Shadowing Practice: The day you died (and didn't notice) - Learn English Speaking with Video
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102 sentences
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I died when I was 22 years old.
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That was when I moved to Oxford and when I think back to my childhood, my upbringing and my family, I think that that was the moment that I died.
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Sometimes I even grieve the younger Johnny.
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I miss my house, my school and my dog called Lily.
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I miss my parents even though they are both still alive because that life is gone.
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That Johnny is dead.
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This is a view known as episodism and it goes back to the philosopher Galen Strawson and his work against narrativity.
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Episodism is when you have no sense
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that who you were in the past is the same as who you are right now.
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It is not saying that there is no self but rather that life is divided into a series of different selves.
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There is no connecting fibre between these selves and any narrative
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or story that we build that tries to do so will always be insufficient and artificial.
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Who you are now is a detailed, coherent and individual personality.
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Sure there will be bits and bobs that overlap such as your music preferences
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or even people who might be here today who were once there in the past.
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But the sense of now is defined by these essential and all-consuming elements or pillars.
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and when these pillars change your sense of self will change as well it will essentially cease to be
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and so then you are reincarnated as a new person for many the idea
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that they are a perpetually written story is a kind of comfort we're told by psychologists like oliver sacks
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that each of us constructs and lives a narrative and
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that narrative is then our identity but for the episodic person and that doesn't make any sense.
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The episodic sees their life in terms of these discrete blocks that overlap a bit, but they have no meaning overall.
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Strawson makes a distinction between a human being and a self.
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I know that I am the same biological entity that went skateboarding with Sam Leatt when I was nine years old.
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But as a self, the person talking to you now and having these thoughts in my head, I know I wasn't there.
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The writer Henry James once remarked that he thought his earlier masterpieces were written by somebody else entirely.
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And Marcel Proust wrote that we are a series of cells which die one after the other.
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I feel like a completely different person today as the person who went skateboarding with Sam Liat.
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So are you an episodic person or are you a narrative kind of thinker?
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Well, episodism is defined by three feelings or beliefs.
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Let's go through them and see if they relate to you.
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First, there is this lack of persistence.
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The episodic does not see themselves as something that was there in the past or will be there even in the future.
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For example, I'm well aware that I will one day be old, Greg, and I'll find it hard to get out of a chair.
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I'll look back at now and think, wow, so much has changed.
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Life has changed completely.
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And there are past episodes which feel the same.
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I feel completely disconnected to who I once was.
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Second, there is temporal displacement.
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While an episodic will possess certain factual from the inside memories, they do not feel that those memories apply to who you are now.
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So for example, I remember my grandparents' house.
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I remember playing an open presence and eating creamed corn.
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But that happened to a different person.
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That happened to childhood Johnny.
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When I think back to some of my best friends at school and university, I remember them fondly, but that wasn't me.
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It's not the same person who does mini philosophy right now.
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And then third, there is the present focus.
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The episodic is by definition more located in the now, and they identify more with their current values, their current thoughts, and their current environment.
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For example, I am defined by my children, I'm defined by my family, I'm defined by the village I live in now and the projects I'm doing right here.
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If none of this resonates at all then you are probably not an episodic person and according to Strawson the opposite kind,
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the narrative kind, is somebody called the diachronic.
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They will see their lives as a long-term continuous stretch and will often view the episodic life as chilling or even empty.
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They'll wonder how How can you have any sense of loyalty?
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How can you have any identity at all if you are just this collection of disconnected blobs?
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Strawson argues that in a lot of academia, in psychology and even medicine, the diachronic or the narrative view is the dominant one.
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It says that to be a full person you have to be narrative
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and this is what Strawson calls the psychological narrativity thesis, that we do live our lives as stories.
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But the problem is
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that this can then spill out into an ethical narrativity thesis where we say
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that we ought to live our lives as stories, and the episodic person is somehow a half person.
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Philosophers like Charles Taylor have argued
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that making sense of ourselves requires us to understand our lives as a kind of unfolding story.
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Some people go further and suggest that you only have a true identity by forming an autobiographical narrative.
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Without it you aren't developing fully as a person because they see a good life in terms of a quest.
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If anybody has ever sat through a self-help lecture talking about your journey
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or if you ever heard a friend talking about growth you will appreciate how dominant the diachronic narrative view really is.
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But is this actually how everybody works?
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Strawson argues that this narrative outlook is often a product of an intellectual fashion,
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and the misplaced confidence of people who generalise their own experience as being the recipe for the entire human race.
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But the diachronic view is not necessarily the case, nor has it always been the case.
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For example, the French philosopher Michel de Montaigne claimed
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that his memory was so poor that he could hardly find a trace of himself in the past, something that I can relate to as well.
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The Earl of Shaftesbury once said that he lived only for the now
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and he didn't care if he became 20 successive selves.
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Writers like Virginia Woolf felt their life existed in his brilliant and disjointed flashes rather than as a linear plot.
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For these people, the idea of a quest or a single unified narrative isn't a requirement for a good life.
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In fact, it's a gross hindrance to self-understanding at all.
