Shadowing Practice: The One Thing That Will Make Everyone Like You - Learn English Speaking with Video
Creating lesson...
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welcome to lesson 3 of the BeeFriend course in our previous lesson we learned about the formula of friendship which are the four factors that determine how deep our relationships with others go however if all you do is employ these
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four factors you are not guaranteed to befriend others this is because there is one rule that you have to stick to in order to make sure that you are developing friendships and not making enemies instead it's called the golden
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rule of friendship now a couple of years ago I hung out with this girl let's call her Stacey who told me that she struggled with making long-lasting relationships Stacey didn't have any childhood friends she didn't have any high-school buddies and even her co-workers rarely asked her
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to hang out she always felt like the people she befriended did not stay loyal to her and at the time I didn't know what she was doing wrong but after years of learning about social skills and thinking back to the way Stacey interacted around others I started to realize that it was because she always
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broke the golden rule of friendship the golden rule of friendship states that if you want people to like you you have to make them feel good if you make people feel good they will want to be around you more but if you make them feel bad
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they will avoid you it sounds pretty simple but there are many many ways that people accidentally break this rule in fact Stacey broke this rule in three different ways see the thing is Stacey had what we new
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yorkers call a resting bitchface it's a combination of a subtle frown combined with glazed over eyes plastered on your face 24/7 it kind of looks something along the lines of this this was the first way that Stacy broke the golden
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rule of friendship by having bad body language see the body language she portrayed made it seem like she wasn't interested in you what you were saying and that she was unhappy when you interacted with her when you speak to
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someone and they look unhappy and uninterested you think to yourself oh is what I'm saying boring is she even listening to me should I just leave and if this happens over and over again you will instinctively try to avoid them in
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the future nobody wants to talk to someone who seems uninterested in whatever they're saying now you're probably wondering improvement bill what sort of body language should we be using to prevent something like this what are some examples of good body language what are some examples of bad ones well don't
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worry because we're gonna dive deep into that with multiple videos in the next portion of the befriend course but for now let's talk about the second way Stacy broke the golden rule of friendship so I remember a specific interaction that I had with Stacy I was telling her
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story of how I did poorly in high school how I didn't have a good social life but also how I was able to make changes and get out of rock bottom now this is a pretty personal story that I hold dear to my heart it's a story
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that I'm very proud of and it's a story that I seldom tell people but at around the halfway point before I could finish my story Stacey butted in and she started telling me a story about her struggles in high school how she had a harder time than me making friends and how her rock bottom
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was way worse than mine the second way that Stacy broke the golden rule of friendship was by making everything about herself see the thing is the majority of people enjoy talking about themselves it feels good to tell a story
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and have people listen to you but when someone cuts you off and proceeds to tell their own story they're doing two things number one they're telling you that they don't care about you or your story which is a terrible feeling and
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number two they're telling you that they want you to listen to them to make them feel good and not the other way around if you constantly redirect the conversation back to yourself you're essentially asking everyone else to give
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you something without getting anything back in return I think this was actually the biggest reason as to why Stacy didn't have any long-lasting relationships because she made everything about herself now before we
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get into the third and final way Stacy screwed up I do want to mention something really really fast we all know going through a course like the friend course or the team course is effective but it's nowhere nearly as powerful as committing to a hands-on coaching program if you are interested in this
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and you're willing to invest money in yourself please sign up for my mailing list using the link in the description box below to receive future updates now there are thousands of different things you can talk about when you hang out with someone else and the sort of topics you choose to discuss can have a huge
