Shadowing practice: FINDING THE PERFECT CHRISTMAS TREE | VLOGMAS

This clip is Zoe Sugg opening a Christmas vlog: she wakes her dog, steps outside in the dark, then talks through her advent calendar plans while she gets ready. It sits at B1, and the pace, 142 words per minute, is faster than most of the catalogue, so it is a real test of keeping up with natural British speech rather than a scripted lesson recording.

There is no scene change and no interviewer, just one person thinking out loud, which makes it good english speaking practice for daily use: the sentences trail off, restart, and pile clause onto clause the way real talk does. If you want english shadowing practice that sounds like an actual person rather than a newsreader, this is closer to that.

A few lines are worth slowing down for before you try to speak english fluently at full speed.

• "welcome to day one of vlogmas how exciting" packs a greeting and an exclamation into one breath, no pause before "how exciting", so shadow this line to practise running two thoughts together without a stop.
• "it's actually half seven but it's still pitch black outside" is a full clause with a contrast word in the middle. Say "half seven" out loud a few times, it is the natural British way to say 7:30 and worth having ready to speak english fluently in casual conversation.
• "which I kind of like it's quite cosy um and it is just quite Christmasy isn't it?" has a filler, a tag question, and no comma where you would expect one. It is a good line for practising rising intonation on "isn't it" at the end of a statement, not a real question.
• The brief for this recording measured five uses of "gonna" further into the clip, a reminder that this speaker drops into casual reduced forms once she's settled into the vlog.

Treat this as a short session, not the whole clip in one go.

• Start with line 4, "there she is this is my little princess come on then let's go outside", and repeat it until the string of short phrases comes out without gaps between them.
• Move to "but it's still pitch black outside" on its own. Isolate the contrast word "but" and the stress on "pitch black", then rejoin it to the half sentence before it.
• Take the Christmasy line next and shadow just the tag question at the end, "isn't it?", a few times before attaching the rest of the sentence.
• Once those three lines feel steady, run lines 4 through 6 together as one block for english speaking practice at the clip's own pace, not slowed down.
• Score yourself on each line before moving on. If the app marks a word red, replay just that word, then redo the full line rather than the whole passage.
• This clip works as free english speaking practice you can do in your browser with no install, so there is no reason to skip the repeats: a line said five times beats one you only played once.