Shadowing Practice: We Built a Wildlife Corridor Through a City - Learn English Speaking with Video

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What if there was a way to transform your city from this to this, replacing concrete with flowers and drains with rain gardens?

What if we can make our towns resilient against floods, heatwaves and droughts, whilst boosting biodiversity and mental health?

Right now, all around the world, people are finding incredible ways to bring nature back into our cities.

And we're here in Bristol to do exactly that.

We're literally kind of surfing on a wetland right now, and I never thought I would say that sentence.

Pockets of lush green wetlands have been popping up all over the city.

Now there's a plan to create a green corridor along the river's embankment.

And we're going to help make this dream a reality.

Together with our friend

Sam Bentley, we'll explore just how easily we can upgrade our cities

and what that means for the future of urban environments all over the world.

In this video, we're going to be checking out loads of genius innovations

that are bringing nature back to the city piece by piece.

We're Planet Wild.

Welcome to Mission 43.

More than half of the global population live in cities, and many of these places have one thing in common.

They were built on water.

Basically, where you see a city, there used to be a swamp or a wetland.

Then we built huge drainage networks to remove the water and paved over the land so we could live there, sometimes even burying entire rivers underground,

like the Bievre in Paris, the Fleet in London, or the Frome here in Bristol.

And predictably, removing all this water has led to some massive problems.

Flash flooding.

Flash flooding in parts of London.

Urban heat island effect.

Dangerous conditions to be outdoors.

Turns out, wetlands aren't just incredibly important for wildlife, but they also keep temperature and water levels stable.

You know, the kind of thing we humans really need to survive.

And this is why all over the world, people are bringing wetlands back into our cities.

When you start to install wetlands across the city, whether that's a small rain garden,

a drain pipe wetland, right the way to a lake in your local park,

it's really sort of magical and everyone in the city benefits from wetlands.

This is Julia from WWT, the wetland charity.

They're kicking off a huge effort to turn Bristol into the UK's first wetland city.

By replacing old drainage systems with lush rain gardens, installing micro wetlands in backyards and anchoring huge wetlands on the river,

they're creating little pockets of biodiversity everywhere.

In fact, over the next few years, there'll be 200 new projects here in Bristol to bring nature back.

Just imagine the impact that this would have it would completely transform public space across the city, creating habitat, absorbing floodwaters, filtering toxic runoff,

and cooling the city down.

And the transformation has already begun.

WWT and their partners are creating a wildlife corridor through the city center.

And this is the next piece of the puzzle.

We are currently building and planting a futuristic structure called a floating wetland.

We've got one platform which is 100 square meters

and another smaller 16 square meter platform specifically designed with these miniature staircases to save baby seagulls

that are getting stuck in a corner of the harbor.

But we are not doing this alone.

Hey Cam.

Alright Sam.

How's it going?

This is Sam Bentley, founder and host of one of our favorite YouTube channels.

If you've never heard of him, he reports good news stories from around the world and is also making a video about the transformation of Bristol.

So we asked him if he could help us with our new floating wetlands.

This is that and then this becomes there and… Huh?

Okay, okay.

This is how it works.

Step one is putting all the pieces together and locking them in place.

It's a completely modular structure that can be built to any size, and every element is recycled, recyclable or biodegradable.

The frame and floats are old drinking water pipes that are wrapped in coconut husk.

And instead of soil or mud that would just drift away, we're using buoyant clay pellets as the plant bed.

Step two is planting it with more than 20 species of native wetland plants.

What have you got?

Ah, nice.

Glorious.

So above water, we have this layered planting system that creates snow wastes for pollinators and a safe haven for nesting birds.

But the real magic happens underneath.

As these plants grow, their roots go super deep into the water, creating a refuge for marine life, cleaning the water, taking all those pollutants out,

and also regulating water temperature too.

There's potential to install up to 5 ,000 square metres of these floating wetlands here in Bristol,

transforming the concrete embankment into a thriving nature corridor.

So the Planet Wild community is completely funding the construction and installation of these two modules,

as well as even more platforms in the future to make this dream a reality.

You know, with Planet Wild, we do projects all over the world, bringing nature back in different remote, far -flung places.

But it's just amazing to see that it can come back in the middle of our cities.

So in addition to the floating wetlands,

we're also helping WWT to develop a miniature wetland in a box that can be attached to any ordinary drain pipe.

