Shadowing Practice: Why I left America for good - Learn English Speaking with Video
Creating lesson...
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So after living in the U.S for 35 years, I made the decision with my family to leave America for good.
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It was not a decision that was easy, but as time passed, it became clear that the U.S was no longer the right place for us.
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So I want to talk about why we left, the downsides of leaving America, and a lot of the benefits that we found as well.
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There were quite a few benefits.
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And because this This is a channel about personal growth.
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I also wanna talk about some of the lessons
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that I learned along the way that might help you to make really hard decisions and live a more meaningful life.
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My wife, Nat and I met in New York over 10 years ago.
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She was on a one-year tourist visa from Australia, looking for a good time, and I was on all the dating apps looking for love.
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I don't think
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that we realize the implications of falling in love with someone who was born 10,000 miles away from you at the time, or how difficult of a life that would be,
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especially once you have kids.
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But at the time, we could give a shit less.
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So as things started to get more serious, we had to talk about where we wanted to settle down, where we wanted to start our family.
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New York definitely wasn't it.
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So we tried California and later Pennsylvania, but no matter where we lived, we couldn't find a place that felt like home.
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And after giving this a lot of thought, I think it really came down to having a lack of community.
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So I've got a big family.
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I've got six brothers and sisters, and we all spread out across the East Coast.
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Some of us even moved across the country.
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My friends from school followed a similar pattern.
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A couple of them still live in my hometown, but the vast majority of them moved more than two hours away.
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Everyone just became so spread out.
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And I think this is a universal experience for people who grew up in small towns in the US.
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Most people go off to college and find opportunities bigger cities and they rarely ever return.
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While there are real benefits to being within a few hours from your family and friends, I don't think that's the same thing as having a community.
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A community needs to be close in proximity.
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They're your actual neighbors.
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They're the people that you run into on your morning walk.
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They're the ones you call when you have to make a midnight trip to the emergency room.
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We really struggled to find any sense of community in the U.S.
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And that's not the fault of the US as much as it is the fact
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that all my family and friends that I grew up with just spread out so much.
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But what I learned from this process is that you're never really stuck and you can always start over.
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Honestly, I lost track of the amount of times that we started over.
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I think we sold all of our stuff and moved across the country two or three times.
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If you can avoid doing that, I think that's probably the way to go.
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You're going to save a lot of money.
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But I also found out that this wasn't the scariest thing in the world.
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To be able to start over again and again, to experiment with where you want to live and what you are looking for,
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for your home, what you need out of a community.
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I think those are pursuits that are worth investing your time and energy into.
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And the more that you do it, the more that you start over, the more you begin to build up resilience and realize that you actually can begin again in a new place.
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And I think that's one of the reasons that made it
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so easy for us during the pandemic to spend a significant amount of time in Australia.
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So I visited Sydney for the first time over 10 years ago.
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This was very early into my relationship with Nat, and I immediately fell in love with the city.
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I mean, sure, there were some challenges in adjusting to the new culture.
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I mean, for one, everything was upside down.
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The toilet flushes the other way, but wow, was this country beautiful.
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I mean, the hiking trails, the tiny beaches scattered all across the coast.
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The people were so friendly, and goddammit, their accents are adorable.
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At the time, though, I never really considered it a real possibility for our future.
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Nat and I kind of had this unspoken agreement that since we met in the U.S., we would always live in the U.S.
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Whether that was fair or not, that was kind of the unwritten terms of our relationship.
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When the pandemic hit, it gave us an opportunity to live in Australia for seven months.
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And for the first time, I really got to live there.
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I wasn't just visiting as a tourist.
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It gave me a taste of what life might be like if we stayed.
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And honestly, it was pretty great.
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I got a gym membership.
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I learned how to drive on the other side of the road.
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I learned that a flat white isn't a boring white person, which is, it's a common mistake.
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So outside of the nature and the friendly people, I also found a country that was safe and looked after each other.
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Australia's public healthcare system has been amazing.
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Nat has been in and out of the hospital over the past few years from giving birth to our son,
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to losing our daughter, and to having an emergency appendectomy.
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And we haven't had to pay a single dollar out of pocket.
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We've never had to stress about insurance companies and whether
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or not we would be paying tens of thousands of dollars or even going into debt for having life-saving procedures.
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Yeah, we pay a little bit more in taxes, but I'd so much rather pay into a system
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that ensures everyone gets access to healthcare without dealing with shady and predatory insurance companies.
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Universal health care should be a thing in the U.S.
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Like the fact that the health care system and insurance care system is so backwards in the U.S is a huge problem.
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And obviously both sides of the aisle are trying to fix it.
