Shadowing Practice: travel & learn English to fix your memory problem - Learn English Speaking with Video

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They say that travelling while learning English helps you remember words 78 % better.

I don't know who says it, but I think they're right.

So travel with me across

China while we collect new English words.

And I have some very exciting news.

Something I've been working on for a long time.

More to come on that later.

Today I brought you guys with me to learn English in Nanjing

which is the capital city of the Jiangsu province in eastern China.

The city has a long history.

It's known for its old temples, beautiful gardens, and ancient city walls.

I wonder what we'll find today.

Hello, hello.

It is 9am on a Sunday morning.

The first few words we're going to collect are carriage.

We can call this a carriage or a coach.

It's a part of a train.

The second word where we get on the train or get off the train is called the platform.

Right now I'm standing on the train platform and over there we have my camera ward.

Now for the next word let's get on the escalator.

This is an escalator and this is my suitcase on the escalator.

This is the handle of the suitcase and this is the hand rail on the escalator let's go

so guys we've dropped our bags at the hotel and we've arrived at jiming temple

which is ancient ancient means very very old and this temple is about 1500 years old

So we have some steps to climb.

These are steps.

When they're outside, they are steps.

When they're inside, they are stairs.

So let's climb the steps.

Let's go up the steps.

Guys, I am very excited to tell you something.

We have officially launched Sprout in China.

On the App Store and on our website sproutlanguage .com if you're from China you can now use Sprout.

If you're someone who can understand English but you struggle to speak then you need an English speaking environment.

You need a way to speak in in a fun and stress -free way.

On Sprout, we've built an English immersion system.

You watch native English videos, learn key vocab with flashcards, and then speak with AI and receive feedback.

So, day by day, you can improve your English and become fluent.

And if you're already part of our growing community on Sprout, I wanna say thank you so much.

Now, so I can hear some people chanting.

That sound that you can hear there is chanting.

chanting the buddhist monks are chanting inside of the temple

and i've just been told an interesting fact

that all of the buddhist monks here are women they are chanting some beautiful champs

up there is a temple a very tall temple

so this is a ginkgo tree and they often call this the gold leaf tree

because in autumn the leaves turn yellowy gold and within the tree you have some red ribbons hanging.

These are called ribbons.

A juxtaposition of these ribbons in the distance you can see the scaffolding.

All of this blue poles and building equipment in order to build a building is called scaffolding.

And there is a juxtaposition between the old ancient temple and the new construction.

scaffolding over there.

I've taught this word before but um that word is juxtaposition

when two contrasting elements are in the same space like skyscrapers next to forest.

Juxtaposition, they juxtapose each other.

So cool fact about these, these are the dragons and they are like roof ornaments.

According to ancient Chinese mythology these dragons were put on the

top of the roofs to protect the buildings from fire

because dragons are synonymous with water

and they're not just for decoration they also provide some structural anchoring to keep the roof in shape

and up here on the corner of the roof is a bell

so you see these everywhere these are hanging lanterns

and they are red

because red is the color associated with prosperity with wealth with abundance at the bottom of hanging lantern

you have tassels these are tassels hanging down from the hanging lanterns

so that bell had a very resonant sound when something is resonant it's deep and rich

and it vibrates for much longer after the sound has been made so after i struck the bell

it made a very resonant sound a deep male voice could also be described as resonant

so here you can see the smoke rising from the big pot

and people are throwing incense sticks into a giant pot a big fire

and they're all burning that produces smoke

and the smoke rises into the air

I'm lighting the incense sticks with the flame from the candle you can see the orange flame blowing in the wind

so we're just leaving the temple

and look what we have found

we found a police car with flashing lights these are the flashing lights on top of the police car

and when they make the sound they're called the siren look on the floors guys you can see my shadow

and Shang's shadow.

Say hello.

BTS behind the scenes.

We have a yellow taxi and a giant archway.

This shape is called an arch.

Behind the arch we have a beautiful blue sky.

Today the weather is very pleasant.

When I say pleasant, that's a very common way to describe the weather it means the weather is nice

but it's a better adjective than nice you can use it in your language today you can say oh

wow the weather is very pleasant today and here we have the vending machines

vending machine is one of these machines where you put your money in and gets a drink.

Here we have a cute couple holding hands, swinging their arms.

So now we're walking by a huge lake.

In the distance you can see the mountains.

This is a willow tree, the one that was in Harry Potter

when it was smashing Ron Weasley in Harry's car

and behind the willow tree we have a lake down there we have all the boats on the lake

and that is where we are going my friends

now we are walking along the wooden pier the pier is this thing that sticks out into the lake.

Inside here guys, these are all the life jackets or life vests.

Well guys, we are on a boat on a lake and it's beautiful weather today so feeling good.

I wanted to introduce you to a good friend of mine and actually the co -founder of Sprouts, Blake.

