Shadowing Practice: Studio Sacramento: Common Core - Learn English Speaking with Video
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At Five Star Bank, community is at the heart of what we do.
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Every day we strive to have thoughtful solutions for our customers and help our communities prosper.
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Honest dialogue about the issues affecting the region is vitally important to that prosperity.
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We are proud to be part of the conversation and hope you'll join in.
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Common Core.
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It's a new set of educational standards developed to address the gap between what employers need and what schools have been delivering.
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As we see
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Common Core being implemented, some are having second thoughts and even rejecting the new standards as harmful to students and a national takeover of public education.
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Joining us in partnership with the American Leadership Forum are managing partner of Capital Impact
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and Sacramento City Vice Mayor Jay Chenier and El Dorado County School Superintendent Jeremy Myers.
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Jay, what is Common Core?
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So, Common Core is a new set of standards that have been developed nationally.
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It started with the National Governors Association saying what we have really isn't good enough.
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What we have is just too much content
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and not really teaching our young people how to think and be prepared for 21st century jobs.
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So they went out and said we'll work with educators, we'll work with teachers, we'll work with researchers,
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and we'll develop a set of standards that can be implemented.
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At this point we have 44 states across the country that are in the process of implementing those standards.
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And Superintendent, as a parent, what is it that I need to know about Common Core?
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You know, and to follow up on Jay's comment in terms of being career ready,
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the intent of Common Core is for students to be career and college ready.
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And the conjunction is intentional in terms of the and.
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And so it is very intentional in terms of it being career and college ready.
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Parents need to understand that this is a different approach in terms of classroom instruction
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and that there will be accountability measures around that instruction that are going to look very different than what they've seen previously.
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Like what?
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Like what?
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Well, everybody, I think, for the most part is familiar with STAR testing,
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standardized testing and reporting, in which students are given a score anywhere from far below basic to advanced.
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And then schools were given an academic performance index, which was a value between 100 and 1 ,000,
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with 800 being the statewide target.
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So everybody's pretty familiar with that as the public means of accountability for gauging a school and a district's success.
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That's all about to change.
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And ultimately, as Vice Mayor of Sacramento, education doesn't fall directly within your purview,
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but what does
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Common Core and its successful implementation mean to your city from a perspective of its young graduates?
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So I think this is critical because as we think about the city's sustainability
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and we think about the workforce that we need in the health sector as we look at agribusiness,
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as we look to implement next economy and the initiatives that we want to grow our economy.
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We need an educated workforce that can think for themselves, that can analyze problems, that can come up with solutions, that can work together.
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These are the things that we're really talking about in Common Core as opposed to, you know, I remember sitting with my high schooler
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and saying these are the routes that all the explorers used across the Atlantic Ocean.
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Well, they don't need to learn that anymore they know where to go to get that,
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they need to understand how you learn and that's what we need to teach our young people now.
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We'll stick on that for a second.
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How you learn.
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One of the criticisms of the last big initiative
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which was President Bush and Teddy Kennedy's No Child Left Behind was that it was test,
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it was memorization because that's what particularly in the East Asian countries was the focus which was rote memorization.
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what, is this a new fad or what's different about this?
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I think this is the evolution of education as we look at it.
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You know, fundamentally Scott, we've changed what education is doing and the purpose from a sorting machine.
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These kids will go to college, these kids will go into industry and work in our factories.
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We don't do that anymore, which is a great thing and that's what Jeremy was talking about when you talk about college and career.
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We need to prepare our young people for jobs that we don't, that don't even exist today.
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And to do that we need to teach them how to think, how to do the analysis.
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Those are the things that are going to be important for young people to be successful.
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Jeremy, though, the question that comes up is
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that Common Core.. is on one level those who are for it say it's about reasoning
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and learning how to analyze and and really creating critical thinking skills for students.
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Right.
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On the other hand those who are more traditionalists say how can there be four answers to the same problem?
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Is this, this is just another manifestation of the self -esteem movement where it is
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that we're all winners and everybody gets a trophy
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and there are no wrong answers and this is another step toward us being uncompetitive and soft as a nation.
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Yeah I would fundamentally disagree in terms of there being no wrong answers.
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This is a very different approach in terms of assessment
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and engaging what students are know and able to be able to do at a particular point in time and what
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Common Core is is that if you look at the properties of a square,
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you would have multiple properties of that square in a single question, and being able to identify the multiple properties of a square, i .e.