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One thing that you might not agree with me on is the fact
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that it's really nice to live in a country with practically no guns.
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I've lived on blocks in Philly where people got killed in shootings.
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I've been to parties where people pulled guns out.
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I went to schools where bomb threats put everyone on lockdown for hours.
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I even had a friend who was on campus during a school shooting.
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I always have my guard up in the US when I'm going to concerts, movie theaters, bars, anywhere out in public.
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I'm always looking for the exits.
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And when I speak with my family and friends, I know that this is a very common mindset.
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I never realized how un-normal this was in the rest of the world until I moved to Australia.
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There's this very real sense of relief when you get off the plane, where you're like, oh, I can let my guard down.
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I don't have to worry about somebody shooting me in the face.
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Say what you want, but that's a pretty good feeling.
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How fucking insane is that?
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There's other good things about Australia.
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We have abortion rights, which is pretty cool.
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Life in Australia might not be perfect.
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And like, part of me is just constantly waiting for the pin to drop.
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I'm like, like, when are you guys gonna, like, just tell me this is a big practical joke and places can't get this good.
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Because, honestly, Australia is pretty great.
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Another self-development lesson that I got from this period of my life was to allow myself to continue to question long-held assumptions.
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I think we tend to think that our life moves in a straight line
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and you have to check off all the boxes.
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You grow up, graduate school, pick a career, settle into a city, get married, have kids, blah, blah, blah.
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You do everything in a certain sequence.
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Everything happens in order and you're supposed to follow the path through to the end.
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But what I've discovered over the past few years is that life is more like a road trip than a train track.
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You can change course or even your destination at any point in time.
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Just because you got a degree in dog training doesn't mean you need to dedicate your life to it.
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Just because you were born a Phillies fan doesn't mean you have to be an asshole.
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I take that back.
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That's definitely not true.
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The point is, the life that you thought you were supposed to have isn't the only one that's available to you.
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And when you allow yourself to question what life and work are meant to look like, you open yourself up to new possibilities.
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Living in Australia for those seven months really made me question everything I assumed my home would look like.
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When we looked around at our life, one thing was clear.
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We had found something that we could never find in the U.S., a community.
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And this wasn't because you can't find communities in the U.S.
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They're all over the place and you can even build communities for yourself.
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It was just that we had everything set up
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so perfectly for us here in Sydney that we didn't have to work as hard for it.
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Our friends were starting their families, they were having their first kids, buying their first houses, and then Nat got pregnant with our son and we had to make a decision.
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This is going to sound absolutely ridiculous and idealistic, but in the beginning we wanted to try to live between the US and Australia.
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We thought we would travel back and forth every six months because we just didn't want to make a decision.
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We wanted everybody to be happy.
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We wanted my family to be happy, Nat's family to be happy.
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We wanted to be happy.
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We didn't want to make a decision, so we decided to do both.
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But when we started looking into the realities of having a baby, getting them into a good daycare,
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looking at the amount of stuff that kids need and the cost of living in two places at the same time, it just wasn't realistic.
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Like it's, it's true that there are a lot of people that live very unconventional lives.
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They, they have a family of five living on a boat
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or in an RV or fucking in a tent somewhere in the middle of the woods.
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So it's like, obviously there are people that can do it, but this just wasn't the life that we wanted to build for ourselves or for our son.
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And so we had to make a decision.
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I have to give Nat so much credit because never once did she pressure me to move to Australia.
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She never even brought it up.
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It was me who eventually came around to the idea and said something like, it'd be pretty great to live here.
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With Sydney, we had a community, a beautiful city, and if I'm being honest, a country that didn't feel like it was tearing itself apart.
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So we made a decision to move here full time.
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And this decision felt equally easy and impossible.
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It was easy because of everything that I've already shared with you.
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Australia is an amazing place to live.
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It was impossible because we'd be 10,000 miles away from my family.
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There are moments that we will miss.
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There are moments that my family will miss.
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Holidays, birthdays, milestones.
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It's in these moments when the distance really hits home.
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But this was kind of the life that we signed up for, whether we realized it or not.
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And listen, this life is hard and it is challenging, but it's not one that I would trade for anything.
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Okay, one final piece of advice that relates to personal growth.
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I don't want to sound like an asshole, although if you made it this far, I don't think this is going to upset you.
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But it's not your job to make everyone happy.
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When you make big life decisions, some people won't understand.
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They might question your choices, disagree with them, they might even feel hurt by them.
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And that's tough, especially when it's people that you care about.
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Your parents might not like the degree you chose or the fact that you decided to become a YouTuber.
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Oh, you gonna be a big man now, you gonna be a YouTuber, huh?
