Shadowing Practice: U.S. Marine Corps Special Operations - An Inside Look - Learn English Speaking with Video
Creating lesson...
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We have 12S19 in the open.
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Roger, understand 12S19 in the open.
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Good read back, requesting 1Lowal, leaving target line is 090 PRS.
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Understand 1Lowal on 0K out and I am now ready time of flight.
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Roger, Spectre 11 rifle away.
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Rifle out.
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Laser on.
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Spectre 11 this is Shadow, 12S19 catastrophic kill, end of engagement.
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The United States was hit today by the biggest wave of terrorist attacks ever seen.
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Both of the massive towers have now collapsed.
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These acts of mass murder were intended to frighten our nation into chaos and retreat, but they have failed.
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Our military is powerful, and it's prepared.
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My title is the Marine Raider!
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My title is the Marine Raider!
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Secretary of Defense wanted some type of special operations unit
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and what the Marine Corps came up at the time was Detachment 1.
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From the time DET-1 was stood up around February, March, April 2003 to the time we deployed was just a year.
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Because Iraq was really kicking off in 2003, 2004, we were working through how this was going to come together.
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They were looking at the next deployment cycle.
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So they were experimenting and planning and coming up with different options of how we would be employed.
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I got my orders and they were contingent on me completing a multiple courses before I got there.
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Started off with jump school, went to airborne at Fort Benning for three weeks, went directly to Sears School, checked into the debt, and then immediately went to dynamic entry and breacher course.
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And then, like, they started slowing down a little on, like, the courses necessarily, but more of the exercises and training internal to the unit.
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The order of the day was get your gear, put it on, here's some ammo, stow everything.
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We need you on the roof and on the walls.
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We were a proof of concept.
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Now all the studies and findings were inarguable.
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We could do whatever the soft forces requirements were at a very high level.
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Long gone was those questions whether we belonged or not.
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The decision was we want that debt.
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Where do we put them?
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Everyone's like, what is MARSOC's niche?
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You know, your kind of maritime, your kind of land.
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And everyone's like, well MARSOC does it all.
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What's MARSOC's niche?
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It's really just its quality.
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When MARSOC stood up, I was in the first Marine Special Operations Company, Golf.
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We deployed to Afghanistan and we were in Helmand Province, so really southern Afghanistan and had pretty clear orders.
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Find the enemy and eliminate them.
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The direct action core activity using organic targeting assets and organic intelligence assets that we had,
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we were focused immediately on targeting Taliban leadership and networks.
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We saw great success in starting to turn the tide.
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SAF were the only ones that had trained, advised, assist.
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MARSOC were critical with our NSW partners, essentially stopping the tide of ISIS and taking back Mosul and then ultimately pushing them back up.
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I came in on an 0311 contract, I went to SOI, and Recon came and gave us a sales pitch.
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I went and took the Recon Indocrination Challenge, and I graduated SOI, went straight to Recon.
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When I finished the deployment, Platoon Sergeant said, we sent some guys up to MARSOC and think that you should go.
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So, under his recommendation, I said yes, and I came to MARSOC.
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I had about a slumber until I went to Assessment Selection, and then I was the first class of ITC.
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I was a junior sergeant.
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I came to the hotel company, which was my first company, and I was on team two, and John Gifford was my team chief.
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So I had the best of the best for two deployments.
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I think one of the things is Marines were very good at adapting and overcoming,
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but within SOCOM, what we found was that we were truly required to build our missions from the bottom up.
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How did we adapt MARSOC to be able to support these other deployments
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that were coming up in the FCOM and PACOM region?
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We refocused on trying to get quality training to prepare them for these deployments.
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Trying to get some of our Raiders into key positions in TSOCs
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so they could help inform decisions on how MARSOC would be employed in these areas was key.
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of it is that direct action hand, and the other part is the hand that helps prepare the environment.
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And that's through knowing the culture, building those relationships, building that trust.
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And you do that through showing up over and over and over again.
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So then that way they could do it on their own and we wouldn't have to do it for them.
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We'd always been kind of looking at how we could be better capable as a MARSOC organization in the Lutols.
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And so it was really taking a look at what would they need different to be able to operate in
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that particular environment.
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It forced us to take a re-look at you know what were we man and train and cook with, what would we need differently in that in that theater.
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We then figure out where's the best place that we want to put these organizations, who's best fit for this.
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That's what people count on when you show up is that your Marines and nobody does that better than MARSOC.
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When you're building a new capability from scratch, someone has to be that pioneer generation that determines what you have already, what you need to add to it,
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and how you get there.
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And so we spend a lot of time in those early years in the pioneer generation of MARSOC, trying to figure out what additional capabilities our Marine Raiders needed
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to have in order to be the type of capability that we have today.
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The biggest difference for those Marines was in the beginning, we were trying to hand-select people.
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And the primary thing was making sure that, first and foremost, they wanted to come to Marsau.
