Shadowing Practice: TEDxYouth@SanDiego - Liz Murray - Learn English Speaking with Video
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Niels Bohr Reviewer Reviewer Hello.
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Good morning, TEDxSanDiego.
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Hey!
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So good to be here.
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Today, I want to talk to you about one of the great loves of my life, which is the love of possibility.
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And what I mean by that is the passion
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that you have inside of you to create the results that you know that you are meant to create in this world.
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And in order to do that, I want to share with you a little bit about my
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journey of going from being a homeless person on the streets of New York City
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and transforming my life and going on to Harvard.
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And another piece I want to share with you, actually to start that conversation, is to talk to you a bit today about one of my heroes, which is someone who has passed away,
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who was with us as a young man, and his name was Ben Underwood.
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Ben Underwood is someone who became famous to us in this world because he was someone who we label as blind,
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but he actually had the ability to see in a different way.
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He had something called echolocation, which you've heard about before with dolphins and bats.
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He, like some people who don't have sight, found a way to create sound waves.
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He would, you know, some people pound their foot.
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He would actually use a clicking noise in his mouth
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to send sound waves bouncing off the walls around him so that he could actually navigate his way around the world.
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I know it sounds crazy, but if you go on YouTube, you can see tons of videos of Ben navigating his way around, even though he had actually no eyes.
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And he's an incredible person to me for a few reasons.
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One is, I would watch these videos of Ben and be
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so moved by him because any day of the week that you went to his house, you could watch Ben and you would not be able to tell that he was blind.
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You would watch him run up and down the stairs in his home.
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His mother, Aquanetta, would call down to him, and he would get her things from her dresser upstairs.
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He would ride his bike around the neighborhood.
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He would hold the door open for people because he was able to make a noise that sounded a little like this.
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Send sound waves off and essentially see in a different way.
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Now, scientists became fascinated by Ben, and they came from everywhere to study him.
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You would see scientists and academics and reporters would gather around Ben
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and they would put him through a series of tests
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and you would watch them put a telephone on a table or a plate or something, and he would click and he would be able to tell you what was in front of him.
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So people became fascinated by Ben's story.
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But that's not what moved me so much about Ben's story.
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There was something else that was different about Ben that really touched my heart.
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Now, as much as I understand when people are fascinated at the result that he accomplished in his life, which was, you know, let's be straight,
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it was incredible, What I was curious about in watching him was, what is the thinking that gets somebody to create that kind of result in their lives?
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What is it inside of a person that refuses to say, I will label myself as blind and find another way?
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And the answer to that question is something that moved me to tears when I learned about Ben's story.
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And what that is was a conversation that took place between Ben and his mother the day of his surgery.
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Now, he was two weeks shy of his third birthday, and his mother had put him through intense chemotherapy because he had had cancer in both eyes.
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And she had a choice to make.
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do I give Ben a ton of chemotherapy and keep risking his life and maybe save his eyes?
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Or do I remove his eyes entirely?
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And if I do, he'll live, but he'll have no sight.
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She made the tough call, they removed his eyes.
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And I'm just going to ask you for one moment to imagine, if you could, what you would say to your three-year-old if they woke up from surgery without their eyes.
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Like, what could you possibly say?
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So I listened carefully at the words that his mother, Akwinetta, chose to share.
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And what she did was, as soon as Ben woke up and said, Mom, I can't see.
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She immediately said to him, Ben, yes, you can.
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And in her own words, she said, I took his little hands and I placed them on my cheeks.
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And I said, Ben, you can see with your hands.
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And then I said, Ben, here.
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And I gave him my arm and I let him smell my skin.
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And she said, Ben, you can smell my skin.
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You can see with your smell.
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And then I whispered in his ear, Ben, you can absolutely see.
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You can see with your ears.
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And one, two, three.
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Akwinetta, his mother, went through the various ways in which Ben could see.
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And so in teaching Ben to refuse to label himself as blind, she set his mind in motion in the search of a greater possibility.