To show you how it works, we're gonna take a break from the harbor and visit a small garden nearby to build a prototype.

We should probably get on with it though.

Yeah.

So this is a very ordinary drain pipe coming from the roof and so when it rains,

the water goes from the gutter all the way down here straight into the drain.

But we are gonna catch this water and use it to create a wetland in a box.

Well, it's actually two boxes.

The top box acts as a pond where aquatic plants can thrive as it fills up with rainwater.

This eventually overflows into the bottom box, a miniature bog that insects and amphibians can call home.

So to make it yourself, you just need to follow these steps.

First thing we need to do is make a hole in the bottom.

This hole should be covered with a filter.

And we use this permeable plant pot.

Then add a layer of gravel, a fabric membrane, and a layer of soil.

The membrane is there to stop the soil running down the drain.

Step 2.

Drill a hole into the side of the top box, allowing the water to flow into the bottom box.

Step 3.

Take a deep breath and cut the drain pipe so

that the entire structure will be in the perfect position to catch the water.

Step 4.

Fill everything with native wetland plants and add a wall of loose bricks.

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And that's it, we're done.

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And within hours you'll start to get insects like dragonflies and damselflies coming back here.

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Spiders can make their homes in here, frogs and newts can come and live in here.

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And it's just incredible the amount of biodiversity that can come back just with this.

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The UK actually has 4 ,000 square kilometers of garden space just like this.

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And now we can actually start to use some of that and give it back to nature.

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We have to interrupt this

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Planet Wild video to bring you some breaking good news from cities around the world.

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First up, we're heading to Seoul, South Korea.

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For decades the Jongjuchon stream was completely buried underneath a massive elevated highway.

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But in the early 2000s, the city actually tore that highway down and restored the natural river.

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Since then, biodiversity has exploded by over 600 % and the corridor is now home to hundreds of species of fish, birds and insects.

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Now we're heading over to the Netherlands where one company has found a way to turn lifeless concrete buildings into green space.

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Respire uses a moisture retaining concrete layer to grow moss directly onto walls.

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Within 12 weeks it forms a green surface that survives on rainwater alone, filtering air pollution while naturally cooling the building.

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Next up we're looking to China where they're creating huge sponge cities.

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Instead of using great infrastructure like concrete pipes to drain stormwater,

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they're building sprawling urban wetland parks and permeable pavements that naturally soak up extreme floods like a giant sponge.

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But the ultimate nature city has to be Singapore.

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By making greenery a core part of their urban design, they've turned a dense metropolis into a city in nature

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and their waterways are now so healthy

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that families of wild otters are happily swimming right through the middle of the central business district.

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You can see from these projects there's not just one solution.

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In a city you have to find little pockets

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and corners to bring nature back around human infrastructure and that's exactly what we're doing in Bristol.

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We're literally kind of surfing on a wetland right now and I never thought I would say that sentence.

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This will be the permanent home of our new wetland.

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For centuries it's been a grey wall but thanks to the Planet Wild community it will soon look like this.

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This piece was installed just two years ago and you can see the difference it's just like full of life.

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There's families of birds in there, it's full of insects, I've seen loads of fish swimming underneath.

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Just incredible what can happen in such a short space of time.

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And of course this is just the beginning.

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These plants will start to establish, they'll start to grow and it really will start attracting nature in.

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We haven't even finished installing the wetland yet and there's this family of swans rocking up and checking it out.

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It can potentially be their new home, like that is just so perfect, so beautiful.

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Finally we installed the second platform and again the effect was instant.

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So we literally just installed the floating wetland

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and we've seen a baby seagull who is stuck in the water use the ramp

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and climb up onto the platform and that's just saved its life it's just unbelievable to witness.

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And that is the beauty of this project nature is just waiting beneath the concrete

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and the asphalt once you give it a chance it's immediately making our cities more biodiverse safer

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and simply nicer places to live.

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And because it's such a simple solution, it can easily be copied around the world.

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So our funding here is not only transforming Bristol, but it's also creating a blueprint for future wetland cities everywhere.

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Thank you so much for making it all the way to the end of the video.

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I hope you can tell that we put a lot of hard work into the missions and the mission videos,

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but we really couldn't do any of it without our community.

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Right now, we're more than 27 ,000 members.

