Shadowing Practice: The #1 English Mistake That Drives Me CRAZY - Learn English Speaking with Video

In this video, I'm going to talk about the number one thing that drives me crazy,

absolutely crazy, that people who are learning languages say and think and believe that is self-sabotage.

They are sabotaging their progress in learning the language and becoming fluent.

And it's crazy to me that people, so many people really don't know this or have thought about this before.

So first, I'm going to passionately rant about that.

And then we're going to take a look at my youtube comment section

and find some mistakes some english mistakes that a lot of you make

and i'm going to help you fix them

so you need to watch this entire video

if you're serious about leveling up your english

because i'm sure you make at least one of these mistakes

yeah you i'm looking at you don't avoid eye contact i'm looking at you i see you now sit down

and pay attention you know i'm just messing with you but

if you're serious about your english sit down

because class is about to start okay i'm going to read

you a very lovely comment written by one of my brazilian

viewers i got a lot of you out there oi jane

she this person wrote i understand everything you said fantastic i'm brazilian living in portugal

so i barely have the chance to practice speaking i work with clients okay

and then she's talking more about her life even though i write

and understand very well i feel completely dumb

when i start to speak ha ha ha can you explain why this happens please

and what's your advice to unlock fluent speaking thank you

so much thank you all right now i'm not picking on this person

because i've seen a million comments like this i've had a

million students ask me about this i'm just using this as an example

but this this right here is the thing that drives me crazy

and i'm gonna explain why specifically this line

so i barely have the chance to practice speaking all right

i'm gonna rant a little bit do you know what ranting is if If you don't know what ranting is, I'm going to put the definition on the screen.

I use it a lot.

It's good to rant about things.

Sometimes I like to rant.

So I'm going to rant for a minute.

Try to keep up.

Try to stay with me.

I am a person who is kind of naturally autodidactic.

I've just always been this way as long as I can remember.

It's very intuitive for me.

It's very easy to just know automatically what I need to do to learn a language.

I also grew up in the time of internet.

I am 27 when I decided that I wanted to seriously study Spanish and Portuguese, I already knew that the number one thing that I need to do,

and really the only thing I need to do to learn this language, is basically what children do.

I need to expose myself to the language, I need to listen to how native speakers talk, and I need to imitate them.

You are imitating them.

That's why babies and kids, they learn even the same accent as their parents.

So you need to channel that.

You need to go into that mode mentally.

There is no such thing as I don't have the chance to practice speaking.

That doesn't exist.

I don't want to hear anybody say that again.

That belief needs to be thrown in the trash.

The problem is, is that people are associating speaking with conversation with another person and they are not separating those things.

They think that those go together and they cannot be separated.

But that's exactly what you need to do.

You need to separate them.

You need to practice speaking.

You need to approach the practice of speaking the same way you approach practicing your guitar by yourself,

practicing a sport, an instrument, yoga, anything, anything that you do that you practice by yourself.

You need to approach your language speaking in the same way.

99% of the way that I learned Spanish and Portuguese was by watching content,

listening to content of native speakers talking in Spanish, in Portuguese, on the internet,

pausing, listening again, imitating them, repeating, trying to copy them exactly the way they said it.

Most of the content I watched was content for native speakers.

It was random YouTube channels of Brazilian girls doing their makeup, which I don't even wear makeup, but I found it fascinating,

to this Mexican guy that used to make cooking videos.

He used to like show himself making food.

I used to watch this funny Dominican guy who made all these comedy videos, like making fun of his mom and the way that his mom was when he was growing up.

I used to watch the same content that Spanish and Portuguese speakers watch.

YouTube videos, TikTok videos, Instagram reels, some movies and shows if they were not too difficult.

Some movies and shows are easier than others.

You have to find the easier ones because some are really hard, yes.

And I'm sitting there in my room with my little tablet or my phone or my laptop or whatever, and I'm pausing and I'm imitating, imitating, imitating.

That is how I learn these languages.

The concept of I don't have a chance to speak never occurred to me.

It never existed, even though I was actually living among English speakers at the time.

I was living in a house of English speakers, and my job was in English, and most of my daily conversations were in English,

but I created a Spanish and Portuguese speaking bubble for myself.

And trust me, the more you do that by yourself with the internet,

the easier it will be when it comes time to have a conversation with a real person, with a native speaker in real life.

Nowadays, with the internet, there is no more, I don't have a chance to practice speaking.

I don't have a chance to be exposed to native speakers.

This doesn't exist.

I'm saying it again for emphasis.

I've said this before in other videos.

I'm going to say it again.

The only way to get better at something is just to do it again and again and again and again.

Even if it's hard, you just keep doing it.

Every great musician started by learning the basics on an instrument.

