Shadowing Practice: The Only IELTS Speaking Plan You Need (All Levels) - Learn English Speaking with YouTube

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you will figure out how exactly you should approach IELTS speaking at each level.

And you can also download the PDF worksheet for this video.

So let's dive in.

Now a lot of people think that you just need to speak a lot to improve your speaking.

Well, yeah, I know it sounds logical.

It makes sense to think that you can improve by speaking a lot.

but when you're doing that let's say you are chatting with an AI bot

or you're chatting with a speaking partner you are repeating the same old bad habits you have bad grammar

and you're going to be reinforcing

that your head is empty you don't have good English in

your head you will just continue saying the wrong things for example

if you keep saying I didn't went I didn't went

your brain will register it as being correct

and you're going to continue saying it again and again

and you will not notice that it's a mistake

when until one day it will be too late to correct

it right it's going to take you a long time to unlearn

that bad habit and

that mistake will stay with you forever forever forever forever forever

forever all right i'll tell you what you should do instead

you should surround yourself with correct English stop speaking stop producing

instead start receiving think about how children learn their mother tongue

right I'm sure as a child yourself you never really learned

grammar rules you never really memorized anything right your parents probably didn't sit you down

and teach you present simple present continuous or anything like that

but rather children learn a language through continuous exposure to things

that they understand

so you will have a parent speaking to the child many many times every single day

and they will build intuition with the language no one teaches

them grammar they will just hear the structure i am i am i am many times

and their brain will realize oh that's how it's said correctly.

Same reason why if somebody tells you IR,

well that sounds weird because you have intuition with it.

Babies learn English or any other language in that same way, right?

They don't practice or anything like that.

They have exposure to the language 24-7.

So it's all about that volume.

They just keep listening and listening and observing and taking in all

that stuff in their head

and by the way what you immerse yourself in what you consume right

and what you put in your head should be around your

level right as long as you're continually watching stuff that's around

your level a little higher than your level you're good all right

if you don't understand it it's not going to be any

good like at band five you're not going to listen to scientific podcasts right

or documentaries or looking at some ben nine phrases

and ben nine words you need foundational english right you need to be able to connect your words

and sentences together i know it sounds

so simple that's it like should i just listen and watch

and uh that's it well no that's not going to be enough for you

because you're not a baby you don't have five six years

for your language to develop in your target language you've got

to speed things up a little bit right now that's where the second thing comes along

which is deliberate practice the repetition unlike babies you have only i don't know a couple months right

but as an adult learner you can speed up the process by deliberately repeating

that structure

that you have for example you are going to now what you can do to deliberately practice new structures

that you learn is you take that new sentence or structure

and you drill it you practice saying it out loud right repeat after whoever it is

that you learn that structure from or you could send that structure to your ai bot

chat gpt or any other model and ask it to give you questions

so you can practice that same structure so that's drilling repetition repetition repetition until it just becomes so automatic

think about how boxers train they take a particular method of punching

or style of punching

and they make sure they repeat it a hundred times until they get very very good at it

so you want to have that level of automation

when speaking where you're speaking so so fast and fluently

and continually train like boxers now the third thing you can do is practice IELTS speaking

but only having gone through those first two steps for about a week two weeks

or maybe even a month however long it takes you to

really really be good at the language you can take speaking part one part two part three questions

and record yourself answering them right

and then transcribe your answers using any app out there

that you can find zoom or any other transcription app

and really digging into your mistakes by the way you can just do all of

that in one place on my website ielts rubix you record your answers you transcribe it

and get ai corrections

and suggestions all in one place right on the website you

can check it out in the description below you should work with all these materials

that i'm about to share with you using these three strategies all right

so let's get into the study plans already let's start off with band five and band six.

Now at band five usually candidates struggle with the grammar.

They are not going to be able to say full sentences without making mistakes.

In the middle of their sentences there will always be mistakes and you have to reformulate them.

They will struggle to make use of long sentences and

long sentences will create difficulty in them speaking and they will rely on slow speech.

Now a similar problem can be seen at band six.

Now the candidate can keep speaking at length but sometimes may lose coherence

because of hesitation because of hesitation that happened in the middle,

stuff like that and coherence is do your ideas connect,

do you make sense?

So if you're struggling to speak and if you hesitate and if your ideas become disconnected

because of your hesitations like um well that's a language issue

another problem at band six is how compared to band seven you will be making mistakes with complex sentence structures

so think about how you need to say a full sentence

and you're going to be able to say it

but with mistakes now you will notice that all

that you need is to say a sentence correctly keep going

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without struggling without saying uh right this is exactly what the following material will help you with

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and that is leveled audiobooks what's really cool about audiobooks is

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that you get to listen to

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and read sentences of a particular level present simple present continuous right

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or any other sentence that you struggle with any tense

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that you struggle with any grammatical structure that you struggle with

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and that same structure will be repeated over and over again throughout the story and automatically it will get into your head.

