Shadowing Practice: Turn Off The Tap | Plastic Bank | David Katz 2 Minute TED Talk - Learn English Speaking with Video

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There is a garbage truck of plastic entering the ocean every minute,
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and countless birds and animals are dying just from encountering plastic.
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If you were to walk into a kitchen, sink overflowing, water spilling all over the floor, soaking into the walls, you had to think fast, you're going to panic.
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What do you do first?
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Why don't we turn off the tap?
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We are the world's largest chain of stores for the ultra-poor, where everything in the store is available to be purchased using plastic garbage.
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School tuition, medical insurance, Wi-Fi, cell phone minutes, power.
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Our chain of stores in Haiti are more like community centers, where one of our collectors, Lisa Nassiz, has the opportunity to earn a living by collecting material from door to door,
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from the streets.
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And at the end of her day, she gets to bring the material back to us, where we weigh it, we check it for quality, and we transfer the value into her account.
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Lisa now has a steady, reliable source of income.
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See, I see social plastic.
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It's the bitcoin for the earth.
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And the app adds rewards,
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incentives, group prizes, user rating, with gamified recycling we add fun and formality into an informal industry.
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Now that plastic, we sell it to suppliers of great brands like Marks & Spencers, who are using social plastic directly into their manufacturing.
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We've closed the loop in the circular economy.
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And so now we can all be a part of the solution and not the pollution.
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OK, maybe cleaning the ocean is futile.
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It might be.
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But preventing ocean plastic could be humanity's richest opportunity.

About This Lesson

You're practicing English with "Turn Off The Tap | Plastic Bank | David Katz 2 Minute TED Talk" using the Shadowing technique — a method originally developed for professional interpreter training.

Focus on sounding like the speaker — not just repeating words. With 15–30 minutes of daily practice, you'll build real-world speaking confidence.

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.