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Shadowing practice: I took the world's shortest flight. It was underwhelming.

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Full transcript

  1. This is the airport on Papa Westray, one of the smallest of the Orkney Islands off the tip of Scotland.0:00
  2. It is just a windsock and a hut and a gravel runway.0:04
  3. I didn't pick a great day to travel to this tiny little island.0:08
  4. The rain is going to return in just a few minutes, but it's still a nice little trip out to visit the world's oldest still standing house.0:11
  5. It's raining sideways.0:23
  6. And also watch some seabirds from quite a distance.0:26
  7. That's a bird.0:30
  8. That's a bird.0:31
  9. That is also a bird.0:33
  10. But leaving here, I'm taking the world's shortest commercial flight from this airport to the next island a mile away.0:35
  11. Which sounds like a great video, but as I start to write the script I found some problems.0:41
  12. It's a commercial flight and it's August 2021 as I record this, so masks are required, which won't look great.0:44
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  1. And the planes in use on this route are incredibly loud and rattly.0:50
  2. You wouldn't hear a thing.0:54
  3. And I'm not going to be the jackass who's vlogging on a tiny little plane with other passengers on it, loudly talking and bothering people and accidentally poking a selfie0:55
  4. stick into someone's face.1:03
  5. I'm just going to swap this GoPro out for a 360 camera and just record voiceover afterwards.1:05
  6. But a video about commercial aviation logistics using voiceover.1:10
  7. Well that doesn't sound like me.1:15
  8. That sounds like something that the Wendover Productions channel would do.1:17
  9. So, Sam.1:19
  10. Hey there Tom.1:21
  11. I'm going to leave this up to you.1:22
  12. I'm going to go catch my flight.1:24
  13. Spanning a distance of 1 .7 miles or 2 .7 kilometers over some 80 or so seconds, the flight Tom's about to take might seem an affront to logic, economics,1:25
  14. environmentalism, and more, but the world's shortest flight has a very real purpose for very real people.1:35
  15. You see, the Orkney Islands are a sparsely populated archipelago.1:41
  16. The vast majority of their 22 ,000 strong population lives on what's known, despite its island status as the mainland, leaving only about 4 ,000 on the outer islands.1:45
  17. These outer islanders need ways of getting to the mainland, of course, but bridges are expensive, especially over some of the longer inter -island spans in the Orkneys, and while1:54
  18. ferries do operate throughout the archipelago, they're slow and lack a direct connection to onward travel.2:03
  19. Therefore, the answer is airplanes.2:09
  20. Of course, flying is expensive, and in the world of commercial aviation, it's typically the case that the lower the demand, the more expensive it is for an airline to2:13
  21. operate a route on a per -passenger basis.2:21
  22. That's because smaller destinations lack the economies of scale afforded by operating larger airplanes more frequently at larger airports, so air service to places with 690 residents, like Westray and2:24
  23. Papa Westray, is essentially impossible on a free market basis.2:34
  24. The fares would be enormous per passenger, meaning people wouldn't choose to fly, meaning there wouldn't be enough passengers to fill a plane.2:39
  25. Therefore, flights to Westray and Papa Westray are subsidized through the UK's Public Service Obligation Scheme, meaning only a small portion of Loganair's revenue is earned through selling the flight's2:46
  26. 17 or 18 pound tickets.2:56
  27. Still, filling a 9 -passenger plane to Papa Westray in particular, with its 90 -person population, would be difficult.2:58
  28. Even at rock bottom prices, price elasticity only goes so far.3:05
  29. Therefore, Loganair uses a network design referred to as a milk run.3:11
  30. Essentially, it means operating a plane like a bus or train.3:16
  31. In this case, the BN -2 Islander aircraft leaves Kirkwall, the largest town in the Orkneys, with passengers destined for Papa Westray and Westray.3:19
  32. Then it lands in Papa Westray, drops off any passengers destined for that island, and picks up any passengers traveling to Westray and Kirkwall.3:29
  33. Next, it flies those 80 or so seconds to Westray, drops off its passengers, and picks up any final travelers headed for Kirkwall.3:36
  34. This way, it aggregates the cumulative demand of two islands onto one flight, allowing for operations to each more regularly than if they both had dedicated flights.3:43
  35. Altogether, this means the only people that might take the flight exclusively between Papa Westray and Westray are aviation enthusiasts and tourists who make the pilgrimage to fly on the3:53
  36. world's shortest commercial flight.4:02
  37. Tom, however, is returning to Kirkwall.4:04
  38. People work, and then we were off in the air again.4:17

A B1 British narration paced for english shadowing practice

This clip gives you real english shadowing practice: Tom Scott narrates in clear British English at B1 level, moving at 198 words per minute, faster than 60% of the catalogue. He opens on Papa Westray, one of the smallest of the Orkney Islands off the tip of Scotland, describing an airport that is "just a windsock and a hut and a gravel runway." From there he walks to the world's oldest still standing house in the rain, watches seabirds from a distance, and sets up the real subject: the world's shortest commercial flight, a mile long, to the next island.

The pace and the switches in register are what make it worth repeating. Scott talks to camera, then cuts to a straight voiceover, then hands the story off to another narrator with a short "So, Sam." "Hey there Tom." exchange. Each shift changes the rhythm you have to match, which is good practice for anyone who wants to speak english fluently across different registers, not just one flat delivery, and useful english listening practice for narration like this.

British english pronunciation practice with Tom Scott's dry humour

This is solid british english pronunciation practice because Scott's delivery stays flat and dry even when the content is absurd, and the humour lives entirely in stress and timing rather than in extra words.

  • "It is just a windsock and a hut and a gravel runway." Say the three items with equal weight and a small pause before "gravel runway", that flat list is where the joke sits.
  • "It's raining sideways." A five word line with a hard stop. Practice the falling pitch on "sideways" until it sounds like a complaint, not a fact.
  • "That's a bird." "That's a bird." "That is also a bird." The repetition shifts from the contracted "That's" to the fuller "That is", a small change in formality worth hearing out loud.
  • "I'm just going to swap this GoPro out for a 360 camera and just record voiceover afterwards." One long sentence with no natural breath break marked, so you choose where to breathe, which is the actual skill.

How to work through this island flight narration, line by line

Treat this as english speaking practice for daily use even though nobody in the clip is chatting, because Scott's narration is closer to how people actually explain something out loud than a scripted dialogue is.

  • Start with "It is just a windsock and a hut and a gravel runway." on its own, five or six times, until the three item rhythm is automatic.
  • Shadow this line "It's raining sideways." right after, matching the drop on the last word before you move on.
  • Take the long run on sentence about the GoPro and the 360 camera and split it where you would breathe, then say it in one go without the split.
  • Do the handoff exchange, "So, Sam." and "Hey there Tom.", back to back a few times to get used to a fast change of speaker inside one recording.
  • Finish on "You see, the Orkney Islands are a sparsely populated archipelago." for the rare word "archipelago" and the shift into the explainer's second half.
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