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more than one right answer, and in fact, to get the answer correct,
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you have to be able to identify all of the properties of a square.
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That's what we mean when there's more than one right answer to a problem, is being able to think with much greater depth and demonstrate knowledge
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that is much more complete
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and exhaustive than what we could measure in a multiple choice test which was a single right answer.
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A couple of years ago no one was talking about this
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but now it's becoming a much larger conversation and I read
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that in fact some folks who were originally for this are now turning negative.
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What's the story behind that?
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You know, I think change is difficult, all else being equal, change is difficult.
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I will tell you that standards are nothing new to the state of California.
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We've had standards -based education since 1997 in an assessment system that has been part and parcel to standards -based education.
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Change is difficult, and I think that there is also the misperception
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that this is somehow the federal government overreaching into the state's right to provide education to our students.
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I've heard it's
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Obamacare for education.
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I've heard the same thing.
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And the irony about that argument, Scott, is that there is more local control right now over the other half of the equation.
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So if we think of this as common core as being the standards, and the standards are what we want students to know
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and be able to do at any particular point in time or grade level.
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The whole other half of that equation is the content, the curriculum, and in the instruction that gets students to that place.
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That is more locally controlled now than it has been in the last three decades.
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How so?
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You're probably familiar with the governor's funding formula, which is called Local Control Funding Formula.
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Yeah.
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That was implemented in 2013, which is the most fundamental overhaul in school finance that we've seen in a very, very long time.
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And it restores local control to school districts.
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And by that we mean LEAs or school boards, local education agency school boards, that are making the decision around the other half of that equation,
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which is the content and the curriculum that gets students to where we want them to know and be able to do.
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The, the, but this local control and this new funding allocation coming in with Common Core,
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Jay what many people want to know is what's this going to do in the lowest income
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and most challenged communities in our state?
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Because we've heard, we heard that
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No Child Left Behind was going to run to the rescue.
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And we've heard other things prior to that.
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So forgive me, but there are a number of cynics who believe
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that this is going to make any more difference at all.
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So first we can talk about the funding formula itself.
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And what the funding formula does is it basically redistributes dollars in California.
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So if you are a district with poor kids, if you're a district with a lot of English language learners or concentrations of those,
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you're going to get more dollars than you would have prior to that.
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And foster youth as well.
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And foster youth as well.
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So it's not, you're not adding more dollars to the system right now.
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We wish we were because we're underfunded as a whole.
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But we are, what we are doing over time is saying
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we're shifting some of these dollars to those kids who need it most
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so it's by need rather than all kids equal because we know all kids don't start equal.
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What is to stop districts, and Jeremy this is as much your question as Jay's, what's to stop districts from just backfilling on the cuts
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that they've made over the past few years in the recession
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and just using that money in that way rather than actually directing it to make.. substantive change?
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Well, in some districts will do that.
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I think the most important type of accountability that we have is public accountability.
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It's really about parents and community members getting involved, understanding what's happening here.
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We just saw some polling last week that came out around Common Core.
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47 % of parents know what
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Common Core is, have some familiarity with it.
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That's really shameful for us.
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This is, as Jeremy said, one of the biggest changes we've done in education.
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This is a landmark change in how we teach our kids and what teachers will have to do in the classroom.
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To know that less than half the parents actually know this is happening doesn't work.
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So I think we have a really big job on messaging here, really getting the word out so parents do understand what's happening in the classroom.
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And that in turn I think is going to force more engagement at the local level.
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I also think because of the funding formula, being a school board member is going to take great added importance.
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You know, To date, you don't have much flexibility when the state's telling you what to do, what to teach, how to teach it,
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and here's your money to do it with 153 categorical programs.
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With all of that gone, being a local school board member is going to mean something again.
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So I hope that all those pieces together create more engagement at the local level.
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We get more parents and community members involved, and the public accountability is what's really going to keep districts honest.
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Yeah, I would just add to that.
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First of all, the comment in terms of what would stop districts from just restoring cuts that they've made during this,
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you know, what we're referring to as the Great Recession.
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In some cases, they would restore those cuts appropriately because they are,
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they were important components to a child's education and they had to make those cuts at the expense of our students.
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So in some cases, it is appropriate that they would add those programs back.
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The other thing that I would suggest, or that I'd say, is that the corollary to LCFF, the local control funding formula,
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is called the LCAP, the Local Control Accountability Plan.
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This year was the first year that districts and county offices were required to complete an LCAP.
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And it really talks about how, if you've got local control, you've also got local responsibility.
