Shadowing Practice: Why You Should Stop Comparing Your English | English Speaking Practice - Learn English Speaking with Video
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Hello, everyone.
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This is Everyday English Academy, where two friends sit down and talk in slow,
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clear English about completely ordinary life.
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I'm Sarah.
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And I'm Mike.
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And at this exact moment, I am sitting on my kitchen floor surrounded by batteries.
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Batteries?
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The drawer, Sarah.
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Every home has the drawer.
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Old keys, five pens, one of which works, and about 40 batteries with no information on them.
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Mine has a single spoon in it, and nobody in this apartment can explain the spoon.
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So the TV remote died this morning.
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I went digging, and I found something I'd completely forgotten about.
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A paper name tag.
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The sticky kind you wear on your shirt. From where?
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A Spanish conversation group.
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I went once, eight months ago.
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Once?
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You told me about that group.
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You were going to go every Tuesday.
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You were so excited about it.
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I was, and that tag has been sitting under the batteries since March.
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Picking it up felt like a nudge.
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Nudge is a nice word to start on.
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A nudge is a small, gentle push.
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If I want your attention in a meeting, I touch your elbow with my elbow.
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That's the real one, but we use it for decisions too.
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And here's the detail that makes it worse.
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Somebody else wrote my name on that tag, and they wrote Mick with a C.
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Mick.
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So, there is a paper tag in my kitchen that says Mick, and Mick is the man who quit a conversation group after one evening.
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Well, there's our episode, everyone, because Mike's Tuesday belongs to about 100 million people.
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Today, we're talking about comparing your English to other people, why we do it, what it actually costs,
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and the words you need in the exact moment when you feel behind in a conversation.
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And I want to promise something before we start.
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This is not a believe-in-yourself episode.
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No speeches.
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I don't have one prepared.
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Thank goodness.
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Because I think comparing is mostly a measuring problem, not a feelings problem.
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People measure the wrong thing and then feel terrible about a result that was never real.
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Say more about that.
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In a minute.
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First, I want the story properly.
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What actually happened in that room?
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Okay, so it's above a bakery, first of all.
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You go up these narrow stairs and the whole room smells like warm bread, which was genuinely the best part of my evening.
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That sounds nice, though.
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It was nice.
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Eight people, folding chairs, the kind of folding chairs that pinch your fingers when you open them.
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I know those chairs.
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They're evil.
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Truly evil.
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And everyone's already chatting in Spanish before we start.
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And there's a woman sitting across from me, and she just goes.
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Full speed.
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Jokes, opinions, arguing with someone about a movie.
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How long had she been learning?
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Six years.
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And she lived in Madrid for two of them. And you?
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Three months, maybe three and a half.
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So you sat down in that room and measured month three against year six.
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When you say it in that voice, it sounds ridiculous.
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It sounds like arithmetic.
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That's not an unfair test, Mike.
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That's not even the same test.
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I know that now.
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In the room, it didn't feel like arithmetic.
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It felt like everyone here can do this and I can't.
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All right, I'll accept that.
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How much did you actually say that night?
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Two sentences.
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Two?
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I counted them.
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That's the humiliating part.
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I sat on an evil chair counting my own sentences like a scoreboard.
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Number one was my name.
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Number two was where I'm from. And then?
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And then I left 20 minutes early and told them I had a bus to catch.
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There was no bus.
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Ugh, of course there wasn't.
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Okay, I want to pull one word apart now because you said something earlier that I think is doing damage.
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You said she was fluent.
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She was.
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But what were you actually measuring?
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What do you mean?
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She talked fast and she didn't stop.
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Right, and those aren't the same thing.
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Fluent is about flow.
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The words come out smoothly, without long stops.
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It doesn't mean perfect, and it doesn't mean she never makes mistakes.
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Hmm, okay.
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And confident is a separate thing again.
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Confident is not being afraid to open your mouth.
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You can be gloriously confident and completely wrong.
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I've worked with one of those.
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Haven't we all?
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So you saw speed and volume for 20 minutes, and you turned that into a level.
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You gauged her whole ability from one evening.
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To gauge something is to judge it roughly.
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Not exact measuring, just a guess from what you can see.
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You look at the line in a coffee shop and you gauge that it's a 10-minute wait.
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So I gauged her Spanish from 20 minutes in a room that smelled of bread.
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And here's the part that bothers me.
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You never gauge yourself that generously.
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You judged her at her best and judged yourself at your worst.
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She was warmed up among friends six years in.
