Shadowing Practice: Why You Didn't Learn English in School - Learn English Speaking with Video

English learners I had the idea today of walking around while doing today's video.

I'm here at a park.

and I'm gonna do a video where I speak at normal speed.

Hopefully you guys like this format, hopefully you can hear me okay.

obviously there might be some ambient sounds there's uh landscapers here mowing the lawn there's kids playing

and stuff like that

so hopefully you can hear me well uh today i want

to talk about reasons why you probably didn't learn english very well

when you took classes in school

when you took english classes in high school middle school elementary school whatever it may be

this is a strange format for me so excuse me if i'm just like looking around i'm trying to like here.

I think people are watching me so this is a little bit new for me so bear with me here.

But today I want to talk about why you might not have learned English very well in school.

I'm also going to release a podcast episode about this.

It's probably going to come out in a couple months or so.

I'm way more ahead on podcast episodes than I am on YouTube videos

but I wanted to talk about this today because it's a topic that is pretty relevant to probably

most of you maybe almost all of you i'm sure most of you learned English in school, um maybe you took four years of english classes in high school

or maybe you took even more than that

if you started english classes in middle school elementary school whatever it may be

but i hear this story again and again and again every time i talk to students

about their experience learning English in school, especially in public schools.

I'm not really talking here about private schools.

There's a lot of good private schools, but in public schools, what tends to happen is

that people take years and years of English classes and they never learn English.

So why is that?

Let's talk about some of the issues.

These are just my opinions.

Obviously, other people might disagree with me.

They might think that there are other issues or they might not.

see it the way I see it,

but these are the things that I see that might contribute to the reasons why people don't learn English in school.

I don't have my notes with me.

Usually I have like my notes on my computer to kind of keep me organized.

So I'm just kind of going off the speak naturally,

spontaneously, and try to remember the ideas that I have in mind So I think the main idea

the not the main idea but the main point the main problem that i would say of why

English classes aren't that useful in school.

They're useful, but not as useful as we'd like them to be.

is because they don't teach you how to learn English, right?

It would be great if English classes in high school English teachers taught students how to actually learn a language,

how to actually go about learning English because the majority of our learning comes outside of the classroom, right?

The classroom is not where we're getting like most of our practice, most of our listening practice, perhaps not even most of our speaking practice depending on your situation.

So because of that, I'm going to turn around here.

I'm going to like do laps at this park.

Sorry, this is like completely natural video, not edited or anything like that.

So bear with me.

Like I said, one of the big problems with English classes in high school, middle school, or whatever, is that students kinda just show up hoping to learn English.

They don't actually know uh.. that actually learned how to learn a language.

You know, whatever subject it may be, it's great to learn how to learn something, right?

And when you learn how to learn, then you can do it on your own, right?

You don't need someone to guide you through every step of the way or whatever.

But that's not the case in high school English classes in most countries, right?

People don't learn how to actually learn English.

They just show up

and hopefully you know the knowledge just like gets transferred to their head from the teacher

or whatever and that's not how it works in most cases right.

So that's a big issue is that students aren't taught how to learn.

Another issue I would say is that the content

that is used is not always the best and so I always talk about this idea of having

comprehensible input that's the term that's used nowadays to describe this.

Input referring to things that you listen to or that you read

you know and having this content and have it be comprehensible meaning you understand it.

So the idea is to use content that you can understand but is still challenging for you.

So it's still like a little above your level so that you're learning new words, you're learning new phrases, you're learning new vocabulary,

your brain is having to kind of fill in the gaps of things

that you don't understand when you read or you listen to whatever the content is.

So that's basically what you're doing right now, right?

You're watching this video, maybe you listen to my podcast, and what it is is specific level.

This is a more advanced video because I'm speaking at normal speed, but you got the subtitles, right?

And so that's a little bit more comprehensible.

You're able to like read the subtitles while you're listening.

So that makes it more understandable.

But for example, if you watch

my in a lower level videos or

if you listen to my podcast you're listening to content that's

made for a specific level that's lower than just native level

so what that's good for is that you actually you know use content

that you can understand

and you are still being challenged you're still learning new words you're still learning new phrases

but it's understandable it's not something that's

some textbook like whatever text they put in there that's not very interesting, right?

So unfortunately in schools a lot of what you consume in

your English class is going to be like really boring like textbook style stories

that don't really interest anyone or they're like little videos that you might watch that really aren't that interesting.

I remember watching these in I didn't have Spanish in middle school.

I was just high school.

But in my high school Spanish classes, I remember watching videos that weren't that interesting or whatever.

You know the type of content that we use is extremely important

because if you use content that's interesting for you that's engaging for you

that you can understand

but it's still challenging for you that's going to be like the optimal type of content that you want to use.