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Here's how you should study audiobooks.

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Number one, make sure you listen to it at first so you develop an understanding of the story,

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you develop an ear for it.

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Now, the second step is to make sure that you understand the audiobook fully.

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What you can do is you can look up new words on a dictionary,

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you're going to be reading everything, rereading it.

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Now you're very, very familiar with the content of the audiobook.

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Let's say you're doing one chapter.

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Then you're going to repeat after every single sentence just the way that the speaker is saying it.

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So you will get the rhythm right.

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You will get the grammatical structures right.

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You will hear the same correct English now.

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Not some mid-sentence hesitation sentence, um sentence, right?

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You will listen to correct sentences and your brain will get used to that type of English.

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Now the next thing you can do is retell what you've just listened to.

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This is going to help you improve your storytelling.

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It's going to help you become more and more confident.

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Now this might feel a little difficult at first,

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but you'll get used to it.

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The most important thing is to select an audiobook that matches your level.

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You should do one chapter a day until Sunday.

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And on Sunday you can practice IELTS speaking on my website

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or elsewhere pick part one and part two topics

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and record your answers transcribe them get your teacher to comment on your mistakes

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or you can just do it by yourself with ai

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or on my website i'll attach links to these audiobooks in

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the description below go check them out all right moving on to level two band 6.5

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and 7 what should you be doing at these levels let's first of all talk about some of the problems

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that candidates at these levels face.

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Now at band 6.5 and 7 you're usually able to keep going,

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you're able to produce long turns,

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you can say full sentences,

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sometimes you have hesitations in the middle of your sentences like

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or self-corrections and that's fine as long as it doesn't affect the meaning of your answers and your pronunciation is all right,

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you can be understood generally,

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everything is pretty fine but the problem is with lexical resource and grammatical range and accuracy.

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Now, while you may have some ability to use less common and idiomatic language,

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you're going to be making mistakes and you don't really know how to use some phrases.

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You are familiar with style.

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Style is formal or informal, all right?

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In speaking part three, should you use more academic language or not?

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And do you use it properly, okay?

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In part one, are you using stylistically appropriate words, okay?

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So style is formal versus informal.

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Less common idiomatic items now a lot of people have misconceptions about these it's not some idiomatic expressions

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that you've heard on the internet it costs an arm

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and a leg no less common and idiomatic items mean are you using the words

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that you would use in their second meaning or their third meaning okay

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so think about the word background it's literally not my background

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right it's background let's say i come from a deprived background

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i come from this particular background background is where i come from

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so it has that other meaning which is not really the common meaning you understand

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or if i use the word legend i'm a legend

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or somebody's a legend well the word legend normally has the

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first meaning of a story that's not true let's take

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or hang out you're not literally hanging something somewhere you hang out with a friend

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so are you using those words in that context

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or are you able to use collocations

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so instead of saying go to picnics can you say go on picnics

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and can you keep this up for all topics and that's

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when you will be able to get seven plus now in

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terms of style for example in speaking part three are you not speaking in the same way

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that you are speaking part one where things are more casual

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in speaking part three can you use more academic language a

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good example of this could be our purchasing decisions right stylistically

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that's a pretty advanced expression instead of a generic alternative

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which is what we buy what we buy

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and our purchasing decisions being aware of this type of language will really push you beyond seven.

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Now TV shows and talks and educational videos are perfect for these.

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For Island Speaking part one where you are interviewed,

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where you talk about familiar topics,

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TV shows are a perfect source of language.

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It's scripted, real-life interview style situations that you will immerse yourself in.

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For Speaking part two you could use real-life talks where

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people share their experience of doing different things and that's just perfect for speaking part two.

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Now for part three where you need to discuss different topics that are academic and more abstract,

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educational videos and documentaries are perfect fit.

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All right here's how you work with tv shows.

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You're going to pick an episode of a tv show.

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First make sure you understand everything really really well,

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look up new words, you use a dictionary and familiarize yourself with everything.

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Now, second step.

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Now, you need to record sentences,

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not just words, sentences and phrases that you think are very,

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very useful for you in speaking part one.

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You know, those less common items and idiomatic language,

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you're going to record it on your notebook.

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Again, the point is that you have a lot of it,

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you are exposed to it again and again and again.

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It's about volume, how much you're putting it in your head.

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You're going to write down even sentences that you think you know,

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but can't use it doesn't have to be anything special it doesn't have to be something

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that you don't know all the nice stuff

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that you can get your hands on you're going to write it down

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and then you can try repeating after the actors

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and actresses in the tv show trying to get the intonation right trying to get the chunking right

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and making sure that you can use different types of intonation stress

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and emphasis because if you look at the band descriptors at band eight you will find

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that says the candidate is able to use a wide range of phonological features.

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That's sentence stress, emphasis, contrastive stress, right?

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You'll find all that in a TV show.

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So you're going to repeat after every single line or you could also try and drill it just like I mentioned earlier.

