Shadowing Practice: Your Assumptions About People Could Be Wrong, Here's Why | Reverse Assumptions - Learn English Speaking with Video
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Music Where do you work?
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I am a freelancer.
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I've been working in advertising for a little bit.
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What do you do for a living?
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I am a residential coordinator.
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My job is to help people with mental disabilities, maintain a sense of independence in the workplace and in the neighborhood.
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I work in a home with adults with mental disabilities.
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I've also worked as a teacher and with students with mental disabilities.
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What do you do?
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I teach voice lessons to people and I music direct children's musicals.
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What's your family like?
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I have a pretty big family.
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I'm the youngest.
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My brother was in a motorcycle accident a month after I graduated high school
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and he ended up losing his right arm and had a traumatic brain injury.
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I never thought about ableism or being an abled body person until this happened.
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I have a disability and throughout my life I had some insecurities about it.
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Like how was I supposed to like contribute in a world
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that I felt like everyone had the same abilities and I had different?
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Like I feel for your brother, you know?
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A wise woman she told me, you know, I shouldn't, don't feel sorry for them.
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They don't want that.
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They just want you to understand.
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I myself suffer from mental illness in a sense, and I hardly ever talk about it.
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It took me years to recover, literally recover my psyche.
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I've been working with people with disabilities since I was 17.
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But the things that I've seen, it made me so much more of an advocate.
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It's weird that growing up, I feel like my parents were always really fearful for me getting into adulthood.
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And I kind of always thought like, why don't you guys think I have a future?
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We live in kind of like a new world.
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Now we're talking about it.
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Now this is like an open thing.
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What do you like about yourself?
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I'm athletic.
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I mean, I work out.
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I try to get some cardio in, and I'm good at it.
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Yeah, well, you have that up on me.
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I hate exercise so much.
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I like the kind of exercise where you don't have to think about the fact that you're exercising.
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You sound like you're 25.
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I bet you got a blue shirt on, blue jeans.
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I bet you was born in Chicago.
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I bet you are a soprano, because I know you say as you're saying.
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You are some type of Hispanic background,
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between like 5'10", 6' tall, around your late 30s.
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I think you are 29.
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I think you're wearing a t-shirt and jeans.
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I think you're from the East Coast, maybe like Pennsylvania.
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Maybe mixed, maybe Asian.
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Kind of petite, short.
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I know you give small little hints at some kind of walking apparatus.
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Not in the chair, though.
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I feel like you're pretty young, 19, 20.
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Hey.
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Hey.
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What's up?
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I was right about a couple things.
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It's so weird having a couple conversations.
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I was visualizing you a whole different way.
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Oh, really?
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A whole different.
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I thought you had a blue shirt.
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You got the brown hair.
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I said you were 29?
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No, I'm not.
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I'm 23.
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Oh, what's all I?
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You said I was 25.
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I'm from the south.
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I'm from EFUS.
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I'm from EFUS, embassy.
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I'm from San Jose, Silicon Valley.
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Oh, okay.
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I am German, not Norwegian.
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You're not German in here?
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Sure, yeah.
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Like a lot.
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You said I was a soprano, I'm not.
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Oh, alto?
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Yeah, low voice.
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Alto, I was a tenor.
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That makes sense.
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You sound like a tenor.
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Let's just sing randomly.
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Sure, yeah.
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Let's sing a song.
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Alright.
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What you saying?
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What's all I going to say?
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We'll do that later.
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Hi.
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Hi.
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Finally I actually meet you.
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I feel like I know you.
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I did not expect you in a chair other than when you gave tiny little hints.
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It threw me off for a second.
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And I'm actually 29.
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29?
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Wow.
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I was really off.
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You were right.
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I actually am Asian, which no one guesses.
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So you guessed it without looking.
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In looking now, I was like, I was wrong.
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You gave me some inches, I was like, sweet, I'll take it.
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What do you got?
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I think you said five, eight, six.
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I'm like, oh my god, I'm like five, seven, on a good day, maybe?
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I said short, petite, so I was pretty spot on.
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I don't know how tall you would be.
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I don't think you would tower over me.
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No, 5'1".
