Shadowing Practice: What Makes a Great Commencement Address? - Learn English Speaking with YouTube

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Delivering a commencement address is a great responsibility,
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Delivering a commencement address is a great responsibility,
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or so I thought, until I cast my mind back to my own graduation.
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The commencement speaker that day was the distinguished British philosopher, Baroness Mary Warnock.
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Reflecting on her speech has helped me enormously in writing this one,
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because it turns out that I can't remember a single word she said.
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Life doesn't happen to you, it happens for you.
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How do I know this?
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I don't, but I'm making sound and that's the important thing.
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Sometimes I think that's the only thing that's important really, you know?
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It's just letting each other know we're here.
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Reminding each other that we're part of a larger self.
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Please stay connected.
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Please never lose eye contact.
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This may not be a lesson you want to hear from a person who creates media,
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but we are spending more time looking down at our devices than we are looking in each other's eyes.
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My mom was driving through this town of Ann Arbor.
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It was the mid-1960s.
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She was a newcomer to this town and to this country.
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Her car breaks down.
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Now let me paint you a picture.
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She is an immigrant from the other side of the world.
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He went to the closest phone booth,
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phone booth, and decided to randomly call someone,
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an Indian person whose name began in the A's.
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Someone answered the phone after the first ring.
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Now as it turns out the person she was trying to call wasn't home,
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but his roommate, her future husband, my father, was.
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Many of you here today are getting your diploma at this Ivy League school
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because you have committed yourself to a dream and worked hard to achieve it.
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And there is no greater cliche in a commencement address than follow your dream.
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Well, I'm here to tell you that whatever you think your dream is now,
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it will probably change.
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And that's okay.
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From 1998, while I was still at Penn,
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to early 2004, I spent each of those six years always thinking
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that I would get that big record deal within the next few months.
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I always thought my moment was just around the corner,
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but I was rejected by all the major labels.
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Some of them rejected me multiple times.
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But I did find a young producer from Chicago named Kanye West who believed in me.
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I found what I loved to do early in life.
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Waz and I started Apple in my parents' garage when I was 20.
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We worked hard, and in 10 years,
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Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4,000 employees.
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We'd just released our finest creation,
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the Macintosh, a year earlier,
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and I'd just turned 30.
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And then I got fired.
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How can you get fired from a company you started?
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What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone.
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But something slowly began to dawn on me.
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I still loved what I did.
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And so I decided to start over.
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I didn't see it then,
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but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me.
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It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.
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During the next five years,
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I started a company named Next,
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another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife.
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Pixar went on to create the world's first computer animated feature film,
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Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world.
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In a remarkable turn of events,
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Apple bought Next, and I returned to Apple,
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and the technology we developed at Next is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance.
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Your work is going to fill a large part of your life,
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and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work.
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And the only way to do great work is to love what you do.
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If you haven't found it yet,
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keep looking, and don't settle.
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I paid the rent in my early 20s by working at the African Research Department of Amnesty International's headquarters in London.
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I was reminded how incredibly fortunate I was to live in
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a country with a democratically elected government where legal representation and a public trial were the rights of everyone.
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Every day I saw more evidence about the evils humankind would inflict on their fellow humans to gain or maintain power.
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And yet I also learned more about human goodness at Amnesty International than I had ever known before.
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Amnesty mobilizes thousands of people who have never been tortured
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or imprisoned for their beliefs to act on behalf of those who have.
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The power of human empathy leading to collective action saves lives.
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Finally, graduates, our greatness has never,
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ever come from sitting back and feeling entitled to what we have.
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It's never come from folks who climb the ladder of success
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or who happen to be born near the top and then pull the ladder up after themselves.
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No, uh-uh.
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Our greatness has always come from people who expect nothing and take nothing for granted.
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Folks who work hard for what they have then reach back and help others after them.
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While you may one day forget this moment, I never ever will.
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Blue.
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Love ya.

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Why practice speaking with this video?

Practicing your English speaking skills using videos, such as commencement addresses, can significantly enhance your fluency and confidence. This particular video highlights a captivating graduation speech that not only provides insightful perspectives but also offers excellent speaking context. By engaging with this content, you will develop your ability to express complex ideas and connect with your audience, which is crucial for both IELTS speaking practice and everyday conversations.

Listening to speeches helps you understand the rhythm and flow of the language, making it easier to emulate during your own speaking practice. Moreover, this video addresses themes of perseverance, connection, and the evolution of dreams, which can be great conversation starters. This would be especially beneficial for english speaking practice as it gives you ideas on what to discuss.

Grammar & Expressions in Context

Let's analyze some key structures used by the speaker that can enhance your understanding of English grammar:

  • “Life doesn’t happen to you, it happens for you.” - This structure uses simple present tense, which is useful for conveying universal truths or general ideas.
  • “Please stay connected.” - The imperative form here gives clear directions or requests, important for effective communication.
  • “Whatever you think your dream is now, it will probably change.” - This sentence illustrates the use of conditional phrases, helping you express hypothetical situations, which is valuable in both IELTS speaking practice and daily discussions.

By shadowing these expressions through shadow speak techniques, you will not only practice pronunciation but also learn how to use these structures naturally in conversation.

Common Pronunciation Traps

Throughout this video, several tricky words and phrases arise that might pose a challenge for learners. Here are some notable ones:

  • “Commencement” - Pay attention to the stress on the second syllable (com-MEN-ce-ment) to pronounce it correctly.
  • “Perseverance” - Focus on ensuring you articulate each syllable distinctly, especially the ‘per-se-VER-ance’ stress pattern.
  • “Cliche” - This word can sometimes be mispronounced. Remember it sounds like ‘klee-SHAY,’ with the emphasis on the second syllable.

Listening attentively to how these words are pronounced in the speech and practicing them using learn english with youtube techniques will improve your clarity and prevent common pronunciation traps.

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.

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