Shadowing Practice: Why You Understand English But Can't Speak Fluently - Learn English Speaking with Video
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So there is something I've wanted to talk about properly for a long time
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because I see it constantly with intermediate English learners
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and I don't think we're good as English teachers at explaining what's actually going on.
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If you've been learning English for years, maybe three,
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maybe ten, and you've got this slightly horrible feeling that you used to improve quite quickly but now you just don't.
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There's a reason for that.
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And I don't mean you've stopped learning things.
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You probably know more vocabulary now than you did a year ago.
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Your listening might be better.
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You might be able to understand virtually everything I'm saying right now without really having to concentrate.
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But then you open your mouth to speak and the English
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that comes out sounds much more basic than the English that exists in your head.
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You know what you want to say.
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Sometimes you even know how you should have said it 20 minutes after the conversation has ended, which is particularly helpful.
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And I think the problem is that learners at this stage have spent years getting very good at knowing English,
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but they haven't spent nearly enough time practicing how to retrieve it and use it automatically.
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Those sound like quite similar things.
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Knowing English, retrieving English automatically, but they are not.
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So I want to show you what I mean and later in the video we're actually going to practice it together.
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Once you feel the difference rather than just hearing me describe it, this will make a lot of sense.
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Quick word on who I am if you don't know me.
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I'm Hannah, I've taught English for well over a decade.
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And these days, I make videos for intermediate learners who want to sound like themselves in English, not like a textbook.
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There's a very strange stage in language learning when from the outside, you're doing brilliantly.
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You can have conversations, you can work in English, you can watch television, maybe you read novels.
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You've got enough vocabulary that you can talk about the things that matter most to you.
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If somebody tested you, you'd probably come out at a perfectly respectable level.
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And yet, speaking can still feel oddly disappointing because you know how articulate you are in your first language.
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You know that you're funny or opinionated or nuanced, complex, whatever you happen to be.
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And then you speak English and you become a slightly cautious version of yourself who'll say things like,
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yes, I agree with your opinion.
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It is very interesting.
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And afterwards you think, I had so much more to say than that.
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Honestly, this is one the hardest stages
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because at the beginning progress is very obvious you learn the past tense
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and suddenly you can tell someone what you did at the weekend once you're intermediate
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that becomes much harder to see you're not trying to get from nothing to communication anymore
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you're trying to get from communication that works to communication
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that feels natural and quick and like you
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and quite often learners respond to this difference in measuring progress by doing whatever it was
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that got them this far so they study more grammar they consume enormous amounts of english
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or they think themselves oh i just need to speak more
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so they book lessons or find conversation partners all in the hope
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that with enough hours something will just click
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now all of those things can help i'm not going to tell you
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that watching english films
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or speaking english is somehow bad for your english learning what is missing
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i think is a particular kind of practice
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and without it you can carry on accumulating english for years
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while your actual speaking changes surprisingly little let's take grammar
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because this is probably the clearest example you can know the second conditional perfectly.
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You know that you say, if I had more time, I would travel more.
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You could probably do 20 grammar exercises on it and get 19 of them correct.
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But then somebody says to you, what would you do if you didn't have to work?
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And there is still this tiny delay.
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you know the grammar.
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Nothing is missing from your knowledge.
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Your brain is just having to assemble the answer while you're speaking.
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And speaking is very unforgiving because nobody freezes politely for eight seconds while you search through your mental grammar book.
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So we tend to fall back on whatever comes most easily.
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Maybe you avoid the structure altogether.
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Maybe you simplify it or maybe you use a phrase
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that you've used hundreds of times before because that's the one
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that is ready for you in the moment
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this distinction is fairly well established in language learning there's the english you can consciously think about
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and explain and then there's the english that's become familiar enough that you can use it without doing much conscious disassembly.
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I don't want to turn this into a neuroscience lecture,
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but researchers distinguish between memory that's involved in consciously knowing things and the memory involved in skills becoming automatic.
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And speaking, ultimately, is a skill.
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That's why you can understand the grammatical explanation and still not use that grammar naturally in everyday conversation.
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It's also why you can hear an expression hundreds of times, recognize it, understand what it means,
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but somehow never think to use it yourself.
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That happens constantly with languages that aren't your mother tongue, and it happens to me with my Italian.
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I'll hear a phrase over and over again, but it will never be one that I automatically reach for in conversation.
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Let's give you an example in English, you'll hear someone say, I wouldn't worry about it.
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You understand every word.
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There's nothing difficult there.
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But six hours later, someone is worried that they have sent an email with a typo in it.
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And instead of reaching for that phrase, you say something like, you don't need to worry, which is completely fine in English.
