Shadowing Practice: The Best Professional Connectors to Explain Your Opinions in English - Learn English Speaking with Video

How many times have you shared an opinion in English, but halfway through your words weren't really coming together as smoothly as you wanted?

Maybe you found yourself saying too much or searching for the right words, trying to wrap up your thoughts. This might happen, for example, when a coworker asks for your opinion in a meeting and again, you have a difficult time explaining why you have a certain perspective or perhaps a friend shares her thoughts about a movie you just saw. And again, you're not really sure how to put your ideas into place.

If that sounds familiar to you, here's what I want you to know.

It's not at all because your English isn't good enough.

It's simply because you don't have the right connectors in place.

Words like because.

So that and due to these connectors improve your flow and help your ideas to feel structured rather than scattered.

They also help you explain your reasoning, which makes your opinion stronger and more engaging. Ultimately, this helps you sound confident and professional.

Instead of hesitant or unsure of your own opinions.

I want you to think about it for a moment.

When you hear someone confidently explain why they believe something, doesn't it make their opinion more persuasive?

That's exactly what we're going to work on today. By the end of this lesson, you'll have the best professional connectors to explain your reasoning smoothly.

You'll also have a simple structure to make your opinions sound polished and professional in English. Ultimately, you'll have more confidence in sharing your thoughts without hesitation or over-explaining. Now, I want you to stick with me because at the end I do have a challenge for you so you can put all of these strategies together and start using the right connectors to get started.

Let's talk about how to structure your opinion so that it's clear, logical, and easy to follow.

English speakers naturally use a three part structure when we're expressing an opinion. The first step is to clearly state your opinion.

This is where you introduce your perspective in a direct confident way. Most of the time you're going to hear this with a sentence starter like I believe, I think I would say, and I feel following that immediate statement of your perspective.

Step two is to explain why, and this is where the connectors come in.

Strong opinions should be supported by clear reasoning and connectors help you explain the why behind your statement.

So again, this would include words such as because since, and due to however, we're going to learn many more in this lesson today.

Before we get there, let's talk about the third step in a.

Clear logical opinion, wrap it up with a conclusion or a question.

Doing this makes your opinion feel complete or finished.

You can do this by reinforcing your point or inviting further discussion.

For example, after stating your opinion and why you have it, you might say, that's why I think this is a good solution, or what do you think?

Before we get into our professional connectors, I want to give you two examples of this step-by-step process in action.

We're gonna look at a social example and a professional, so let's imagine in a social setting I might say, I think the new wicked movie was great because the actors did justice to the roles and didn't stray from the original characters.

What did you think about it? I have my opinion, my reasoning, and a way to reinforce or invite discussion on that opinion.

And now let's look at a professional option.

I believe we should adjust the project timeline since the current deadlines don't give us enough time for quality control. What's your take on this?

When you structure your opinion in English using this three-step process and when you include your reason why you have that particular opinion, your ideas are more clear and more persuasive.

Now of course, simply following this structure isn't enough.

The connectors you choose are going to determine how natural and confident you sound.

So let's go deeper into the best professional connectors you can use to explain your opinions clearly in English.

We're going to explore three categories of connectors today and we'll start with the most important explaining why you think something or what happened as a result. We need this because when you're expressing your opinion, you're not just saying what you think, you're answering an important question why, and this is where our connectors come in.

So let's start with cause or the reason why you have a particular belief or opinion.

In English we have several go-to words for this.

The first is the most common because which means for this reason.

Next on this list is sense and we use this when the reason for an opinion is already pretty clear or obvious.

Now similar to the word because we can also use due to it's very similar in meaning but slightly more formal.

And here's one more that has a very similar meaning just like due to we can use because of these two function in the same way grammatically however of these two due to is more formal and because of is used more often in everyday conversation.

Now I've got one more in this list, but before I go there, I know you might be thinking Annemarie, it sounds like you've just given me a list of words that all have very similar meaning. And you're right, English speakers love variety.

We like to use different vocabulary and sentence structures.

This allows us to have more than one way to express what we think.

Now you don't have to start using all of these today.

My recommendation is learn one or two connectors that are new to you.

Start incorporating them into your conversations and your writing and then once you're comfortable you can add a couple more.

Now the last one on this particular list is the word As we use this when we're emphasizing the result of a situation, let's take a look at how these work. In real conversations, I want you to imagine you're talking about your company, the place where you work, and you might say, I like this company because the people are friendly.

Or maybe you're making weekend plans and you could say, since the sun is shining, let's go to the park.

Remember we talked about using sense to highlight that the reason for something is already clear and obvious.

It is clear and obvious to everyone that the sun is shining and it's a good reason to go to the park.

If you needed to explain why you were late to a meeting, you might say I was late due to traffic.

And when letting someone know why an event was canceled, you could say the meeting was canceled because of the storm.

And here's one more using as as our local coffee shop has closed, we have to drive two miles away for good coffee.

Before we move on to our next category, I wanna talk about something that is grammatically important when we're using the words due to and because of these are always followed by a noun like traffic, the storm, the delay for example, I cannot say I was late due to it was raining.

That doesn't work for us. Instead you would say, I was late because it was raining.

