |
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | I've studied · have tried · have not made |
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | is called · is already applied |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 39 contractions and reduced forms, such as don't, you're, I've. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: crucial /ˈkɹuː.ʃəl/, pronunciation /pɹəˌnʌn.siˈeɪ.ʃən/, explanation /ˌɛkspləˈneɪʃən/, exposure /ɪkˈspəʊ.ʒə(ɹ)/, relation /ɹɪˈleɪʃ(ə)n/
- Long words — get the stress right: vocabulary /vəˈkæb.jə.lə.ɹi/, pronunciation /pɹəˌnʌn.siˈeɪ.ʃən/, explanation /ˌɛkspləˈneɪʃən/, participate /pɑːˈtɪs.ɪ.peɪt/, curriculum /kəˈɹɪk.jə.ləm/
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 feedback, tutor, skill.
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.