Shadowing Practice: We're Terrible Athletes - Learn English Speaking with Video

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181 sentences

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In this video, I don't give a puck.

It's like a hockey pun.

Please throw that in at some point in the video.

In this video, I'm joined by my least favorite athlete, infamous Swoosh.

And we're going to talk about being terrible at sports.

This guy sucks.

Terrible.

Look at that.

Surprisingly, the animators are not the best athletes.

Dude, I don't know if this was the same for you with your hockey coaches, but our volleyball coach, everyone in the auditorium,

like knew that he was mad like it would echo the halls of the high school

that we were i am with you there oh my my

coaches in competitive hockey were insane oh my god okay i'm sorry i'm sorry please take

that out of the video drinking a diet pet me

i'm sorry did you drink it in one gold my lord buddy the elf over here

when i was like 14 or 15 the parents

and coaches acted like we were about to go to the nhl i had one coach

that was generally pretty good but he would lose his mind

when we had a bad game

and one day we had probably the worst game of our lives

i'm talking like six to nothing

we go to the locker room after the whooping of our lives

i'm sure you know just the dead silence after a terrible game

when everyone's just sitting there thinking about which sport we should probably switch to

and then coach walks in stands at the middle of the room

and he jump kicks an industrial trash can across the room and all everything exploded out of it

like clambered around it was insane nimble

and we were all like yeah actually we probably deserve

that yeah i can't even argue yeah the punishments were brutal

so they were called bag skates my coach would drag the

same industrial trash can into the middle of the ice

and he would tell us we're not leaving until someone throws up in here oh no way

that dude you're kidding

that's a joke yeah kids did man are you serious yeah yeah holy cow yeah including me including me people

i guess

so you guys aren't training for the freaking olympics

it's like middle school as far as he was concerned we were all right

if we lost two games in a row he'd start cutting off fingers

all right uh timmy come here with your skate

and uh ronald you just stand right there

and this isn't exactly a mainstream sport uh you ever heard of taser knife fighting

please tell me this is a bit this is not a bit bryson

and i just got back from open sauce

and somebody had a call for taser knife fighting where it's

literally like a dull knife with a 20 ,000 volt taser on the end

and you fight and you fought bryson i fought bryson dude by the way it hurts

if that's what you're wondering

i missed out dude bryson ended up winning he's more nimble

than i thought he'd be man freaking twinkle toes well dude next time

i see you uh definitely gotta do some like taser knife fighting

i'll bring the tasers you bring the knife no god dude i'll bring from sixth grade

and i went over to my buddy james's house we went in like his garage

and found golf clubs and a golf ball he had like a hill in his backyard

so we like set up the tee at the top of the hill on my first attempt

i freaking tiger woods this thing

it went flying across like oh happy gilmore style yes

i'm not kidding literally i could not believe

it it was my first time ever hitting a golf ball

we were in like a neighbor's backyard like we could not find it

and it's ironic because i am

so bad at golf that's like the one hit of a lifetime

you're gonna be driving by now like 10 years later

and you're gonna find a golf ball in the ditch my golf story

and i do i actually still brag about this to this day i'm terrible at golf

but mini golf dude that's my game that's my game right

there i'm bringing it up i'm bringing

it up again man our buddy mitch pulse fire

he plays college golf he competes in tournaments he's really good yeah

and then we were all visiting each other in texas we all decided to go mini golf

and we're like well you know obviously mitch is gonna be pretty good

but it'll be fun for the rest of us

and by a miracle i end up beating mitch by one stroke i was

so over the i turned up

i'm like work on your short game buddy are you kidding

me dude what are we doing here literally to this day never seen brody happier than

that day i have the scorecard

and he wrote on the back of it he was a little pissed

and he just wrote so happy smiley face

and i framed it i have it framed in my office right

now we have actually something in common we both did do something

that we've briefly mentioned in videos before oh my god oh yes yes i totally forgot about

that that is

so funny it's 2017 the dab is a hot commodity we lost shockingly not really me

and like my teammate were like dude

when we're like doing the handshakes at the end let's dab on the coach

i don't know i was an idiot and i did exactly

that i just decided

i'm gonna dab on this coach my coach acted like we

blew up the coach's car out in the parking lot

because he was like how could you guys have done

that just have the most vivid memory of like looking out the window

and seeing the coaches talk to each other and i'm like dude i am so

Oh, it's screwed, bro. So bad.