It might be too easy for you, it might be too hard for you, whatever it may be, that content tends to be just less useful overall, right?

So the type of content used in schools is often not the best.

Right.

What else?

What other problems?

Let me think.

I've got a few other ones that I had in mind, but I don't have my notes in front of me, so I kind of have to scour my brain to try to remember what they were.

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Yes, another issue is the speaking practice is not very helpful.

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right obviously speaking is like the hardest part of learning a language for most people right

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and so you would hope

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that in these classes you would have some good well -designed effective speaking practice

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but that's usually not the case at least in my experience it was typical to do like role playing

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and this role playing was not very interesting it's like all right let's pretend

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that you're the cashier i'm the person shopping here at the supermarket let's interact right

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useful about that obviously you can learn useful phrases useful words for

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that specific situation maybe I'll slow down here so I'm not walking

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so fast so I can talk more easily yeah obviously you're learning things

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that are good for that situation

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but let's be honest that's not the most interesting type of speaking practice

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and those types of things like the words that you learn through that exercise or whatever,

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they're not going to stay in your head as like easily as something that's much more relevant to you.

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Like, for example, if you were to do speaking practice.

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about something that's actually really important to you, it's really engaging for you, it's really relevant to your life,

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you're probably going to learn and remember those new words more easily.

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I notice this a lot, for example, when I do speaking practice, when I'm learning other languages,

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What happens is I tend to focus a lot of my early efforts on speaking about things

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that are really important to me, that are really relevant to my life.

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For example, I might speak a lot about language learning, or I might speak a lot about online business, content creation, things that I do that I talk about on a regular basis,

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even in English, and that are interesting for me, they're relevant for me.

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things because those things stay in my head i repeat them a lot

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because these are things

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that i talk about a lot i have a lot to say about them

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so it kind of helps out with the repetition where i'm

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speaking more about them these phrases are sticking in my mind more i don't know

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if you guys want to kind of see the view

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because you're kind of under me here

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but got a nice big old park here uh pretty close to my house

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so this is uh pretty nice there's some kids over on the playground so of speaking practice,

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the speaking practice in these schools, in these classes, it's just not that relevant, not that useful.

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And because of that, it's not very memorable.

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The stuff that you're learning doesn't stay with you as easily, right?

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So that's a big issue.

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So speaking practice is, you know, that's something that's lacking.

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Like there is speaking practice, but it's not very good.

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It's not very effective.

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And It just doesn't help you learn as much, right?

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And then one other thing

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that I can think of is just kind of the lack of freedom when it comes to these classes, because as you probably know, when it comes to learning a language,

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it's really useful to be able to kind of have flexibility

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and use content that's good for you that perhaps might not be interesting for someone else, but you like it or, you know, whatever it might be,

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having this freedom to customize so that it's interesting for you.

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This is something that's obviously lacking

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in schools right

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so obviously everyone's kind of forced to read the same thing

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uh listen to the same thing do the same thing you know all this kind of stuff

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and yeah i get it because we want structure but unfortunately that means

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that a lot of people are just kind of tuned out

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they're not really you know engaged with what they're um they're

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interacting with in the class in terms of the content

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and it probably means that they're not retaining as much information it's just not good

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forced you to use just like really boring content for English, right?

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You probably wouldn't be that excited to learn English, right?

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I hope that this type of video is more interesting for you than just some random boring textbook

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or whatever it may be, right?

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So I'm not saying that we need to just like have no rules in the English class.

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All I'm saying is there should be a little more flexibility.

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Perhaps students can use different types of content, not always have to use the same exact thing if it's interesting for one person, but not for another person, right?

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And speaking of textbooks, that's one other issue.

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I think there's just an over -reliance on textbooks in English classes.

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Don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with textbooks.

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Textbooks are great.

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They're great like resources.

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You can reference them if you want to learn things about grammar, you want to learn rules, you want to practice with things, maybe learn vocabulary.

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Sometimes there is.

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like they do have like good interesting stories that could be good, comprehensible input.

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Not always, but sometimes they have that as well.

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So textbooks are great.

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However, these classes tend to be like dependent on these textbooks

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as like the primary source of information for like our primary source of interaction with the language, you know, for the students.

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And I don't think it should be like that.

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Textbook should be supplementary.

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So obviously it's good to reference a textbook, to learn different things, practice with different rules if that's what you're trying to do.

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But the main foundation of your learning, of course, is not going to come from the textbook.

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It's not like, "Alright, I'm going to learn all the rules in the textbook

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and then I can use all these rules naturally in my own speech." It just doesn't work that way.

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You guys probably know what I'm talking about.