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You gonna be a YouTuber, son?
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My dad doesn't even sound like that.
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I don't even know where that came from.
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At the end of the day, other people's opinions about your life shouldn't define it.
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This doesn't mean that you should ignore people or not care about their feelings.
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It just means that you don't have to carry the weight of their expectations.
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You can acknowledge their concerns and appreciate their perspective and still choose what's right for you.
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And what I've found is that when you stop trying to make everyone else happy
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and you just focus on building a life that you love, people who care about you will come around.
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That's pretty much it if you clicked on this video because you're in some weird kind of political algorithm, welcome to my channel.
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I talk about self-development and personal growth.
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If that's something that you're interested in, if you want to learn more about how to build a meaningful life, then click subscribe.
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You can also get my newsletter by going to mattdivella.com slash newsletter.
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Thanks for being here and I'll see you soon.
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This B2 speaking lesson is built on the video “Why I left America for good”. This video has 167 sentences and 2370 words to shadow. The speech runs for 12:03. The speaker talks fast, about 197 words per minute, so expect linked and reduced sounds. 87% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English, so the vocabulary is easy to follow.
Key vocabulary in this video
The 15 most advanced words in the video, with pronunciation and meaning:
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| newsletter noun | /ˈn(j)uzˌlɛtɚ/ | A periodically sent publication containing current events or the like, generally on a particular topic or geared toward a limited audience. |
| meaningful adjective | /ˈmiː.nɪŋ.fl̩/ | Having meaning, significant. |
| appendectomy noun | The surgical procedure for the removal of the vermiform appendix. | |
| daycare noun | /ˈdeɪkeə(ɹ)/ | Daytime supervision, usually of children or pets. |
| idealistic adjective | /ˌaɪ.di.əˈlɪ.stɪk/ | Of or pertaining to an idealist or to idealism. |
| predatory adjective | /ˈpɹɛdəˌtɔɹi/ | Of, or relating to a predator. |
| scatter verb | /ˈskætɚ/ | To (cause to) separate and go in different directions; to disperse. |
| unconventional adjective | Not adhering to custom, convention, or accepted standards. | |
| unspoken adjective | /ʌnˈspoʊkən/ | Not spoken; not said. |
| unwritten adjective | Not written. | |
| dedicate verb | /ˈdɛdɪˌkeɪt/ | To set apart for a deity or for religious purposes; consecrate. |
| lockdown noun | /ˈlɑkˌdaʊn/ | The confinement of people in their own rooms (e.g., in a school) or cells (in a prison), or to their own homes or areas (e.g., in the case of a city- or… |
| downside noun | /ˈdaʊnˌsaɪd/ | A disadvantageous aspect of something that is normally advantageous. |
| implication noun | /ˌɪmpləˈkeɪʃən/ | The act of implicating. |
| resilience noun | /ɹɪˈzɪl.ɪ.əns/ | The mental ability to recover quickly from depression, illness or misfortune. |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| start over verb | to begin again; to return to the beginning | |
| spread out verb | Become further apart. | |
| build up verb | To erect; to construct. | |
| check off verb | To mark items on a list (with a checkmark or by crossing them out) that have been chosen for keeping or removal or that have been dealt with (for example… | |
| come around verb | /kʌ.məˈɹaʊnd/ | To change one's mind, especially to begin to agree or appreciate what one was reluctant to accept at first. |
| come down to verb | To reach by moving down or reducing. | |
| find out verb | To discover, as by asking or investigating. | |
| get off verb | To move from being on top of (something) to not being on top of it. |
Sentences worth repeating
Short, complete lines from the video that you can reuse in everyday conversation:
- You're going to save a lot of money.
- I wasn't just visiting as a tourist.
- I'm always looking for the exits.
- My dad doesn't even sound like that.
- I don't even know where that came from.
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 been · I've lived · I've been |
| Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing | someone who was · people who grew · person, which is |
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | was born · were born · are meant |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 60 contractions and reduced forms, such as don't, I've, wasn't. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: implication /ˌɪmpləˈkeɪʃən/, shady /ˈʃeɪdi/, flush /ˈflʌʃ/, expectation /ˌɛk.spɛkˈteɪ.ʃən/, assumption /əˈsʌm(p).ʃ(ə)n/
- Long words — get the stress right: idealistic /ˌaɪ.di.əˈlɪ.stɪk/, predatory /ˈpɹɛdəˌtɔɹi/, implication /ˌɪmpləˈkeɪʃən/, resilience /ɹɪˈzɪl.ɪ.əns/, proximity /pɹɒkˈsɪm.ɪ.ti/
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 newsletter, meaningful, appendectomy.
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.