Shadowing Practice: The Present | Full Award-Winning Documentary - Learn English Speaking with Video
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The time passes for us all.
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When we take care of the time that takes place, we realize how much life is precious.
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And in general, when something comes to 6 years old, We realize how much life can suddenly fall.
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And I think it's not necessary to wait for something to live plainly.
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When I chose to live an adventure life, I wanted to develop this feeling of living several lives in one.
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For me, it's the essence of the journey.
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This little boy, it's me, little Dimitri.
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I had about three years.
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Three years have passed.
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Today I have 34 years.
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I'm Dimitri Poffet, I grew up in the North of France.
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I've been five years ago, I made a genetic test and I learned that I was positive to the Huntington's disease.
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A disease neurodegenerative rare and incurable.
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The studies show that I should develop the first symptoms between 35 and 40 years old.
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When I learned to be porter of this gene, I sold all the material that I had.
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I left my work in the bank at Paris, I left my apartment and my country to make my dream, to travel to four corners of the world.
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And it's this rich experience that made me realize what I wanted in my life.
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To live my passion, not only for me, but also for people in need.
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So, two years ago, I bought a bike and started a trip in solitary from Mexico to Patagon.
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A journey of 18.000 km.
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And I called this project Explore for Huntington.
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The idea is to be able to collect and collect funds for the disease,
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but also to meet the whole network of Huntington's disease in Latin America to connect together together.
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Like that, I contribute to something sacred.
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The espoir.
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My advice is the following.
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The disease has no boundaries, and we all need to collaborate.
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Huntington is a neurodegenerative, genetic and hereditary.
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My father was born from this disease, and it's him who has transmitted the gene defective to my sister and me.
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When a parent is a child's child, the probability of the transmitting to his child is 50%.
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The current symptoms include difficulties of concentration, problems of memory, movements involontarily, problems of digestion, depression, and many psychiatric troubles.
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The people who are sick of the disease She usually has symptoms between 35 and 50 years old.
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But there are also cases of Huntington Juvenile.
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My sister started to develop symptoms when she was 13.
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Today, she has 42 years old.
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And she's symptoms are grave.
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She has lost autonomy in everyday life.
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She suffers from important problems psychiatriques.
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She's enfermated in her room since the beginning of the disease.
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And she doesn't see a person, not even a doctor.
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She can even make it aggressive.
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Today, there is no curative treatment.
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And I hope that more people will talk about it, the research will progress.
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And the more it will progress, the more there will be hope for a treatment.
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The disease remains a little bit.
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And it's true that the prevalence is relatively low, with about 5 cases for 100.000 individuals in Europe.
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In Chile, a country of 19,5 million inhabitants, we officially recense 380 sick.
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But these are official numbers, and there are a lot more.
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In most countries, the disease is still known, and it's very difficult to identify all the patients.
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In Latin America, few people have access to genetic tests.
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So, few people can take their precautions to not propagate this gene.
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It's one of the most touched areas of the disease in Huntington's world disease.
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That's why I chose to take my trip here.
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Good afternoon, Maricé.
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How are you?
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Everything is fine?
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I am Dimitri.
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I am French.
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And I am here to meet you.
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We have to move forward and try to deliver the best quality of the life possible.
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It has been hard, but we have been able to go ahead and survive.
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With love, affection, affection.
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Do you want to go to Patagonia?
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With the family.
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Yes?
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Like it's a rare disease, with your husband, with your children, we tend to feel alone and isolated.
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I visit people who are infected by the disease to share their hope.
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Sometimes, I see in them part of my future, some symptoms that I might have too.
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But I focus on the beauty of these meetings, on the phone.
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I want to show you through this project that no one is alone and that there is a international community.
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Give us a hug.
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Give us a hug.
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Give us a hug.
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And how do you say in French a hug?
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A hug.
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A hug.
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A hug.
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A hug.
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We all have to be honest with you.
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We managed to control a lot of things throughout history, but not the time.
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Controlling the time, it's just a fantasy.
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And at the end, we all have to do an adventure.
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Not to control the time that passes, but to change the perception.
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The life is so comfortable that most people don't feel the need to get out of their zone.
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And yet when you do it, I believe you really feel what it is to be able to do.
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And for me, it's like this trip.
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A wonderful way to feel alive.
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It connects you to the beauty of human relations.
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I've been doing literally all the corrida from the south of Colombia to Chile.
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So it's a lot of climbing, it's about 150.000 meters of level.
