Shadowing Practice: What Years of Heartbreak Actually Teach Us - Learn English Speaking with Video
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It can be easy to feel, as we look back on our lives, that we have been singularly inept in our choices and behaviours.
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Why did we waste so long here?
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Why didn't we see what they were doing there?
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Why didn't we speak up sooner?
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Or hold our nerve?
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In such self -recriminatory moods, it can be more than merely sentimental to remind ourselves of a fundamental fact about relationships
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that we miss when we despair of our conduct they sit in an area of exceptional importance in
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which we are granted astonishingly few chances to practice before having to make vastly consequential decisions imagine
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if we were asked to become great violinists
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and were given all of six lessons to perfect our craft or
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if we were expected to master the javelin after four perfunctory
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throws we'd know the odds were stacked against us we'd have
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compassion for our often miserable performances we'd understand what we were
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up against without us being aware much the same level of
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unpreparedness holds true of relationships even a highly experienced lover might
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have only eight partners before getting married most of us have two
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or three someone might have shared a home with just one
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other person before deciding to place a new human being on the earth.
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None of us has ever been asked to pass an examination in love before going on a date.
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From the other side of failure, we chastise ourselves for how little we've understood.
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We don't appreciate how much there is to understand how infinitely more complicated relationships are than any musical instrument.
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It's entirely to be expected that the sounds we make are frequently terrifying.
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Let's imagine that there are some 30 key lessons to learn about relationships,
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30 things we might have to get the hang of before having any real chance at managing our lives successfully.
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We might begin to summarize these lessons as follows.
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Always speak up when you're feeling undervalued.
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Complain with clarity and kindness not despair or rage.
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Never try to persuade anyone to love you.
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Don't set out to fix anyone's childhood.
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An absence of attraction is fateful, but then attraction isn't enough.
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They should be like a best friend, but this isn't just a friendship.
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Resentment at a mother or father has a very long tail.
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Someone who hates therapy doesn't just hate therapy, they're liable to hate introspection and dialogue too.
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Flee from anyone defensive, never get together with someone just because they are right on paper.
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If something breaks down once, the chances of it ever working a second time are beyond minimal.
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And so on and so forth.
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The challenge is that though we might state these lessons simply enough,
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to get the hang of each one properly requires at least eight months and more usually several years or even decades.
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We need to experience the finer nuances of the issues through summers and winters, through journeys and work crises, in the slow despair of quiet Sunday afternoons.
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We need time, encouragement and the right to fail without tragedy.
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We wouldn't be any less generous after telling a trumpet player to support their notes from the diaphragm.
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In a depressed moment in middle age, we might try to categorise phases of our love lives according to the slow lessons
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that we've taken away from each one of them.
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For example, don't keep making an effort if they're not.
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Caitlin, four and a half years.
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Beware of people who can't articulate their emotions jonathan six months
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don't wait around hoping they'll explain why they acted as they
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did roshin three years don't have children before the bond is
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properly formed way way 20 years we would need to live
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to at least 500 years old to stand any realistic chance
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of picking up our craft instead we're rushed on stage
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and have to work out the right way to hold the bow before a live audience.
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Those who haven't generated disaster and mutiny are luckier than they are talented.
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We aren't miserable because we're stupid, but because we weren't ever trained,
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because we exist in a culture morbidly and mysteriously resistant to emotional education.
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We leave things to chance, out of a feeling that it might be cold or unromantic,
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to apply some the same basic discipline and foresight that we would resort to before operating a lawnmower or floor polisher.
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We teach people to become brain surgeons and pilots, yet leave the roles of partner and parent to intuition.
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A better arranged culture would itemise the key lessons of love for people in their last year of school.
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and then impose a universal intensive training program with some of the rigor of an architecture or accountancy qualification.
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We would think of novels and films, not as entertainment, but as chances to hone the lessons of love we'd learned in an analytical form elsewhere.
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We'd use video games to place us in digitized scenarios before we had to face them in reality.
