English Speaking Practice (Shadowing) on Brain Health & Turning 40!

Hey there I'm Emma from mmmEnglish. This is a speaking practice lesson and I'm going to share a personal story with you today. You see, earlier in the year I turned 40 and suddenly a whole lot of things that I'd never previously thought about or cared about suddenly became important. Have you ever had this happen? Like on a particular birthday where something felt like it changed but for no apparent reason. So one thing I started paying more attention to is brain health. Like I've always been physically healthy and always taken care of myself, always eaten well but it's only recently that I've started paying attention to cognitive health and this happens to be a conversation topic that we've been discussing inside the Hey Lady English speaking community. Over the past month I've had some really interesting conversations with some of our members about this topic but I thought I'd make a specific practice lesson to help share some vocabulary and perhaps even inspire some English conversations about brain health. What do you think? So this is a speaking practice that any English learner can use. Before we dive in, I want to give you a quick reminder about how it works because this is the mmmEnglish imitation technique. It's my method for training your mouth using your ears and not your eyes. It is an amazing way to improve your English speaking skills. Really easy to do and to practice on your own. There are three steps. Listen, repeat after me and shadow me which is where you follow along in real time. You're following my natural rhythm, my pace, my tone and all of this is to help you feel what it feels like to speak English naturally. You'll hear the short story that I'm going to share with you repeated three times once at each step. Are you ready? Let's begin. In step one, just listen. Listen for new words. Listen to the tone of my voice. So I turned 40 this year and suddenly brain health feels like something I actually need to pay attention to. Not just my body but my mind as well. To be honest, I feel like the algorithms are to blame for this. Like I'm 40 now so they feed me information for 40 year olds and I'm actually learning a lot. Three things have started influencing my daily habits and my regular routine. Firstly, sleep. Now I've never had any problems sleeping so I've never paid much attention to it but if you deprive yourself of sleep night after night your brain never gets the time it actually needs to rest and repair itself. So now I have a proper wind down ritual. Phone away, lights low, same time every night or at least I try to make it so. The second thing is the importance of lifelong learning and stimulating your brain which is great news for language learners everywhere because it is one of the best, most complete workouts that your brain can get. It strengthens your memory. It sharpens your focus. It builds brand new neural pathways. Every single time you learn something new. And the third thing might surprise you. Connection. Real conversations with real people. Not messages, not scrolling on your phone. Isolation is one of the biggest risks for cognitive decline as we get older. But connection. Connection will actually protect you from it. So now I'm actually prioritizing these three things. Sleep, learning and connection. They were always there but I never appreciated just how important it is to build habits and routines around those three things. Not just for the joy of them but because they're essential. Now in step two, repeat after me. You'll hear me say the line and then there'll be a pause after. So you can copy me exactly as you hear. On the screen you can see some words are in bold text. These are the words that are stressed in the sentence. So they are spoken a little louder and clearer than the others. There is a letter underlined in some words. This is the stressed syllable if the word has more than one syllable. So I turned 40 this year. And suddenly brain health feels like something I actually need to pay attention to. Not just my body but my mind as well. To be honest, I feel like the algorithms are to blame for this. I'm 40 now so they feed me information for 40 year olds. And I'm actually learning a lot. Three things have started influencing my daily habits and my regular routine. Firstly, sleep. Now I've never had any problems sleeping. So I've never paid much attention to it. But if you deprive yourself of sleep night after night, your brain never gets the time it actually needs to rest and repair itself. So now I have a proper wind down ritual. Phone away, lights low, same time every night. Or at least I try to make it so. The second thing is the importance of lifelong learning. And stimulating your brain. Which is great news for language learners everywhere. Because it is one of the best, most complete workouts that your brain can get. It strengthens your memory. It sharpens your focus. It builds brand new neural pathways. Every single time you learn something new. And the third thing might surprise you. Connection. Real conversations with real people. Not messages, not scrolling on your phone. Isolation is one of the biggest risks for cognitive decline as we get older. But connection. Connection will actually protect you from it. So now I'm actually prioritising these three things. Sleep, learning and connection. They were always there. But I never appreciated just how important it is to build habits and routines around those three things. Not just for the joy of them. But because they're essential. Now try to shadow me. Speak along with me. Following the rhythm and the intonation of my voice. It doesn't matter if you fall behind or if you stumble over your words. What's important is that you feel the rhythm. Repeat this step as many times as you want to until it feels natural. So I turned 40 this year. And suddenly brain health feels like something I actually need to pay attention to. Not just my body, but my mind as well. To be honest, I feel like the algorithms are to blame for this. Like I'm 40 now, so they feed me information for 40 year olds. And I'm actually learning a lot. Three things have started influencing my daily habits and my regular routine. Firstly, sleep. Now, I've never had any problems sleeping, so I've never paid much attention to it. But if you deprive yourself of sleep, night after night, your brain never gets the time it actually needs to rest and repair itself. So now I have a proper wind down ritual. Phone away, lights low, same time every night. Or at least I try to make it so. The second thing is the importance of lifelong learning and stimulating your brain. Which is great news for language learners everywhere because it is one of the best, most complete workouts that your brain can get. It strengthens your memory. It sharpens your focus. It builds brand new neural pathways every single time you learn something new. And the third thing might surprise you. Connection. Real conversations with real people. Not messages, not scrolling on your phone. Isolation is one of the biggest risks for cognitive decline as we get older. But connection. Connection will actually protect you from it. So now I'm actually prioritizing these three things. Sleep, learning and connection. They were always there, but I never appreciated just how important it is to build habits and routines around those three things. Not just for the joy of them, but because they're essential. So those three things that I mentioned, sleep, learning and connection. Which of these things are you already doing well? And which of them do you need to work on? Tell me about it down in the comments. Tell me how you are doing or practicing these three things to support brain health. And do come back and join me next week for another speaking practice lesson. Same time, same place, right here on the mmmEnglish YouTube channel. Right now, you want to keep practicing? Check these ones out.