Shadowing Practice: True Love Debate | Alex Yeandle | Opposition (2/6) - Learn English Speaking with Video
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I now look to Alex Yeendall, St Hugh's College, to open the case for the opposition.
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Mr President, thank you very much.
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Thank you very much
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and it of course goes without saying how honoured I am
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to have been given the opportunity to speak in this debate and I'm incredibly grateful to yourself, I'm incredibly grateful to our guests,
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but primarily I'm incredibly grateful to the members in the chamber tonight for giving me an audience to talk to.
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The motion before us this evening is one that can be explored through a wide variety of academic disciplines.
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We could consider the neuroscience of what love is in a materialist sense we could, if you like, recognise the slight irony that we would be analysing chemistry with chemistry.
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We could consider psychological explanations of why we love the people we do, and what qualities it is that makes them attractive to us.
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Finally, perhaps, we might consider the sociological and philosophical questions, whether we all love in the same way,
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whether love is something that actually has a sense of intrinsic value, value or instead whether the relationships we hold with others are nothing more than an expression of the society in
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which we live.
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Now as a PPE student you will probably expect me to stand here
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and talk a lot about a lot of different subject areas each of which I don't really know anything about.
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Um...
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But of course that in itself would not be doing our motion any justice.
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For instead I wish to speak of why true love is something that we can reform,
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of why it is something that we of course need to tweak and clarify and make sure that we understand, but it is something
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that has the genuine power to be one of the greatest prizes of our short existence on this planet.
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And of course, as Freya mentioned, I am not going to make any attempts to skirt over the fact that true love, in the way that perhaps we intuitively understand it,
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perhaps in the way we have been taught as children or in Disney films, is a perfect conception of what true love is.
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Instead, I want to argue why an amended true love, a true love that is fit for the 21st century, fit for modern consumption, is one that can be a benefit to the entire world.
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As an idea in our minds and as a predicate of our entire worldview,
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I wish to demonstrate to you tonight why abandoning the ideal of true love would be deeply damaging to humanity's progress, its well-being and its future.
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Firstly, however, it falls upon me to introduce the proposition speakers for tonight's debate.
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You've already heard from Freya Dixon van Dijk, a second year human sciences student from St John's College.
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And as you will have discovered listening to her, Freya is a very eloquent public speaker.
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What you might not know, however, is that for all her talk about true love, Freya was in fact an avid reader of Stephanie Meyer's Twilight series.
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And I have it on good authority from one of Freya's close friends that, and I quote, she used to skip through the books to get to the kissing scenes.
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Now if you find yourself talking to Freya at some point after this debate, you may well end up talking about the topic of her gap year.
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And all I will say is this, I'm not sure if there are any romantic tales within that one gap here, but to draw upon a very old meme, I'm sure it would still be a better love story than Twilight.
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So, secondly, you will hear from Professor Amy Webb, a seasoned writer and speaker in the field of love and data.
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Amy has written award-winning books and currently lectures at New York University, but she is equally well known for her fascinating TED talk entitled How I Hacked Online Dating,
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explaining her transition from a lack of dates and romantic interest, relatable, to her eventual success in finding a partner.
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Now I must confess, Mr President, that as I was researching Professor Webb in preparation for tonight's debate, I came across this TED talk and I thought that sounds interesting,
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I'm going to start watching it only to realise it was a talk I was very familiar with already.
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Lastly you will hear from Professor Simon Blackburn, is a world-renowned emeritus professor of philosophy at the other place.
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Simon has spoken at events across the globe,
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he has written influential books and has been published in some of the most prestigious journals in his field.
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And whilst of course my knowledge of philosophy as a subject area is as nothing compared to his,
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we do perhaps have one more surprising activity in common.
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You see in 2014 before starting an interview with OXTEW, the Oxford University student newspaper.
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Professor Blackburn remarked, could we do it over some wine?
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There is nothing like a drink after the adrenaline rush of giving a talk.
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Professor, I will see you for President's drinks in the Gladstone Room later tonight.
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Mr President, these are your speakers and they are indeed most welcome.
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So, to move on to the crux of my argument itself, the first point that I wish to make this evening is
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that if we are to blindly follow the proposition's case and to abandon the ideal of true love altogether, we need to be crystal clear about exactly what it is that we are abandoning.
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And here we run into perhaps a slightly interesting notion, in that the proposition was more than happy to point out the problems with one interpretation of true love,
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but seemed to take this one interpretation as being static or unchanging or rigid.
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And this is something that I wish to challenge.
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You see, I think old-fashioned conceptions of true love, even of love in general, can of course run into problems when confronted with a modern, progressive society.
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I'm not here to defend a clichéd, patriarchal, heteronormative, impossible illusion of love.
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And you see, the notion that true love is about a man marrying a woman, you know, they buy a nice house, they go and live in the suburbs, the man works, the wife stays at home,
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they retire, they get a nice pension, they live in a home, they die.
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That is not what I am talking about here this evening.
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This is not at all valid with the lives that we leave today, and and neither should it be.
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And we can progress on a deeper level.
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There's this constant implicit assumption that true love has to be this one person, that once you meet your one true love,
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you'll be completely perfect for each other for the rest of time until the day you die.
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No, the person who is perfect for me today is by
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no means necessarily the same person who's going to be perfect for me in 50 years time.
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The short 20 years that I have been on this planet has taught me that people change.
