Shadowing and listening practice for B2 learners

B2 shadowing practice focuses on following connected speech, rhythm and pauses in material you understand. A clip’s suggested level helps you choose material; it does not measure your proficiency.

Try one line nowListen to one short line, record your take, then play it beside the original. Free, with no account.

What changes at B2

The words are mostly familiar; the challenge is speed and the shape of the sentence. Copy how the speaker groups words into chunks and where they pause, and let the small words — to, of, the — go by quickly, the way they do. The table runs from slowest to fastest.

The talks, slowest to fastest

Talk	Level	Length	Speed	Try a line
Brené Brown Brené Brown on Empathy	B2	3 min	132 wpm	So, what is empathy and why is it VERY different than sympathy?
Oprah Winfrey Harvard Commencement Address (2013)	B1–B2	29 min	133 wpm	To President Faust, my fellow honorands, Carl,
J.K. Rowling Harvard Commencement: The Fringe Benefits of Failure, and the Importance of Imagination	B2	21 min	139 wpm	President F, members of the Harvard Corporation and the board of overseers,
Matt Walker Sleep Is Your Superpower	B1–B2	19 min	139 wpm	Well, I would like to start with testicles.
Brené Brown Listening to Shame	B2	21 min	141 wpm	I'm going to tell you a little bit about my TEDxHouston Talk.
Robert Waldinger What Actually Makes a Good Life, According to 85 Years of Data	B2–C1	17 min	141 wpm	- I started out as an intern in pediatrics and I would see one ear infection after another,
Kelly McGonigal How to Make Stress Your Friend	B1–B2	14 min	143 wpm	But first, I want you to make a little confession to me.
Bill Gates We Can Make COVID-19 the Last Pandemic	B1–B2	15 min	143 wpm	In the year 6 CE, a fire devastated Rome.
Robert Waldinger The Secret to a Happy Life — Lessons from 8 Decades of Research	B1–B2	29 min	148 wpm	I am delighted to be here and grateful to all of you for joining us for this discussion.
Dan Pink The Puzzle of Motivation	B2	19 min	149 wpm	I need to make a confession at the outset here.
Jill Bolte Taylor My Stroke of Insight	B1–B2	20 min	149 wpm	I grew up to study the brain because I have a brother who has been diagnosed with a brain disorder, schizophrenia.
Adam Grant How to Stop Languishing and Start Finding Flow	B2–C1	16 min	149 wpm	I know you all have long to-do lists, but I hate wasting time so much that I have a to-don't list.
Steve Jobs Stanford Commencement Address (2005)	B2	15 min	154 wpm	Thank You. I am honored to be with you today at your commencement
Brené Brown The Power of Vulnerability	B2	21 min	154 wpm	So, I'll start with this: a couple years ago, an event planner called me because I was going to do a speaking event.
Arthur Benjamin Lightning Calculation and Other “Mathemagic”	B1–B2	15 min	155 wpm	My name is Art Benjamin, and I am a "mathemagician."
Bill Gates Innovating to Zero!	B1–B2	30 min	163 wpm	I'm going to talk today about energy and climate.
Tim Urban Inside the Mind of a Master Procrastinator	B1–B2	14 min	164 wpm	So in college, I was a government major, which means I had to write a lot of papers.
Chris Bailey How to Get Your Brain to Focus	B2	16 min	164 wpm	I began to observe something in my own behavior
Sir Ken Robinson Do Schools Kill Creativity?	B2	20 min	165 wpm	I've been blown away by the whole thing.
Malcolm Gladwell The Unheard Story of David and Goliath	B2–C1	16 min	165 wpm	So I wanted to tell a story that really obsessed me when I was writing my new book,
Adam Grant The Surprising Habits of Original Thinkers	B1–B2	15 min	165 wpm	Seven years ago, a student came to me and asked me to invest in his company.
Derek Sivers The “Good Enough” Life Choice	B1–B2	19 min	166 wpm	I'm so excited to be in Taiwan. I've always wanted to come to Taiwan.
Malcolm Gladwell The Tipping Point I Got Wrong	B1–B2	17 min	168 wpm	I want to tell you a story about when I moved to New York City in 1993.
William McRaven Make Your Bed — Speech Excerpt	B2	6 min	169 wpm	- If you wanna change the world, start off by making your bed.
Simon Sinek Why Good Leaders Make You Feel Safe	B1–B2	12 min	169 wpm	There's a man by the name of Captain William Swenson who recently was awarded the congressional Medal of Honor
Simon Sinek How Great Leaders Inspire Action	B2	19 min	171 wpm	How do you explain when things don't go as we assume?
Andy Puddicombe All It Takes Is 10 Mindful Minutes	B1–B2	9 min	171 wpm	We live in an incredibly busy world.
David Foster Wallace This Is Water	B2	22 min	172 wpm	There are these two young fish swimming along
Julian Treasure How to Speak So That People Want to Listen	B1–B2	10 min	173 wpm	The human voice: It's the instrument we all play.
Adam Grant What Frogs in Hot Water Can Teach Us About Thinking Again	B2–C1	16 min	173 wpm	You might have heard that if you drop a frog in a pot of boiling water, it will jump out right away,
Susan Cain The Power of Introverts	B2	19 min	176 wpm	When I was nine years old, I went off to summer camp for the first time.
Dan Gilbert The Psychology of Your Future Self	B2	7 min	176 wpm	At every stage of our lives we make decisions that will profoundly influence the lives of the people we're going to become,
Malcolm Gladwell Choice, Happiness and Spaghetti Sauce	B2	18 min	177 wpm	I think I was supposed to talk about my new book, which is called "Blink," and it's about snap judgments and first impressions.
Amy Cuddy Your Body Language May Shape Who You Are	B2	21 min	178 wpm	So I want to start by offering you a free no-tech life hack,
J.J. Abrams The Mystery Box	B2	18 min	179 wpm	I want to start today -- talk about the structure of a polypeptide.
Elizabeth Gilbert Your Elusive Creative Genius	B2	19 min	184 wpm	Writing books is my profession but it's more than that, of course.
Derek Sivers Keep Your Goals to Yourself	B1–B2	4 min	185 wpm	Everyone, please think of your biggest personal goal.
Adam Grant Are You a Giver or a Taker?	B2	13 min	186 wpm	I want you to look around the room for a minute and try to find the most paranoid person here --
Derek Sivers Why You Need to Fail	B2	5 min	189 wpm	...six months ago, and I emailed asking if I can please come.
Terri Trespicio Stop Searching for Your Passion	B2	11 min	191 wpm	The day I got laid off from my job at Martha Stewart, I was relieved.
Derek Sivers Weird, or Just Different?	B2–C1	3 min	205 wpm	So, imagine you're standing on a street anywhere in America and a Japanese man comes up to you and says,
Shawn Achor The Happy Secret to Better Work	B2–C1	12 min	210 wpm	When I was seven years old and my sister was just five years old, we were playing on top of a bunk bed.
Elizabeth Gilbert Success, Failure and the Drive to Keep Creating	B2–C1	7 min	210 wpm	So, a few years ago I was at JFK Airport about to get on a flight,

