Shadowing Practice: Woody Allen - Annie Hall Opening - Learn English Speaking with Video

There's an old joke.

Two elderly women are at a Catskill Mountain resort, and one of them says, boy, the food at this place is really terrible.

The other one says, yeah, I know, and such small portions.

Well, that's essentially how I feel about life.

Full of loneliness and misery and suffering and unhappiness, and it's all over much too quickly.

The other important joke for me is one that's usually attributed to Groucho Marx, but I think it appears originally in Freud's wit and its relation to the unconscious.

And it goes like this, I'm paraphrasing.

I would never want to belong to any club that would have someone like me for a member.

That's the key joke of my adult life in terms of my relationships with women.

You know, lately the strangest things have been going through my mind

because I turned 40 and I guess I'm going through a life crisis or something.

I don't know.

And I'm not worried about aging.

I'm not one of those characters.

Although I'm balding slightly on top.

That's about the worst you can say about me.

I think I'm going to get better as I get older.

I think I'm going to be the balding, virile type, as opposed to, say, the distinguished gray, for instance.

Unless I'm neither of those two.

Unless I'm one of those guys with saliva dribbling out of

his mouth who wanders into a cafeteria with a shopping bag screaming about socialism.

Annie and I broke up, and I still can't get my mind around that.

You know, I keep sifting the pieces of the relationship through my mind

and examining my life and trying to figure out where did the screw up come, you know?

And a year ago we were in love, you know?

And it's funny, I'm not a morose type.

I'm not a depressive character.

I, you know, I was a reasonably happy kid, I guess.

I was brought up in Brooklyn during World War II.

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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson

This video has 29 sentences and 336 words to shadow. The speech runs for 1:40. The speaker talks fast, about 202 words per minute, so expect linked and reduced sounds. Only 77% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English, so the vocabulary is demanding.

Key vocabulary in this video

15 words from the video worth learning, with pronunciation and meaning:

Word	Pronunciation	Meaning
bald adjective	/bɔːld/	Having little or no hair, fur, or feathers.
gray adjective	/ɡɹeɪ/	Of a color between black and white, having neutral hue and intermediate brightness.
suffer verb	/ˈsʌfɚ/	To undergo hardship.
essentially adverb	/ɪˈsɛnʃəli/	In essence: by nature.
lately adverb	/ˈleɪt.li/	Recently; not long ago; of late; not long since.
belong verb	/bɪˈlɒŋ/	To have its proper place.
resort noun	/ɹɪˈzɔɹt/	A place where people go for recreation, especially one with facilities such as lodgings, entertainment, and a relaxing environment.
relation noun	/ɹɪˈleɪʃ(ə)n/	The manner in which two things may be associated.
examine verb	/ɪɡˈzæmɪn/	To observe carefully or critically to learn about someone or something.
elderly adjective	/ˈɛldɚli/	old; having lived for relatively many years.
scream verb	/skɹiːm/	To cry out with a shrill voice; to utter a sudden, sharp outcry, or shrill, loud cry, as in fright or extreme pain; to screech, to shriek.
reasonably adverb	/ˈɹiː.zən.ə.bli/	In accordance with reason.
oppose verb	/əˈpoʊz/	To attempt to stop the progression of; to resist or antagonize by physical means, or by arguments, etc.; to contend against.
unconscious adjective	/ˌʌnˈkɑnʃəs/	Not awake; having no awareness (usually as the result of a head injury).
misery noun	/ˈmɪz(ə)ɹi/	Great unhappiness; extreme pain of body or mind; wretchedness; distress; woe.

Phrasal verbs you will hear

Word	Meaning
go through verb	To travel from one end of something to the other.
break up verb	To break or separate into pieces.
figure out verb	To come to understand; to discover or find a solution; to deduce.

Pronunciation to watch

The speaker uses 13 contractions and reduced forms, such as I'm, can't, don't. Say them the short way, as you hear them.

The “sh” and “zh” sounds: essentially /ɪˈsɛnʃəli/, relation /ɹɪˈleɪʃ(ə)n/, unconscious /ˌʌnˈkɑnʃəs/, socialism /ˈsoʊʃəlɪzəm/, distinguish /dɪˈstɪŋ.ɡwɪʃ/
Long words — get the stress right: essentially /ɪˈsɛnʃəli/, reasonably /ˈɹiː.zən.ə.bli/, socialism /ˈsoʊʃəlɪzəm/, cafeteria /ˌkæ.fə.ˈtɪ(ə).ɹi.ə/

How to practise with this video

Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
Start at 0.75× speed, shadow it sentence by sentence, then go back to normal speed once it feels easy.
Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like bald, gray, suffer.

What is the Shadowing Technique?

Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.

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

Shadowing Practice: Woody Allen - Annie Hall Opening - Learn English Speaking with Video

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