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We went through a step-by-step process of deciding what are the capabilities that our professionals need in the SOF environment, how do we build that.
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We started with the talent we needed, here are the skill sets they need.
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Everything that was being done in combat, we needed to figure out how to do it here, but in many ways at a different level.
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These Marines are exceptionally good at what they do.
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They need a little bit more in tradecraft of all of the disciplines.
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Everybody's coming from another MOS, so they've cut their teeth in the Marine Corps.
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They've been evaluated.
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They come to us.
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They go to our schoolhouse.
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So you take that Marine Warrior ethos, you bring that here to a world-class training center that indoctrinates them into special operations.
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It creates world-class problem solvers in our Marine Training Center in the extensive program that they put them through.
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One of the things
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that has kept MARSOC relevant for the past 20 years is the capability of having a fully enabled MSOC.
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We're not just gonna send Marine Raiders off and say, figure it out.
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They now understand what the capabilities they have access to are, and they don't have to concentrate fully on that.
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I knew I was never going to go be a team chief.
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My role was to be the best I possibly could be at the Medicaid part of shoot, move, communicate, and Medicaid.
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There's a subtle difference in how MARSOC employs employs their medical personnel.
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We've got 240 boat spaces, 125 special operations independent duty corpsmen.
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These corpsmen are full-time soft medics that can fight.
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I'm of the strong opinion
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that the only way we're going to keep the similar survivability rates
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that we saw in GWAT are by keeping lifesavers embedded into the maneuver element, carrying two guns and an APEC.
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Prolonged casualty care is a team sport.
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It's not just going to be that corpsman down there sitting on those casualties for 72 plus hours.
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A lot of that cross-training happens in the pre-deployment training environment.
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You really get to hunker down inside of that full-time soft medic identity.
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We used to write reports on a typewriter.
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We've evolved.
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And if we don't evolve, we will be back in the era of the typewriter.
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You have to understand the skill sets and the tech that's evolving continuously.
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Being here at MARSOC, no one's fighting to leave here.
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Everybody wants to stay here.
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It's a volunteer force within the volunteer force.
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The name Marine Raider now means something again, man, is because of what these men have done over the last 20 years.
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You're looking for people who want it, people who have the desire to do it and to commit to it, and we found it.
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It's also just a level of motivation that I feel every morning showing up
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and seeing Marines with rocks on their back in the pool or in the gym slinging steel.
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I think MARSOC's future is very bright.
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I think they are very secure and competitive as equal partners in the U.S.
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Special Operations Command.
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The skills, the capabilities, the way we train right now are very relevant.
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What we know is we know that the operating environment is changing.
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So really the thing to worry about is how fast can you adapt.
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We're doing pretty damn well over here at Marsock.
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And we intend to keep moving at pace.
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Real-Life Scenarios: Military Communication & Special Ops Stories
The video takes you inside high-stakes military operations, blending urgent radio chatter with personal accounts of Marine Raiders. From coordinating airstrikes ("Rifle away. Laser on.") to describing deployments in Afghanistan and Iraq, the dialogue reflects real-world communication—direct, concise, and mission-critical. Whether it’s discussing "proof of concept" units or "organic intelligence assets," the language mirrors the precision needed in special operations, making it a dynamic resource for learning practical, high-stakes English.
Useful Chunks & Collocations to Master
- "Catastrophic kill": A military term for destroying a target completely, used here in radio communication. Example: "Shadow, 12S19 catastrophic kill, end of engagement."
- "Turn the tide": To change a situation from bad to good. Example: "We saw great success in starting to turn the tide against the Taliban."
- "Organic assets": Resources or teams that are part of a unit, not external. Example: "Using organic targeting and intelligence assets, we focused on Taliban leadership."
- "Assessment Selection": A process to evaluate if someone qualifies for a role. Example: "I had a slumber until I went to Assessment Selection for MARSOC."
- "Direct action": Military operations involving immediate engagement with the enemy. Example: "Our direct action core activity was eliminating enemy networks."
Your Shadowing Challenge: Master Military Rhythm & Clarity
Shadowing is a powerful technique to improve pronunciation, fluency, and listening skills—and this video is perfect for practicing! Here’s your task: Pick a 30-second clip of the radio communication (e.g., "We have 12S19 in the open... end of engagement") or a personal story segment. Play the clip, pause, and repeat it immediately, mimicking the tone, pace, and stress. Focus on matching the urgency in "Rifle away" or the confidence in "Long gone were those questions." For extra practice, use a shadowing site to record yourself and compare. This "shadowspeak" practice will help you master natural, high-stakes English. Remember: The goal isn’t perfection—it’s progress. Keep at it, and you’ll notice your clarity and fluency soar!
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | was hit · were intended · was stood |
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | have now collapsed · have failed · they've cut |
| Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing | company, which was · people who want |
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.