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And with all the weight I have to carry on the bike, sometimes it's very difficult.
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I met so many incredible people during this adventure.
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I rarely felt alone.
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I've crossed the borders and seen dozens of different cultures.
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And I saw that before belonging to a country or culture, we had to have simple attributes.
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The The
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The I'm not going to go to the world.
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I'm not going to go to the world.
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I'm not going to go to the world.
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In the opposite way, we don't have any experience.
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It's part of us, never.
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To go to Latin America, it's not always easy, I believe.
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At some times I even wanted to leave.
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But I never had to leave my arms.
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And you know why?
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Because in every difficult situation, I thought to all of them touch a symptom.
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And it was them who gave me the strength of my heart.
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Thank you for blessing me.
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Thank you for coming.
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Thank you for coming.
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I was able to go to the south, I saw a metamorphosis of nature.
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Plus I was moving towards the heart of Patagonia, plus the leaves were going to their own colors.
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The forests passed from the orange to the orange, and from the orange to the orange.
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The end of my journey approached me, and nature was given a spectacle.
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The End
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The End
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The adventure is something powerful.
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because there is no certainty.
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It's a constant reflection on what she is doing.
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In the adventure, you decide what are your own limits.
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Pousser au delà de ta zone de confort, c'est fascinant.
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Et surtout quand tu fais face à la nature.
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Pourquoi on escalade des montagnes ?
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Pourquoi on randonne quand il fait froid ou quand il pleut ?
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Moi je pense que l'aventure c'est un moteur inné que beaucoup ont oublié.
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Because everything is becoming so comfortable, so perfectly controlled.
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But we need the uncertainty of adventure to understand who we are really.
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And when we live in nature, we come back to the essence of life.
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We start to valorize the most simple things, and the simple fact of having water, food, or someone with who we are, becomes a treasure.
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And that's how we understand the value of life.
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And the value of the present.
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The idea is to reach the valley, to reach the glacier, to put our yellows, always with a safe step as possible.
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We're going to be there, in the patio of the Torres del Paine.
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Perfect.
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In traveling and living like that, I want to see the day when the disease is declared I don't regret anything.
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The adventure becomes a way to feel fully alive.
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It becomes a way, even for an instant, to stop the tic tac of the horloge of my life.
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Life is the most beautiful of the cadeau.
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And today, it's the present.
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The End
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I'm sorry.
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I'm sorry.
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I'm sorry.
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I'm sorry.
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I'm sorry.
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I'm sorry.
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I'm sorry.
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How do you go?
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How do you go?
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Until now?
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If the sky is asleep I'm a human,
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I've changed that, that's normal.
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oh oh Where are you?
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How is your way? Where are you?
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He gave you us He gave you us
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He gave you us He gave you us And what you
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are doing? you
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Real-Life Stories: A Window into Authentic English
The video shares Dimitri’s powerful journey with Huntington’s disease, blending personal narrative with factual details. This real-life scenario is perfect for english speaking practice—it uses natural, conversational language while introducing complex topics, mirroring the kind of discussions you might encounter in daily life or exams like IELTS. Listening to his story helps you practice understanding emotional tone, pacing, and clear communication, all key for IELTS speaking practice.
Useful Chunks & Collocations to Master
- "develop symptoms": A common phrase in medical and personal contexts (e.g., "She started to develop symptoms at 13").
- "genetic test": Essential for discussing health and science (e.g., "I took a genetic test to learn about my risk").
- "solitary trip": Describes traveling alone (e.g., "He began a solitary trip across South America").
- "lose autonomy": Refers to losing the ability to care for oneself (e.g., "Over time, she lost autonomy in daily tasks").
- "collect funds": A practical phrase for charity or projects (e.g., "The journey aims to collect funds for research").
Your Shadowing Challenge: Speak Like a Native
Ready to improve your pronunciation and fluency? Try shadow speech (or shadowspeak) with a 1-minute clip from the video. Here’s how: Play a short segment, pause, and repeat it immediately, mimicking Dimitri’s tone, stress, and rhythm. Focus on phrases like "the essence of the journey" or "contribute to something sacred"—notice how he emphasizes key words. Do this 3-5 times, then record yourself. Compare your version to the original: Did you match the pace? Did you stress the right words? This exercise is a proven way to improve english pronunciation and build confidence in real-time speaking. You’ve got this—every repeat brings you closer to sounding natural!
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 passed · I've been · has transmitted |
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | was born · is still known · are infected |
| Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing | people who are |
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.