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You were brand new, first night, sitting on a chair that was attacking you.
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In hindsight, I should have stayed. In hindsight.
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Everybody catch that one.
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You say in hindsight when you look back at something and understand it better now than you did at the time.
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At the time, it felt completely obvious that I didn't belong there.
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Eight months later, I can see that I lasted 40 minutes and then made a very big decision.
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In hindsight, I shouldn't have sent that message.
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In hindsight, we should have booked earlier.
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That's the shape of it.
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My entire 20s. In hindsight.
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Same.
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But take me back into the room.
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because there's practical language sitting in there.
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What you were trying to do all evening was keep up with them.
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And I could not.
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To keep up with a conversation is to follow it at the speed it's really moving.
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And losing it is normal.
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Eight people talking and laughing and interrupting each other, you lose the thread in your own language.
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True.
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My family at dinner.
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My English is fine and I still have no idea what's happening.
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And then there's the phrase I really want people to take home.
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Hold your own.
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I like the sound of that one.
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If you hold your own, you do okay in a situation where the other people are stronger than you.
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You don't win, you just don't disappear.
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My cousin plays chess with people far better than her, and she holds her own.
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She loses, but it's close, and she's still at the board at the end.
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She held her own in a room full of experts.
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Like that, yes.
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And Mike, two sentences in a fast group in month three is holding your own.
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It didn't feel like it.
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I believe you.
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But you didn't sit there in silence.
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You said your name, and you answer her question.
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In a language you'd had for 12 weeks.
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That's a beginning, not a failure.
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See, this is exactly why comparison is poison.
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If I hadn't been looking at her, I'd have gone back the next week.
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I'm stopping you there because I disagree.
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You disagree?
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I compare constantly, and I've learned a lot doing it.
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No, comparison is the enemy.
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You should never look at other learners.
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Head down, own lane, ignore everybody.
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Never look at anyone ever?
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Ever.
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So how did you find the Tuesday group?
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A friend of mine was going.
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So you looked at another learner and thought, that looks good, I'll have some of that.
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That's annoying.
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That's annoying.
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A bit annoying, yes.
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Okay, but you know what I mean.
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I do, and I think we're closer than it sounds.
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Here's my split.
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Comparing methods is fuel.
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Comparing people is a scoreboard nobody wins.
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Unpack the methods part for me.
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I've stolen three habits from people who are better than me.
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A woman in my old office wrote down one phrase a day from whatever she watched the night before.
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Not ten phrases, one.
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That's doable, though.
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That's the kind of thing you'd actually keep.
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That's why I took it.
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And a guy told me he re-listens to the same podcast episode three times instead of hunting for a new one.
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Once for the story, once for the words, once because he likes it.
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Huh.
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That's a habit, not a talent.
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And that is my point exactly.
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When you watch someone better than you, there are two questions available.
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Why am I worse than them?
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Useless question.
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Or what are they doing that I'm not?
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That one gives you something to carry home.
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So the trouble isn't looking at people.
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It's what you're looking for.
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And the other trouble is using a person as a yardstick.
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A yardstick.
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The wooden ruler thing.
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Originally, yes.
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A stick one yard long that builders measure with.
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But we use it for anything you judge your progress against.
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She's a terrible yardstick for your Spanish.
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Because she was six years and two years of Madrid ahead of me.
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And a yardstick should be something steady.
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A person moves around and you only ever see their outside.
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I have no idea what her six years looked like.
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Not a clue.
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Maybe she cried in her car after her first group too.
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Yeah.
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Okay, I want to hear from everybody listening, because Mike and I genuinely land in different places on this.
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When you hear someone speaking better English than you, what happens to you?
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Do you go home and practice harder, or do you go quiet for the rest of the evening?
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And be honest, because both are completely normal.
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I'm the quiet one, firmly.
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And I'm the other kind.
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I hear someone good, and I want to compete with them, kindly.
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Is that what we're calling it?
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Kindly and competitively.
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Put yourself in the comments, first type or second type.
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I'd love to know if we're evenly split or if Mike is down there on his own.
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I refuse to be on my own.
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Let's find out.
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Now, those eight months, I don't believe for a second that you did nothing.
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No, I kept studying, just never with people.
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I read, I watched things, I did my grammar exercises like a good student.
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And what happened to your Spanish?
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Eh, it stagnated.
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Explain that one for everyone.
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When something stagnates, it stops improving for a long time.
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It just sits there.
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Nothing gets worse, but nothing moves forward either.
