Shadowing Practice: Why relationships in 2026 carry impossible expectations | Alain de Botton - Learn English Speaking with Video
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It used to be the case that when people found partners, they would do so according to fairly pragmatic considerations.
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Couples were formed not by the individuals themselves, but by the wider society.
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There were, if you like, dynastic marriages.
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There was then a momentous change that occurs towards the end of the 18th century, that we now know as Romanticism.
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And one of the central tenets of Romanticism is that each individual should be left to decide on their partner
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by their own, the movements of their own heart.
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It's a beautiful idea, it's a very liberating idea.
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And let's put it plainly, It's been a disaster.
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We are not any appreciably happier now in a romantic culture than we were in a dynastic culture. And why?
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Because we live in a romantic culture that sees something adverse in planning
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and thinking and reflecting too hard on the business of love and it's been a serious problem for humanity.
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My name is Alain de Botton.
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I'm a philosopher, psychotherapist and founder of the School of Life.
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the unique challenge of modern gating.
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We know in theory that love matters a lot.
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It's in every pop song, it's the center of most religions.
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We sometimes lose sight of what that word actually means.
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It's really about connection.
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And it is one of the most beautiful and one of the most complicated, of all phenomena Even though we think we've been around on this planet for a long time,
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trying to figure things out, I'd say we were still at the dawn collectively.
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of making sense of this phenomenon we call love, And it's no surprise that most people will go to their deathbeds thinking,
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Not quite sure I've figured that side of life out.
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At least many of us will.
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still be grappling with some of the complexities of love by the time time runs out on us.
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The most central kind of love that people are obsessed about, concerned about, is romantic love.
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That is the intimate connection between two human beings who have a sexual Contact.
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It's worth saying that there are other forms of love, We can love our children, we can love animals, we can love ideas,
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we can love tables, chairs, clouds, all sorts of things.
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We are capable of many forms of love.
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But I'd say that when people sing about love, and when they cry about love,
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it tends to be the love of one very special person we tend to call our soulmate, our partner.
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It used to be the case that when people found partners, they would do so according to fairly pragmatic considerations.
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in most nations, in most parts of the world, for most of history, Couples were formed not by the individuals themselves, but by the wider society,
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families, the village, the court.
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There were, if you like, dynastic marriages.
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You would get together with somebody because they had a plow
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and you had an ox and it seemed like a good match.
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Or you were the Duke of Brabant and they were the Princess of Naples.
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And that was seen as a wonderful union.
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So you got together for reasons that were nothing to do with emotional compatibility.
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There were a lot of tears, there was sadness, there was loneliness, it didn't seem to matter.
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because relationships were seen to be about something else.
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There was then a momentous change that occurs in, towards the end of the 18th century,
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starting in Britain, France, Germany, parts of Italy, a revolution in feeling, that we now know as Romanticism.
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And one of the central tenets of Romanticism is that each individual should be left to decide
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on their partner by the movements of their own heart.
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they should be left to decide for themselves.
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It's a beautiful idea, It's a very...
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a liberating idea, it should make a lot of sense.
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And we have been in the Romantic age now for you know, 200 years, perhaps shorter, perhaps a little longer, that kind of time period.
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And let's put it plainly: It's been a disaster.
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We are not any appreciably happier now in a romantic culture than we were in a dynastic culture,
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where marriages were made for dynastic reasons.
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Why?
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Because we have failed collectively to focus with enough intent on the difficulties that couples will have when they choose each other,
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according to the movements of their own heart.
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Look, I think a really key...
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prejudice of the romantic worldview is that if love is working well, It should be following instinct.
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There's been an enormous veneration Mr. Worship of instinct.
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Love is described as a special feeling, not in a set of ideas, not a sense of rationally observable principles, but a feeling.
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You either have the feeling or you don't.
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You must be guided, by your feeling.
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There's even a prejudice against language.
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You know, true lovers shouldn't talk too much.
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They should just feel the fluttering of their own hearts.
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That's why music has a huge prestige.
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higher than philosophy.
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When we're in love, we don't want to read philosophical tracks, we want to hear love songs.
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That is to do with our sense that emotion should be guiding us, not reason.
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Reason is the enemy in the romantic worldview.
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of truly happy relationships.
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If you follow reason, that's cold, it may be calculating, it's unromantic.
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And, you know, there are so many things that are considered unromantic.
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and I would love to train our audience.
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That every time something seems unromantic, Question it.
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Is it truly unromantic?
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If we define Romanticism, as the pursuit of a workable relationship.
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On that basis, is it unromantic to talk about money?
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Is it unromantic?
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to think long and hard about childhood patterns of psychological development.
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Is it anti -romantic? to spend a lot of time thinking about families and friends and compatibility at that level.
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All these things, in my view, belong to a truly adequate way of surveying whether a couple should be together.
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But I'm also aware that nowadays these things are considered very unromantic.
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To live in a romantic culture, means to live in a culture that has a set of ideas about how good couples should form.