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We're actually growing really quickly which is so exciting.

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Every single month we go on a mission to bring back endangered species, to clean up our oceans and to restore entire landscapes.

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So if that sounds good to you, you can join

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Planet Wild as a backer by following the QR code here or the link in the description.

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Thanks so much for watching and catch you next time.

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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson

This speaking lesson is built on the video “We Built a Wildlife Corridor Through a City”. The speaker keeps coming back to these words: wetland, nature, cities, Bristol, drain. This video has 115 sentences and 1927 words to shadow. The speech runs for 11:27. The speaker talks at a natural 168 words per minute, close to everyday conversation. Only 80% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English, so the vocabulary is demanding.

Key vocabulary in this video

15 words from the video worth learning, with pronunciation and meaning:

Word	Pronunciation	Meaning
drain noun	/dɹiːn/	A conduit allowing liquid to flow out of an otherwise contained volume; a plughole (UK)
concrete adjective	/ˌkɑnˈkɹit/	Real, actual, tangible.
flood noun	/flʌd/	An overflow of a large amount of water (usually disastrous) from a lake or other body of water due to excessive rainfall or other input of water.
pipe noun	/ˈpaɪp/	A wind instrument consisting of a tube, often lined with holes to allow for adjustment in pitch, sounded by blowing into the tube.
float verb	/fləʊt/	To be supported by a fluid of greater density (than the object).
layer noun	/ˈleɪ̯ɚ/	A single thickness of some material covering a surface.
transform verb	/tɹænsˈfɔɹm/	To change greatly the appearance or form of.
corridor noun	/ˈkɒɹɪdɔː/	A narrow hall or passage with rooms leading off it, as in a building or in a railway carriage.
insect noun	/ˈɪn.sɛkt/	An arthropod (in the Insecta class) characterized by six legs, up to four wings, and a chitinous exoskeleton.
pocket noun	/ˈpɑ.kɪt/	A bag stitched to an item of clothing, used for carrying small items.
soil noun	/sɔɪl/	A mixture of mineral particles and organic material, used to support plant growth.
installed verb	/ɪnˈstɔːld/	readied for use
filter noun	/ˈfɪltɚ/	A device which separates a suspended, dissolved, or particulate matter from a fluid, solution, or other substance; any device that separates one substance from…
underneath adverb	/ˌʌndɚˈniθ/	Below; in a place beneath.
metre noun	/ˈmiːtəɹ/	The basic unit of length in the International System of Units (SI: Système International d'Unités), equal to the distance travelled by light in a vacuum in…

Phrasal verbs you will hear

Word	Pronunciation	Meaning
come back verb		To return to a place.
bring back verb	/ˈbɹɪŋ bæk/	To fetch something.
check out verb		To record the departure or withdrawal of someone or something (such as guests, employees, books, etc.).
clean up verb		To make an area or a thing clean; to pick up a mess; to tidy.
get on with verb		To proceed with; to begin or continue, especially after an interruption.
kick off verb		To make the first kick in a game or part of a game.
pop up verb		To come up with a "pop" sound.
run down verb		To hit someone with a car or other vehicle and injure or kill them.

Grammar in this video

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

Structure	In the video
Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now	has led · has already begun · you've never heard
Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it	were built · can be built · are wrapped

Pronunciation to watch

The speaker uses 36 contractions and reduced forms, such as we're, gonna, they're. Say them the short way, as you hear them.

The “th” sounds: underneath /ˌʌndɚˈniθ/, thrive /θɹajv/, beneath /bɪˈniːθ/
The “sh” and “zh” sounds: transformation /ˌtɹæns.fɔɹˈmeɪ.ʃən/, establish /ɪˈstæb.lɪʃ/, potentially /pəˈtɛnʃ(ə)li/, innovation /ˌɪn.əˈveɪ.ʃən/, pollution /pəˈluʃən/
Long words — get the stress right: miniature /ˈmɪn.(i)ə.tʃəɹ/, naturally /ˈnæt͡ʃ.(ə.)ɹə.li/, infrastructure /ˈɪnfɹəˌstɹʌkt͡ʃə/, ordinary /ˈɔɹdɪnɛɹi/, transformation /ˌtɹæns.fɔɹˈmeɪ.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 drain, concrete, flood.

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: We Built a Wildlife Corridor Through a City - Learn English Speaking with Video

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