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It's a heavy word, and it's the right one.
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Water stagnates when it stops flowing.
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It goes still and green and unpleasant.
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That was my vocabulary from March to about October.
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And nearly everybody hits a stretch like that, especially around B1.
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The beginning is exciting because everything is new.
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Then you reach the boring middle, where you're still learning, but you can't feel it happening anymore.
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And that's where people quit, isn't it?
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Not at the hard part.
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They quit in the boring middle, when nothing seems to be moving.
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And in your case, one skill was much slower than the rest.
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Your speaking was trailing behind everything else.
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Badly.
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When a skill trails behind, it stays slower than the others.
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It's lagging.
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My listening trails behind my reading.
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That's a sentence half our listeners could say tonight.
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Mine too.
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I can read a Spanish news article and mostly get it.
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Then a person asks me a simple question in the street and my mouth forgets the entire language.
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Which is standard.
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Reading waits for you.
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People don't wait at all.
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People do not wait.
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And that's a good way into what you say when they don't.
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Can we do your Tuesday again?
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What do you mean?
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I'll be her, the fast one, you be you in month three.
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Ready?
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Ready.
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So, I'm mid-conversation, and I turn to you, and I go, Oh, and you must have seen the thing they built down by the river.
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The big glass one.
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It's awful.
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My brother works right next to it, and he says the whole street's changed.
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What do you think?
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Do you like it?
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I don't know.
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And that was your whole answer?
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That was my whole answer for eight months.
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Yes.
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What was actually going on in your head?
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I caught about half.
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I got River and I got your brother.
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And by the time I'd put it together, you'd already moved on to somebody else.
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Right.
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That's the moment.
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That's the tiny second where a person decides they don't belong.
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So let's fix the moment instead of your feelings.
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Same question, same speed.
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But this time, you're allowed to talk.
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Okay.
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So the glass building by the river?
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My brother works next to it.
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He says the whole street's changed.
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What do you think?
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Sorry, could you slow down a bit?
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I'm still learning.
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Oh, of course.
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Sorry.
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So, the new building, down by the river.
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Ah, the glass one.
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Give me a second.
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Take your time.
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I think it's ugly, but my sister likes it.
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And now we're having a conversation.
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That felt completely different.
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Because you stayed inside it.
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Look at what you used, because there are three small tools in there.
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Could you slow down a bit does most of the work.
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Not please repeat, which gets you the same fast sentence again, only louder.
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Louder is never the problem.
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Never.
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Could you slow down a bit tells the other person exactly what to change.
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And that a bit is doing something lovely.
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It turns a complaint into a small favor.
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Then give me a second.
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You're buying time.
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Give me a second.
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Let me think.
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Hang on.
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They all say the same thing.
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I'm not lost.
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I'm loading.
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There's a fancier one I've heard.
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Bear with me.
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Oh, that one's great.
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Be patient with me for a moment.
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I'm getting there.
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You hear it on the phone all the time.
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Bear with me while I find your details.
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And it's not formal?
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I could say it to a friend?
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Completely normal with a friend.
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Bear with me.
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I'm putting my shoes on.
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It's just asking for a few seconds of patience.
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I'm keeping that one.
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Right.
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So what's the thing I should not say?
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Ooh, yes.
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Please, everybody, stop opening with, my English is very bad.
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I've said that a thousand times.
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Everyone has, and it backfires two ways.
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Either the other person switches to your language, if they can, and you've lost the practice completely.
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That has happened to me.
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One apologetic sentence, the guy switched to English, and we never went back.
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or they believe you, and then they talk to you like you're five years old.
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Very slow words.
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And you're stuck in the simple version of the conversation for the rest of the night.
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That's so much worse than being confused.
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Slow words, loud voice, kind eyes.
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Whereas I'm still learning carries the same information with no apology inside it.
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calm, honest, and you're not attacking yourself in front of a stranger.
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Which is what I did.
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I downplayed myself before anyone had even asked me anything.
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Downplay.
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You explain that one.
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To downplay something is to make it sound smaller or less important than it really is.
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Somebody gets a promotion and says, oh, it's nothing.
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It's just a title.
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Or somebody says, I speak a little English and then talks beautifully for 20 minutes.
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I know that person.
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She downplays her English constantly, and she's better than half her office.
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And it's a habit, not modesty.
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People think downplaying protects them.
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If I say I'm bad first, nobody can be disappointed later.
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That's what I was doing on that chair?
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Everybody does it, but it lowers the room.