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Instead of that, you know, why not make, you know, comprehensible input the foundation of the learning experience,

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even within the context of the classroom, have some

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relevant type of speaking practice that's actually useful and engaging

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and then also use the textbook as like a supplementary thing to help with like certain grammar points

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and help kind of give just a little bit of

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guided structure through the the fundamentals of the language or whatever right

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so I think that would be a better approach than like using the textbook as the main learning resource

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because I don't think anyone really likes that that much.

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And it just deprives people of the time, like during class, to do other things that are more important,

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like the listening comprehension and the relevant speaking practice, all that.

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One other issue, and this one is kind of hard to really remedy, but the other issue is that obviously most teachers in public schools,

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if they're teaching an English class in some other country, they're not a native speaker.

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right and so because of

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that they're obviously not going to pronounce words correctly all the time they're obviously going to say things

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that are wrong

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and you know that's just kind of how it goes that's

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not like a knock on these english teachers i'm not trying

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to insult these english teachers obviously you know they're doing the best they can right

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but obviously there is the issue of people in these classes

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that just repeat what they hear the teacher say and obviously if the teacher They're looking at the teacher as the authority,

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so they're going to say it wrong.

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like the teacher does.

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But again, that's a little bit harder to remedy because you can't have a native teacher in all these classes.

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But what I would say is if you are like a teacher, an English teacher in one of these classes, it's really important to acknowledge this right we don't want to get

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so prideful like

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if i were teaching spanish let's say in the us i would never want to be

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so prideful to say like oh no like i'm you know the way

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that i'm saying it is exactly the way

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that someone from mexico would say it

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because it's not right even though i don't have a terrible accent

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when i speak spanish i do not say things the same way

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that a mexican does right and there's nothing wrong with that i'm a second you know,

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someone teaching English in another country and they're not a native speaker, they should have that same attitude of not thinking, "Well, I'm the teacher, so everything I say is right and correct."

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that's just not the case right we need to acknowledge that

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and so if you can acknowledge that and

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if you can also like communicate that to the students

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and perhaps use other content like that would be from native speakers like videos

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and audios and things like that that would serve as like instructional you know material

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or just listening practice beyond just your own

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speaking obviously that would be good as well like

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if i were teaching spanish in the u .s in a

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class i wouldn't want their listening practice to be like just

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all just from me like it wouldn't it shouldn't be 100 me speaking right

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because obviously i'm not a native speaker they're going to be missing a lot

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if i'm the one that's like 100 of their listening content

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right whereas in english obviously i have no problem doing that because i'm a native speaker Okay, so I think the same thing goes for someone teaching English in another country.

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It'd be good for them to just, you know, be humble, obviously know that they're not going to say everything correctly, and then also kind of utilize other content.

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to supplement you know what they're saying to the students you know like native content

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and you know help them help students find native content that's good for them

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that will serve as good listening practice for them my thoughts

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are really scattered right now it's kind of nice to do videos like this it's just a little bit

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A little bit outside my comfort zone, but if you guys like this, I'll try to do this a little bit more often But there's a few other people walking around.

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I'm trying to avoid them trying to go to places where I can just walk freely and not not

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need to lower my voice

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because I It makes me a little bit embarrassed to talk really loud here at the park filming myself or whatever.

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But yeah, those are some of the issues that I think.

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And then the remedies would just be to kind of mitigate those issues, make those issues less of a problem.

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Don't rely too much on textbooks.

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Use comprehensible input.

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Teach students how to learn English.

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classroom would be to actually teach students how to learn on their own right

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if you can teach how Teach a student how they can actually utilize their time at home

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that they have to learn English utilize it the right way you know that's

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Golden right

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that would be a really really good thing for someone to learn how to learn English on their own

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because the majority of our learning doesn't come from

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that high school English class it comes from all the stuff

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that we're listening to that we're reading that we're watching on our own

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and of course the speaking practice

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that we do you know whether it be you know with other people in our daily lives other people online

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or whoever it is right those are the things that really you know, it's the foundation of our learning.

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Right.

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So I think that

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even though it's not my expertise like the classroom setting i'm

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more of a one -on -one type teacher i think

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that these are still valid ideas even though i'm not an expert i think that

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i'm speaking just kind of from experience from what i've heard from students

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that have talked to me like about issues with their english class experience

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or whatever so i don't know what you guys think maybe you can leave a comment down below

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and let me know what you think about that

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in a high school classroom setting or whatever

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and let me know what you think about this type of

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video obviously i'm breathing a little bit more heavily i think i just need to walk more slowly

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and that would be better so i was like walking really fast before uh

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so if i walk more slowly maybe it'll be a little a little bit more natural

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but uh this is fun for me

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so hopefully you guys like this uh remember that

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if you want more advanced content if you want all of my advanced episodes

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so i've already recorded like a hundred of them or something like that you can get them

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just by becoming a listening time family member.

