Shadowing Practice: 🐌🐳The Snail and the Whale - Animated Read Aloud Book - Learn English Speaking with Video
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The Snail and the Whale Julia Donaldson Axel Scheffler The Snail and the Whale
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This is the tail of a tiny snail and the great big grey-blue humpback whale.
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This is a rock as black as soot and this is a snail with an itchy foot.
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The sea snail slithered all over the rock and gazed at the sea and the ships in the dock.
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As she gazed, she sniffled and sighed.
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The sea is deep and the world is wide.
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How I long to sail, said the tiny snail.
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These are the other snails in the flock, who all stuck tight to the smooth black rock,
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and said to the snail with the itchy foot, Be quiet, don't wriggle, sit still, stay put.
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But the tiny sea snail sighed and sniffed, then cried, I've got it, I'll hitch a lift.
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This is the trail of the tiny snail, a silvery trail that looped and curled and said...
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Lift wanted around the world.
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This is the whale who came one night, when the tide was high and the stars were bright.
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A humpback whale, immensely long,
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who sang to the snail a wonderful song of shimmering ice and coral caves and shooting stars and enormous waves.
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And this is the tail of the humpback whale.
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He held it out of the starlet sea and said to the snail, Come sail with me.
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This is the sea so wild and free that carried the whale and the snail on his tail.
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To towering icebergs and far off lands
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With fiery mountains and golden sands Ah!
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The waves are falling.
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These are the waves that arched and crashed, that foamed and frolicked and sprayed and splashed.
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The tiny snail on the tail of the whale.
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These are the caves beneath the waves where stripy fish with feathery fins and sharks with hideous toothy grins
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swam round the whale and the snail on his tail.
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This is the sky so vast and high, sometimes sunny and blue and warm, sometimes filled with a thunderstorm,
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with zigzag lightning, flashing and frightening, the tiny snail on the tail of the whale.
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And she gazed at the sky, the sea, the land, the waves and the caves and the golden sand.
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She gazed and gazed, amazed by it all, and she said to the whale, I feel so small!
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But then came the day.
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The whale lost his way.
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These are the speedboats running a race, zigging and zooming all over the place,
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upsetting the whale with their ear-splitting roar, making him swim too close to the shore.
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This is the tide slipping away.
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And this is the whale lying beached in a bay.
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Quick!
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Off the sand!
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Back to sea! cried the snail.
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I can't move on land.
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I'm too big! moaned the whale.
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The snail felt helpless and terribly small.
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Then, I've got it, she cried and started to crawl.
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I must not fail, said the tiny snail.
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I'm
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going to
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go to the next episode.
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This is the bell on the school in the bay, ringing the children in from their play.
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This is the teacher holding her chalk, telling the class, Sit straight, don't talk.
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This is the board as black as suit.
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And this is the snail with the itchy foot.
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A snail!
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A snail!
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The teacher turns pale.
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Look!
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Say the children, It's leaving a trail!
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This is the trail of the tiny snail,
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a silvery trail saying, Save the whale!
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These are the children running from school.
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Fetching the
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firemen, digging a pool .
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Squirting and spraying to keep the whale cool
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This is the tide coming into the bay.
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And these are the villagers shouting hooray,
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as the whale and the snail travel safely away.
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The Back
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to the dock and the flock on the rock, who said, How time's flown!
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And, Haven't you grown?
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And the whale and the snail told their wonderful tale of shimmering ice and coral caves and shooting stars and enormous waves.
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And how the snail, so small and frail, with her looping, curly silvery trail,
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saved the life of the humpback whale.
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Then the humpback whale held out his tail, and on curled the snail after snail after snail.
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And they sang to the sea as they all set sail on the tail of the grey-blue humpback whale.
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Thank you for watching!
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This A2 speaking lesson is built on the video “🐌🐳The Snail and the Whale - Animated Read Aloud Book”. The speaker keeps coming back to these words: snail, whale, sea, tail, tiny. This video has 74 sentences and 733 words to shadow. The speech runs for 13:06. 70% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English; the rest is worth studying before you start.
Key vocabulary in this video
15 words from the video worth learning, with pronunciation and meaning:
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| snail noun | /sneɪl/ | Any of very many animals (either hermaphroditic or nonhermaphroditic), of the class Gastropoda, having a coiled shell. |
| whale noun | /ˈweɪl/ | Any large cetacean, usually with the exclusion of dolphins and porpoises. |
| tail noun | /ˈteɪ̯l/ | An object or part of an object resembling a tail in shape, such as the thongs on a cat-o'-nine-tails; a strand of material hanging from something. |
| trail noun | /tɹeɪl/ | The track or indication marking the route followed by something that has passed, such as the footprints of animal on land or the contrail of an airplane in the… |
| gaze verb | /ɡeɪz/ | To stare intently or earnestly. |
| cave noun | /keɪv/ | A large, naturally-occurring cavity formed underground or in the face of a cliff or a hillside. |
| sand noun | /sænd/ | Rock that is ground more finely than gravel, but is not as fine as silt (more formally, see grain sizes chart), forming beaches and deserts and also used in… |
| tide noun | /taɪd/ | The daily fluctuation in the level of the sea caused by the gravitational influence of the moon and the sun. |
| sail noun | /seɪl/ | A piece of fabric attached to a boat and arranged such that it causes the wind to drive the boat along. The sail may be attached to the boat via a combination… |
| grey adjective | /ɡɹeɪ/ | Commonwealth standard spelling of gray. |
| loop noun | /luːp/ | A length of thread, line or rope that is doubled over to make an opening. |
| enormous adjective | /ɪˈnɔː.məs/ | Extremely large; greatly exceeding the common size, extent, etc. |
| swim verb | /swɪm/ | To move through the water, without touching the bottom; to propel oneself in water by natural means. |
| spray noun | /spɹeɪ/ | A fine, gentle, dispersed mist of liquid. |
| dock noun | /dɑk/ | A fixed structure attached to shore to which a vessel is secured when in port; usually for loading and unloading. |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Meaning |
|---|---|
| hold out verb | To hold (something) out; to extend (something) forward. |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 9 contractions and reduced forms, such as don't, I'm, I've. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “th” sounds: smooth /smuːð/, beneath /bɪˈniːθ/, feathery /ˈfɛ.ðəɹ.i/, slither /ˈslɪðɚ/, thunderstorm /ˈθʌn.dɚˌstɔɹm/
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: flash /flæʃ/, shore /ʃɔɹ/, shout /ʃaʊt/, splash /splæʃ/, shimmer /ˈʃɪm.ɚ/
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 snail, whale, tail.
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.