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He's the wizard behind the beautiful app, Sprout, that we have built.

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And do you have anything to say?

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Yeah, I've been working with Jay on Sprout for over a year now.

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And I think both of us fell in love with language learning through Spanish originally, having lived in Spain and learned through immersion.

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Yeah, it's been great working with you on the app.

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And for those of you who are learning with the Sprout app, thank you and if you have any ideas

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or suggestions please leave a comment

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and let us know yeah absolutely we appreciate all your feedback

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and we constantly listen to you guys we want to learn from you

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and improve your experience learning english so thank you

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so much for joining us on this journey to our growing spout community

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and we hope you're enjoying this video this beautiful weather as much as we are.

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So this is the steering wheel, a nice red steering wheel.

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So on the lake you can see the movement of the water and we call that a ripple.

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The water is rippling.

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The sunlight is shining on the lake and it's almost sparkling like a dress.

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We say that is glistening.

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The sunlight is glistening on the water.

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Two words to describe this beautiful view guys.

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I just said it was stunning and Blake said it was scenic.

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We can say stunning, scenic, beautiful, gorgeous, pleasant.

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It's a duck, a real duck.

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The duck is bobbing beneath the water.

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So in the foreground at the bottom of the image you can see the lake.

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In the middle you have the sailboats with the trees behind.

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And far in the distance, in the background, you can see the skyscrapers.

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When talking about an image you can use words like foreground,

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middle and background to help you navigate your way around the photo. And

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if you want to do this more

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you can now use the photo chit chat game in Sprout to practice talking about photos.

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So right now I can take a photo of this lake, I can go into Sprout,

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upload the photo and it's gonna pull key vocabulary from

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that photo and I will speak about it and it will give me personalized feedback on my speaking.

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You can do the same with your phone take any photo upload it into sprouts

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and talk about it for one minute to get your ai feedback it's a wonderful practice

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that i do with all of my students in the infinity class

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and super useful for improving your vocabulary and becoming a better more confident english speaker.

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Good morning, guys.

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It is Monday morning and about half ten.

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The sun is shining.

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We are walking through a national park in Nanjing.

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I'm eating

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probably the most delicious apple i've had in a long long time

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and the plan for today is to head up to hike up to the top of purple mountain

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when you go for a hike it is a long walk usually in nature

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and right now we are walking on a boardwalk this is a boardwalk going through

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forest and just look at that view on the right you can see the sun shining through the canopy

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this top layer of trees in a forest is called the canopy gorgeous

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so now guys we can see that this area is pretty busy there are lots of tourists around just like

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Blake and I

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representing the sprout t -shirts we're on the hike up the mountain and

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that is a buggy the buggy is taking people up the mountain

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this is called the apple core the core of the apple

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just like the core of your body of the core in the center of the earth now this apple goes in

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the bin nope not that side this side there we go

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and blake is from america

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so in america they say the trash can trash can trash can okay in england we say the rubbish bin

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or for short the bin.

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And would you say trash shot?

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I'd say the trash.

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The trash, yeah, to throw the apple in the trash.

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I throw the apple in the bin.

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You, as an English learner, can say whichever one that you please, whichever one you like.

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This is a bridge.

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We are walking under the bridge hey guys

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we have a very old looking train slash car is it a train is it a car

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i guess we'll never know somewhere in between these trees are huge massive they are gigantic they are enormous

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they are humongous they are immense look at the size of the trunk look at this trunk

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there's white paint at the bottom of the trunk and it forks out into this catapult like shape

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by the way i'm holding this leaf this is a an orange leaf

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or a brown leaf because right now the season is autumn it's autumn it's October

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and in the UK we say it's autumn in America where

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Blake is from they say it's the fall fall

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so you can say it's autumn

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or it's fall up here we have the traffic lights and that traffic light is flashing orange,

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or in the UK we say amber, red, amber, green.

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This is flashing amber.

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This is a pavilion with a nice roof and red columns.

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There are some people taking a rest in the shade from the sun.

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So one of the most famous things in China is you would think the palaces, the kings, what did they eat?

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What did the royalty of China eat back in the day?

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Well, let me tell you.

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Okay, and ducky fried chicken.

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Look at that, with a traditional roof.

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So guys the sun is beating down and we have made it to the top.

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Let's go check it out.

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There's one really cool concept I wanted to talk about and you can see above me now the canopy or the trees.

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At the top of the forest the trees don't touch each other.

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The leaves have space between them and they call this crown shyness.

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Now a crown is what a king wears or a queen.

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The crown is also the top of our head and the concept of crown shyness is when the top of the trees,

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the top layer, don't touch so that they all work together in the forest to not take up too much of the sun's light.

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Isn't that a cool concept?

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Crown shyness.

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Now guys we're heading towards the Ming tomb

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and here we have a statue and these statues are over 600 hundred years old,

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according to the sign.