And maybe it was even hard for them in the beginning.

Probably.

That's the same thing with any kind of exercise or whatever.

Maybe you can only do a couple push-ups today, but if you keep doing those couple push-ups, it'll get easier and then you can do more.

I think another problem is that people don't realize how much time

and exposure and practice it takes to really master a language.

I'm like eight years into my Spanish and I feel confident with my Spanish, but there's still a lot of things that I am not sure about,

I don't know about, I am constantly asking my friends, how should I say this?

What should I say here?

What is this?

100

So yeah, I think people are just busy and they just want to know the language now.

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They want to be confident in the language now and they don't realize how much it really takes.

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You got to be patient.

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All right.

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I think I've talked about this enough.

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Bottom line, I'm going to say it again.

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There is no such thing as I don't have the chance to speak.

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Stop saying this.

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Stop believing this.

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Start speaking.

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And if you're at the point where you're ready to talk to a native speaker, well, you can take a conversation class with me,

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or you can go to any of the websites with hundreds of teachers, hundreds of native speakers that you can take conversation classes with.

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On my YouTube page, I have a link to schedule classes with me, and I have an italki link,

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which is a discount link to take classes with other people, with other native speakers.

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So even if your problem is that you want to talk to a native speaker

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and you don't think you have the opportunity, yes, you do.

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You just have to pay for that, obviously, because you're paying for somebody's time.

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But honestly, sometimes I feel like I get more out of studying a language for free,

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watching a video and practicing speaking by myself than even talking to someone.

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Sometimes I can learn more just by watching a video and imitating it than trying to have a conversation.

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And even if you are taking classes with native speakers, you need to also be practicing speaking by yourself as well.

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And if the idea of practicing speaking by myself bothers you, don't think of it like that.

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Don't think of it as I'm talking to myself.

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You're not talking to yourself.

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You're just imitating what you hear.

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It's the same thing as listening to your favorite song and singing along to the lyrics.

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It's just like that.

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It's just like singing along with your favorite song.

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You're listening to native speakers talk in a and you're imitating them or a podcast or whatever it is.

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It's just imitation.

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It's not talking to yourself.

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Yes, you can talk to yourself, but if you don't wanna do that, you can just imitate.

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That's gonna be the most efficient and productive thing you can do to improve your language skills.

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Comprehensible input and output.

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Imitate.

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That's it.

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If I had to choose one word that you need in your language learning journey, it's probably the word imitation.

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That is the golden word right there.

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That's it.

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All right.

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I already said I was done talking about that, but then I kept going.

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Anyways, okay.

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Now for real, I'm done.

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Let's move on.

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All right, now let's look at some English mistakes in my comment section.

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This is really my favorite part.

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Okay, we got another big paragraph.

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I don't want to read the whole thing.

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I don't want to look for all the mistakes in this paragraph because there are several.

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I don't want to do that.

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There are two specific mistakes that I want to talk about today.

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The first one, as a non-native, I can say I was always afraid about my English level.

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Okay, so you can see the way this person wrote about.

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They wrote bout with an apostrophe, the little line.

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This is a great example of students trying a little bit too hard to be like a native speaker, but then not actually being like a native speaker.

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Yes, when we speak, sometimes it sounds like bout instead of about.

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And yes, sometimes native speakers might write bout like this, but it's not as common as you think.

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Most of the time we just write about.

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It's not faster to write about.

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I mean, it's one letter difference.

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And in this case, he even wrote the apostrophe.

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So it's like another character.

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So it's not even less characters.

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It's still five.

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He had to type five things.

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So it's the same.

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Native speakers are just going to write about most of the time, just about.

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All right.

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And then at the end of the paragraph, the last thing they said was, you rock lady.

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Now, thank you for the compliment.

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And I appreciate it.

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Thanks for saying that I rock.

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I notice a lot of students say that, like, you rock.

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It is a phrase that native speakers use sometimes, but it's not as common anymore as it used to be.

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But I'll let that one slide.

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It's not a big deal.

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But yeah, it's not as common as I think students think it is.

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But whatever, that's not really the thing that I want to talk about here.

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The problem with you rock lady is the lady.

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This is something that a lot of students don't know, I think, or they haven't ever heard before.

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So I'm going to explain it to you using Spanish and Portuguese as a reference, like Latin-based languages, because that's what I know.

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And I know a lot of you guys speak those languages.

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In a language like Spanish, for example, you have the word senora or senorita.

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You can use this word to talk about someone like esa senora, like that woman, that lady over there.

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And you can also use it to talk to someone directly.

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You can call someone senora or senorita.

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In English, we don't have this.

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We don't have one word like this that you can use to talk to someone directly and talk about them.

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We have two different words.

