Shadowing Practice: What is The School of Life? - Learn English Speaking with Video

Loading...
1
Everyone nowadays believes in education.
2
We train kids to do maths, we teach pilots how to land planes, and surgeons how to operate on our brains.
3
But there's one area where we don't seem to believe in education at all, and we just leave people to figure it out themselves.
4
Life itself.
5
There's an odd silence in education when it comes to the truly big questions.
6
Who should we get together with?
7
How can you manage a relationship?
8
What career are you suited to?
9
What's money for?
10
How can we manage anxiety and what do we do with regret and shame?
11
What do we do about illness and aging?
12
How do we deal with our families?
13
Here there is, very strangely, often no one to turn to, nowhere to go.
14
So stress accumulates and disasters occur.
15
We wanted a place to help with this stuff, so we built the School of Life.
16
An open-minded, rigorous, and ideological organisation devoted to helping you deal with the important things that you were never taught at school.
17
relationships, careers, anxieties and emotions.
18
We have physical hopes across the world in London, Paris, Antwerp, Amsterdam, Istanbul, Melbourne and Rio.
19
And here online we'll be posting new films every week that address the great questions.
20
We don't have to keep making the same mistakes.
21
There are things to be learnt while there's still time.
22
Thank you.

About This Lesson

You're practicing English with "What is The School of Life?" using the Shadowing technique — a method originally developed for professional interpreter training.

Focus on sounding like the speaker — not just repeating words. With 15–30 minutes of daily practice, you'll build real-world speaking confidence.

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.