Alan, we are so bad.

Yeah, literally.

That's what it felt like, dude.

Mine was an act of rebellion because these referees were dog shit, dude.

Just terrible.

Like, the other team kept tripping and pushing and high -sticking our guys.

100

Oh, my gosh.

101

And the refs just didn't care.

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I made the executive decision.

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I'm not shaking this guy's hand.

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I'm going to dab on him as, like, a little prank, right?

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And I'm a bad person.

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And so are you.

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Well, you are.

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I don't know about me.

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He's at the very end of the line

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so he's the last person i go for the dab he blows his whistle

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and he's like number eight come back here now

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and i'm like oh this is gonna be a big thing

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i got suspended i was not allowed to play in the next two games

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it was gonna be more than two games my coach had to talk the referee down

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he wanted me like off the team bro you commented on

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that video when i released it and we weren't like really tight back then

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and you commented like familiar story or something like that and i was Like oh my god,

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he's gonna think I copied a story dude cuz like how could this possibly it happened to both of us

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You're not allowed to talk about anything that I've experienced on YouTube by your the amount of people

120

You know when you post like a video about like our dogs and they're like

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Oh my god, you're copying Bryson cuz he also has a dog and tell stories about it.

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It's like We adopted a dog because Bryson did that's what we do.

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That's what we do around here I might have told you this one before

124

but I have to I can't believe

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I've never told this story in a video generally in hockey you don't start body checking up until you're 13 or 14

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and on probably the first day

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we were allowed to hit rock was like foaming at the mouth for some violence dude

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he was craving it he catches one of our friends with his head down like in our zone

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and he was like now's the chance

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he absolutely crushes him against the boards like steamroll dude like a fly swatter to a nap

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he took the hit and they shrugged it off

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and he kept playing then later on back at school he's in class with brock

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and he gets asked to write an answer on the board

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so he walks up grabs a marker

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and he cannot lift the marker up high enough to write on the board

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and the teacher's like what's going on are you okay

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and she makes him roll up his sleeve his shoulder is purple this dude had broken his collarbone

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and he was too embarrassed to tell anyone

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because he thought he looked like a wimp oh my god

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he has to go to the hospital brock felt terrible dude brock was like oh my god i'm so sorry

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and our friend he's just like just don't let him know just don't let him know

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we're like dude you broke your collarbone man that's got you can't just play

143

that off that's crazy

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now the whole world knows hey what was his name again just for the record uh

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i deliberately did not say his name just to honor his legacy speaking of getting injured

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when we would like do practices our coach would bring his

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kids who were pretty young at the time like six

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and like four we would like set up hitting routines like you're like you're tossing the ball

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they set it to you you jump you hit it

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and the coach was like all right kids like go on the stage

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and then like one kid was like no i don't want it

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and he was like okay but like you might get hit with a volleyball

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and he was like and he was just playing

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and now he's like all right

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so we start doing dude my first hit i jump up just spike

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it down it directly hit this like five -year -old in the face no no

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he falls over like peter griffin falling down the stairs bro like the kid was crying

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and the coach was like i literally told you like i just told you like we warned

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you pal we warned you pal

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and then he like throws another at him it was within 45 seconds of him telling him like

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Hey, don't be over here.

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Dude, I'm going to be so real.

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Sometimes that's the only way people learn.

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Like, it's just getting hurt.

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Thanks for joining me on this trip down memory lane, Nathan.

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And if you ever come to Canada, I will show you how we beat the hell out of each other for fun.

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I will be fully honest.

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I thought I invited TJ Toons to be in this video.

169

He's also wearing green with the brown hair.

170

Yeah, dude, I get a brown hair, green shirt.

171

The door's there.

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The door's right there.

173

Would you mind?

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No, it's all good.

175

Yeah, I know.

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Just let him know he can head in.

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Thank you.

178

Yeah, thanks.

179

Have a good recording.

