Shadowing Practice: The 4 moments that will change your life - Learn English Speaking with Video
Choose a practice mode
Each mode opens a full-screen practice room.
76 sentences
If sentences are too short or too long, click Edit to adjust them.
1
He was telling me that he nearly died.
2
I was sitting on the sofa talking to my mate's dad.
3
It's always a little bit strange talking to your childhood friend's parents
4
when you're older because on the one hand it's nice to see them and their world with older and wiser eyes.
5
It's nice to see them as people.
6
But on the other hand, childhood is not an easy thing to shake off.
7
Hi Johnny, come on in, he said.
8
Hi Mr Hammond, thanks for having me stay.
9
Hey, can Alex come and play please?
10
I reply suddenly in a squeaky prepubescent voice wearing shorts and carrying my primary school bag.
11
But as I sat there in the nostalgic liminal space between adulthood and childhood, Mr Hammond told me about how he had nearly died.
12
It wasn't one of those I got a diagnosis and then I pulled through kinds of stories.
13
This was a hit by lightning, hungry shark attack, act of God kind of thing.
14
one minute he was fine
15
and the next he was in the back of an ambulance
16
careening down the road to the hospital without oversharing another person's story i would just say
17
that it involved a lot of blood hours on an operating table
18
and a few weeks in the ward do you know what johnny he said to me all of
19
that you need to make the most of it stuff is all just abstract
20
and remote until it happens of course you think it
21
and you say it but until something like this happens you don't feel it
22
I told Mr Hammond to write down his story for me, especially his post-encounter philosophies, but until that time you have me.
23
And so this week we're going to look at life-changing moments along with Anton Chekhov.
24
In Chekhov's play The Seagull, we are asked to imagine a seagull flying over a lake.
25
The gull is swooping and diving, fishing and cawing.
26
It's entirely consumed by the busyness of being a seagull.
27
And then, in the squeeze of a trigger, it's gone.
28
A man on the shore holding a rifle is bored, and with no game and no fun to be had, he decides to pull up his gun and shoot the bird for no other reason than idleness.
29
Of course, as with any great literature, the metaphors are wrapped in allegories.
30
In the play, we meet a cast of characters who are obsessed with their own plans.
31
They have these unfulfilled longings.
32
They want fame, they want riches, they want love, they want pure art.
33
Like a seagull flapping back to land, they have their eyes only for the shore, and so blinkered and distracted,
34
they are vulnerable to the misfortune of life's mercurial rifle.
35
So much of our lives is spent planning and preparing for things, and yet often the most significant moments come out of the blue.
36
These are what the psychiatrist Carl Jaspers called boundary situations.
37
A boundary situation is a rupture.
38
It's a transformative experience that we cannot initiate, plan or even avoid.
39
We can only encounter it.
40
The mundane, every part of our life, putting on socks, ordering a pizza, planning a holiday, that kind of thing, are what Jaspers calls a situation being.
41
But a boundary situation is one that thunders down to shake the foundations of your very existence.
42
It changes who you are and it happens
43
when you wake up in a hospital bed having only just beaten the reaper's odds.
44
Although these boundary situations change a bit in Jasper's works, he broadly sorted them into four categories.
45
First, you have death.
46
We fear our loved ones dying and we fear the very fact of our own death.
47
When you know grief, when you reflect on mortality, you often find some kind of revelation.
48
As my friend's dad told me, we always know about death, but when it's a boundary situation.
49
It comes crashing into our lives like some grim and unforeseen curtain call.
50
Second, suffering.
51
As the Buddha pointed out long before Jaspers, it is impossible to entirely avoid suffering.
52
Our paths will hit old age, sickness and a great deal of pain.
53
Some of this we can see coming, a tooth filling, a long run, a 14-hour flight to Australia.
54
But the rest comes along unexpectedly.
55
It hits us with such a shocking intensity that we're almost glad that we didn't see it coming.
56
We come home from the hospital with a new life to live.
57
Then there is guilt.
58
There will come a time in life, often in adulthood, when we feel responsible for things.
59
And this is a sudden awareness that our actions will impact those around us.
60
That we are the reason for those tears, that laughter, that pain, that joy.
61
The profound pull of the heart changes how we live and it often comes on unexpectedly.
62
Finally you have chance.
63
No matter how ordered we might want our lives to be, there will always be an unpredictable exception.
64
We can hope for the best and make all of the plans
65
that we want but we will never fully control all of the facts that affect our existence.
66
We want order, we want regularity but we get the capricious throws of chance.
67
What Chekhov's Seagull, Jaspers and Mr Hammond all get right is
68
that we are each more vulnerable than we might want to allow.
69
A wedding, three years and the fortune in the planning is ruined by a single stomach bug.
70
An hour-long journey home for Christmas winds up getting you stuck in the traffic of a freak snowstorm.
71
A lifetime achievement is overshadowed by a national disaster.
72
A long and gentle retirement is blown off course by a near-death detour to the operating table.
73
Our lives are defined by the unforeseen and unplannable.
74
We have our dreams and hopes and we are flying to some distant horizon, yet life doesn't care.
75
Around every corner, at every flap of our wings,
76
everything can change and that's all the more reason to enjoy the view from where we are as long as it lasts.
