Shadowing Practice: What divorce taught me - Learn English Speaking with Video
Creating lesson...
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I don't know if anybody's experienced this, but I woke up every day
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and I think she did too for probably five years thinking about how to end this elegantly.
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And it occupies your mind.
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And I don't know if that was the right thing.
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I'm just being transparent.
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And then when I went through it for the first time in my life, I had panic attacks.
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I had anxiety.
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I didn't want to get in a plane.
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I didn't want to get in an elevator.
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There was weird things happening to me.
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I went back and realized that I hid so many of the things
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that I felt when I was a kid as a divorce that I just kept them in.
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Like I felt like I locked them in a box.
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All the things, you know, my parents divorced and they hated each other.
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When we got married, I had to put my parents in two different hotels and they've been divorced for 50 years.
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They still won't talk to each other, right?
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So all these things, I realized that I can repeat patterns.
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I can let this bug me or I could heal in such a big way.
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But I felt like when I was going through divorce that I was in the middle of a storm.
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And every time you get to a certain point, it was so bad in the storm, you'd turn around.
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And then you go back and then you got to experience the pain all over again.
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And I remember just thinking one day, the only way through it is through it.
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I have to face this.
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And I just want to share with anybody who's going through anything
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that sometimes the best way is to just look the storm in and ride it through.
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This video has 25 sentences and 302 words to shadow. The speech runs for 1:06. 82% 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
13 words from the video worth learning, with pronunciation and meaning:
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| divorce noun | /dɪˈvɔːs/ | The legal dissolution of a marriage. |
| anxiety noun | /æŋˈzaɪ.əti/ | An unpleasant state of mental uneasiness, nervousness, apprehension and obsession or concern about some uncertain event. |
| panic noun | /ˈpænɪk/ | Overwhelming fear or fright, often affecting groups of people or animals; (countable) an instance of this; a fright, a scare. |
| heal verb | /ˈhiːl/ | To make better from a disease, wound, etc.; to revive or cure. |
| transparent adjective | /tɹænsˈpæɹənt/ | See-through, clear; having the property that light passes through it almost undisturbed, such that one can see through it clearly. |
| elevator noun | /ˈɛləˌveɪtɚ/ | Anything that raises or uplifts. |
| occupy verb | /ˈɑkjəpaɪ/ | To fill. |
| elegantly adverb | Gracefully, smoothly, and swiftly; with supreme style. | |
| storm noun | /stɔɹm/ | Any disturbed state of the atmosphere causing destructive or unpleasant weather, especially one affecting the earth's surface involving strong winds (leading… |
| anybody | /ˈɛn.i.bə.di/ | Any one out of an indefinite number of persons; anyone; any person. |
| pattern noun | /ˈpætɚn/ | Something from which a copy is made; a model or outline. |
| lock noun | /lɑk/ | Something used for fastening, which can only be opened with a key or combination. |
| repeat verb | /ɹɪˈpiːt/ | To do or say again (and again). |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| go through verb | To travel from one end of something to the other. | |
| go back verb | To return to a place or state after having been there at a previous time. | |
| turn around verb | To physically rotate (usually around a vertical axis) for a half turn (180 degrees), a whole turn (360 degrees), or an indefinite amount. | |
| wake up verb | /ˌweɪk ˈʌp/ | To stop sleeping; to awake. |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 8 contractions and reduced forms, such as didn't, don't, I'm. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- Long words — get the stress right: anxiety /æŋˈzaɪ.əti/, elevator /ˈɛləˌveɪtɚ/, anybody /ˈɛn.i.bə.di/
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 divorce, anxiety, panic.
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.