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Tell people you're bad, and they treat you as bad and then you feel bad, and the whole thing quietly comes true.
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So, the neutral version.
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The neutral version.
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I'm still learning, my speaking is a bit slow, I understand more than I can say.
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All true, and none of them an insult.
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I understand more than I can say is a genuinely useful sentence.
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Because it's true for nearly everyone at B1, and it tells people how to talk to you.
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Keep going normally, just wait for my answers.
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Let's put a few of these in your mouth while they're still warm.
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I'll say a line, you say it straight back after me.
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Nice and clear.
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And if you're somewhere you can't speak, move your lips.
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That still counts.
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Give me a nudge if I forget.
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Please don't downplay how far you've come.
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I want tangible progress this month.
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My speaking proficiency is slowly improving.
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Good.
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Run those again tomorrow and they'll start feeling like yours.
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And two new words snuck in there.
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Tangible first.
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If something is tangible, it's real enough to see or touch.
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Solid.
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Not a feeling.
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So tangible progress is progress you can point at.
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Right.
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I felt a bit better about my English this week is not tangible.
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I ordered lunch and then asked the waiter a follow-up question is tangible. And proficiency?
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Proficiency is how well you can actually use a skill.
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It's the slightly formal word for your level.
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My reading proficiency is higher than my speaking.
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Which is the sentence I've been circling for the last 10 minutes.
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It's yours now.
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So what are you going to do about Tuesday?
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I've been thinking about it since I sat down in the batteries.
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I think I'll give it another shot.
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Give it a shot.
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To try something even when you're not sure it'll work.
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I like that phrase because there's no pressure inside it.
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You're not promising to succeed.
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That's why I chose it.
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Give it a shot sounds like I'm allowed to be bad at it.
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You are allowed to be bad at it.
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That's month three's job description.
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But I'm going in with a plan this time.
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No counting sentences.
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What's the plan?
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Stay the whole time and say three things.
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That's the entire plan.
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Three, not two.
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One more than Mick managed.
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Progress.
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But this is where I get stuck.
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If that woman isn't my yardstick, what is?
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Because I do still want to know if I'm getting better.
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That's a real question, and you should want to know.
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So here's mine, and it's deeply unglamorous.
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Every Sunday, I write one sentence on the back of the grocery list.
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One sentence I couldn't have said a month ago.
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Why there, of all places?
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Because then it goes on the fridge, next to the milk and the bananas, and it stays there all week.
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So you're seeing it whenever you go for the milk?
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All week long.
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Last Sunday's was in Italian, and it was me complaining that a delivery arrived late.
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Not beautiful.
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Extremely useful.
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But it's tangible.
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That's your own word coming back at you.
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And that's the point.
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I can't measure myself against a stranger, because I have no idea what's inside their head.
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But I can absolutely measure myself against me in March.
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And you always have that information.
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Always.
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You're the only person whose starting point you actually know.
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Mine's messier than yours.
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I don't write anything down.
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I've seen your notebook.
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There is no notebook.
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But I do this thing.
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Every few months, I go back to something I've already watched.
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Same episode, same show.
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And I see how much more I catch.
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That's not messy at all.
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That's a good one.
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You think?
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The show can't change.
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So the only thing that could have changed is you.
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That's a proper yardstick.
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The first time, I understood maybe a quarter.
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Last month, I got most of it, and I laughed at a joke.
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You laughed at a joke.
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Jokes are the last thing to arrive.
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It was a bad joke.
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Doesn't matter one bit.
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Catching a bad joke in another language means your grasp of it is real now.
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Grasp?
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Your grasp of something is your understanding of how it works, like holding something in your hand except with your head.
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I have a decent grasp of the grammar, I just can't use it fast enough yet.
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That is my exact situation word for word.
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True for most people around B1.
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The grasp arrives long before the speed does.
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I'll take that.
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Understanding first, speed later.
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And once a year or so, it's worth sitting down and taking stock properly.
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Meaning what?
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To take stock is to stop and look at where you actually are.
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It comes from shops, counting what's left on the shelves at the end of the year.
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We borrowed it for life.
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Take stock of what you learned this year.
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So bigger than the Sunday sentence.
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Much bigger.
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Sit down, phone away, and ask one honest question.
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Not, how do I feel about my English?
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What can I do now that I couldn't do last January?
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Those give completely different answers.
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Completely.
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Feelings lie all day long.
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Actions don't.
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Then here's something that surprised me when I took stock this week.
