Shadowing Practice: The Best of Philomena Cunk on Britain | Part Two - Learn English Speaking with Video

Creating lesson...
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Wordsworth wrote, I wandered lonely as a cloud, but clouds don't have legs, do they?
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So how was he allowed to get away with that kind of stuff?
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So join me, Philomena Cunk, as I take you right up the history of the United Britain of Great Kingdom.
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This is Cunk on Britain.
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It's hard to imagine while you're standing in it, but there was a time before Britain,
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before Europe, before the world, even before the universe.
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Nobody can say when it was, because it was also before clocks and words.
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It was a time when nothing existed, empty, without motion or energy or light or hope, just like Plymouth today.
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Just imagine something like this orange, and then imagine it's not there.
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Then do that one by one with everything that exists until there's nothing at all.
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That's what Britain was like until the Big Bang.
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The Big Bang created the universe in one mad explosion.
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It was probably deafening, although luckily ears didn't exist yet.
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Computers think it looked like this, although eyes also didn't exist back then either, so we can't be sure.
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And it was so long ago now, it's probably best not to keep dredging it up.
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The Stones Age was all rocks, wasn't it?
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Are stones made of rock or are rocks made of stone?
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Both.
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A stone is a rock.
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Generally a rock is...
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And a rock is a stone.
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Yeah, yeah, generally rocks are more edgy, more ragged varieties of stone.
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The Stone Age lasted a very long time.
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In fact, our species spent more time in the Stone Age than the other.
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Let's think of it this way.
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If you look at the human history, prehistory is a year, and so New Year's Day is where humans start to use fire and shape stone tools.
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And this year is the last split second before midnight at the other end of the year.
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Then we're in the old stone age until about 3pm on the 31st of December.
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So rocks are more jaggedy.
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By the time the Wars of the Roses ended, Britain was literally on the map, somewhere near the top, showing how important it was.
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The British had a firm grasp of the solid parts of the country, like this rock, but there was a load of stuff around the edges that wouldn't do as it was told.
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It was wet, it was full of fish, and it wouldn't make up its mind how close to the rock it wanted to be.
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I'll discover how Britain came to rule the waves and invent the umpire.
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It's a story about events beyond Britain's coastline, So I'll be using the C word a lot.
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C. Where did the Romans come from?
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To begin with, they came from Rome, and then they came from the Roman Empire.
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Right, but where in Britain did they come from?
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Not from Britain.
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They came from Rome, which is in Italy.
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Right, well, this is about the history of Britain, so...
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Where in Britain did they come from?
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Well, the Romans came from Rome, and they headed northwards and conquered most of Europe.
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and then they cross the English Channel and they conquered about half of Britain.
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And where did they go once they were in Britain?
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Well, they tried to get to Scotland, but they decided it wasn't worth the effort of going there.
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Yeah, I felt that.
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Stones-aged man used stones to make basic weapons and tools, like these hand axes.
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As well as boring, these were also shipped by today's standards, but back then they were cutting edge because they had a cutting edge.
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Why did they decide to have the plague twice?
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More than anything, it must have just been boring.
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Well, they had many, many more times than twice.
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Did we get the plague because of the European free movement of rats and fleas and our inability to control our borders?
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It certainly looks as though the epidemic came to England by ship.
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So in that sense, yes, it's imported.
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They are immigrant rats and fleas.
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And they wouldn't integrate.
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Except when they're bitters.
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People say the financial crisis happened because it just got too complicated.
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And it's all because of the maths.
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If we took maths out of the equation, it'd be much easier.
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Couldn't we use something else instead of numbers?
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I think that actually you're right in a way.
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That there is too much maths in the way that people think about the economy.
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And one of the things that occasionally goes wrong is that economists think that they can build...
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Let's go, girls.
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Sorry about that.
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Queen Victoria is often portrayed as old and grumpy.
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It's where the term Victoria Cross comes from, but she wasn't always a sour disapproving old woman, she was once a sour disapproving baby.
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Queen Victoria was born in 1819, in the usual way out of a woman.
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It was hard to tell that this infant would grow up to be Queen, because her crown hadn't yet formed, it was just her, which must have been a relief to her mother as she was pushing her out.
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As well as looking miserable, her other hobby was fashion.
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Even at an early age, she was dressing like a cross between a disillusioned Lord Mayor and an angry hen.
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It was a big deal, wasn't it, when they got trains to run on steam.
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Where did they get the steam that powered the trains back then?
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Did they have to sort of mine it from underground or did they get it from the sky?
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Well, you can actually make steam by boiling water.
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So what they're doing is using the coal to boil the water and make the steam that way.
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Right, so clouds are made of boiling water.
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Why don't planes boil then when we fly through them?
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I think you probably want to speak to a meteorologist about the clouds.
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Okay.
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Why did they call World War I World War I?
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It's quite pessimistic numbering, isn't it?
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Or did they just know it was the start of a franchise?
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At the time they weren't numbering the wars, although I think
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that in the First World War the idea of it being a great war denoting the sheer scale of the conflict,
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the casualty rate was already becoming used quite a lot.
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So it was called the Great War but not because it was great.
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Britain had been uptight ever since Victorian times
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and having two world wars on top of that had really knocked the fun out of everyone.
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Men had to wear bowler hats issued by the government and their only form of entertainment was reading boring newspapers.
