Shadowing Practice: The Assassin's Teapot Is Weird - Learn English Speaking with Video
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148 sentences
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This is an assassin's teapot.
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It can be used to pour yourself a drink and to pour a drink for your enemy.
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You can then down your drink to prove that the drink isn't poisoned.
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There's no poison there.
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Don't worry about the poison.
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There is no poison.
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But then when your enemy takes a drink, they find out that it is poisoned.
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And by the way, this doesn't require you to spend the last few years building up an immunity to Iocane powder.
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It works straight off the bat.
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No preparation required.
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That's because the Assassin's teapot can be used to pour three different drinks, which I've shown here using three different colored liquids.
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And by the way, if you plan to poison your enemy, I recommend using liquids of the same color.
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Do I need to tell the viewers that they shouldn't be trying to poison people?
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Like legally, just that it would break the flow of the video.
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Film myself having a fake phone call with a lawyer in which I explain the problem.
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And so long as I say out loud, don't try to poison people, then that should have me covered.
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Okay.
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Click.
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The way you choose the drink is by sneakily covering up one of these holes.
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If you cover this hole, you get a blue drink.
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If you cover this hole, you get a yellow drink.
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If you cover no holes, you get a green drink.
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So three drinks in total though actually no four drinks.
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If you cover both holes you get the null drink.
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But how does it work?
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Well you know me
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if I want to describe how a hydrodynamic mechanism works I like to make a transparent 2d version of it.
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I'll put a playlist of those videos in the card in the description.
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First I needed to figure out what was going on inside the teapot
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and a bit like with the glugl jug the only really sensible way to do
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that was to hit it with a hammer.
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So you can see there are two chambers here side by side and they both lead up to the spout.
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Additionally, one chamber leads up to this hole, the other chamber leads to this hole.
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For the 2D version, I don't want to put them side by side because then it wouldn't be 2D,
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but I feel like I can put them top to bottom and it should still work.
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And here it is.
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So if I want a blue drink, I cover this hole.
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If I want a yellow drink, I cover this hole.
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And if I want a green drink, I cover neither of the holes.
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And for completeness, here's the null drink.
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Similarly, I could have a black coffee, or I could have milk, or I could have a milky coffee.
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So that's how it works.
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But why does it work?
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Why is it that putting your finger over different holes causes different liquids to flow out?
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Well, it comes down to surface tension.
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It's similar to this demonstration you might have seen before.
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Look, I can pour water from this bottle, but if I turn the bottle upside down, no water pours out.
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The trick is that there's a gauze covering the opening of the bottle.
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So when I pour it like this water can flow out
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and air can flow in but
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when I turn the bottle upside down for water to flow out air would need to flow in
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and for air to flow in surface tension would need to be broken.
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Here's another example where instead of a gauze there's a small hole.
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The hole's actually big enough to push a straw up into and it floats to the top of the bottle.
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It's a really cool trick.
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You know, strictly speaking, ultimately, it's not surface tension that's keeping the liquid in place.
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It's air pressure.
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Like the assassin's teapot and these bottle tricks wouldn't work in a vacuum.
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So the reason the liquid doesn't fall out of the assassin's teapot
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when you have your thumb over the hole is because the atmosphere is pushing on it.
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Atmospheric pressure is holding the liquid in place.
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And that's counterintuitive.
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Like you you think, well, the real explanation is that, you know, well, if the liquid did fall out a little bit,
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it would create a vacuum and the vacuum would pull the liquid back in.
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But there is no pulling force.
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There's only pushing force from the atmosphere.
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It's like when you suck on a straw, it's not the suction that's pulling the liquid up the straw,
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it's the atmosphere pushing the liquid up the straw.
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And that's really counterintuitive because you feel like, well, look, that's me doing the work.
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I'm sucking on the straw.
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I'm pulling the liquid up with my lungs.
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At this point I want to go off on a bit of a tangent
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and talk about a type of pedantry that I think isn't always helpful.
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Like imagine you say I'm sucking liquid up a straw now.