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On the kitchen floor, in the batteries.
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A very dignified scene.
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Extremely.
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I realized I can read Spanish recipes now, all the way through, no stopping.
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See, that's real.
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And in March, I couldn't.
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So something moved even while I thought everything had stopped.
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Of course something moved.
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It just wasn't the thing you were staring at.
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That's how the boring middle fools people.
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You watch your speaking, and your reading quietly climbs up behind your back.
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Huh.
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And can I tell you the other thing I wish more learners measured?
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Not speed, a good turn of phrase.
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What does that mean exactly?
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A turn of phrase is a particular nice way of saying something.
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Not a whole idiom, just a small combination of words that lands well.
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You gave me one earlier without noticing. Did I?
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You said the folding chairs pinch your fingers.
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Well, they do.
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That's what they're for.
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But nobody taught you that sentence.
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You built it, and it worked.
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He has a lovely turn of phrase, we say.
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And that's a much better sign of progress than talking fast.
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Anybody can talk fast.
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Saying something in a way that makes another person smile, that's the good part.
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Okay, we want one from all of you now.
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Name one thing you can say in English today that you could not say six months ago.
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A phone call.
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A joke.
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Asking for something in a shop without practicing it in your head first.
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One short sentence in the comments.
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And read a few of the other replies while you're down there, because you'll find people standing exactly where you're standing.
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That helps more than you'd expect.
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Right.
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Before we say goodbye, let's walk back through today's words.
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I'll start where we started.
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In your battery drawer.
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Where all great journeys begin.
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Nudge.
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A small, gentle push to get you moving.
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The name tag under the batteries was Mike's nudge.
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And give it a shot.
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To try something when you're not sure it'll go well.
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Which I am now doing. When?
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Next Tuesday.
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The real one with a date on it.
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Good.
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Then we went up those narrow stairs into the room above the bakery, and three words came out of that evening.
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Fluent first.
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Fluent is about flow.
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The words come out smoothly without long stops.
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It doesn't mean perfect.
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Then, keep up with, which is following a conversation at the speed it's really moving.
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And, I couldn't keep up with eight people at once.
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And, hold your own, to do okay when the people around you are stronger than you.
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You don't win, you just stay in the room.
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Which apparently two sentences counts as.
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It counts.
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Then came the arguing part of the show, and the word sitting underneath that whole argument was yardstick,
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the thing you judge your progress against.
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A person makes a terrible yardstick because you only ever see their outside.
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And gauge, to judge something roughly rather than exactly.
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I gauged her entire ability from 20 minutes.
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Then two words for the slow stretch.
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Stagnate is yours.
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To stagnate is to stop improving for a long time, like water that isn't flowing.
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My Spanish stagnated from March to October.
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And trail behind.
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When one skill stays slower than the others, your speaking trails behind your reading.
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Which is nearly everyone listening, I'd guess.
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Nearly everyone.
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Then we ran that conversation again, and this time you stayed in it.
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Bear with me.
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Be patient with me for a moment.
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I'm getting there.
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Works on the phone, works with friends.
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And downplay, which is the one we're asking you not to do.
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Making something sound smaller than it really is.
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Please stop telling strangers your English is very bad.
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Say, I'm still learning instead.
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Same information, no apology.
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Then the practice lines handed us two more.
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Tangible, real enough to see or point at.
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And proficiency, how well you can actually use a skill.
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And grasp, which turned up with my terrible joke, your understanding of how something works.
555
And take stock, stopping to look honestly at where you are.
556
That's the one I'd ask you to do this week.
557
Not a big review, five quiet minutes.
558
And turn of phrase, which was your favorite, a particularly nice way of saying something.
559
Small and worth noticing when somebody does it well.
560
And the last one, in hindsight, which is where this whole conversation began,
561
looking back at something and understanding it better now than you did then.
562
In hindsight, I should have stayed for the second half of that Tuesday.
563
And that's the honest ending, by the way.
564
Nobody fixed their feelings today.
565
He found a name tag and made a small plan.
566
That was all it took.
567
So if you catch yourself comparing this week, don't try to stop the feeling.
568
Just check what you're measuring.
569
They're year six against your month three isn't a result.
570
It's bad arithmetic.
571
And go find something you can compare yourself to fairly.
572
An old episode.
573
An old recording.
574
A sentence on the back of a grocery list.
575
Thanks for spending this stretch of your day with us.
576
If these conversations are useful to you, a like helps other learners find us.
577
And subscribing means the next one turns up without you having to look for it.
