Shadowing Practice: The positive effects of positive emotions - Learn English Speaking with Video

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Tanya Cushman Reviewer Reviewer.

If I asked

you what emotions psychologists have spent most of their time studying,

Would you be surprised if the answer was anger, fear, anxiety, or sadness?

Well, it surprised me.

Now, don't get me wrong, this research is incredibly important.

But focusing so heavily on our negative emotions portrays a very one-sided image of the human experience

that fails to capture its beauty and its resilience.

We feel such a wide variety of positive emotions, like compassion, joy, love, and awe.

In fact, in our everyday lives, we experience these positive emotions three times as often as negative emotions.

Now, I'm happy to report that a new generation of researchers, myself included, are starting to focus on the impact of positive emotions for outcomes like health,

relationship quality, and well-being.

And it turns out that across every domain of measurement, the positive emotions are revealing themselves to have a profound effect.

Let me tell you about two studies my colleagues and I have done.

They both focus on one potential biological pathway between positive emotions and physical health.

At the center of this work are some important markers of immune functioning, called pro-inflammatory cytokines.

These proteins are called the regulators of the immune system, and they actively promote inflammation in the body in response to infection, illness, or injury.

Now, they may be small in size, but I can assure you that their impact is dramatic.

They give rise to acute symptoms like fever, fatigue, and even pain.

And over time, when chronically elevated, they have harmful effects for health, contributing to diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and depression.

Now, there are many different types of pro-inflammatory cytokines, so in our work we chose to focus on one called interleukin-6, or IL-6 for short.

Thanks to scientific advances, we can now measure IL-6 relatively cheaply and easily in the lab by collecting a person's saliva.

Our idea was that people who experience more positive emotions would have lower levels of IL-6 circulating in their body.

Why did we think this?

Well, certain negative emotions have been associated with increases in IL-6.

So we thought perhaps positive emotions would have the opposite effect, leading to lower levels of this damaging biomarker.

So in two studies, we had students come into the lab, and we measured how much positive emotion they felt in the past month.

Then we collected a sample of saliva in order to measure IL-6.

It turns out that our hypothesis was correct.

Positive emotions predicted lower levels of pro-inflammatory cytokines in our student population.

So next we asked, are certain positive emotions better predictors of lower levels of IL-6 than others?

So in an additional study, we had participants fill out a survey that was designed to measure the frequency

and intensity with which people experience seven specific positive emotions.

Amusement, awe, contentment, compassion, pride, love, and joy.

Not only did we replicate our original findings, that positive emotions predicted lower levels of pro-inflammatory cytokines,

we also found that four specific positive emotions were particularly good predictors of lower levels of IL-6.

Those emotions were joy, pride, contentment, and awe, and their predictive value was significant.

Interestingly, the emotion of awe had the strongest negative relationship to levels of IL-6.

Even when we controlled for the other six positive emotions, even when we took the relevant personality measures into account,

and even when we used another measure that asked participants how much awe, wonder, and amazement they felt the day they came into the lab.

So let's talk a little bit about awe.

Awe is a powerful and transformative emotion.

It's inspired great works of art, incited religious movements, and generated philosophical musings about the sublime.

But despite this impressive resume, only very recently have we begun to study this emotion in psychology. So what is awe?

I define it by its synonyms, wonder and amazement, and by its psychological experience.

We feel awe when we encounter something vast and grand that challenges our world view.

It makes us feel small in the presence of something bigger than ourselves, and connected with others around us.

Now, you might be thinking that you have to travel to remote places in order to experience this emotion, but I can tell you that that's not the case.

In fact, participants report feeling awe about twice a week on average, making it a more common emotion than you might expect.

We feel awe when we hear beautiful music, when we look up at the night sky and see the stars,

or when we watch athletes achieve feats that we thought were beyond reality.

So here's the question.

Why would awe be a better predictor of good health than other positive emotions.

We don't yet know.

It may be because awe is particularly potent at reducing stress or increasing feelings of social connection.

It may be because awe generates a desire to engage or explore the world around us.

Recent work suggests that awe promotes greater humility, pro-sociality, and well-being.

And all of these things could impact physical health.

What I do know is that these findings have changed how I think about awe in my own life.