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And you'll still get two new ones every single month after that.

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So it's a really, really great deal.

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The link down below, if you go down and click on that, you can sign up to become a listening time family member and you'll get those.

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Also check out my U .S.

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Conversations podcast.

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In that podcast, I talk to different English teachers from all over the country.

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It's a lot of fun.

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It's great practice for your listening.

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These are authentic conversations.

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I give you the transcript for it so you can follow along more easily.

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If you want that, that link is also down below.

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All right, thank you all for listening.

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I'll talk to you in the next video.

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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson

This B2 speaking lesson is built on the video “Why You Didn't Learn English in School”. The speaker keeps coming back to these words: english, learn, content, speaking, practice. This video has 281 sentences and 3579 words to shadow. The speech runs for 20:07. The speaker talks at a natural 178 words per minute, close to everyday conversation. 90% 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
textbook noun	/ˈtɛkst.bʊk/	A coursebook, a formal manual of instruction in a specific subject, especially one for use in schools or colleges.
comprehensible adjective	/kɒmpɹəˈhɛnsɪbəl/	Able to be comprehended.
podcast noun	/ˈpɑdˌkæst/	A program, especially an audio program, produced on a regular basis, delivered over the Internet in a compressed digital format and designed for playback on…
classroom noun	/ˈklɑːsɹʊm/	A room, often in a school, where classes take place.
utilize verb	/ˈjuː.tɪ.laɪz/	US, Canada, and Oxford British English standard spelling of utilise.
remedy noun	/ˈɹɛmədi/	Something that corrects or counteracts.
bore verb	/boɹ/	To inspire boredom in somebody.
acknowledge verb	/əkˈnɑ.lɪd͡ʒ/	To admit the knowledge of; to recognize as a fact or truth; to declare one's belief in.
prideful adjective	/ˈpɹʌɪdfəl/	Full of pride.
subtitle noun	/ˈsʌbtaɪtəl/	A heading below or after a title.
supplementary adjective		Additional; added to supply what is wanted.
understandable adjective		Capable of being understood; comprehensible.
vocabulary noun	/vəˈkæb.jə.lə.ɹi/	A usually alphabetized and explained collection of words e.g. of a particular field, or prepared for a specific purpose, often for learning.
flexibility noun	/ˌflɛksɪˈbɪlɪti/	The quality of being flexible, whether physically or metaphorically.
interact verb	/ɪn.təˈɹækt/	To engage in communication and other shared activities (with someone).

Phrasal verbs you will hear

Word	Meaning
show up verb	To appear, arrive, or attend, especially suddenly or erratically.
walk around verb	To walk with no planned destination; to meander.
check out verb	To record the departure or withdrawal of someone or something (such as guests, employees, books, etc.).
come out in verb	to be afflicted by (a visible disruption of the body)
follow along verb	To continue behind or beside an animal, person, vehicle or other object, especially as a companion.
go down verb	To descend; to move from a higher place to a lower one.
go off verb	To explode.
look around verb	To inspect a building or area.

Sentences worth repeating

Short, complete lines from the video that you can reuse in everyday conversation:

I'm here at a park.
I'm not really talking here about private schools.
Let's talk about some of the issues.
I don't have my notes with me.
I'm going to like do laps at this park.

Grammar in this video

The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:

Structure	In the video
Conditional sentences if + clause, will/would + verb — a condition and its result	if you guys like this, I'll try · if i walk more slowly maybe it'll be
Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now	i've heard · have talked · i've already recorded
Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it	aren't taught · being challenged · are really scattered

Pronunciation to watch

The speaker uses 118 contractions and reduced forms, such as I'm, they're, don't. Say them the short way, as you hear them.

The “sh” and “zh” sounds: repetition /ˌɹɛp.əˈtɪʃ.ən/, comprehension /ˌkɑmpɹɪˈhɛnʃn̩/, cashier /kaˈʃɪə/
Long words — get the stress right: comprehensible /kɒmpɹəˈhɛnsɪbəl/, vocabulary /vəˈkæb.jə.lə.ɹi/, flexibility /ˌflɛksɪˈbɪlɪti/, repetition /ˌɹɛp.əˈtɪʃ.ən/, spontaneously /spɑnˈteɪ.ni.əs.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 textbook, comprehensible, podcast.

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.

Shadowing technique: read the full step-by-step guide →

Shadowing Practice: Why You Didn't Learn English in School - Learn English Speaking with Video

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B1 English Listening Practice - Fads

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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson

Key vocabulary in this video

Phrasal verbs you will hear

Sentences worth repeating

Grammar in this video

Pronunciation to watch

How to practise with this video

What is the Shadowing Technique?