Shadowing Practice: Tom Bateman Gets Real About Christmas With 13 Siblings! - Learn English Speaking with Video
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1
Hello, I mean, everybody leads with this, but I'm so sorry, but 13 siblings?
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I know, it's one of those things, you don't...
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Is Christmas hell?
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Yeah, it feels a little bit just like all these people here, I'm like, everyone's a family member.
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No, Christmas is wonderful.
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It's one of these funny things about my life that I don't think is strange until people ask me about anything.
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Yeah, I guess that is kind of strange, isn't it?
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13 siblings.
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Do you have to buy presents for every...
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Do you all do like, and then there's cousins and then there, those people multiply.
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And they do, they keep, and I'm at the point in life where everyone's getting married and having kids.
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You're like, oh my God, there are so many of us.
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My dad told me this the other day, he has 21 grandchildren now.
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Isn't that crazy?
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I know.
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What a footprint to leave by, honest.
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I know, exactly.
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That's amazing.
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But no, we never do, we never buy presents.
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We do, you know, like Secret Santa?
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Yeah, I love it.
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We do that.
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So we'll sort of pick names out of a hat.
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Oh, what a, take the pressure off.
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We could probably do it for 30 years
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and still never get the same name twice you know yeah oh my god that's so funny
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and sad um that's just my life no wait as it's also awesome
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i'm just kidding that's actually a cool thing to have
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that much family surrounding you
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but um as britsa will you do have you ever celebrated thanksgiving have you ever been over here well
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i've been here twice i've uh been here for thanksgiving
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which i just love we obviously don't have it back in my country
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but um going over to people's houses and get like beginning to be with their families and stuff, the amazing food, I love it.
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It's a wonderful holiday, yeah.
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Yeah, it's a no pressure one for big families.
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Yes.
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So wait, so you and Daisy, you've done a few projects together.
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Do you like, do y 'all like doing projects together and working together when it collides?
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Completely, I love it.
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Daisy's my favorite person.
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She's one of my favorite actors.
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Exactly, so working with her is wonderful.
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We obviously met on the movie, Murder on the Orient Express, and oh look, there we are now.
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Yeah.
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And working with her is wonderful.
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I wrote a movie, I've written a bunch, but the the first one that um was made was one
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that we made together i wrote it for daisy it's called magpie it came out last year
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and uh it was one of my favorite writing experiences she's one of my favorite actors
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so to write for her was just um this is my question though
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because i have worked with a significant other is it easy to be
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that kind of honest like when like with each are you all good at
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that we are we don't skirt around it no
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and she really does she's very um honest in direct yeah yeah that's good like something
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or doesn't like it but um yeah no
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Oh, we love it.
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And also, our tastes align, but we love what we do so much.
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And if we ever have a difference of opinion over a movie or something, it's always interesting to hear the other person's point of view.
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I find her point of view fascinating, even if I love something and she hated it.
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Well, you're both open.
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Okay, that works.
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Yeah, so it works.
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Yeah.
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Yeah, that's wonderful.
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All right.
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Because a lot of times you get pulled away on projects
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and you don't see a significant other in your line of work.
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So it's kind of nice when it does align.
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Yeah.
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Your new film is Hedda.
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So it's loosely based on a classic stage play, right?
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That's correct.
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So explain to everybody kind of what it's about.
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Hedda Gabler, written by Henrik Ibsen, is a classic play.
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I've actually, I studied it for A -level literature.
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I have performed in it as a different character.
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I played Islet Loveborg.
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Oh, that's cool.
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You get to dive in now.
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Yeah, it was super fun.
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So I thought I really knew this text, but what Nia DaCosta, the writer -director, has done with it, is totally, she's modernized it.
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It's set in the 1950s.
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She's set it all over the course of one party, right?
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And so it's like a really intense, amazing kind of salt burn meets...
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I don't know.
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Do you know what I mean?
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It has elements of that.
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It's beautiful.
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It's gorgeous.
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Oh, it's so beautiful.
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Sean Barber, our director of photography, did an amazing job.
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But playing this character is amazing, because I thought I knew the play.
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I thought I knew this material.