I used to see a walk in nature or a trip to the museum

as a luxury that I could rarely afford in my busy life.

Now I see these experiences as essential to my mental and physical health.

And as a field, we psychologists are changing how we think about positive emotions.

We now recognize that they aren't simply the absence of negative emotions, but that they're colorful and varied in their own right,

and that specific positive emotions like awe might hold important benefits for things like physical health.

Now, we still have a lot to learn about the emotion of awe, but it's fascinating to think that in seeking out the beauty

and the mystery and the vastness that our world has to offer, that we might actually find the key to our own physical health.

Thank you.

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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson

This C1 speaking lesson is built on the video “The positive effects of positive emotions”. The speaker keeps coming back to these words: emotion, awe, positive, levels, experience. This video has 68 sentences and 1017 words to shadow. The speech runs for 7:27. The speaker talks at a steady 137 words per minute, a comfortable pace for shadowing. Only 79% 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
cytokine noun	/ˈsaɪ.təˌkaɪn/	Any of various small regulatory proteins that regulate the cells of the immune system.
inflammatory adjective	/ɪnˈflæmət(ə)ɹi/	Tending to inflame or provoke somebody.
predictor noun	/pɹɪˈdɪk.tɚ/	Something that anticipates, predicts, or foretells.
participant noun	/pɑːɹˈtɪsəpənt/	One who participates.
amazement noun	/əˈmeɪz.mənt/	The condition of being amazed; a state of overwhelming wonder, as from surprise or sudden fear, horror, or admiration; a feeling of intense astonishment or…
contentment noun	/kənˈtɛntmənt/	The state or degree of being contented or satisfied.
saliva noun	/səˈlaɪvə/	A clear, slightly alkaline liquid secreted into the mouth by the salivary glands and mucous glands, consisting of water, mucin, protein, and enzymes. It…
psychologist noun	/ˌsaɪˈkɑl.ə.d͡ʒɪst/	An expert in the field of psychology.
compassion noun	/kəmˈpæʃ.ən/	Deep awareness of the suffering of others that people have to the point of them being motivated to relieve such states.
predict verb	/pɹɪˈdɪkt/	To make a prediction: to forecast, foretell, or estimate a future event on the basis of knowledge and reasoning; to prophesy a future event on the basis of…
biomarker noun	/ˈbaɪoʊˌmɑɹkɚ/	A substance used as an indicator of a biological state, most commonly disease.
cheaply adverb	/ˈt͡ʃiːpli/	In a cheap manner; without expending much money.
chronically adverb		In a chronic manner, or to a chronic degree.
circulate verb	/ˈsɝ.kjʊˌleɪt/	To move in circles or through a circuit.
elevate verb	/ˈɛləveɪt/	To raise (something) to a higher position.

Phrasal verbs you will hear

Word	Pronunciation	Meaning
turn out verb		To end up; to result.
fill out verb	/fɪl ˈaʊt/	To complete a form or questionnaire with requested information.

Grammar in this video

The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:

Structure	In the video
Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now	have spent · have done · have been associated
Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it	are called · have been associated · was designed

Pronunciation to watch

The speaker uses 5 contractions and reduced forms, such as don't, aren't, I'm. Say them the short way, as you hear them.

The “th” sounds: pathway /ˈpæθˌweɪ/, hypothesis /haɪˈpɒθɪsɪs/
The “sh” and “zh” sounds: compassion /kəmˈpæʃ.ən/, sociality /ˌsoʊ.ʃiˈæləti/, inflammation /ɪnfləˈmeɪ̯ʃən/, measurement /ˈmɛʒ.ə.mənt/, assure /əˈʃʊɹ/
Long words — get the stress right: inflammatory /ɪnˈflæmət(ə)ɹi/, participant /pɑːɹˈtɪsəpənt/, psychologist /ˌsaɪˈkɑl.ə.d͡ʒɪst/, sociality /ˌsoʊ.ʃiˈæləti/, transformative /tɹænsˈfɔɹmətɪv/

How to practise with this video

Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
Shadow it sentence by sentence at normal speed, repeating each one until your rhythm matches the speaker.
Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like cytokine, inflammatory, predictor.

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 technique: read the full step-by-step guide →

Shadowing Practice: The positive effects of positive emotions - Learn English Speaking with Video

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