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Strawson argues that this dominant narrativity thesis is a problem.
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It might even be dangerous.
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Because Strawson thinks that the more you try to turn your life into a good story, the more you are forced to engage in what he calls revision.
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Narrative people often become virtuoso novelists.
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They unconsciously delete, edit, and reorder their past to make it cohere.
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And as Nietzsche famously put it, I have done that, says my memory, but I cannot have done that, says my pride.
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Eventually memory surrenders to what you want it to say, you stop caring or focusing on the facts,
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and you spend your time engaging in a kind of cognitive bias that constructs a perfect and moral saintly self.
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For Strawson, revision takes two forms.
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First is the charged form, and this is when it is motivated by pride, by shame, or the need for self-love.
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is a kind of ego protection.
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And second there is the uncharged form, which is simply a kind of form-finding tendency that tries to fill in the gaps of an often faulty memory.
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In other words, we make up stories and even memories to bridge the part of ourselves that we cannot remember.
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Every time we retell our past, we shift further and further away from the facts.
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Recent neurophysiological research shows that the very act of conscious recall brings an alteration of the memory itself.
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The narrative person in their ham-fisted breaking
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and making reconstruction of their daily experiences is often drifting further and further away from the truth of their actual being.
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The episodic by contrast doesn't need a story to be moral or responsible or even necessarily coherent.
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Montaigne was famous for his deep loyalty and friendship despite claiming to have no memory of the past shared experiences.
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Friendship for the episodic is shown in how one is in the present.
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It's how you and I relate right now.
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So do you think your life is defined by episodes
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or do you think there is one long overarching narrative which connects who you are?
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Is the luxury or the habit of a life story actually a trap
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that keeps you from the beauty of being in the moment.
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This C1 speaking lesson is built on the video “The day you died”. The speaker keeps coming back to these words: narrative, episodic, Strawson, self, defined. This video has 102 sentences and 1508 words to shadow. The speech runs for 8:42. The speaker talks at a natural 173 words per minute, close to everyday conversation. Only 80% 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 |
|---|---|---|
| episodic adjective | /ˌɛp.ɪˈsɒd.ɪk/ | Relating to an episode. |
| diachronic adjective | /daɪ.əˈkɹɑnɪk/ | Occurring over or changing with time. |
| narrativity noun | The presentation (and subsequent interpretation) of a dramatic narrative. | |
| philosopher noun | /fəˈlɑsəfɚ/ | A lover of wisdom. |
| thesis noun | /ˈθisɪs/ | A proposition or statement supported by arguments. |
| disconnect verb | /dɪskəˈnɛkt/ | To sever or interrupt a connection. |
| skateboard noun | /ˈskeɪt.bɔɹd/ | A narrow, wooden or plastic platform mounted on pairs of wheels, on which one stands and propels oneself by pushing along the ground with one foot. |
| coherent adjective | /koʊˈhɛɹ.ənt/ | Unified; sticking together; making up a whole. |
| pillar noun | /ˈpɪlɚ/ | A large post, often used as supporting architecture. |
| overlap verb | /ˌəʊvəˈlæp/ | To extend over and partly cover something. |
| revision noun | /ɹəˈvɪʒ.ən/ | The action or process of reviewing, editing and amending. |
| construct verb | /ˈkɑn.stɹʌkt/ | To build or form (something) by assembling parts. |
| alteration noun | /ɔl.tɚˈeɪ.ʃən/ | The act of altering or making different. |
| autobiographical adjective | /ˌɑtoʊˌbaɪəˈɡɹæfəkəl/ | Of or relating to a person's life or an account of a person's life, as told by the subject. |
| cohere verb | /koʊˈhɪɚ/ | To stick together physically, by adhesion. |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| get out of verb | To leave, exit or escape from; to become free of. | |
| go back to verb | To stem from; to originate in. | |
| go through verb | To travel from one end of something to the other. | |
| make up verb | /ˌmeɪk ˈʌp/ | To constitute, to compose. |
| sit through verb | To unwillingly stay seated until the end of an event. |
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | is divided · is defined · are reincarnated |
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | has changed · have argued · has ever sat |
| Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing | people who might · person who went · person who does |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 15 contractions and reduced forms, such as I'm, doesn't, I'll. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “th” sounds: thesis /ˈθisɪs/, thinker /ˈθɪŋ.kɚ/, ethical /ˈɛθɪkəl/
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: revision /ɹəˈvɪʒ.ən/, alteration /ɔl.tɚˈeɪ.ʃən/, unconsciously /ˌʌnˈkɑnʃəsli/, insufficient /ɪnsəˈfɪʃənt/, reconstruction /ˌɹiːkənˈstɹʌkʃən/
- Long words — get the stress right: episodic /ˌɛp.ɪˈsɒd.ɪk/, diachronic /daɪ.əˈkɹɑnɪk/, philosopher /fəˈlɑsəfɚ/, alteration /ɔl.tɚˈeɪ.ʃən/, autobiographical /ˌɑtoʊˌbaɪəˈɡɹæfəkəl/
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 episodic, diachronic, narrativity.
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.