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I mean it's a weird thing to say out loud
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but hypothetically and then an annoying physicist comes along and says well technically you're not sucking water up a straw,
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it's the atmosphere pushing it up the straw.
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And then in the next breath
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that physicist might go on to talk about the flow of positively charged holes in a semiconductor.
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Well, holes don't flow and a hole can't have a charge.
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So why is it okay to talk about the flow of positively charged holes?
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Well, the reason it's okay is because it's useful.
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But I would also argue that it's useful to talk about a suction force.
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So long as you keep the underlying physics in mind, you should be okay.
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Like, for example, you can't just increase a suction force indefinitely.
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Eventually, when you get to about 100 kilopascals, it stops working because you've run out of atmospheric pressure, the thing that's really doing the work underneath.
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Similarly, I think it should be all right to talk about the flow of cold.
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Like if I put an ice cube in my drink, the cold flows from the ice cube into the drink.
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Of course, that's not really what's happening the warmth from the drink is flowing into the ice cube
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and so it gets colder.
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But it's useful to talk about the flow of cold, again, so long as you understand the underlying physics.
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Like, you can't just keep pumping cold into something because eventually you reach absolute zero.
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By the way, these animations are from a video I made about how all LEDs are secretly solar panels
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and all solar panels are secretly LEDs.
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The link's in the card and in description.
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Okay, tangent over.
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The point is, we all know that for the water to get out, air needs to be able to get in.
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And with your finger off the hole, well, air can get in at the top.
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But if you cover over the hole, the only way for the air to get in is through the spout.
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And that's where surface tension comes in.
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Surface tension acts to minimize surface area.
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You might think, well, Well, one way for the water to get out is if the air can sneak past it on the way.
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But what would that look like?
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Well, it might look a bit like this.
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You've got a drip of water starting on one side and on the other side, you've got a bubble of air forming.
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But see how that increases the surface area of the water.
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And because surface tension acts to decrease the surface area, that's not energetically favourable and so you don't get this bubbling effect.
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And instead the liquid is trapped inside the chamber.
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This is also the principle behind a magic trick by the way sometimes called inexhaustible bottle or thinker drink.
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It's usually a bit more elaborate it'll have more chambers
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and different options for drinks but anyway you can read all about it in my kids book
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Science is Magic available from all good bookstores.
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So these are magnets yeah and then these are metal
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so they stick to the magnets and then when they drive around they also go around with it.
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And that makes it spin.
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Yeah.
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And some of them go loop the loop like this.
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That was my daughter spontaneously explaining the mechanics of the thing that she just built.
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The thing she just built was from a KiwiCo project, the sponsor of this video.
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Actually my kids have had a KiwiCo subscription since way before they approached me for sponsorship
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so I can tell you a bit about them.
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It's a subscription service where a box comes in the post every month
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and everything you need for the projects is in the box.
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You never need to run off to the shops or anything like that.
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And the projects are STEM projects.
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There's eight different subscription lines for every possible age group.
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You know, something that I haven't talked about before
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that I really appreciate about KiwiCo is the spontaneous STEM discussions that arise from it.
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You know, I'm the sort of person who, like a fact will pop into my mind and I'll say,
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hey kids, did you know this thing about the moon?
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You know, whatever.
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And, you know, it's completely out of context and the kids are sort of like, well, okay, fine.
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You know, so these days I'm on the lookout for, you know, STEM discussions that are within the context of what we're doing.
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And KiwiCo is great for that because the kids are so invested in the projects already.
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Like they're building these things, they're excited about them.
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And then as you saw with the explanation, these STEM discussions arise spontaneously.
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And it's really amazing to see.
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We've got a promo for the holiday season.
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Perhaps you know someone who would appreciate a KiwiCo subscription, in which case you can get the first month absolutely free using my special URL
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if you go to kiwico .com forward slash Steve Mould the link is also in the description so check out KiwiCo today.
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I hope you enjoyed this video if you did don't forget to hit subscribe
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and the algorithm thinks you'll enjoy this video next.
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When I touch it like that, it spins.