180

Yeah, yeah, don't let the door hit your ass on the way out, okay?

181

I won't!

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719 sentences

Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson

This speaking lesson is built on the video “We're Terrible Athletes”. The speaker keeps coming back to these words: dude, coach, golf. This video has 181 sentences and 1925 words to shadow. The speech runs for 9:36. The speaker talks fast, about 200 words per minute, so expect linked and reduced sounds. 84% 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
knife noun	/ˈnaɪ̯f/	A utensil or a tool designed for cutting, consisting of a flat piece of hard material, usually steel or other metal (the blade), usually sharpened on one edge…
hockey noun	/ˈhɑ.ki/	Any of a family of sports in which hockey sticks are used to move a ball or puck into a goal.
buddy	/ˈbʌdi/	A person far removed from the conversation.
brock noun	/bɹɑk/	A male badger.
mini adjective	/ˈmɪn.i/	Miniature, tiny, small.
trash noun	/tɹæʃ/	Useless physical things to be discarded; rubbish; refuse.
insane adjective	/ɪnˈseɪn/	Exhibiting unsoundness or disorder of mind; not sane; utterly mad.
athlete noun	/ˈæθ.liːt/	A participant in any of a group of sporting activities including track and field, road running, cross country running and racewalking.
warn verb	/woɹn/	To make (someone) aware of impending danger, evil, etc.
backyard noun	/bækˈjɑːd/	A yard to the rear of a house or similar residence.
marker noun	/ˈmɑː(ɹ)kə(ɹ)/	A felt-tipped pen, a marker pen.
referee noun	/ˌɹɛf.əˈɹi/	An umpire or judge; an official who makes sure the rules are followed during a game.
volleyball noun	/ˈvɒlibɔ(ː)l/	A game played on a rectangular court between two teams of two to six players which involves striking a ball back and forth over a net.
skate noun	/skeɪt/	A runner or blade, usually of steel, with a frame shaped to fit the sole of a shoe, made to be fastened under the foot, and used for gliding on ice.
finger noun	/ˈfɪŋɡɚ/	A slender jointed extremity of the human hand, (often) exclusive of the thumb, and the corresponding part, irrespective of including a thumb, in many other…

Phrasal verbs you will hear

Word	Pronunciation	Meaning
end up verb		To bring to a conclusion.
set up verb	/ˌsɛt ˈʌp/	To make ready for use.
blow up verb		To explode or be destroyed by explosion.
check up verb		To verify through brief investigation or revisit for assurance that there are no problems.
come back verb		To return to a place.
cut off verb	/ˌkʌt ˈɔf/ [ˌkɐɾ ˈɔf]	To remove by cutting.
fall down verb	/fɔl ˈdaʊn/	To fall to the ground. To collapse.
fall over verb		To fall from an upright or standing position to a horizontal or prone position.

Sentences worth repeating

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

In this video, I don't give a puck.
I'm not shaking this guy's hand.
I don't know about me.
Dude, I'm going to be so real.

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	we've briefly mentioned · have done · I've experienced
Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it	were called · was not allowed · were allowed
Superlatives the -est / the most … — the top or bottom of a group	my least favorite · the best · the worst
Verb + -ing enjoy, keep, stop… + -ing — verbs that are followed by the -ing form	start cutting · kept tripping · kept playing

Pronunciation to watch

The speaker uses 68 contractions and reduced forms, such as I'm, don't, you're. Say them the short way, as you hear them.

The “th” sounds: athlete /ˈæθ.liːt/, sixth /sɪksθ/
The “sh” and “zh” sounds: trash /tɹæʃ/, punishment /ˈpʌnɪʃmənt/, shake /ˈʃeɪk/, garage /ɡəˈɹɑʒ/, crush /kɹʌʃ/
Long words — get the stress right: surprisingly /səˈpɹaɪzɪŋli/, deliberately /dɪˈlɪb.(ə.)ɹət.li/, rebellion /ɹɪˈbɛl.i.ən/, commodity /kəˈmɑdəti/, auditorium /ˌɔ.dɪˌto.ɹi.əm/

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 knife, hockey, buddy.

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're Terrible Athletes - Learn English Speaking with Video

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