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They should be formed by instinct, that everybody has a soulmate, that you'll recognize your soulmate by a special, flattery feeling, that you shouldn't be asked to account for that feeling,
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you should simply go for it and marry in Vegas in two weeks
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if that's what seizes you and that you should be able to
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Communicate deeply with your partner without using language through that special medium of the heart, through the silence, Also that you shouldn't criticize your partner,
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that true partners should love each other for who they really are, which means no desire to grow or change.
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You just accept someone.
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Couples in romantic culture will sometimes complain, "You're trying to change me." And this is seen as really offensive.
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It's like, what?
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You know, you complain to your friends.
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My partner's trying to change me.
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Oh, what an awful person.
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This must be awful.
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You must get out immediately.
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If you went to an ancient Greek, if you went to Athens in 400 BC, And you said to an ancient Greek, what is love?
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and where is the role of criticism, they would say, Love is a process of education.
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It's the education of emotion.
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And lovers should of course be able to pick each other up for things that they don't spot in one another.
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And they should be trying to develop into the best version of themselves, rather than simply staying stuck in an admiration for who they are today.
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The whole process should be dynamic.
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become who you could be, not worship who you happen to be right now.
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All of this sounds very strange in Romantic culture, which is why relationships are so difficult in our time.
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Let's remember that a person's life satisfaction is determined by up to around 70 % by the quality of their personal relationships.
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A Martian hearing that statistic visiting planet Earth would think, "Well, clearly earthlings, given the enormous role of love, will be spending 70 % of their money
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and 70 % of their educational time working out how on earth this business of love works." Is that true?
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No. We spend hardly any time rationally thinking about it.
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None of us are made to sit through classes in attachment theory, classes in apology, classes in listening, classes in communication.
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No, we're, you know, Physics is important.
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Geography is important.
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Don't get me wrong.
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But is there no time for this given its role in our lives?
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Do we really want to leave this to chance?
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And the answer is yes. And why?
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because we live in a romantic culture that sees something adverse in planning
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and thinking and reflecting too hard on the business of love.
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It's very deleterious, and it's been a serious problem for humanity.
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One of the most powerful disseminators of romantic culture is art.
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And by art, I mean all the leading artistic media.
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Film, definitely.
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You know, if you were learning about love from films you would be very confused.
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And that's why many of us are confused, because films, and I include that television shows and other narrative forms, these things are hugely misleading.
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They simply Do not show what a real relationship is like.
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I mean, probably you can count on one hand, that the number of films that have accurately shown love.
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I think one of the most accurate representations of love is Richard Linklater's Before Trilogy.
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which ended up with Before Midnight.
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It's a wonderful reckoning, really, with the real complexities of love.
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But, you know, most films are not that.
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Most films are blithe, are superficial, are...
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not modest enough in showing us what's really going on between couples.
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It's also stimulated through music, and music constantly It gives us little miniature stories about how love works.
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And the music is terrific but it's not accurate to what's going on.
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presses the wrong buttons.
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Poetry, no one really reads poetry nowadays.
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If they did, the problem exists in poetry too.
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So We have so much media around.
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and yet we're still so much strangers to ourselves, I would say that the single greatest, most misleading disseminator of ideas on love is
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culture and art.
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The problem is very heavily located there.
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Why practice speaking with this video?
Practicing speaking by engaging with Alain de Botton's insightful discussion on relationships allows learners to immerse themselves in both the language and complex themes of love and romantic culture. Through the shadowing technique, where you mimic the speaker's words and intonation, you gain a deeper understanding of nuanced language while concurrently improving your pronunciation and fluency.
This video serves as an excellent resource for those preparing for the IELTS speaking practice, as it covers a range of vocabulary and expressions pertinent to personal relationships and emotional dynamics. Listening to de Botton's reflections provides context that enriches the language learning experience, giving learners practical examples of how to articulate thoughts on abstract concepts such as love and connection.
Grammar & Expressions in Context
- Conditional Clauses: de Botton frequently uses conditional statements that reflect on hypothetical scenarios, such as “If love is working well, it should be following instinct.” Practicing these clauses helps learners articulate possibilities and consequences in their conversations.
- Infinitive Phrases: The speaker employs phrases like “to decide on their partner” and “to question” which are essential in expressing intentions. Mastery of these structures will enable learners to convey their thoughts more precisely.
- Descriptive Adjectives: Terms like "momentous change" and "beautiful idea" illustrate the importance of descriptive language in communication. Learning how to effectively use adjectives can enhance your descriptive speech, making your conversations more engaging.
Common Pronunciation Traps
As you practice with this video, pay attention to certain words that may present challenges in pronunciation. For instance, the word “romanticism” can be tricky due to its length and multiple syllables; it’s essential to break it down into manageable parts during your shadow speech practice. Also, phrases like “the quality of their personal relationships” require careful pronunciation to maintain clarity, particularly in the linking of sounds between words.
Additionally, de Botton’s accent and inflections may introduce nuances uncommon in standard English accents, making it imperative for learners to adapt and flex their skills to match the variations. Engaging in shadowspeak, where you echo the precise speech patterns of the speaker, will greatly enhance your pronunciation skills.
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| “Used to” used to + verb — a past habit or state that is no longer true | used to be |
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | were formed · should be left · was seen |
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | It's been · we've been · I've figured |
| Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing | are, which means · culture, which is |
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.