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So do you think the air is doing the same thing?
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Yeah.
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You're saying that the air from the candle, the candles making the air push up on those red things.
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Yeah.
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Oh, I see.
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This speaking lesson is built on the video “The Assassin's Teapot Is Weird”. The speaker keeps coming back to these words: drink, hole, liquid, flow, surface. This video has 148 sentences and 1777 words to shadow. The speech runs for 9:00. The speaker talks fast, about 197 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
15 words from the video worth learning, with pronunciation and meaning:
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| liquid noun | /ˈlɪk.wɪd/ | A substance that is flowing, and keeping no shape, such as water; a substance of which the molecules, while not tending to separate from one another like those… |
| poison noun | /ˈpɔɪ.zən/ | A substance that is harmful or lethal to a living organism when ingested. |
| straw noun | /stɹɔ/ | A dried stalk of a cereal plant. |
| tension noun | /ˈtɛnʃən/ | The condition of being held in a state between two or more forces, which are acting in opposition to each other. |
| pour verb | /poɹ/ | To cause (liquid, or liquid-like substance) to flow in a stream, either out of a container or into it. |
| chamber noun | /ˈt͡ʃeɪ̯mbɚ/ | The private room of an individual, especially of someone wealthy or noble. |
| trick noun | /ˈtɹɪk/ | Something designed to fool, dupe, outsmart, mislead or swindle. |
| atmosphere noun | /ˈætməsˌfɪɹ/ | The gases surrounding the Earth or any astronomical body. |
| suck verb | /sʌk/ | To use the mouth and lips to pull in (a liquid, especially milk from the breast). |
| subscription noun | /səbˈskɹɪpʃən/ | Access to a resource for a period of time, generally for payment. |
| vacuum noun | /ˈvæ.kjuːm/ | A region of space that contains no matter. |
| cube noun | /kjub/ | A regular polyhedron having six identical square faces. |
| finger noun | /ˈfɪŋɡɚ/ | A slender jointed extremity of the human hand, (often) exclusive of the thumb, and the corresponding part, irrespective of including a thumb, in many other… |
| explanation noun | /ˌɛkspləˈneɪʃən/ | The act or process of explaining. |
| physics noun | /ˈfɪz.ɪks/ | The branch of science concerned with the study of the properties and interactions of space, time, matter and energy. |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Meaning |
|---|---|
| get out verb | To leave or escape. |
| lead up to verb | To set in motion; to act as a causal or preparatory event or sequence of events. |
| build up verb | To erect; to construct. |
| check out verb | To record the departure or withdrawal of someone or something (such as guests, employees, books, etc.). |
| come along verb | To accompany. |
| come down to verb | To reach by moving down or reducing. |
| cover up verb | To conceal or disguise. |
| fall out verb | To come out of something by falling. |
Sentences worth repeating
Short, complete lines from the video that you can reuse in everyday conversation:
- I'm sucking on the straw.
- I'm pulling the liquid up with my lungs.
- We've got a promo for the holiday season.
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | I've shown · you've run · have had |
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | isn't poisoned · is poisoned · be broken |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 36 contractions and reduced forms, such as don't, I'm, can't. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “th” sounds: breathe /bɹiːð/, underneath /ˌʌndɚˈniθ/, algorithm /ˈælɡəɹɪðm̩/, thumb /ˈθʌm/, warmth /wɔɹmθ/
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: tension /ˈtɛnʃən/, subscription /səbˈskɹɪpʃən/, explanation /ˌɛkspləˈneɪʃən/, preparation /ˌpɹɛpəˈɹeɪʃ(ə)n/, animation /ˌæn.ɪˈmeɪ.ʃən/
- Long words — get the stress right: explanation /ˌɛkspləˈneɪʃən/, similarly /ˈsɪm.ə.lə.li/, positively /ˈpɑ.zɪ.tɪv.li/, atmospheric /ˌætməsˈfɛɹɪk/, preparation /ˌpɹɛpəˈɹeɪʃ(ə)n/
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 liquid, poison, straw.
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.