Levels are our own estimate from vocabulary, sentence length and speed, not an official CEFR rating. Speed is measured across the talk’s full captions.

Find your level

Beginners: short captioned lines you understand, repeated after the speaker.
B1: 36 talks with clear speakers and everyday words, slowest first.
B2 (this page): 43 talks at natural speed, with longer sentences and humour.
Advanced C1: the C1 talks and every talk at 180 words a minute or faster.

A daily routine for B2

Start in Shadow mode at normal speed; drop to 0.75× only for lines where fewer than half the words turn green.
Pick the lines with a joke or a strong point and repeat them until your timing matches the speaker’s. That is where the rhythm is.
Once a week, record a full minute without stopping and compare it with your first try.

Practise one line, step by step

Open an exercise from this guide. Choose a captioned video for this guide’s topic and a line whose meaning you understand.
Listen and read the caption, then say the line after the speaker in Repeat mode.
Try saying the line with the speaker in Shadow mode, following the rhythm and pauses.
Record a take, then open Compare and play your recording and the original. Review words and timing; Sada does not grade individual sounds.
Repeat the line while focusing on one difference you heard, then move to another line.

Questions people ask

What should B2 learners shadow?

Real talks and interviews at natural speed, with long sentences, humour and changes of pace. TED talks fit well because the speech is clear but not slowed down.

How fast do the speakers on this page talk?

Between about 132 and 210 words a minute, measured across each talk’s full captions.

Should I read the text while shadowing at B2?

Read it the first time, then try the line without it. Sada shows you the words after you speak, so you can see what you missed.

Start practising