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impact on the overall interaction Stacy like to talk about her past how she used to be skinnier how she used to have nicer hair when we ate together she liked to complain about the food and how the service that this one wasn't so
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great she was super critical of everything the third and final way Stacy broke the golden rule of friendship was by talking too much about negative things think about this when you talk about something negative what sort of emotion are you bringing to the table while depending on
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what you're talking about it could be a wide variety of things such as anger disgust jealousy sadness etc but all of these emotions have one thing in common they don't feel good when you talk about negative things you're not only sharing
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the words and stories but also the emotions that go along with them so if you tell a story about how your dog died people will feel your sadness if you tell a story about how your girlfriend cheated on you people will feel some of your anger there's a time and place for stories
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like this but you have to be very careful about these types of things especially if you've just started to get to know someone because they make people feel bad and if you do this too often they will start to associate you with
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all of those negative emotions and avoid you if you look at the formula of friendship Stacey was doing all of the right things she would go partying with people quite often so she had good proximity good frequency good duration
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and good intensity however she did not employ the golden rule of friendship in fact she broke the rule over and over again which meant that she eventually made more enemies than friends people started hating her because she stuck to
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the formula friendship but made them feel bad at the same time think of the golden rule of friendship as a plus or negative sign in front of our equation so far if you stick to it your friendships will grow but if you break
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it people will start to hate you it's a simple simple rule that you must keep in mind during all of your future interactions now before we start talking about body language there is one more foundational concept that I must teach
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you it's something so powerful that it can potentially two times three times heck even five times the speed of which you can befriend others and deepen your relationships with them it's the importance of value make sure you
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subscribe and hit the bell icon because we're gonna cover that in our next lesson and I don't want you to miss it besides that guys stay tuned
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This B2 speaking lesson is built on the video “The One Thing That Will Make Everyone Like You”. The speaker keeps coming back to these words: friendship, rule, golden, Stacy, Stacey. This video has 30 sentences and 1354 words to shadow. The speech runs for 5:49. The speaker talks fast, about 233 words per minute, so expect linked and reduced sounds. 88% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English, so the vocabulary is easy to follow.
Key vocabulary in this video
The 15 most advanced words in the video, with pronunciation and meaning:
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| befriend verb | /bəˈfɹɛnd/ | To become a friend of (someone), to make friends with (someone). |
| emotion noun | /ɪˈməʊ.ʃən/ | A person's internal state of being and involuntary physiological response to an object or a situation, based on or tied to physical state and sensory data. |
| uninterested adjective | Not interested; indifferent, not concerned. | |
| sadness noun | /ˈsædnəs/ | The state or emotion of being sad. |
| employ verb | /ɪmˈplɔɪ/ | To retain (someone) as an employee. |
| interact verb | /ɪn.təˈɹækt/ | To engage in communication and other shared activities (with someone). |
| unhappy adjective | /ʌnˈhæpi/ | Not happy; sad. |
| deepen verb | /ˈdiːpən/ | To make deep or deeper |
| foundational adjective | /faʊnˈdeɪ.ʃə.nəl/ | Of or relating to a foundation or foundations. |
| instinctively adverb | /ɪnˈstɪŋktɪvli/ | Innately; by instinct; without being taught. |
| redirect verb | To give new direction to; to change the course, direction or destination of. | |
| yorker noun | /ˈjɔː(ɹ)kə(ɹ)/ | A ball bowled so as to bounce at or near the batsman's popping crease. |
| plaster noun | /ˈplæstɚ/ | A paste applied to the skin for healing or cosmetic purposes. |
| disgust noun | /dɪsˈɡʌst/ | An intense dislike or loathing someone feels for something bad or nasty. |
| seldom adverb | /ˈsɛldəm/ | Infrequently, rarely. |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Meaning |
|---|---|
| get out of verb | To leave, exit or escape from; to become free of. |
| go along with verb | To acquiesce to or comply with a proposal, despite lacking a desire or value for it. |
| go through verb | To travel from one end of something to the other. |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 27 contractions and reduced forms, such as didn't, you're, don't. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: emotion /ɪˈməʊ.ʃən/, foundational /faʊnˈdeɪ.ʃə.nəl/, equation /ɪˈkweɪ.ʒən/, duration /dʒʊˈɹeɪ.ʃən/
- Long words — get the stress right: foundational /faʊnˈdeɪ.ʃə.nəl/, instinctively /ɪnˈstɪŋktɪvli/, proximity /pɹɒkˈsɪm.ɪ.ti/, intensity /ɪnˈtɛnsɪti/
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 befriend, emotion, uninterested.
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.