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We'd ask ourselves for patience and be aware, without humiliation of how blind we necessarily were.
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We've made a mess, no doubt.
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We don't, on top of everything else, need to be surprised that we did so.
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This is a game with at least 30 traps in it, and we began to play long before we'd ever realised that the instruction manual had been tossed aside.
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This video has 66 sentences and 898 words to shadow. The speech runs for 5:41. The speaker talks at a natural 158 words per minute, close to everyday conversation. Only 81% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English, so the vocabulary is demanding.
Key vocabulary in this video
15 less common words from the video, with pronunciation and meaning:
- lesson /ˈlɛs.ən/ (noun) — A section of learning or teaching into which a wider learning content is divided.
- despair /dɪˈspɛə(ɹ)/ (noun) — Loss of hope; utter hopelessness; complete despondency.
- craft /ˈkɹæft/ (noun) — Ability, skillfulness, especially skill in making plans and carrying them into execution; dexterity in managing affairs, adroitness, practical cunning…
- attraction /əˈtɹækʃn̩/ (noun) — The tendency to attract.
- miserable /ˈmɪz(ə)ɹəbəl/ (adjective) — In a state of misery: very sad, ill, or poor.
- universal /ˌjunəˈvɜɹs(ə)l/ (adjective) — Of or pertaining to the universe.
- necessarily /ˌnɛs.əˈsɛɹ.ə.li/ (adverb) — Inevitably; of necessity.
- rush /ɹʌʃ/ (verb) — To hurry; to perform a task with great haste, often not properly or without thinking carefully.
- complicated /ˈkɑm.plɪˌkeɪ.tɪd/ (adjective) — Difficult or convoluted.
- elsewhere /ˈɛlsˌʍɛɹ/ (adverb) — Synonym of somewhere else: in, at, or to some other place.
- successfully /səkˈsɛs.fə.li/ (adverb) — In a successful manner; with success; without failing.
- mood /muːd/ (noun) — A mental or emotional state, composure.
- architecture /ˈɑː.kɪˌtɛk.t͡ʃə/ (noun) — The art and science of designing and managing the construction of buildings and other structures, particularly if they are well proportioned and decorated.
- odd /ɑd/ (adjective) — Differing from what is usual, ordinary or expected.
- disaster /dɪˈzɑːs.təː/ (noun) — An unexpected natural or man-made catastrophe of substantial extent causing significant physical damage or destruction, loss of life or sometimes permanent…
Phrasal verbs you will hear
- speak up /ˌspik ˈʌp/ (verb) — To talk more loudly or clearly.
- break down (verb) — To stop functioning.
- go on /ˈɡoʊˌɒn/ (verb) — To continue in extent.
- pick up (verb) — To lift; to grasp and raise.
- sit in (verb) — To attend a class, educational presentation, meeting, etc. for one time, as a visitor.
- take away from (verb) — To subtract a quality from; make something seem not so good or interesting.
- wait around (verb) — To spend an especially lengthy period of time inactively, while expecting the arrival of someone or while anticipating some other event, often impatiently and…
- work out /ˌwɝk ˈaʊt/ (verb) — To calculate.
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 32 contractions and reduced forms, such as we'd, don't, we've. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: attraction /əˈtɹækʃn̩/, rush /ɹʌʃ/, friendship /ˈfɹɛn(d)ʃɪp/, examination /ɪɡˌzæm.ɪˈneɪ.ʃən/, patience /ˈpeɪ̯.ʃəns/
- Long words — get the stress right: miserable /ˈmɪz(ə)ɹəbəl/, universal /ˌjunəˈvɜɹs(ə)l/, necessarily /ˌnɛs.əˈsɛɹ.ə.li/, complicated /ˈkɑm.plɪˌkeɪ.tɪd/, successfully /səkˈsɛs.fə.li/
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 lesson, despair, craft.
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | are granted · were asked · were given |
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | have been · has ever been asked · we've understood |
| Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing | Someone who hates · people who can · Those who haven |
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.