Name: English Speaking Practise: How to improve your English Speaking and Fluency: SHADOWING
Uploaded: 2013-09-03T14:48:46.000Z
Duration: 11 min 29 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Future simple

Today I'm going to show you how you can practice speaking English by yourself, at home using

only materials that you definitely have access to

Now I bet you've heard this advice a lot.

In order to become a good English speaker and to speak in conversation you have to speak

To become a good English speaker, the best and easiest way is to speak English in conversation

I've given the same advice on my YouTube channel

However unless you live in an English speaking country, or use English every day at work,

"But I don't have any chances to speak English.

I don't have anybody to speak English with!"

And yes, this is a problem for a lot of people.

others, on the other hand, have many chances to speak English.

However they lack the confidence to make use of these chances.

Or perhaps they learned English only from textbooks with their eyes and they feel their

And they don't know how to say the things that they want to say.

Today I'm going to teach you a technique that both of these kinds of people can use to improve

their English speaking skills and pronunciation.

You listen to some English, and you repeat it at the same time.

It could be a conversation or it could be a monologue.

But you're listening and you're repeating at the same time.

The first thing that it does for you is it trains your ear to listen very very carefully

To the tone and the rhythm in which phrases are said.

And the length and the number of pauses that are used in speech.

Because if you can't hear these things you can't copy them so in order to copy them you

have to become very good at hearing them.

So very quickly your ear will become very accustomed to the rhythm and the tone and

The second thing that it will do is it will really improve your pronunciation and your

This is because you will get so good at listening to the way that things are said, to the pronunciation,

It will also get your mouth muscles moving in the correct way and it will train you to

move your mouth properly when you are speaking.

In another video I will show you a slightly more advanced way to do shadowing which will help

you remember massive quantities of phrases and vocabulary.

But today I'm going to demonstrate the basic version of shadowing.

So as I said, first you need to find some audio to use for shadowing.

It could be a TV show or it could be a radio programme it could be a podcast or it could

be an audiobook it could be anything like that.

It should be to your level so if you are a beginner don't try to use something very advanced.

Maybe just a tiny bit more difficult is OK.

But it should be fairly easy for you because the exercise is not to improve your comprehension

the exercise is for you to improve your pronunciation and your speaking and really train your mouth

OK, so I'm going to demonstrate today using some materials that I designed especially

So I'm going to be demonstrating shadowing today using some special materials that I

and I've printed out a text here and I have an MP3 which I've recorded which is on my

I have read the text several times and I've looked up any new words in the dictionary.

I've also listened to the MP3 several times so it's kind of easy for me now.

So now I just want to be able to say this really easily.

I should point out that because I made these materials I'm going to be shadowing my own

voice, which is a little bit strange to be honest.

You should be shadowing a native speaker.

The goal is to copy that speaker so closely that you become that speaker.

Every single little pause and the kind of rhythm and everything you should be trying to copy those

So, again I've read through this and I've listened to the MP3.

What I'm going to do now, is I'm going to shadow just one time was reading the text. Which

My son and I nearly came to blows over the Olympics.

He came down to stay whilst they were on, and was not impressed with my old 20-inch

"You're not really going to watch the Olympics on that old thing, are you?" he said to me.

"TVs like that went out with the ark. Get yourselves something more modern!"

"There's nothing wrong with this television," I replied, sniffily.

"I don't live in a throw-away culture like some people."

And then I realised it was a good excuse to upgrade, and quietly went out to buy a new,

Ok, so that was reading the text and that was quite easy because I can already see what's

What I'm going to do now, which is a little more difficult is I'm going to get rid of

the text and now I'm going to shadow without the text.