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He began to ask himself, not why can't I see, but in what ways can I see?
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And for the love and the passion of that possibility, he searched for his own.
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And therefore, it would only make sense that he would create a new way.
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That's what inspires me about him, is when someone is so moved by what possibility can create in their lives.
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And don't get me wrong, I marvel at his result.
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The fact that he could have echolocation and people would sit there and study him is incredible.
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But what moved me to tears again is the search for another possibility.
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I relate to that in my own life because, well, you guys know that at some point I ended up homeless in my life.
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And that happened because I grew up in the Bronx in a very tough neighborhood.
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my parents, they had always used drugs.
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I mean, my whole life, they had been getting high.
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And it was commonplace in my household to walk and see my parents shooting up drugs in my kitchen, and growing up, even though they were very loving to us,
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my sister and I, I watched them use drugs so frequently that that was just the way that our lives went.
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That went on for so long, and you can't live like that forever.
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It catches up to you.
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Eventually, both my parents contracted HIV and by the time
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that I was the age that most people are when they're planning their prom or applying to college,
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what happened in my life instead was that my mother was without access to the medications they have now.
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She went from having HIV to full-blown AIDS.
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My father was living in a homeless shelter, and I found myself at 15 years old, sleeping in New York City streets in parks and subway stations.
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Many nights I would fall asleep with my backpack in my lap, and I would have my journal, my clothing.
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I had a picture of my mother when she was my age, and she was homeless in New York City when her family had fallen apart.
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Now, living this way, I know I sound pretty different from other people because it's such an intense situation, but I actually think I was really just like everyone else.
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No matter what was in front of me, I had dreams that I wanted to accomplish.
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I mean, don't we all?
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You know, I had things like I wanted to go to school, I wanted to have a family, I wanted to live a better life.
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But, you know, people listen when they hear my story, and I guess much like Ben, when they study his echolocation,
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they want him to be able to distinguish the telephone from the computer or whatever they did with him.
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People would often ask me very strange questions about being homeless, and, you know, people would ask me, Did you eat from the trash?
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Or, you know, where did you sleep?
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Or, you know, the things that people are interested in fascinate me, when instead what really was in my heart and was probably the most amazing experience I had was,
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again, this internal experience.
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I had these dreams, but living in that kind of despair, I let them begin to fade away.
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Have you ever felt hopeless in your life?
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Where you had something you wanted to do, but it felt so much out of your reach?
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I had this voice in the back of my head that I believe we all have, I call it the what-if voice.
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And the what-if voice said, what if you go to school?
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What if you change your life?
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What if you go back?
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And I let that voice fade in all of this sadness that I was in.
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And there's a quote that I love by Dr. Martin Luther King, and what he says is, your life begins to end the day you become silent about things that matter.
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And feeling that inside of me, that was the most dangerous thing about being in my situation.
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But what occurred was incredible.
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I had a transformational experience.
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Unfortunately, it came through tragedy.
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It was when my mother died.
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But when she passed away, what my mother did for me, and maybe it was the intense love that we had for each other because we loved each other so much,
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her dying, it unlocked my mind to begin to think of possibility in my own life.
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And the best way I know how to explain this is there was something about knowing
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that at one moment I had a family, I had my mother, and then I lost everything.
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And I realized life changed pretty rapidly, for the worst, but life can change.
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And I was inspired by this belief that my life could, in fact, change.
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And with that thinking in mind, I remember knocking on doors in high schools.
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I'd dust myself off after sleeping on the train.
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I'd knock on doors at high schools after years of being truant, and I would ask them to accept me.
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I should have been applying to college, I was applying to high school.
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That's how old I was.
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And I was knocking on doors asking for them to accept me.
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I went from school to school to school and I experienced a lot of rejections.
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But there was this feeling in my heart, a feeling that I want so badly to transfer to everyone that I meet now, which is that passion that I felt for that,
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what would happen if I just kept going?
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Even if there was every evidence in the world that it wouldn't work out, what if?