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As we get older, things get harder, right?
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I'm just having to come to face with the fact that I think I'm a little sensitive.
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I think you're too hard on yourself.
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I think you just feel things and that's good.
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Yeah.
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You're like, I'm sensitive.
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You're just, you're a person with feelings. For sure. For sure.
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I gotta ask you, what's like the toughest challenge that I'm like? getting dressed, getting fed.
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No, so I'm actually not confined to the chair.
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I can do a little bit of walking, but I walked a lot as a kid, and I only started using the wheelchair when I was in high school.
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But I grew up with my parents being fearful of my future, you know?
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Like, I don't know how she's gonna make it in the world.
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And they would say things to me like, well, we wanna get a house that we can have like an apartment that you can live in, like a basement apartment.
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I'm like, I don't need to live with you.
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I can do this on my own.
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It was nice to meet you, Oshie.
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Yeah, it was nice to meet you too.
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Carolyn, it was really nice meeting you.
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I honestly had a great experience just talking to you.
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So I don't know if you're a handshaker or a hugger, but I still give you hugs.
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Yeah.
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That's just awesome.
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It was fun.
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It's nice to meet you, Albert.
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Likewise.
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This B2 speaking lesson is built on the video “Your Assumptions About People Could Be Wrong, Here's Why”. The speaker keeps coming back to these words: disabilities, mental, meet. This video has 136 sentences and 1005 words to shadow. The speech runs for 5:59. The speaker talks at a natural 168 words per minute, close to everyday conversation. Only 78% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English, so the vocabulary is demanding. 21 of its 136 sentences are questions, so it is good practice for question intonation and short answers.
Key vocabulary in this video
The 15 most advanced words in the video, with pronunciation and meaning:
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| alto noun | /ˈæl.toʊ/ | A musical part or section higher than tenor and lower than soprano, formerly the part that performed a countermelody above the tenor or main melody. |
| petite adjective | /pəˈtiːt/ | Fairly short and of slim build. |
| soprano noun | /səˈpɹænoʊ/ | The musical part higher in pitch than alto, typically encompassing the range of the treble clef. |
| tenor noun | /ˈtɛnə(ɹ)/ | A musical range or section higher than bass and lower than alto. |
| fearful adjective | /ˈfɪəfəl/ | Frightening; causing fear. |
| hint noun | /hɪnt/ | A clue. |
| jeans noun | /d͡ʒiːnz/ | A pair of trousers made from denim cotton. |
| ableism noun | /ˈeɪ.bə.lɪ.zəm/ | Discrimination or prejudice against individuals with physical, intellectual, psychiatric, or other disabilities. |
| cardio noun | /ˈkɑɹ.di.oʊ/ | Exercise with the goal of raising the heart rate by walking or running on the treadmill. |
| confine verb | /ˈkɑnfaɪn/ | To restrict (someone or something) to a particular scope or area; to keep in or within certain bounds. |
| freelancer noun | /ˈfɹiˌlæn.səɹ/ | Someone who freelances. |
| handshaker noun | One who gives a handshake. | |
| hugger noun | /ˈhʌɡɚ/ | One who hugs or embraces. |
| visualize verb | /ˈvɪʒuəˌlaɪz/ | To perceive (something) visually; to see. |
| insecurity noun | A lack of security; uncertainty. |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| end up verb | To bring to a conclusion. | |
| grow up verb | To mature and become an adult. | |
| work out verb | /ˌwɝk ˈaʊt/ | To calculate. |
Sentences worth repeating
Short, complete lines from the video that you can reuse in everyday conversation:
- What do you do for a living?
- What's your family like?
- What do you like about yourself?
- What's all I going to say?
- I gotta ask you, what's like the toughest challenge that I'm like?
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 | I've been working |
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | I've also worked · I've seen |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 51 contractions and reduced forms, such as I'm, you're, don't. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- Long words — get the stress right: ableism /ˈeɪ.bə.lɪ.zəm/, apparatus /ˌæp.əˈɹeɪ.təs/, motorcycle /ˈmoʊtɚˌsaɪkəl/
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 alto, petite, soprano.
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.