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And that needs to be reflected in a local control accountability plan and tied to really directly to student outcomes.
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And so what this does is it uniquely ties for the first time the budget to student outcomes.
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And what's the consequence if schools and districts don't hit the benchmark?
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Well, a lot of this is yet to be decided.
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We're going to be moving to a brand new accountability model
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and the local control accountability plan is actually submitted by districts to a county office for approval.
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So it is the responsibility of the county office and in fact county superintendent to work
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in partnership with districts to make sure that they have outcomes
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that are reasonable and that they have provided resources that are sufficient to be able to deliver on those student outcomes.
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So the other thing I want to add to that is there are requirements as districts develop these plans,
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they're LCAPs, far too many, too much jargon.
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A lot of acronyms.
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I apologize for all education people on this one.
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But within that there are requirements about community engagement and parental engagement in developing their plans.
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So again, it's getting our parents smarter about what's happening at their school site, what's happening in their district.
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And then there are requirements as far as Jeremy said of the county looking at this to make sure
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that those are implemented.
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Where's the teacher accountability in any of this?
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When we have the California Teachers Association come to your show we can have that discussion as well.
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Okay, so in other words, now I've heard that teachers are fairly supportive of Common Core in California, is that accurate?
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I think by and large teachers are very excited about it.
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It's a mixed bag for teachers.
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I mean this is very difficult and we probably don't have enough time in implementation
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and it's a different way of teaching
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and we've actually brought up now a whole generation of teachers based on the way we've been teaching since 97.
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So which has been timing and pacing, this is what you'll teach on Tuesday, this is what page you should be on,
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without a lot of flexibility in that.
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And now we're asking teachers to go back to pre -1997 days when they really had much more control in their classroom.
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What we're telling teachers, and I think this is a good thing, is here's a set of results we want for you with your kids.
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You figure out how to do it.
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You as a school, you as a district adopt your own curriculum to get there.
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So there is a lot of flexibility in how they teach and allowing them to do that.
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But this whole focus that has been going on the debate for the past several years on teacher accountability, I'm not hearing much about that within
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Common Core itself?
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Not necessarily within Common Core.
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There is a lot of discussion right now in terms of student outcomes being tied to teacher evaluation.
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I wouldn't say that those discussions are anywhere close to being complete
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or fruitful in terms of actually having teacher evaluation tied to student outcomes.
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It's one of the reasons why California was not successful in getting a waiver from No Child Left Behind is
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that we didn't have a teacher evaluation piece that was connected to student outcomes.
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Well, let's talk about connections for a second because one of the things
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that folks who believe
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that government just continues to layer things one on top of the other have said is that we had
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No Child Left Behind and now we've got Common Core does
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Common Core supersede or get rid of No Child Left Behind?
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Or is this just another layer of stuff that sits on top of No Child Left Behind?
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Common Core replaces the standards that we had in place since 1997.
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So Common Core again is what we want students to know and be able to do in a particular time, in a particular grade level.
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The corollary to that is accountability.
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And accountability exists really on two levels.
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It exists at a state level and that model is yet to be determined.
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As I mentioned, we're moving away from the star.
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And then you've got federal accountability that schools are required to meet for Title I, which is No Child Left Behind.
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So Common Core is really just the standards.
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And then the corollary to that is the accountability that exists at both the state and the federal level.
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Now, as both of you know, there were significant scandals around the country with teachers not only teaching to the test
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or districts teaching to the test with regards to the accountability standards of No Child Left Behind,
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but in fact actually falsifying scores because it was a relentless drive to get these scores up.
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Under Common Core, it raises the question, who wins and who loses with the successful implementation of these standards?
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Well, I think successful implementation means everybody wins, beginning with students.
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I mean, they're going to be better prepared with 21st century skills for the workforce that we have.
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They're going to be better prepared if they want to go to higher education when they graduate from high school.
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And if our students are doing better, we all do better, the country does better.
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But at the same time, there are certain folks who have succeeded
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because they found a way to be successful with the existing model of using the STAR testing.
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Also what I've heard is that some of the things
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that parents might have to expect is that based on the change that grades for their student may go down,
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that they may not be as competitive in applying for college as they would have been
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because they've learned under this old system.
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So this isn't your grading system in the schools.
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This is, these are your test scores which don't count towards your transcripts, don't count towards college applications.
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We do expect that the scores will go down as the change happens,
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although I will say Kentucky is the first state that actually implemented Common Core.