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It just means that the natural phrase, I wouldn't worry about it,
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is sitting in the part of your English that you recognize rather than in the part that your mouth reaches for automatically.
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And that gap explains a huge amount about the intermediate plateau.
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You often don't need much more English.
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You need better access to the English you already have.
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There's another piece of advice that intermediate learners hear constantly, which is just to speak more.
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And speaking more is useful, of course it is, but there's a problem if all you are doing is having lots and lots of free conversation.
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Your brain gets faster at what it repeatedly does.
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So if you already have certain habits in English, those habits tend to become easier to produce.
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And yes, by habits, I can mean mistakes.
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This is how people can have extremely fluent mistakes.
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You meet learners who say something like, I'm agree, and have been saying that for years, who never hesitate when they say it.
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It comes out beautifully, very confident, completely automatic, because fluency and accuracy aren't the same thing.
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And this is why correction itself can sometimes be frustrating your teacher says no not i'm agree i agree
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and you nod because you know that you might have known
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that for years but the very next week there it is again i'm agree
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because the problem was never
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that nobody explained the rule the old version the wrong version was simply much better rehearsed
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so what tends to help is not endlessly adding more material
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and it's not hoping general conversation will somehow one day reorganize your English.
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You need to spend time deliberately rehearsing the language you actually want to become automatic.
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Not hundreds of isolated words, useful chunks, sentence frames, little patterns that come up over
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and over again in conversation once those are familiar enough
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they start doing a lot of the work for you you're no longer building every sentence from the foundations
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while somebody waits patiently you already have the pieces available
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if you listen to native speakers we recycle an extraordinary amount of language
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we don't invent every sentence from scratch we say things like i was wondering
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if if you don't mind i don't know if probably
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it's a bit the thing is to be fair
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and then we put what we actually want to communicate around those familiar bits you're still thinking
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and choosing words you're just reducing how much work your brain has to do in real time
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and i think intermediate learners are often taught these things in completely the wrong way
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you get a vocabulary list maybe a grammar point you do some exercises
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and then you move on
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which means you've met the language you just haven't necessarily trained it
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so what i want to do now is train a few of these with you
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and if you can actually speak don't just watch me doing it
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because then we are back where we started
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if you're on the bus maybe don't start loudly repeating i was wondering
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if because you will irritate the person next to you, maybe save the video and watch it later.
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But if you're somewhere reasonably private, have a go.
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This is the process I want you to notice.
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You hear a useful pattern in context.
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You repeat it enough that your mouth gets used to it and then you have to retrieve it yourself.
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We will do just that with four patterns now.
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Pattern one, you need to ask someone you don't know very well for a favor
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you could say can you help me with this absolutely fine
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but in a situation where you want to sound softer
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or more polite you'll very often hear this i was wondering
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if you could help me with this in
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that sentence the useful bit is i was wondering
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if say it with me I was wondering if again I was wondering
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if and once more but don't make every word equally strong this time I was wondering if
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when you do this yourself you should repeat
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it as many times as you can to make it yours
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now I will give you an ending say it after me I was wondering if you had a minute it.
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I was wondering if you could send that again.
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I was wondering if it would be possible to change the time.
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Now imagine you booked a table at a restaurant for 7pm and now you need to move it to 8pm.
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Use the pattern.
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Don't make it perfect.
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Start with I was wondering if.
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Go.
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You might have said, I was wondering if I could change my reservation.
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And if you did, well done.
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You've just done something different from reading it on a page.
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You've had to retrieve it.
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You recognized it.
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You've repeated it.
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You used it.
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With the next pattern, let's try something that comes up constantly when you're giving an opinion or a suggestion.
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Someone asks, do you think I should drive or get the train?
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And I might say, I'd probably get the train, to be honest.
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Again, the bit I'd want is, I'd probably.
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Not, I would probably.
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In ordinary conversations, we contract constantly.
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And those contractions make an enormous difference to rhythm.
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I'd probably say it.
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I'd probably, again.
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I'd probably.
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Pause, repeat it, repeat it, repeat it now again i will say a phrase repeat it after me i'd probably leave a bit earlier
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i'd probably speak to her first i'd probably wait until tomorrow
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now somebody asks you i'm visiting london for the day should i drive or take a train to the center
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Give your answer, starting with that pattern.
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Go.
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I'd probably take the train, to be honest.
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But the important part isn't how sensible you were about your recommendation for London transport.
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The important part was that you retrieved this frame yourself.
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You retrieved it without building it word by word.
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Pattern three.
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Now, this one is small but does an enormous amount of work, especially if you want to sound more specifically British.
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Listen to these.
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The soup is cold.
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The soup's a bit cold.
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It's the same fact really, but the second one you will hear constantly here.
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The soup's a bit cold, not the soup is cold.
