Shadowing Practice: Why Ebola Keeps Coming Back - Learn English Speaking with Video
Creating lesson...
1
Ebola is back.
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What makes it so hard to stop?
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Once Ebola enters your body through contact with infectious bodily fluids, immune cells rush to destroy it.
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But the virus infects these cells and uses them to spread,
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killing some and triggering others to produce a massive flood of chemical signals that causes extreme inflammation and internal bleeding.
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Ebola also attacks the cells that make clotting proteins so that the bleeding becomes hard to stop.
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Organs lose oxygen and begin to fail.
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Around half of infected patients die, and in some outbreaks, the death rate has reached 90%.
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While many have been contained, Ebola keeps returning.
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Especially in high-risk countries like the DRC, conflict has displaced millions into crowded camps where the virus spreads fast.
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Constant cross-border movement makes things worse, and with a health system in ruins, an infectious disease can thrive.
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There are vaccines for some strains, but not for others, so many patients with Ebola need round-the-clock care to stay alive.
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Containing the current outbreak will cost around $518 million, and this investment can also help stop the next one before it starts.
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So, it's money well spent.
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This C1 speaking lesson is built on the video “Why Ebola Keeps Coming Back”. This video has 14 sentences and 193 words to shadow. The speech runs for 1:11. The speaker talks at a natural 163 words per minute, close to everyday conversation. Only 78% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English, so the vocabulary is demanding.
Key vocabulary in this video
The 15 most advanced words in the video, with pronunciation and meaning:
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| virus noun | /ˈvaɪ.ɹəs/ | A submicroscopic, non-cellular structure that consists of a core of DNA or RNA surrounded by a protein coat, that requires a living host cell to replicate, and… |
| outbreak noun | /ˈaʊtbɹeɪk/ | An eruption; the sudden appearance of a rash, disease, etc. |
| infectious adjective | /ɪnˈfɛk.ʃəs/ | Caused by an agent that enters the host's body (such as a bacterium, virus, parasite, or prion); often, also, transmitted among hosts via any of various routes… |
| bleed verb | /ˈbliːd/ | To shed blood through an injured blood vessel. |
| rush verb | /ɹʌʃ/ | To hurry; to perform a task with great haste, often not properly or without thinking carefully. |
| clock noun | /klɑk/ | A chronometer, an instrument that measures time, particularly the time of day. |
| flood noun | /flʌd/ | An overflow of a large amount of water (usually disastrous) from a lake or other body of water due to excessive rainfall or other input of water. |
| ruin noun | /ˈɹuː.ɪn/ | The remains of a destroyed or dilapidated construction, such as a house or castle. |
| oxygen noun | /ˈɑksɪd͡ʒən/ | The chemical element (symbol O) with an atomic number of 8 and relative atomic mass of 15.9994. It is a colorless and odorless gas. Sometimes called elemental… |
| trigger noun | /ˈtɹɪɡɚ/ | A finger-operated lever used to fire a gun. |
| fluid noun | /ˈflu.ɪd/ | Any substance which can flow with relative ease, tends to assume the shape of its container, and obeys Bernoulli's principle; a liquid, gas or plasma. |
| strain noun | /stɹeɪn/ | A particular variety of a microbe, virus, or other organism, usually a taxonomically infraspecific one. |
| immune adjective | /ɪˈmjuːn/ | Exempt; not subject to. |
| organ noun | /ˈɔːɡən/ | The larger part of an organism, composed of tissues that perform similar functions. |
| vaccine noun | /vækˈsin/ | A substance given to stimulate a body's production of antibodies and provide immunity against a disease without causing the disease itself in the treatment… |
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 | has reached · have been contained · has displaced |
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | have been contained |
Pronunciation to watch
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: infectious /ɪnˈfɛk.ʃəs/, rush /ɹʌʃ/, inflammation /ɪnfləˈmeɪ̯ʃən/
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 virus, outbreak, infectious.
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.