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When I read what Nia had done, I thought, my God, I had no idea what could be possible with this kind of adaptation.
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She really just opened it all up.
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Because it's pushed forward.
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It's now in the, is it based in the 40s?
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1950s.
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50s, yeah.
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And she's gender -swapped one of the characters.
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So the character that I played when I left drama school, Islet Loveborg, is now Eileen Loveborg, played by the amazing Nina Haas.
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So we also have this sort of sexuality tension between Tessa and her, and it's an amazing film.
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It's an amazing piece.
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I love tension.
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This is tension from the off, you know?
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It's a whole night of that, and people not showing who they truly are they're playing games with each other.
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Everyone's just sort of moving each other around like a little chess piece, lying, stabbing each other in the back.
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So it was a real, real lovely, great work to be doing.
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Yeah, it's beautiful and gorgeous as well.
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So well done, the whole thing.
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All right, well, let's take another break, everybody.
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Hedda is now streaming on Prime Video.
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Thank you so much.
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This speaking lesson is built on the video “Tom Bateman Gets Real About Christmas With 13 Siblings!”. The speaker keeps coming back to these words: amazing, wonderful, favorite. This video has 114 sentences and 1031 words to shadow. The speech runs for 4:33. The speaker talks fast, about 227 words per minute, so expect linked and reduced sounds. 86% 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 |
|---|---|---|
| tension noun | /ˈtɛnʃən/ | The condition of being held in a state between two or more forces, which are acting in opposition to each other. |
| gorgeous adjective | /ˈɡoɹd͡ʒəs/ | Sumptuously dressed. |
| align verb | /əˈlaɪn/ | To form a line; to fall into line. |
| sibling noun | /ˈsɪb.lɪŋ/ | A person who shares a parent; one's brother or sister who one shares a parent with. |
| element noun | /ˈɛləmənt/ | One of the simplest or essential parts or principles of which anything consists, or upon which the constitution or fundamental powers of anything are based. |
| photography noun | /fəˈtɑ.ɡɹə.fi/ | The art and technology of producing images on photosensitive surfaces, and its digital counterpart. |
| cousin noun | /ˈkʌz(ə)n/ | Chiefly with a qualifying word: Any relation (especially a distant one) who is not a direct ancestor or descendant but part of a person's extended family; a… |
| intense adjective | /ɪnˈtɛns/ | Of a characteristic: extreme or very high or strong in degree; severe; also, excessive, towering. |
| feedback noun | /ˈfiːdˌbæk/ | Critical assessment of a process or activity or of their results. |
| forty adjective | /ˈfoɹti/ | Resembling or characteristic of a fort. |
| dive verb | /daɪv/ | To swim under water. |
| adaptation noun | /ˌæd.æpˈteɪ.ʃən/ | The process of adapting something or becoming adapted to a situation; adjustment, modification. |
| skirt noun | /skɚt/ | A separate article of clothing, usually worn by women and girls, that hangs from the waist and covers the lower torso and part of the legs. |
| chess noun | /t͡ʃɛs/ | A board game for two players, each beginning with sixteen chess pieces moving according to fixed rules across a chessboard with the objective to checkmate the… |
| swap verb | /ˈswɑp/ | To exchange or give (something) in an non-normal exchange (for something else). |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| come out verb | /ˌkʌm ˈaʊt/ | To be discovered; to be revealed. |
| push forward verb | To continue to act or do something, especially with a lot of effort | |
| work out verb | /ˌwɝk ˈaʊt/ | To calculate. |
| work together verb | To be coworkers with someone; to share a workspace with someone. |
Sentences worth repeating
Short, complete lines from the video that you can reuse in everyday conversation:
- Have you ever been over here well?
- We obviously don't have it back in my country.
- She's one of my favorite actors.
- I don't know, you know what I mean?
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 24 contractions and reduced forms, such as don't, I've, I'm. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: tension /ˈtɛnʃən/, adaptation /ˌæd.æpˈteɪ.ʃən/
- Long words — get the stress right: photography /fəˈtɑ.ɡɹə.fi/, adaptation /ˌæd.æpˈteɪ.ʃən/
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 tension, gorgeous, align.
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.