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We have ma'am and lady, and they are used differently.

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So ma'am is for talking to someone directly.

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Personally, I don't use it because I'm from the north and in my family, my culture, it's just not common.

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So I didn't grow up saying ma'am, we don't do that.

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But in the south of the US, it's very common.

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You'll hear that a lot, sir and ma'am.

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But anyways, ma'am is the option for talking directly to someone.

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If you want to say something like senora to someone, you would say ma'am.

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But honestly, you rock ma'am.

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Sounds a little weird.

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It's a little bit overkill.

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I think in that case, it would be better to just say you rock.

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That's it.

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But anyways, lady is only used for talking about someone.

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That lady over there.

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I saw a lady at the gas station.

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A lady started talking to me in the store.

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There are also other ways that lady is used, like ladies and gentlemen, or there are other ways that we use lady as well.

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But in general, lady is used to talk about someone.

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And it's not a rude thing.

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It's not an insult like that.

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It's just a way to refer to a random woman.

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But we do not use lady to talk to someone directly unless you're indicating that you're being rude.

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You'll see that if someone is talking to a woman

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and they are a bit irritated by them or annoyed or they think that they're being ridiculous or something, they might say, look, lady, listen, lady, blah, blah, blah.

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Hey, lady, you can't say that to me.

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Like, if they're annoyed with someone, if they're being rude, they might use lady.

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But if they're being nice or neutral, they're not going to use lady.

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We don't call people lady directly.

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It sounds rude.

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It sounds bad.

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Why is this the case?

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I don't know.

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I don't know why it's like this, but all I know is that ma'am and lady are used differently.

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They're not the same.

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We don't have one word like senora, like in Spanish, that you can use in both ways.

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And this is confusing.

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I know a lot of people around the world don't understand this.

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When I was in Cambodia, I was walking around and a lot of the vendors, a lot of the people who are selling clothes and, you know, like stuff for the Taurus,

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they would say like, hello, lady.

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Hello, lady.

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This is a clear indication that somebody is not a native speaker of the language because we don't use lady like this.

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All right.

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So while I'm filming this video, I can see that I've spent longer than I wanted to on these few topics that I've talked about.

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So let's just do one more and then we'll wrap it up and I will save the other ones for another video.

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Hey guys, I'm just coming in here to interrupt the video real quick to tell you

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that I have a really cool friend in Bogota, Colombia that is an artist.

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He's very talented.

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His artwork is very cool.

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I want you to check it out.

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Go to his Instagram page.

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I'm going to put the link in the comments.

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You can message him and ask him to make you a piece that he already has on his profile, or you can ask him to make something new that you don't see on his profile.

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I'm pretty sure he can ship to any country or almost every country.

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So if you like cool independent artists from Colombia and you want to support, go check out his page.

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His name is Nicolás.

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Les puedo decir que es una persona muy chévere.

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All right, thank you for your attention.

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Back to the video.

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So the last thing I want to talk about is not a mistake necessarily.

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I just want to explain that there's a clear difference here between British and American English.

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And you can learn and use whatever English you want.

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I'm not here to tell you what to do,

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But I personally recommend focusing on North American English unless you have a specific strong connection with England

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or Ireland or Scotland or Australia.

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Like, for example, if you're living there or you're planning to move there or you frequently talk to people from there.

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If not, I recommend just focusing on North American English because we have by far the most native speakers of English.

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So I saw a comment where a person wrote, I've just discovered your channel.

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First of all, awesome.

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Welcome.

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Welcome to the channel.

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But what I'm here to talk about today is that I've just discovered your channel sounds very British.

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In North American English, we are probably going to say, I just discovered your channel.

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I just discovered.

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We're going to use the simple past.

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I just discovered your channel.

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Saying that you have just done something, this is called the present perfect verb tense.

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This is extremely common in British English.

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They use it in so many cases where we would just use the simple past.

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Both are correct and we understand both.

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But if your goal is to focus on North American English

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and you want to kind of master that or just really know more about that, then try to use the simple past as much as possible.

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We love the simple past.

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We use it all the time.

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In almost every case, when you're talking about something in the past, you can probably find a way to use the simple past.

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It's just very common.

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So yeah, it's not a big deal.

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I just wanted to bring it to your attention.

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All right, that's the end of the video.

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That's all I have time to talk about today.

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The other comments mistakes are gonna have to wait for another video.

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Let me know in the comments if you like these kinds of videos, if you find them to be helpful, or just any questions you have, anything you'd like me to talk about in a future video.

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I usually read most of the comments.

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All right, well thanks for joining me today, and I'll see you in the next video.

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Bye-bye.

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What is the Shadowing Technique?

Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.

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

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About This Lesson

What is the Shadowing Technique?