Shadowing Practice: The Value of TIME - Powerful Motivational Speech - Learn English Speaking with Video
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56 sentences
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When asked what's the biggest mistake we make in life, the Buddha replied, the biggest mistake is you think you have time.
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Time is free, but it's priceless.
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You can't own it, but you can use it.
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You can't keep it, but you can spend it.
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And once it's lost, you can never get it back.
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The average person lives 78 years.
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We spend 28 .3 years of our life sleeping.
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That's almost a third of our life, but 30 % of us struggle to sleep well.
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We spend 10 .5 years of our life working, but over 50 % of us want to leave our current jobs.
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Time is more valuable than money.
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You can get more money, but you can never get more time.
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We spend nine years on TV and social media.
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We spend six years doing chores.
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We spend four years eating and drinking.
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We spend three and a half years in education.
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We spend two and a half years grooming.
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We spend two and a half years shopping.
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We spend one and a half years in childcare and we spend 1 .3 years commuting.
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That leaves us with nine years.
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How will we spend that time?
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Steve Jobs said your time is limited so don't waste it living someone else's life.
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So there's good news and there's bad news.
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The bad news is time flies, the good news is you're the pilot.
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Imagine you wake up every day with $86 ,400 in your bank account
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and at the end of the night it's all gone.
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Whether you spent it or not.
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And then the next day you get another $86 ,400.
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What would we do with it?
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Every day 86 ,400 seconds are deposited into your life account.
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At the end of the day, once they're all used up, you get a new 86 ,400 seconds.
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We would never waste it if it was money.
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So why do we waste it when it comes to time?
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Those seconds are so much more powerful than dollars because you can always make more dollars, you can't always make more time.
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To realise the value of one year, ask a student who failed a grade.
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To realise the value of one month, ask a mother who lost her child in the final month.
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To realise the value of one week, ask the editor of an online magazine.
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To realise the value of one hour, ask the couple who's in a long distance relationship.
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To realize the value of one minute, ask the person who just missed a bus, train or plane
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To realize the value of one second, ask the person who just missed an accident
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And to realize the value of a millisecond,
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ask the person who just came second at the Olympics We think that it's people wasting our time,
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that it's really us giving them the permission to do that and in reality these two people live inside us.
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Don't let someone be a priority when all you are to them is an option.
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Some of us lose the people most important to us because we don't value their time.
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Some of us don't recognize how important someone is to us until they're gone.
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Inside all of us are two voices.
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One voice that wants to uplift, one voice that wants us to expand, one voice that wants us to grow and then there's the other voice,
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the voice that holds us back, the voice that makes us lazy, the voice that makes us complacent, the voice that restricts us from our potential.
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Every day from the moment we wake up to the moment
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we go to sleep inside of us there's this battle between the two voices and guess which one wins?
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The one that we listen to the most, the one that we feed, the one that we amplify.
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It is our choice of how we use our time.
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Life and time are the best two teachers.
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Life teaches us to make good use of time and time teaches us the value of life.
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And as William Shakespeare said, time is very slow for those who want, very fast for those who are scared,
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very long for those who are sad very short for those who celebrate but for those who love time is eternal
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This speaking lesson is built on the video “The Value of TIME - Powerful Motivational Speech”. The speaker keeps coming back to these words: spend, voice, value, realise, waste. This video has 56 sentences and 703 words to shadow. The speech runs for 4:38. The speaker talks at a natural 152 words per minute, close to everyday conversation. 94% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English, so the vocabulary is easy to follow.
Key vocabulary in this video
15 words from the video worth learning, with pronunciation and meaning:
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| realise verb | Non-Oxford British standard spelling of realize. | |
| priority noun | /pɹaɪˈɒɹɪti/ | An item's relative importance. |
| expand verb | /ɪkˈspænd/ | To change (something) from a smaller form or size to a larger one; to spread out or lay open. |
| deposit noun | /dɪˈpɑ.zɪt/ | Sediment or rock that is not native to its present location or is different from the surrounding material. Sometimes refers to ore or gems. |
| lazy adjective | /ˈleɪ̯zi(ː)/ | Unwilling to do work or make an effort; disinclined to exertion. |
| leaf noun | /lif/ | The usually green and flat organ that represents the most prominent feature of most vegetative plants. |
| eternal adjective | /ɪˈtɝ.nl̩/ | Lasting forever; unending. |
| scare verb | /skɛɚ/ | To frighten, terrify, startle, especially in a minor way. |
| restrict verb | /ɹɪˈstɹɪkt/ | To restrain within boundaries; to limit; to confine |
| groom verb | /ɡɹum/ | To attend to one's appearance and clothing. |
| priceless adjective | /ˈpɹaɪslɪs/ | So precious as not to be obtainable or sold at any price. |
| commute verb | /kəˈmjuːt/ | To exchange substantially; to abate but not abolish completely, a penalty, obligation, or payment in return for a great, single thing or an aggregate; to cash… |
| amplify verb | /ˈæm.plə.faɪ/ | To render larger, more extended, or more intense. |
| childcare noun | The act, practice, or occupation of supervising and taking care of young children. | |
| chore noun | /t͡ʃoɹ/ | A task, especially a regularly needed task for the upkeep of a home or similar, such as cleaning or preparing meals. |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| use up verb | To consume, deplete, expend, or exhaust. | |
| wake up verb | /ˌweɪk ˈʌp/ | To stop sleeping; to awake. |
Sentences worth repeating
Short, complete lines from the video that you can reuse in everyday conversation:
- You can't own it, but you can use it.
- You can't keep it, but you can spend it.
- How will we spend that time?
- What would we do with it?
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 10 contractions and reduced forms, such as don't, can't, they're. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- Long words — get the stress right: priority /pɹaɪˈɒɹɪti/, millisecond /ˈmɪlɪˌsɛkənd/
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 realise, priority, expand.
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.