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Indeed, the short few terms I have been on Oxford Union Committee has taught me that people change.
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So I appreciate that so far I have spent a lot of time giving you broad, general arguments, and I haven't actually given you my own definition of true love.
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But I will, of course, get onto this now.
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So for me, we have to start from here.
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that true love is about recognition that nobody, absolutely nobody, is perfect.
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Perfect with somebody else or perfect by themselves.
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Nobody is perfect.
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It's about the idea that there is somebody who can improve us.
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It doesn't have to be one person, but there has to be somebody existing on this planet Earth who can make us a better person, somebody who can make us happier.
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True love is about the idea that this can be reciprocated, that both parties can end up benefiting from each other whilst perceiving one of the greatest emotional feelings known to mankind.
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And again, critics will say, as the proposition already has, that our perception of love is perhaps nothing more than a selection of hormones drowning our brains.
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Hormones that can be fabricated in a laboratory and fed to us down dark alleyways in brightly coloured little pills.
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But this is, I believe, quite frankly besides the point.
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It is, you know, a feeling of true love is a symptom of something else that is going on.
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It is a necessary but not sufficient condition.
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It is one part of a far greater human puzzle.
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You know, it is Aristotle who says love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies.
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And whilst maybe two as a numerical value could be questioned, the general point here is, I think, quite beautiful.
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Humans are quite clearly social animals by the way that we see and we think,
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and by ourselves we can only understand a tiny fraction of what we could with somebody else.
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True love has this remarkable ability to open our eyes to the world in a way that nothing else can.
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To put this another way, we must build our conception of true love around our lives rather than building our lives around our conception of true love. Of course.
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We must be brave, bold, unafraid, radical in constructing a true love that is fit for the 21st century.
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But be in no doubts that voting with the proposition this evening does not allow you to do that.
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Voting with the proposition this evening is saying, that's it.
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We give up.
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We are abandoning it as an ideal because we do not want to try and fix and reform.
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We do not want to make our lives better.
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We simply want to pretend the problem doesn't exist, brush it under the carpet and go on being miserable.
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So you may ask, what is the point of fixing this concept if there are problems with it already?
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And the point is this, walking away from one of the most powerful emotions known to man
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and the implicit norm that we ought to embrace it is, I believe, akin to abandoning a core tenet of the imperfect perfection of being human.
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Quite simply, abandoning one of the most fundamental things about being ourselves.
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A belief in true love is not just about how we view our potential partners, but about how we view our existence as human beings and the worldview that subsequently defines it.
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We have the power to shape not just our own happiness, but to shape the driving forces and inspiration between cultures and people the world over.
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So that said, whether you view yourself as the deepest and the deepest of romantics,
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or whether you view yourself as the most rational of economic agents, whether you think with your heart, whether you think with your head, whether you think with some other organ of your body,
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the ideal of true love has practical purposes
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that I think make it an irrefutable goal for every human being on this planet.
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If you walk through the nose door and vote with the opposition at the end of tonight's debate, let me be absolutely clear
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that you are not signing up to committing the rest of your days searching for a Disney princess style happily ever after, nor you committing yourself to scrolling through thousands upon thousands upon
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thousands of oxloves desperately searching for the faintest whiff of your name.
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You are instead making a gesture, a strong, bold gesture that in a world teetering with misery, with pain, with suffering, with rampant nationalism,
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with climate change, with Brexit, with Donald Trump.
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There is something that we can hope for, that we can salvage and that we can hold onto.
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Mr President, if I may, I would like to finish with a quote tonight.
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Of all people, it is Friedrich Nietzsche, the philosopher, who says, There is always some madness in love,
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but there is also always some reason in madness.
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In echoing these sentiments, honourable members, I would urge you to vote with the opposition this evening.
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Thank you very much.
Why This Video Is Perfect for English Speaking Practice
This clip from a debate about true love is a goldmine for learners. The speaker, Alex Yeandle, uses natural, conversational English with a mix of formal and casual tones—ideal for practicing real-world communication. His pacing is steady, and he pauses thoughtfully, making it easy to follow and mimic. Plus, the content is engaging, which helps you stay focused as you work on shadow speech or pronunciation. Whether you’re using a shadowing app or a shadowing site, this video offers diverse language to challenge and improve your skills.
Breaking Down Natural English Phrases
Let’s look at a few lines that sound authentic and why: - “it goes without saying how honoured I am”: This common phrase softens formality, showing humility. Native speakers use such expressions to connect with audiences. - “I’m not sure if there are any romantic tales within that gap year”: The casual “tales” and “within that” flow naturally, avoiding stiff language. Notice how “gap year” is a common term, perfect for vocabulary building. - “we run into perhaps a slightly interesting notion”: The hesitation “perhaps a slightly” makes the speech sound unscripted, a key trait of real conversation. These phrases teach you to balance clarity with warmth, a skill vital for fluent speaking.
A Simple Shadowing Routine for This Video
Try this learn English with videos practice: 1. Watch the clip once to understand the message. 2. Pick a 30-second segment. Pause after each sentence, then repeat it aloud, mimicking the tone and pace. 3. Record yourself. Compare it to the original—note differences in stress (e.g., “genuine power”) or intonation (rising at the end of questions). 4. Use a shadowing app to slow down the audio if needed. Focus on tricky words like “neuroscience” or “intrinsic” to improve English pronunciation. Repeat daily, and you’ll soon notice your speech sounds more natural and confident.
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.