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And that's because in British English especially, we tend to soften many things with a bit.
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Not because we don't have opinions, we do quite strong ones in fact.
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But because saying things too directly sounds a bit rude to us.
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There we go, I just did it.
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It can sound rude to us.
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It's a bit cold.
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It's a bit late.
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He's a bit annoying.
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Say them with me.
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It's a bit cold.
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It's a bit late.
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He's a bit annoying.
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and here's a slightly odd part a bit is almost never literal
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if i describe something as a bit sore it's not a bit sore it usually is very painful
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or very sore i'm just choosing not to make the fuss about it
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because yes we bricks are known for understatement so when it comes to the phrase a bit.
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The softening isn't softening the meaning, it's softening the delivery.
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The last one.
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This is useful because it gives you something to say while you're organising the rest of your sentence, which native speakers do constantly.
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The thing is, I'm not sure we've got enough time.
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The thing is, is a very common expression in English.
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And the thing is the phrase itself isn't carrying
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that much meaning do you see what i did there it's giving your brain a bit of runway
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you've started speaking the conversation is moving and meanwhile
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you've bought yourself a second or two to organize your actual point say it with me the thing is
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the thing is the thing is pause and repeat it now let's add something to the end of it
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The thing is, it's a bit expensive.
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The thing is, I've already made plans.
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The thing is, I'm not sure that would work.
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Now, time for you to retrieve it.
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I want you to disagree with this statement.
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Everyone should work from home.
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Disagree with it and start with, the thing is, go.
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There you are.
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And with each of those, what I hope you started to notice was that they began to feel normal.
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The thing is, the thing is, I'm a bit tired.
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It's a bit sore.
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That is what you want.
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Not intellectually impressive.
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Things that are familiar.
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Familiar language is much easier to retrieve when you're under pressure.
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So if you've been stuck for a while here's what I'd actually change.
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I wouldn't stop watching English or reading or learning new vocabulary because quite frankly that would be silly.
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I'd just stop assuming that exposure automatically becomes speaking and I'd think about them as three shifts.
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Shift one, stop thinking about learning English and start thinking about training the English you already have to come out faster.
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Those sound similar but they are not the same, they're not the same project.
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Shift 2, stop adding new material, start rehearsing what you've already got.
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When you hear a useful sentence don't just think, oh that's nice, I understand that.
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Steal it, use it, change a word then use it again the next day say it again
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and again until it becomes automatic for you shift three stop chasing correctness
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and start chasing automaticity this is the counterintuitive one
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because automaticity actually produces more correctness than correctness produces automaticity
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if you are always focusing on just being correct of course things aren't going to come out automatically
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but if you automatically say the correct thing over
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and over again the correctness builds itself the patterns running automatically
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in a fluent speaker's head are often the correct ones and particularly
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look for language with a lot of mileage in it i was wondering
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if is useful
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because you can use
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it in dozens of situations every week a very specific sentence
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you'd only need once every few years doesn't deserve the same rehearsal.
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Pay attention, especially to the English you already understand but don't yet produce.
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That is such a useful place to work because you're not learning something from scratch, you're just moving it from, oh I recognize that, to,
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oh that's something I say automatically.
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That's the bit most intermediate learners are missing.
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Before I go on, there is one thing I want to mention just
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because it would be a bit odd if I didn't.
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i do sell a course
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which is built around this exact problem i just didn't want
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it coming out of nowhere in a minute's time this all of this is the reason
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that i built unlock real english
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because i kept seeing the same problem with students they'd learned an enormous amount of english over the years
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and yet when we spoke they were relying on a much smaller pool of language than the language they understood.
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So the course is built around getting
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that useful spoken English out of the pool of passive understanding and making it easier to access.
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What we did together in this video is a small example of the method inside it.
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You meet the language in context first, then you practice saying it, and then you use it yourself.
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Recognize, repeat use.
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And so by the end, you're not just recognising my English, you're producing your own.
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Inside, we do this much more systematically.
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Longer practice sessions, audio you can come back to and shadow, written exercises if you need them,
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and speaking activities that are designed to help you retrieve the language rather than just observe it.
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It isn't really a course about collecting more vocabulary.
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It's for people who already have quite a lot of English
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but who are frustrated that it isn't coming out naturally when they speak.
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One of the things I found genuinely encouraging from the students who have first gone through it is
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that they haven't talked about learning new things, they've talked about becoming more aware of how spoken English actually works
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and noticing things they've been hearing for years but haven't actually used themselves.
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It is not for beginners, it is for intermediate to advanced learners, so B1 upwards.
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And I teach British English, so that is the variety you will hear throughout.
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You get lifetime access, so you can work through at your own pace and come back to the practice whenever you like.