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They weren't even allowed to get erections and had to make do with a stiff upper lip instead.
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Meanwhile, women had to stay at home washing clothes, raising hundreds of children by hand and agreeing with their husbands.
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The only form of personal expression they were allowed was wearing pointy glasses.
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But all that was about to change, thanks to four boys from Liverpool, George, Ringo and their guitarists, a pop band called The Beatles.
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Some brave volunteers among the British police elect to act with heroism above
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and beyond the call of duty and escort the beetles to their car.
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These beetles didn't have six legs.
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They had eight legs, like a spider.
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Everywhere they went, girls screamed, like with a spider.
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But unlike spiders, the beetles never crawled into anyone's mouth when they were asleep.
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Instead, they sang, which scientists claim spiders don't.
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How come the BBC started with radio?
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Because radio is loads less popular than television, isn't it?
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There are people in radio who get very angry about that.
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I mean radio still performs tremendously well.
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There's still radio.
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They called it the Civil War because there was a swear jar and people apologised after killing each other, like in tennis.
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The Civil War was a clash of styles.
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The King's Cavaliers had panache and weird outfits, while Cromwell's roundheads were basic, brutish little bulldog men.
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It was like a fight between Wayne Rooney and Noel Fielding, but not as funny.
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Eventually, after many reenactments just like this, the Roundheads won 1-0.
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Charles was caught in a big king net and executed here in Whitehall.
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A proud man to the last, he wore two shirts so no one could see him shiver, to preserve his regal dignity.
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And according to witnesses, it worked.
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His severed head rolled regally along the ground, pumping blood everywhere and getting covered in hay and dirt.
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and dried up flecks of dignified fox shit, and no-one mentioned the rest of him shivering at all.
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The Celts famously would...
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The warriors would strip naked, paint themselves in designs, and go into battle naked.
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They believed that by painting themselves in designs,
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that they were calling out to their gods up in the sky for protection and for courage and for help.
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Did the Romans have chain mail, then?
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They had armour of a sort.
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They had armour and they were naked?
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Yeah. Who won?
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Well...
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The Romans.
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The Romans won in the end.
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I knew it.
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I bet when the Celts turned up naked and saw what the Romans had on, I bet they were kicking themselves, I bet they felt stupid.
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I bet they were like, who suggested this?
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But not all stone's-aged things have to be dug up have to be dug up.
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Some are still visible, which means you can see them.
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This is Stonehenge, early man's finest achievement.
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To Stone's age Britons, this was a cross between Nemesis at Alton Towers, in that it was a spectacular attraction,
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and the queue for Nemesis at Alton Towers, in that it never fucking moves.
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Stonehenge was used to tell the time, which means Stonehenge is the only There's only clock you can see from space, unless you have a clock in your spaceship.
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How was it we beat the Germans at Dunkirk in War II, but still didn't win the whole war?
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Well, first of all, I think we've got to stop calling it War II.
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I mean, it's the Second World War if you're American and you have to have it this way, it's World War II.
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But, you know, that's the language we tend to use.
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But in terms of Dunkirk, I think that's the wrong way round.
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We actually lose at Dunkirk.
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We lost at Dunkirk?
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We lost at Dunkirk.
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I don't think so.
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The Beatles started from humble beginnings.
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In the early days they couldn't afford individual haircuts
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and had to copy and paste the same one onto each of their heads.
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And they had to share a microphone to save money.
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But their catchy jingles were so infectious they soon led to an epidemic called Beatlemania.
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And the Beatles wanted to hold your hand, which only made the disease spread faster.
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Soon it spread across the Atlantic to America, a country which was still there.
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There are rumours around that this is Britain's revenge for the Boston Tea Party.
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While the Beatles were in the USA, they started to become influenced by the hippies, which were sort of American Wombles.
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They experimented with a drug called Luzd, which made the users see and hear things that weren't really happening.
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A bit like Netflix, their music turned psychopathic.
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Rather than churning out more simple love songs, thanks to psychopathic drugs, the Beatles began to sing about deeper, more meaningful things.
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In a yellow submarine, yellow submarine, yellow submarine.
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How hot was the Great Fire of London?
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Could you stand in somewhere like Maidenhead and sort of warm your hands on it like that?
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You couldn't warm your hands, but you probably could see it.
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How many other cities did the Great Fire of London burn down?
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No other cities.
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It was the Great Fire of London.
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But lots of other places were affected.
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But how do we know no other cities burnt down?
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Because it would have burnt them down.
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Yes, but we know that London was burnt, even though it was burnt down.
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So we would have the same sorts of information about other places that didn't burn down.
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But there might have been another place burnt down that just burnt down completely, and now we don't know because it's not there because it was burnt down.
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But then that wouldn't be part of the Great Fire of London, would it?
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No, it'd be outside, wouldn't it?
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Yes.
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So were there any others that burnt down?
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There don't seem to have been any other fires at the same time.
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Although we don't know because they've burnt down.
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Well, that's one way of looking at it.
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This is the book, George Orwell's chilling classic, 1984.
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In the book, using nothing but words, Orwell depicts a world in which people are manipulated by screens, manipulated by the media, manipulated by the government,
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something which, thankfully, didn't and couldn't happen.
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Although 1984 is set in the year 1984, it's not a 1984 anyone who lived through it would recognise.
