Shadowing Practice: What True Love Really Is - Learn English Speaking with Video
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70 sentences
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The world is sick for a surprisingly modest-sounding reason.
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We don't understand love.
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And yet we're rather convinced that we do.
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We talk a lot of love, of course, but generally in terms of a dizzying rapture lasting a few months focused on someone's beauty,
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intelligence and strength.
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We have high ideals and refer with confidence to concepts like justice,
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equality and rights and yet somehow in the mix we avoid talking of the sort of love
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that would give true life to any of these.
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We are law-abiding and righteous but we are in the grandest sense in the public square without love.
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The most convincing definitions of love in the West have come from Jesus of Nazareth
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which has proved unfortunate given how easy it is for rational
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types to confuse an overcoming of supernatural faith with a neglect of the subject of love.
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To move forward, we require a new philosophy of love, in effect a powerful secular religion of love.
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This should be read out after the news and its tenets taught to CEOs and supply chain managers.
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We should put it on t-shirts and it should be as common and more useful to say,
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I'm trying to learn to love as to announce a desire to become fit or famous.
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It's no insult to have to acknowledge that even though we inhabit a culture soaked in romanticism, we have problems understanding love.
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And even though we've had plenty of crushes and heard plenty of songs about love,
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we're still taking our first steps towards grasping what love might actually be.
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Here then are seven key constituent ingredients of love.
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Charity.
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Love Love means, above anything else, benevolence and gentleness towards what is failed,
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disgraced, broken, unappealing, angry and foul in other people and in ourselves.
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Love isn't about an admiration for strength.
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It's about directing sympathy in a most unexpected direction, at what is messed up, lost and in pieces, and at what we might hate,
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resent and be frightened of.
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Anyone can express an interest in perfection.
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To love is to devote an active charity towards the mistakes and aberrations.
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One day we will all require the charity of others.
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In one way or another, we will be on our knees
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and we will need people to look past our evident failings in a tender search for our deeply hidden merits.
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To love with imagination is to look beneath the surface where there may be rage,
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cynicism, brittleness or transgression, and to picture the suffering and pain that got a person to this place.
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To love with imagination is to fill in the better reasons why others are behaving as they are.
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Imaginative love knows that we are all somewhere desperate.
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It seeks out that desperation and treats it with sorrowful gentleness.
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Kindness.
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There are so many fighters for social justice, so many people determined to make a better world.
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They denounce their enemies and feel certain of their cause, but along the way, they have a fateful habit of forgetting to be kind.
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In their denunciations of the evils of others, there is precious little mercy, humility, tenderness or grace.
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It's not enough to be right or just.
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To be kind is to know that everyone, even sinners – and in a way especially sinners – deserve ongoing sympathy and mercy.
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It's never simply because someone is wrong that we have any right to cease showing them the greatest kindness.
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Forgiveness To forgive is to know that we are, in our own way, as guilty as the next person.
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Given what we all are, we have no option but to cut each other some slack.
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Of course we have failed and been hasty and less than admirable.
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But that is no reason forever to withhold love.
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We learn to forgive when we are no longer self-righteous, That is, when we are brave enough to fathom the darker sections of our own hearts.
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Loyalty.
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To love means being loyal to people.
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This could be ourselves, even though the crowd no longer agrees.
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Outside, the mob may be jeering, but we continue on the same side, with steadfastness and an unbudgeable, resilient faith.
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Generosity.
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Love overflows.
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It isn't about loving just one person.
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It encompasses the love of someone you've just met, of strangers in another land, of the earth, of plants,
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evils, house bats and that moth by the window who might be dead by nightfall.
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Patience.
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We want others to meet our hopes right now, but true love means giving people the time to mature and develop, to go wrong, to wander in another direction
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and not to shout at them but to give them every chance to grow at their own pace towards their better selves.
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If we can believe wholeheartedly in some of the above, it won't matter who we vote for or what our cause is,
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we can count as part of what is helping.
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We should be almost done with romantic love by now.
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We should be setting our sights on the challenge of this sort of love.
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Yet it's not surprising if we're still only at the beginning.
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We're just starting on the path to being human.
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Love is a skill that we can learn.
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Our relationships book calmly guides us with calm and charm,
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through the key issues of relationships to ensure that success in love need not be a matter of good luck.
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This C1 speaking lesson is built on the video “What True Love Really Is”. This video has 70 sentences and 915 words to shadow. The speech runs for 6:01. The speaker talks at a natural 152 words per minute, close to everyday conversation. 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
The 15 most advanced words in the video, with pronunciation and meaning:
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| gentleness noun | /ˈd͡ʒɛntl̩nəs/ | The state of being gentle. |
| sinner noun | /ˈsɪnɚ/ | A person who, by one particular action, has sinned. |
| righteous adjective | /ˈɹaɪt͡ʃəs/ | Free from sin or guilt. |
| kindness noun | /ˈkaɪnd.nəs/ | The state of being kind. |
| sympathy noun | /ˈsɪm.pəθ.i/ | A feeling of pity or sorrow for the suffering or distress of another. |
| aberration noun | /ˌæb.əˈɹeɪ.ʃn̩/ | The act of wandering; deviation from truth, moral rectitude; abnormal; divergence from the straight, correct, proper, normal, or from the natural state. |
| admirable noun | /ˈæd.məɹ.ə.bəl/ | The quality, state, or an example of being admirable. |
| benevolence noun | /bəˈnɛvələns/ | Disposition to do good. |
| brittleness noun | The state of being brittle (in various senses). | |
| cynicism noun | /ˈsɪn.ɪˌsɪzəm/ | A distrustful attitude. |
| denounce verb | /diˈnaʊns/ | To criticize or speak out against (someone or something); to point out as deserving of reprehension, etc.; to openly accuse or condemn in a threatening manner… |
| denunciation noun | /dɪˌnʌnsiˈeɪʃən/ | Proclamation; announcement; a publishing. |
| encompass verb | /ɪnˈkʌmpəs/ | To form a circle around; to encircle. |
| fateful adjective | /ˈfeɪtfəl/ | Momentous, significant, setting or sealing one’s fate. |
| fathom verb | /ˈfæðəm/ | To measure the depth of (water); to take a sounding of; to sound. |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| look past verb | To see potential beyond obvious flaws; to consider something more than something else. | |
| mess up verb | To make a mess of; to untidy, disorder, soil, or muss. | |
| move forward verb | To cause to make progress. | |
| read out verb | /ˌɹiːd ˈaʊt/ | To read something and say the words to inform other people; to call. |
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 | have come · has proved · we've had |
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | should be read · is failed · is messed |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 11 contractions and reduced forms, such as we're, isn't, don't. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “th” sounds: sympathy /ˈsɪm.pəθ.i/, fathom /ˈfæðəm/, withhold /wɪθˈhoʊld/
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: aberration /ˌæb.əˈɹeɪ.ʃn̩/, denunciation /dɪˌnʌnsiˈeɪʃən/, transgression /trɑːnzˈɡrɛʃn/, desperation /ˌdɛspəˈɹeɪʃən/, admiration /ˌæd.məˈɹeɪ.ʃən/
- Long words — get the stress right: admirable /ˈæd.məɹ.ə.bəl/, benevolence /bəˈnɛvələns/, cynicism /ˈsɪn.ɪˌsɪzəm/, denunciation /dɪˌnʌnsiˈeɪʃən/, imaginative /ɪˈmæd͡ʒɪnətɪv/
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 gentleness, sinner, righteous.
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.