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Their scores have actually gone up, their college acceptance rates have gone up.
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They've done really well there.
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So we'll have to see what happens.
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And the research is absolutely clear in the field of education.
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When you raise expectations and you couple that with quality instruction,
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test scores go up, students respond and they rise to the level of the challenge.
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As long as you've got increased expectations coupled with good instruction, students will do better.
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There's no question that the REIT.
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Where is all of the angst coming from them?
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I mean, as recently as within the past few weeks, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, who was an early supporter,
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has moved backwards from his former position supporting the implementation of Common Core.
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And there does seem to be a bit of chaos going on in the country.
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What's driving that?
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You know, I don't know what
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Bobby Jingle's position is.
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And what I, everything I read says that this is about the government overreaching into the business of states.
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And in this case that business is education.
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And the resistance is the federal government overreaching and governors being very sensitive to that.
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But this was a governor driven initiative, was it not?
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Right.
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Perception is reality as you know and the perception that's been put out there is
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that this is.. the federal government taking over education once again.
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That's the ironic thing is in terms of its inception, this had nothing to do with the federal government.
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The genesis of this was the National Governors Association.
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They got together and said if the world is flat and this is truly a global economy,
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we ought to be able to compare California to Kentucky and know how they're doing relative to one another.
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And in order to do that, you have to have a common starting place, i .e common core.
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And again, the ironic thing in terms of folks that think
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that this is a federal initiative and that the federal government is overreaching is
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that we again have more local control right now over the other half of that equation, which is the content, curriculum and instruction,
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than we have had in decades.
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By that we mean again, these are local school boards that are making those decisions.
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I hear you, it's just hard to believe because everything you read is about how there is no local control whatsoever.
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Well we're in the infancy.
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We really are in the infancy of all of this.
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And we are finding our way as county offices of education and as school districts in terms of,
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as Jay was mentioning, that we have to acclimate ourselves to making these decisions locally that have been,
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by and large, been made at the state level through the legislature with categoricals and the California Department of Education with materials.
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And so we're, for the very first time in a very long time, making these decisions locally.
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And how does this connect up when to higher education and getting our young people into the workforce?
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So they start to learn under these new standards and they start to perform.
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Is a similar parallel conversation happening at the community college,
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state university and UC level where they're having to adjust as well or do they really not have any involvement in this?
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No, I think they do have involvement
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and I think we're getting better at thinking through the alignment issues between K -12 and community college, CSU and UC.
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It hasn't been an easy discussion over time but between this initiative,
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Link Learning Initiative, We're really trying to get our young people to understand what they need
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and align what it is to graduate from high school and then to be accepted and to go forward.
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We know that the levels of remedial education are far too high in community college and at CSU.
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That's something that they care about that they want to work with.
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So you see a lot more cooperation,
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particularly higher ed reaching down into K -12 and saying we do want to work with you because everybody wins that way.
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The, the, for parents today who are evaluating this issue,
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how should they change how they interact or help guide
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and coach their kids in order to prepare them to be successful in this new environment?
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Well I think there are some tremendous resources out there
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that are on the internet for parents to be able to familiarize themselves with the standards.
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And I think that's a first step is to be able to familiarize yourself with the standards
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and know what the expectations are for your child as they're entering a particular grade level.
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And as Jay was mentioning, only 47 % of the parents are even aware at this point of Common Core.
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and what that means is it's incumbent upon us as educators
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to communicate this critical change to our parents and to make them aware initially that this change is not about to happen,
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it has happened.
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Common Core have been our standard since 2010.
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So we're entering the 2014 -15 school year and we have over half the people that aren't aware of this.
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That's incumbent upon us as educators to make sure that parents are aware.
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And there are a number of resources out there on the internet for parents to be aware of the standards
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and how they look different.
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How is teaching under these standards different for the teacher in
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the classroom than what they've been experiencing in the past with the focus on just the rote testing under STAR?
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Well, one of the major complaints of our 1997 standards was that there was a focus on breadth over depth.
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And teachers had to make sure that they were at a particular place teaching a particular standard and then move on.
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Without being able to gauge necessarily the degree to which students got that standard.
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They had to move through to the 153rd day of instruction, which was when the window for star testing opened up,
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and try to get through as many standards as possible in advance of star testing.
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common core
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and what we're hearing from teachers is a breath of fresh
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air in terms of it focusing on depth over breadth
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and teachers being able to engage much more deeply in a particular standard without having to get through
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that laundry list of standards that we've been dealing with up until 2010.