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Orwell didn't predict Band-Aid or Ghostbusters, or Radio 1's Mike Reed banning Frankie Goes to Hollywood for singing about spunk.
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In fact, almost the only thing he got right was that there'd be a thing on the screens called Big Brother, and even then he didn't predict that it would eventually be on Channel 5.
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But fortunately for national pride, one great British hero was about to rise.
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Vice Admiral Viscount Lord Horrorshaw Nelson.
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What was Lord Nelson all about?
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Why did his parents call him Horror Show?
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I think they probably intended it to be pronounced Horatio.
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But it just got mish-mashed up and became Horror Show?
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No, I think that most people still know him as Horatio Nelson.
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As well as being a sailor, Nelson found time to star in lots of old paintings, doing his weird signature pose.
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Why did Nelson always have one hand up his jumper?
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What was he doing up there?
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He'd lost most of his right arm, so it wasn't really trying to conceal his hand.
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He was actually missing an arm.
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Oh, God.
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How do we know that that's true, though?
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Because, you know, Rod Hull, he used to have his arm round an emu, didn't he?
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It might have just been that.
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He didn't have it blown off at all.
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He was just trying to make his story more interesting.
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Well, I don't see why he bothered to do that.
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I mean, he's already a heroic figure, So I don't think he needed to sort of feign, you know, serious injury to, if you like, deepen his growing legend.
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So I think we can probably say that, unlike some things, this is true.
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Yeah, and the eye was true.
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The eye was true as well, yes.
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He wore a patch.
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So he was like a pirate, but like a boring one.
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Henry created the Church of England, didn't he?
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Did he have to find a British Pope?
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He didn't need to find a British Pope.
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You could just have bishops.
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You can just use the bishops and people that you've got in there already.
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If you were to find a British Pope now, who would you go for?
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You couldn't use the Archbishop of Canterbury.
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No, you have to have someone else.
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Someone from without the church?
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Yeah, like Matt Baker off The One Show.
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So, Matt Baker off The One Show?
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He's not an obvious choice, you see, that's why I think he'd be good.
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But the more you think about it, the more it makes sense.
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The Industrial Revolution was so frenetic, a man called Charles Babbage got carried away and invented the computer invented the computer far too early.
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Modern computers are tiny, but this was as big as a transit van.
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It was even bigger than the 1990s one your dad's got in the loft, and won't throw away in case the bin men find all his bank details and mucky JPEGs.
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Hello, who are you?
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I'm Doran Swade, I'm an historian of computing, and I was responsible for building this engine.
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So what games does it have?
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It doesn't have any games.
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It must have, like, some basic games, like Mario Kart or Snake or...
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I'm afraid not.
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Or Patience, like the shittiest one.
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It must have Patience.
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I'm afraid it doesn't.
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It doesn't have any games.
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None whatever.
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It just does mathematical calculation.
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So where's the screen on this computer?
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A screen, again, is part of the electronic era.
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This has no screens.
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As it happens, you don't need to read the numbers because it prints them automatically for you.
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It's a shame, isn't it, that it doesn't have a screen? because then you could turn it upside down and the numbers would become rude words.
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You know, like with a calculator?
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Yes.
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Have you ever done that?
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I haven't, but I know what you mean.
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You've done this, but you haven't done that.
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Correct.
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Babbage never foresaw the terrible consequences of his invention.
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A machine that would autocorrect his name to cabbage every single time.
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Who was wrong?
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Among the romantics, you mean?
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Yeah.
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Um...
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William Godwin was quite wrong.
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He believed that there should be no laws at all in society.
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No, who's Ron?
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Ron?
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Er...
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Is there a Ron?
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Yeah, the one that wrote all the poems and signed them, Byron.
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Yeah, that.. that was his family name, Byron.
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Lord George Byron.
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Oh, right, OK.
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Yeah.
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Who was the man from Nantucket that Byron wrote about in his poem?
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I don't remember that poem.
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It's the one that goes there was a young man from Nantucket.
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Is that Byron?
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I think so, it's really good.
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How did it end?
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The British's mastery of the oceans made Catholic King Philip of Spain furious in Spanish.
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So he sent his secret weapon to attack England, a woman called Spanish Amanda.
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The story goes that Drake was playing a leisurely game of bowls on Plymouth Hall when the Spanish attacked.
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But Drake didn't let the Spanish attack put him off his stroke.
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He just carried on playing with his balls.
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According to records, when he'd finished, Drake changed back into his normal shoes and thrashed the Spaniards.
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At war, not bowling.
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England was victorious.
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If Hardy was kissing Nelson at the exact moment he was dying, to what extent would that make him a necrophile?
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Because that's a serious offence.
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It took him three or four hours to die, and this particular famous moment took place when Nelson was still very much alive.
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So there was nothing dodgy about it?
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Nothing dodgy at all.
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Nelson may have died, but a whole new chapter of British history was about to be born be born
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and it was all thanks to one woman, Queen Victorian era.
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But that's a story for another time and place.
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Next week and here.