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And for the idea that even though it was unlikely after being told no so many times, it was possible that the next school would accept me.
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And so I continued to knock on doors until I was accepted.
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And then I fell in love with what would be possible
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if I got straight A's for the first time in my life.
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So I did that.
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And then I fell in love with what would be possible if I applied to Harvard.
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And I fell in love with what would be impossible Well, with applying for a scholarship from the New York Times.
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I had no idea how big this would get.
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I didn't know that I would actually be able to lift myself out of homelessness, go on to Harvard, graduate, and entirely change my life.
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Now, like Ben, who I mentioned in the beginning, people get pretty fixated and fascinated on the result.
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Talk to me about Harvard, or talk to me about the mechanics of how you did what you did.
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People think about that, and what I am moved by instead is falling in love with possibility in your life.
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Because haven't you ever felt in a place of despair?
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You had a goal, you had something you wanted to accomplish, and you start feeling that fading feeling.
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In fact, I love when people talk to youth, because you know what they often will say?
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I always hear people say, it's great you have all the passion you have, get it done while you're young.
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Raise your hand if anyone's ever told you youth are uniquely qualified, yay?
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Say aye.
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Aye.
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Right?
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And so I hear this with youth, and I always thought that sounded kind of screwy, because what's the implication?
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That one day in your life, you will no longer be passionate, you will no longer be capable.
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And here's what I believe.
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Absolutely no one knows what's possible until they're already doing it.
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And each and every moment is always another chance.
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No matter what your history is, no matter where you've come from, every moment is a new possibility.
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And if I could leave you with something, I'll tell you that as I move through these obstacles in my life, I was tempted so much to think that because of my past,
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I could not change my future.
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But that feeling of, okay, I'll let it go.
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What will happen if I apply to school?
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What will happen if I apply to the scholarship?
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What will happen if I put one foot in front of the other until my world changes around me?
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So any time that you are hunkered down in that feeling of despair, any time that you may ever doubt yourself or believe for a second
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that there was a before and after to your potential in this world, I'm standing here today to tell you that your potential is timeless.
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And will you do this with me now as I leave here?
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Will you go, new moment, new opportunity?
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Do it with me now.
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New moment, new opportunity.
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New moment, new opportunity.
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And one more time, new moment, new opportunity.
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Your potential in this world is timeless.
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My wish for you is that you fall in love with possibility, and you marvel in what it will create in your life and in this world.
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Thank you so much for having me here today.
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What You'll Learn
This video is a goldmine for english speaking practice. You’ll pick up skills like storytelling with emotion—Liz Murray’s vivid anecdotes about Ben Underwood and her own journey teach you to connect with listeners. You’ll also learn to emphasize key ideas through pauses and tone, which is crucial for clear communication. Plus, it’s perfect for practicing the shadowing technique: repeating phrases in real time to mimic natural rhythm.
Listen For These Sounds
Pay attention to connected speech. Liz often links words, like "what I mean" becoming "whadimean" and "you are" sounding like "y’are". Reductions are common too—"he would" shortens to "he’d" and "I want to" becomes "I wanna". These small changes make speech flow, so listen closely to how she glides between words. It’s a great example of how to sound more natural when using learn english with youtube content.
Say It Like a Native
To mirror Liz’s style, focus on stress and rhythm. She stresses words like "possibility", "passion", and "create" to highlight her message—copy that to make your speech impactful. Notice her pauses after big ideas, like after "transforming my life and going on to Harvard"—this gives listeners time to process. Use the shadowing technique here: pause the video, repeat her lines, and match her pace. For extra practice, try shadowspeak—a fun way to mimic speech patterns. This video is ideal for a shadowing site because it balances storytelling with clear, conversational English.
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| Conditional sentences if + clause, will/would + verb — a condition and its result | if I do, he'll live · if you could, what you would say |
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | are meant · are fascinated · was inspired |
| Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing | life, which is · heroes, which is · someone who became |
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | has passed · you've heard · Have you ever felt |
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.