Download App
Everything you need to speak fluently
AI PronunciationScore every sentence
IPA PracticeMaster every sound
VocabularyBuild your word bank
Vocab GameLearn while playing
Same Channel
C151
Shakespeare: Hamlet
British AccentDaily ConversationUniversity Students
C1114
Arguments for God: The Fine Tuning Argument
British AccentDaily ConversationUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
C16
Why you should "steel man" other people
British AccentDaily ConversationUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
C117
Why you can't quit social media (and the Romans knew it)
British AccentDaily ConversationUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
B26
One of the cruellest things to tell any child
British AccentTeensDaily ConversationHigh School Students
C19
“But you did it first!”: A defense of the whataboutism
British AccentIELTS PrepTOEFL PrepUniversity Students
C17
Every monster you fear is really you
British AccentDaily ConversationUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
C13
The day you died (and didn't notice)
British AccentDaily ConversationUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
C15
Some brains are built for philosophy. Is yours?
British AccentDaily ConversationUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
C15
3 philosophy classics that are better than self-help books
British AccentDaily ConversationUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
C16
The “Nietzsche Thesis”: Why we don’t really care about truth
British AccentIELTS PrepTOEFL PrepUniversity Students
FOR YOU
Recommend Video
B224 sentences
Man's Search for Meaning: Finding Your Why
British AccentDaily ConversationUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
B21
63 sentences
Why a Walk in the Park Can Save Your Life
British AccentBusiness EnglishDaily ConversationUniversity Students
B21
97 sentences
When Does Truman Figure It Out?
Daily ConversationUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
B21
214 sentences
Want Better English? Stop Trying So Hard!
British AccentBusiness EnglishDaily ConversationUniversity Students
B25
24 sentences
The Old Man and the Sea: Destroyed but Not Defeated
American AccentDaily ConversationUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
B2155 sentences
Why You Should Talk To Strangers | Kio Stark | English Subtitles
Daily ConversationUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
B210
51 sentences
Anything you want except what made it matter.
Daily ConversationUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
B23
25 sentences
The 4 Rules For A Great Life | Andrew Huberman
Daily ConversationWorking Adults
C151
34 sentences
Don't Despair
British AccentDaily ConversationUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
B15
207 sentences
13 Unreleased Videos I Thought Would Go Viral
Daily ConversationUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This B2 speaking lesson is built on the video “The 4 moments that will change your life”. The speaker keeps coming back to these words: situation, seagull, boundary, Jaspers, Hammond. This video has 76 sentences and 1029 words to shadow. The speech runs for 5:39. The speaker talks fast, about 182 words per minute, so expect linked and reduced sounds. Only 81% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English, so the vocabulary is demanding.
Key vocabulary in this video
The 15 most advanced words in the video, with pronunciation and meaning:
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| seagull noun | /ˈsiː.ɡʌl/ | Any of several white, often dark-backed birds of the family Laridae having long, pointed wings and short legs. |
| boundary noun | /ˈbaʊndɹi/ | The dividing line or location between two areas. |
| flap noun | /flæp/ | Anything broad and flexible that hangs loose, or that is attached by one side or end and is easily moved. |
| unforeseen adjective | /ˌʌnfɔːˈsiːn/ | Not foreseen. |
| adulthood noun | The state or condition, for humans and other animals, of physical and psychological maturity: being an adult. | |
| unexpectedly adverb | /ʌnɪkˈspɛktɪdli/ | In an unexpected manner. |
| rifle noun | /ˈɹaɪfəl/ | A firearm fired from the shoulder; improved range and accuracy is provided by a long, rifled barrel. |
| allegory noun | /ˈæləˌɡɔɹi/ | The use of symbols which may be interpreted to reveal a hidden, broader message, usually a moral or political one, about real-world issues and occurrences… |
| blinker noun | /ˈblɪŋkəɹ/ | Anything that blinks. |
| busyness noun | /ˈbɪz.i.nəs/ | The state of being busy. |
| capricious adjective | /kəˈpɹɪʃəs/ | Impulsive and unpredictable; determined by chance, impulse, or whim. |
| careen verb | /kəˈɹiːn/ | To heave a ship down on one side so as to expose the other, in order to clean it of barnacles and weed, or to repair it below the water line. |
| detour noun | /ˈdi.toɹ/ | A diversion or deviation from one's original route. |
| idleness noun | /ˈaɪdəlnəs/ | The state of being idle; inactivity. |
| liminal adjective | /ˈlɪmən(ə)l/ | Of or pertaining to an entrance or threshold. |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| blow off verb | To vent, usually, to reduce pressure in a container. | |
| come along verb | To accompany. | |
| come on in verb | Synonym of come in (“to enter”). | |
| point out verb | To identify among a group of similar subjects, or in a scene where the subject might not be readily seen or noticed, with a gesture of the body. | |
| pull through verb | To come through pain and trouble through perseverance. | |
| pull up verb | /ˌpʊl ˈʌp/ | To lift upwards or vertically. |
| shake off verb | To remove (something attached to, on or clinging to an object) by shaking. | |
| wind up verb | /waɪnd ˈʌp/ | To wind (rope, string, mainsprings, etc.) completely. |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 7 contractions and reduced forms, such as we're, didn't, doesn't. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “th” sounds: tooth /tuθ/, thunder /ˈθʌndɚ/
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: capricious /kəˈpɹɪʃəs/, overshadow /ˌoʊ.vɚˈʃæd.oʊ/, initiate /ɪˈnɪʃ.i.eɪt/, revelation /ˌɹɛv.əˈleɪ.ʃən/
- Long words — get the stress right: unexpectedly /ʌnɪkˈspɛktɪdli/, allegory /ˈæləˌɡɔɹi/, mercurial /mɝˈkjʊ.ɹi.əl/, overshadow /ˌoʊ.vɚˈʃæd.oʊ/, regularity /ˌɹɛɡjuˈlæɹəti/
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 seagull, boundary, flap.
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.