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And here we have a statue of an elephant.

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This is a stone statue of an elephant.

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And did you know what these things are called?

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These are the elephant's tusks.

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The tusks.

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And this long nose is the elephant's trunk.

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We have walked around 16 ,000 steps today and

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that leads me on to the final word of the day which is knackered.

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Naked is a British slang word that we love to use in England and it means you are very tired.

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You can say this with your friends or people that you are close with.

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I am knackered.

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Right now, I'm knackered.

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The next stop is Shanghai.

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Super excited for that next vlog.

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Stay tuned.

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Thank you for watching.

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I hope you found this video useful and I'll see you next time.

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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson

This speaking lesson is built on the video “travel & learn English to fix your memory problem”. The speaker keeps coming back to these words: sprout, tree, english, word, lake. This video has 213 sentences and 2351 words to shadow. The speech runs for 20:06. The speaker talks at a steady 117 words per minute, a comfortable pace for shadowing. 83% 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
temple noun	/ˈtɛm.pl̩/	A house of worship dedicated to a polytheistic faith.
trash noun	/tɹæʃ/	Useless physical things to be discarded; rubbish; refuse.
autumn noun	/ˈɔtəm/	Traditionally the third of the four seasons, when deciduous trees lose their leaves, and temperatures and daylight hours decrease; typically regarded as…
chant verb	/t͡ʃænt/	To sing, especially without instruments, and as applied to monophonic and pre-modern music.
flash verb	/flæʃ/	To cause to shine briefly or intermittently.
feedback noun	/ˈfiːdˌbæk/	Critical assessment of a process or activity or of their results.
leaf noun	/lif/	The usually green and flat organ that represents the most prominent feature of most vegetative plants.
pleasant adjective	/ˈplɛz.ənt/	Giving pleasure; pleasing in manner.
statue noun	/ˈstæt͡ʃu/	A three-dimensional work of art, usually representing a person or animal, usually created by sculpting, carving, molding, or casting.
trunk noun	/tɹʌŋk/	The usually single, more or less upright part of a tree, between the roots and the branches.
dragon noun	/ˈdɹæɡən/	In European mythologies, a gigantic beast, typically reptilian with leathery bat-like wings, lion-like claws, scaly skin and a lizard-like body, often a…
duck noun	/dʌk/	Any of certain aquatic birds of the family Anatidae, having a flat bill and webbed feet, distinguished from swans and geese by generally being smaller and…
shine verb	/ʃaɪn/	To emit or reflect light so as to glow.
amber noun	/ˈæm.bəː/	A hard, generally yellow to brown translucent or transparent fossil resin from extinct coniferous trees of the pine genus, used for jewellery, decoration and…
hike noun	/haɪk/	A long walk, usually for pleasure or exercise.

Phrasal verbs you will hear

Word	Meaning
beat down verb	To forcefully diminish the power or influence of; to quell; to squash.
fall up verb	To benefit in the long run from what seems initially to be a setback.
get off verb	To move from being on top of (something) to not being on top of it.
go through verb	To travel from one end of something to the other.
go up verb	To move upwards.
take up verb	To pick up.
walk around verb	To walk with no planned destination; to meander.
walk through verb	To explain (something) to (someone), step by step.

Sentences worth repeating

Short, complete lines from the video that you can reuse in everyday conversation:

Something I've been working on for a long time.
I wonder what we'll find today.
Let's go up the steps.
Let's go check it out.
Isn't that a cool concept?

Grammar in this video

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

Structure	In the video
Present perfect continuous have/has been + -ing — an action that started earlier and is still going on	I've been working
Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now	we've dropped · have officially launched · we've built
Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it	is called · been told · are called
Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing	someone who can · one that was · day which is

Pronunciation to watch

The speaker uses 38 contractions and reduced forms, such as they're, I'm, I've. Say them the short way, as you hear them.

The “th” sounds: beneath /bɪˈniːθ/, mythology /mɪˈθɑ.lə.d͡ʒi/
The “sh” and “zh” sounds: trash /tɹæʃ/, flash /flæʃ/, shine /ʃaɪn/, shadow /ˈʃædəʊ̯/, contrast /kənˈt(ʃ)ɹæst/
Long words — get the stress right: vocabulary /vəˈkæb.jə.lə.ɹi/, prosperity /pɹɑˈspɛɹ.ɪ.ti/, decoration /ˌdɛkəˈɹeɪʃən/, infinity /ɪnˈfɪnɪti/, mythology /mɪˈθɑ.lə.d͡ʒi/

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 temple, trash, autumn.

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: travel & learn English to fix your memory problem - Learn English Speaking with Video

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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson

Key vocabulary in this video

Phrasal verbs you will hear

Sentences worth repeating

Grammar in this video

Pronunciation to watch

How to practise with this video

What is the Shadowing Technique?