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If what I was talking about in this video felt familiar, if you thought, yes, that is the gap I have,
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have a look at the course page.
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No pressure, the link is below.
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Have a read through what's included and see if that feels right for you.
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I built it for exactly the learner I've been talking to for the past half hour.
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So if that's you, if this felt familiar, I'd love to see you in there.
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And whether you join me in the course or not, I'd like you to try this differently next week.
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Pick a few phrases that you already understand easily but never seem to say.
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Don't collect 50.
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Choose a small number and keep coming back to them until they stop seeming like somebody else's English.
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say them aloud change them use them when you speak see what happens because
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if you've reached the intermediate level
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there is already an enormous amount of english in your head
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the next stage is about making more of it available
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when you actually need it if this was useful
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and you've ever had a moment
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when you've realized 20 minutes after a conversation has finished what you should have said tell me below
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and if you know another learner who finds themselves in the same plateau.
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Please feel free to send this to them too.
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Until then, I'll see you in the next one.
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This speaking lesson is built on the video “Why You Understand English But Can't Speak Fluently”. The speaker keeps coming back to these words: english, wondering, language. This video has 286 sentences and 3337 words to shadow. The speech runs for 23:21. The speaker talks at a steady 143 words per minute, a comfortable pace for shadowing. 86% 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
15 words from the video worth learning, with pronunciation and meaning:
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| intermediate adjective | /ɪn.tə(ɹ)ˈmi.di.ət/ | Being between two extremes, or in the middle of a range. |
| retrieve verb | /ɹɪˈtɹiːv/ | To regain or get back something. |
| phrase noun | /ˈfɹeɪ̯z/ | A short written or spoken expression. |
| grammar noun | /ˈɡɹæm.ə(ɹ)/ | A system of rules and principles for the structure of a language, or of languages in general. |
| enormous adjective | /ɪˈnɔː.məs/ | Extremely large; greatly exceeding the common size, extent, etc. |
| 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. |
| automatic adjective | /ˌɔː.təˈmæt.ɪk/ | Capable of operating without external control or intervention. |
| sore adjective | /soɹ/ | Causing pain or discomfort; painfully sensitive. |
| habit noun | /ˈhæb.ɪt/ | An action performed on a regular basis. |
| naturally adverb | /ˈnæt͡ʃ.(ə.)ɹə.li/ | In a natural manner. |
| chase verb | /t͡ʃeɪs/ | To follow at speed. |
| collect verb | /ˈkɑlɪkt/ | To gather together; amass. |
| rude adjective | /ɹuːd/ | Lacking in refinement or civility; bad-mannered; discourteous. |
| scratch verb | /skɹæt͡ʃ/ | To rub a surface with a sharp object, especially by a living creature to remove itching with nails, claws, etc. |
| soup noun | /sup/ | Any of various dishes commonly made by combining liquids, such as water or stock, with other ingredients, such as meat and vegetables, that contribute the food… |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| come out verb | /ˌkʌm ˈaʊt/ | To be discovered; to be revealed. |
| come up verb | To emerge or become known, especially unexpectedly. | |
| fall back on verb | To turn to as a substitute; to rely on as a backup. | |
| go through verb | To travel from one end of something to the other. | |
| read through verb | To thoroughly read something to check or proofread it. |
Sentences worth repeating
Short, complete lines from the video that you can reuse in everyday conversation:
- You've had to retrieve it.
- Someone asks, do you think I should drive or get the train?
- I'd probably take the train, to be honest.
- The thing is, I've already made plans.
- The thing is, I'm not sure that would work.
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 | you've been learning · have been saying · they've been hearing |
| Conditional sentences if + clause, will/would + verb — a condition and its result | If somebody tested you, you'd probably · if I had more time, I would travel |
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | I've wanted · you've stopped · has ended |
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | are often taught · are known · you've been stuck |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 116 contractions and reduced forms, such as don't, you're, you've. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “th” sounds: altogether /ɔl.tuˈɡɛð.ɚ/, rhythm /ˈɹɪð.əm/
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: explanation /ˌɛkspləˈneɪʃən/, exposure /ɪkˈspəʊ.ʒə(ɹ)/, shadow /ˈʃædəʊ̯/, suggestion /səˈd͡ʒɛst.ʃən/, conscious /ˈkɑn.ʃəs/
- Long words — get the stress right: intermediate /ɪn.tə(ɹ)ˈmi.di.ət/, vocabulary /vəˈkæb.jə.lə.ɹi/, automatic /ˌɔː.təˈmæt.ɪk/, naturally /ˈnæt͡ʃ.(ə.)ɹə.li/, necessarily /ˌnɛs.əˈsɛɹ.ə.li/
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 intermediate, retrieve, phrase.
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.