This is a simple but important difference. Now, at the start of this section, I highlighted that we're looking at words that help us explain why or what happened, so let's take a look at a few more connectors that help us express the what happened, what was the result of something.

For that we use words like so, and this helps us to show a consequence or an outcome.

We might also use witches.

Why this explains a reason at the beginning or the end of a sentence.

Let's take a look at a few examples.

Let's say that you studied really hard for some exams and you want to highlight the result. You might say, I studied hard so I passed all three exams.

Or maybe your team just had a really successful meeting and in telling someone else about it, you might say the meeting went well, which is why we got the project. Now, before we move on to our second category of connectors, I want to give you a challenge to practice.

I want you to think about something that you did recently.

Maybe you just started to learn English, maybe you changed jobs or maybe you moved to a new city.

How would you explain why? For example, you might start with I started learning English because, or since I wanted to improve my communication skills I, or due to my work environment, I decided to take a moment to finish those example sentences.

As always, you can also share them with me in the comments below.

Now that we've covered connectors for cause and result, let's move on to purpose.

To further explain the why behind your decisions.

Just like expressing what you think.

When you share a thought or a decision that you've already made, you're not just talking about what you did, you might also need to explain why you did it.

And for that we use purpose connectors.

I want to share with you three great ways to express why you did something.

The first is in order to, this is more formal and allows you to emphasize your intention.

Now a more informal everyday conversational version of in order to is simply using the word to, and I'll share an example with you in a moment.

The third in this category is so that, and this focuses on the ultimate desired response.

Here's what all of these would sound like in real conversational examples.

Let's start with evaluating why you started to learn English for work.

You might say, I'm taking these lessons in order to communicate better at work.

Again, using in order to is a more formal version.

You might also say, I joined this course to improve my speaking skills, or I'm studying English so that I can work abroad.

Again, in that example, we're emphasizing the ultimate goal or desire that you have. Now, I want to pause here for a moment because in category one, focusing on cause and results we had, so as a connector and here when talking about purpose, we had so that what's the difference?

Let's take a look at two example sentences to help.

The first is I went by car so that I could take more luggage to the hotel with so that we're highlighting the purpose for making that decision.

What pros and cons did we evaluate in order to come to that decision?

We could also say, I went by car so I was able to take more luggage to the hotel.

Here we're emphasizing the ultimate result.

It might not have been a factor in the original decision, but it was a positive result. In the end, one is about what you intended to do and the other is about what happened in the end. So now let's do a quick practice again.

I want you to think about a decision that you've made recently.

Maybe you changed jobs or signed up for a new English class.

I want you to try finishing these sentences.

I started learning English two or I changed careers so that and now what if you need to give more than one reason for your opinion?

That's where our next category of connectors comes in because sometimes one reason isn't enough.

Maybe you love your neighborhood where you live and there are multiple reasons why. Or maybe you think a decision at work is a great idea, but there's more than one benefit that you want to highlight.

For clear organized speech, we use connectors to add more details and here's how we can do that. The first, another reason is this allows us to add a separate second reason to support a decision or an opinion we can also use, plus, this is a bit more casual, quite often used in everyday speech similar to plus is using also very neutral and commonly used.

And a fourth option is on top of that.

This adds emphasis and may be used to highlight a surprising detail. Now again, let's take a look at all of these in action.

Let's say that someone asks you, do you like your new neighborhood?

And you might say, I love my new neighborhood because it's so close to work.

On top of that my friends live there and there are many great restaurants nearby.

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Or imagine you're trying to explain why you support a particular company policy.

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You might say this new work from home policy is great for those who prefer to work at different times of the day. Also, it helps employees save money on commuting. And here's one more.

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Let's say that you're giving feedback to someone on a new cafe that you tried.

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You might say, I love this new cafe, the coffee's excellent, plus they have delicious pastries. Now, one important thing to keep in mind about using on top of that or another reason is both of these can only be used at the beginning of a sentence. And once again, let's do a bit of practice.

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I want you to think of something that you really enjoy or support.

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It could be your job, a new hobby, a policy change, or even a favorite restaurant.

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How would you give two reasons for your particular opinion? You could try.

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I love because and plus or one reason I support is a, another reason is, and now let's do a quick recap. Today we did quite a few things.

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We started with a three step structure to ensure that you can share a clear, well organized opinion in English.

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Then we learned a variety of connectors for cause and result explaining why something happened. Next, we moved on to purpose connectors showing why you did something, and finally we learned how to add extra reasons to strengthen an opinion.

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So now I want you to put all of this into practice.

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Here's my challenge for you. I want you to think about this question.

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Why did you choose to learn English? In your answer, I want you to try to use at least two connectors from today's lesson.

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You might begin with, I started learning English because or since I wanted to improve my communication skills or I'm learning English. So that, and another reason is as always you can share your answers and your questions with me in the comments below. Also, if you found this lesson helpful to you, I would love to know, give this lesson a thumbs up here on YouTube and while you're at it, make sure you subscribe so you never miss one of my Confident English lessons.

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Thank you so much for joining me and I look forward to seeing you next time.

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 Practice: The Best Professional Connectors to Explain Your Opinions in English - Learn English Speaking with Video

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What is the Shadowing Technique?