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And we're going to have to leave it there.
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Thank you gentlemen.
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Our pleasure.
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And that's our show.
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Thanks to our guests and thanks to you for watching Studio Sacramento.
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I'm Scott Syphax.
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See you next time right here on KVIE.
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At Five Star Bank, community is at the heart of what we do.
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Every day we strive to have thoughtful solutions for our customers and help our communities prosper.
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Honest dialogue about the issues affecting the region is vitally important to that prosperity.
313
We are proud to be part of the conversation and hope you'll join in.
314
All episodes of Studio Sacramento, along with other KVIE programs, are available to watch online at kvie .org slash video.
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This speaking lesson is built on the video “Studio Sacramento: Common Core”. The speaker keeps coming back to these words: common, Core, standard, student, teacher. This video has 175 sentences and 4376 words to shadow. The speech runs for 26:20. The speaker talks at a natural 166 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 |
|---|---|---|
| accountability noun | /əˌkaʊn.təˈbɪl.ə.ti/ | The state of being accountable; liability to be called on to render an account or give an explanation; liability to be held responsible or answerable for… |
| outcome noun | /ˈaʊtkʌm/ | That which is produced or occurs as a result of an event or process. |
| implement verb | /ˈɪmpləmənt/ | To bring about; to put into practice; to carry out. |
| instruction noun | /ɪnˈstɹʌkʃən/ | The act of instructing, teaching, or providing with information or knowledge. |
| formula noun | /ˈfɔː.mjʊ.lə/ | Any mathematical rule expressed symbolically. |
| initiative noun | /ɪˈnɪʃ.ə.tɪv/ | A beginning; a first move. |
| implementation noun | /ˌɪmplɪmənˈteɪʃən/ | The process of moving an idea from concept to reality. In business, engineering and other fields, implementation refers to the building process rather than the… |
| classroom noun | /ˈklɑːsɹʊm/ | A room, often in a school, where classes take place. |
| engagement noun | /ɪnˈɡeɪd͡ʒ.mənt/ | An appointment, especially to speak or perform. |
| curriculum noun | /kəˈɹɪk.jə.ləm/ | The set of courses, coursework, and content offered at a school or university. |
| equation noun | /ɪˈkweɪ.ʒən/ | The act or process of equating two or more things, or the state of those things being equal (that is, identical). |
| evaluation noun | /ɪˌvæljuˈeɪʃn̩/ | An assessment, such as an annual personnel performance review used as the basis for a salary increase or bonus, or a summary of a particular situation. |
| restore verb | /ɹɪˈstoɹ/ | To reestablish, or bring back into existence. |
| locally adverb | /ˈləʊkəli/ | With respect to place; in place. |
| flexibility noun | /ˌflɛksɪˈbɪlɪti/ | The quality of being flexible, whether physically or metaphorically. |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| leave behind verb | To abandon. | |
| go up verb | To move upwards. | |
| get through verb | /ɡɛt ˈθɹu/ | To overcome; to endure. |
| go down verb | To descend; to move from a higher place to a lower one. | |
| bring up verb | To mention. | |
| come out verb | /ˌkʌm ˈaʊt/ | To be discovered; to be revealed. |
| come up verb | To emerge or become known, especially unexpectedly. | |
| come up with verb | To manage to produce, deliver, or present (something) by inventing, creating, thinking of, or obtaining it. |
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 | have been delivering · we've been teaching · has been timing |
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | have been developed · they've seen · we've changed |
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | being implemented · have been developed · can be implemented |
| Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing | index, which was · focus which was · anymore, which is |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 89 contractions and reduced forms, such as we're, don't, we've. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “th” sounds: thoughtful /ˈθɔːtfəl/, breadth /bɹɛdθ/
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: instruction /ɪnˈstɹʌkʃən/, initiative /ɪˈnɪʃ.ə.tɪv/, implementation /ˌɪmplɪmənˈteɪʃən/, equation /ɪˈkweɪ.ʒən/, evaluation /ɪˌvæljuˈeɪʃn̩/
- Long words — get the stress right: accountability /əˌkaʊn.təˈbɪl.ə.ti/, initiative /ɪˈnɪʃ.ə.tɪv/, implementation /ˌɪmplɪmənˈteɪʃən/, curriculum /kəˈɹɪk.jə.ləm/, evaluation /ɪˌvæljuˈeɪʃn̩/
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 accountability, outcome, implement.
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.