Context & Background

In the video "The Best of Philomena Cunk on Britain | Part Two," the speaker, Philomena Cunk, humorously dives into the history of Britain, weaving together both whimsical and factual content. Through her unique narrative style, she challenges common understandings of history, encouraging viewers to think critically about the past. This approach not only captures attention but also presents an engaging medium for learners of English. By using humor and wit, the video offers insights into historical events while providing an entertaining platform for english speaking practice.

Top 5 Phrases for Daily Communication

  • "I wandered lonely as a cloud" - A poetic expression to convey feelings of solitude.
  • "It was a time when nothing existed" - A phrase that illustrates absolute emptiness or the absence of the familiar.
  • "So how was he allowed to get away with that kind of stuff?" - A colloquial way to question someone's behavior or actions.
  • "Where did the Romans come from?" - A straightforward inquiry about origins that can be used in various contexts.
  • "It must have just been boring" - An expression that conveys a lack of excitement or interest in a situation.

Step-by-step Shadowing Guide

To effectively use shadowing technique while watching this video, follow these steps:

  1. Watch the video once without interrupting. Familiarize yourself with the tone and style of Philomena Cunk.
  2. Break it down into manageable segments. Focus on a 30-second clip at a time to avoid feeling overwhelmed.
  3. Listen carefully to the audio. Pay attention to the pronunciation, rhythm, and intonation of the phrases, especially those highlighted above.
  4. Repeat after her, mimicking her speech as closely as possible. This practice, commonly referred to as shadowspeak, enhances your fluency and pronunciation.
  5. Record yourself while practicing, then listen back. This feedback will help you identify areas for improvement in your english speaking practice.

By following this structured approach, you will not only enjoy the comedic value of Cunk’s narrative but also significantly boost your English skills. Incorporate content like this into your regular practice, and you'll find that learning English with YouTube can be both educational and entertaining.

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.