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You're going to take that sentence,

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send it to chat GPT or any other model of your choice and ask them to

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create questions that will force you to use that sentence

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so you will do it again

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and again again it's about repetition now with talks what you're going to do is again make sure

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that you understand 100% look up new words and new phrases

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and some references on a dictionary or on the internet

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and you want to write down all the sentences again but this time pay attention to some storytelling phrases.

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For example, in a video I was watching,

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a speaker uses a very useful storytelling phrase.

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I'm going to tell you about how I ended up on, ended up.

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That's a good storytelling phrase.

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Or you're going to listen for precise language,

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which is something that we want for band eight.

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If you want to go from seven to eight, we need precise language.

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Language that really hits the spot.

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Again, in that same video,

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I heard the speaker say,

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I ended up on a rooftop deck of a parking garage, right?

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Look at that.

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So that really paints quite a picture.

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So you're going to really pay attention to phrases like that and you're going to get them down on your notebook.

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And now you're going to retell the whole thing by memory,

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looking at all your notes now.

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So this way you're going to reinforce all the nice stuff that you've learned from the video,

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from the video talk.

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Well, you could also do shadowing.

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Now instead of after every single sentence,

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you could just do it in chunks.

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You can take 30 seconds and go with the speaker.

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Now for speaking part three,

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you want to take things up a notch and expose yourself to academic English.

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So education videos are perfect.

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Again, just like with the previous two materials,

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you're going to pick a video and you're going to make sure you understand it really,

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really well before moving on to the speaking part.

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The first thing you're going to do is take notes of advanced concepts that come up.

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For example, in an educational video I was watching,

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I learned about planned obsolescence.

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I'm going to think to myself,

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oh, planned obsolescence is really useful for talking about consumerism,

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about how products don't last long.

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Oh, I'm going to use that in my speaking.

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I'm going to take down that idea.

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And I'm also going to take down these academic sounding phrases or sentence structures.

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For example, in one educational video,

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I heard someone say,

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this project has great potential financially instead of just saying oh

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it will bring a lot of profit we will bring a lot of money well that's the kind of language

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that you need to make sure that you secure that band-aid

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so you do all of these every single day from monday to saturday

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on monday you could do tv show and on tuesday you do a talk

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and on wednesday you do an educational video and repeat

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that until Sunday where you'll do a full exam whether on my website or anywhere else that's your choice.

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Now moving on to the highest level band 7.5

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and 8 right now what is the biggest problem for candidates at this level?

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Now at band 8 you're very very confident already you're not hesitating much

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but the problem might be in part 3 sometimes

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or in part 2 or even in part one but

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if you do these previous things that I talked about tv shows

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and other things your part one will already be really good

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but usually candidates at band-aids struggle with topic development it's not fully coherent that's something

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that we need for part three where you now need to

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show some more depth right you should be able to talk

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about these very very advanced concepts for example I was reading an article about animal cruelty

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and I read that Charlotte Desjardins who is an Olympic level horse rider she was spotted mistreating a horse.

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Well that made headlines sounding alarm bells about animal welfare in the Olympic world

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and I was able to relate

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that to an IELTS speaking part 3 topic about how animals should not be kept at the zoo.

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Well to really get a band 9 you need to showcase your awareness of such advanced concepts.

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Now in addition to of this you should not be making

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any pronunciation mistakes you should showcase your awareness of pronunciation of

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all pronunciation features now this is where unscripted english comes in right

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so instead of tv shows you're going to be taking on celebrity interviews

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which are perfect for part one

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so you'll train your ear to listen for phonological features

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that you won't find in scripted english like tv shows

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so you're really going to push yourself to the limits now

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with celebrity interviews you follow the same steps as tv shows you will continue watching talks

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and youtube videos for speaking part two now for part three

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you might want to include articles well you read the article in the same way you watch an educational video

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but a bonus step that you could add is read the text out loud

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so you're extra confident about what you read so you can then incorporated in your discussions in speaking part three.

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So you do that every single day until Sunday and on Sunday you're going to do a full IELTS speaking test.

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We'll really listen back to your speaking part three recordings to see how well you're doing and correcting your errors.

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So I have a list of materials for this level as well.

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Check out the video description to download everything you need.

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Now if you'd like to download the full plan for each level head over to my telegram channel

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and be sure to make use of the study plan don't just leave it lying around

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and collecting dust right I'll see you in the next one

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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.

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Speak English fluently using the Shadowing technique. Listen to native YouTube videos, repeat sentence by sentence, and build real pronunciation and fluency — used by IELTS learners worldwide.

Shadowing Practice: The Only IELTS Speaking Plan You Need (All Levels) - Learn English Speaking with YouTube

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About This Lesson

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What is the Shadowing Technique?

Shadowing Practice: The Only IELTS Speaking Plan You Need (All Levels) - Learn English Speaking with YouTube

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About This Lesson

Key Vocabulary & Phrases

Practice Tips

What is the Shadowing Technique?