578
And if you go quiet in a group next week, remember two lines.
579
Could you slow down a bit and give me a second?
580
They'll carry you a long way.
581
Right, go and say something imperfect to somebody today.
582
Wish me luck for Tuesday.
583
Take care, everyone.
584
Good luck, Mick.
585
Thank you.
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This B1 speaking lesson is built on the video “Why You Should Stop Comparing Your English”. This video has 585 sentences and 4480 words to shadow. The speech runs for 31:33. The speaker talks at a steady 142 words per minute, a comfortable pace for shadowing. 84% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English; the rest is worth studying before you start.
Key vocabulary in this video
The 15 most advanced words in the video, with pronunciation and meaning:
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| hindsight noun | /ˈhaɪn(d)saɪt/ | Realization or understanding of the significance and nature of events after they have occurred. |
| yardstick noun | /ˈjɑɹdˌstɪk/ | A measuring rod thirty-six inches (one yard) long. |
| tangible adjective | /ˈtæn.d͡ʒə.bəl/ | Touchable; able to be touched or felt; perceptible by the sense of touch. |
| phrase noun | /ˈfɹeɪ̯z/ | A short written or spoken expression. |
| downplay verb | /ˈdaʊ̯nˌpleɪ̯/ | To de-emphasize; to present or portray as less important or consequential. |
| gauge noun | /ˈɡeɪd͡ʒ/ | A measure; a standard of measure; an instrument to determine dimensions, distance, or capacity; a standard |
| nudge verb | /nʌd͡ʒ/ | To push against gently, especially in order to gain attention or give a signal. |
| stagnate verb | /ˈstæɡneɪt/ | To cease to flow or run. |
| grasp verb | /ɡɹæsp/ | To grip; to take hold, particularly with the hand. |
| proficiency noun | /pɹəˈfɪʃənsi/ | Ability, skill, competence. |
| learner noun | /ˈlɜɹnəɹ/ | One who is learning; one receiving instruction. |
| fluent adjective | /ˈfluənt/ | That flows; flowing, liquid. |
| annoy verb | /əˈnoɪ̯/ | To disturb or irritate, especially by continued or repeated acts; to bother with unpleasant deeds. |
| arithmetic noun | /æɹɪθˈmɛtɪk/ | The mathematics of numbers (integers, rational numbers, real numbers, or complex numbers) under the operations of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and… |
| drawer noun | /dɹɔɹ/ | An open-topped box that can be slid in and out of the cabinet that contains it, used for storing clothing or other articles. |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| keep up with verb | To manage to remain beside or just behind someone or something that is moving away from one. | |
| slow down verb | To decelerate. | |
| sit down verb | To assume a sitting position from a standing position. | |
| build down verb | In solitaire card games, to place a card over another card of higher value (e.g. 4♦ over 5♣). | |
| come out verb | /ˌkʌm ˈaʊt/ | To be discovered; to be revealed. |
| go back verb | To return to a place or state after having been there at a previous time. | |
| go up verb | To move upwards. | |
| find out verb | To discover, as by asking or investigating. |
Sentences worth repeating
Short, complete lines from the video that you can reuse in everyday conversation:
- How much did you actually say that night?
- Why am I worse than them?
- Is that what we're calling it?
- That's what I was doing on that chair?
- If that woman isn't my yardstick, what is?
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| Present perfect continuous have/has been + -ing — an action that started earlier and is still going on | has been sitting · I've been circling · I've been thinking |
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | I've worked · I've learned · I've stolen |
| Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing | man who quit · bread, which was · people who are |
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | was warmed · are allowed |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 125 contractions and reduced forms, such as I'm, you're, don't. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “th” sounds: arithmetic /æɹɪθˈmɛtɪk/, smoothly /ˈsmuːðli/, underneath /ˌʌndɚˈniθ/
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: proficiency /pɹəˈfɪʃənsi/, shelf /ʃɛlf/, patience /ˈpeɪ̯.ʃəns/
- Long words — get the stress right: proficiency /pɹəˈfɪʃənsi/, arithmetic /æɹɪθˈmɛtɪk/, genuinely /ˈd͡ʒɛn.ju.ɪn.li/, apology /əˈpɑ.lə.d͡ʒi/, apologetic /əˌpɑləˈd͡ʒɛtɪk/
How to practise with this video
- Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
- Shadow it sentence by sentence at normal speed, repeating each one until your rhythm matches the speaker.
- Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like hindsight, yardstick, tangible.
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.