Pratica di Shadowing: How to Learn Vocabulary in ANY Language (backed by science) - Impara a parlare inglese con i video
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I'm going to show you how to learn lots
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and lots of vocabulary in any language because
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if you've ever felt like you're just learning the same words over
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and over again and forgetting anything new well you're definitely not alone.
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I've been teaching and learning languages for over 25 years, I've taught thousands of students, I've written books in over three dozen different languages now
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and I've become convinced that forgetting vocabulary has almost nothing to do with memory.
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It's almost entirely a method problem and once you understand that well, words will stop vanishing from your brain and start sticking instead.
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And best of all, there's a really fascinating science behind all of this as well.
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So in this video, I will show you the real reason why words keep slipping out of your mind,
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what your brain actually needs to do in order to remember them,
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and then the one simple method you can follow that will help these new words stick,
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even if you are a complete beginner and have the worst memory on the planet.
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So there's something about learning vocabulary that's been winding me up for years, and it's probably the number one reason that students run out of steam
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and give up on languages all together i've seen
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this happen a thousand times you have a great learning session with a teacher
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or by yourself and there's a whole bunch of new words on your flashcards
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or you're learning in an app
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or even with those beautiful visual dictionaries you know the ones with the pictures in
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and when you test yourself at the end you get all 10 words right success well done
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but then a few days later what happens well you try to remember them
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and nine and a half of those words are completely gone.
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Sound familiar?
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This is where it all starts to unravel, because that's usually the moment that people start believing, well, I'm just horrible at languages,
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I have a terrible memory, and it can be very disheartening, and believe me, I've been there a lot.
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Most people think that forgetting words means they've got a bad memory, but that's not what's happening.
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See, your brain doesn't store words the way that most people imagine in some kind of big mental dictionary.
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No, it's actually more like this.
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This is the first time we've been able to map the semantic systems of the brain in such detail discovering
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that words are grouped by meaning and revealing just how complicated
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and widespread the word maps in our heads really are your
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brain already has this incredible map of meanings built from your
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personal life experiences think of a dog your brain already has a place for everything
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it knows about dogs the furry animal the barking sound the feeling of touching it
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and probably a few dogs
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that you've loved yourself over the years the word dog is simply the label
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that your brain attached to all of that now suppose
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that someone tells you that xian means dog well you can memorize it sure
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but that doesn't mean your brain knows
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that the word xian belongs in the dog category
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and this is where most vocabulary learning goes wrong people take the word out of the language
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you see a word on the left a translation on the right
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and nothing going on around it at all which feels organized like you're in some kind of filing cabinet,
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but your brain's got no reason whatsoever to hang on to the word xian, which is French for dog, by the way.
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And when you sit down with a word that has no story, no feeling, no memory, no earthly reason to be there,
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your brain has no obvious place to put it.
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And so it does the sensible thing.
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It chucks it out.
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It's being efficient.
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You see, it was actually helping you all along.
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And that's why you keep forgetting words.
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You never really learned the word.
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You learned the translation, but luckily methods can be changed.
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But before I you how.
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I put together a guide that's going to help you here called Binge Worthy Resources.
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It's a downloadable list of the very best movies, shows, and podcasts across more than 15 languages that we teach here at Story Day.
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All of these resources have been tested by myself and my team
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so that you know exactly what to press play on today, because the faster that you find content that you actually enjoy,
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guess what, the faster those words are going to start stacking up.
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If you like this list, it's pretty comprehensive, just scan the QR code on the screen with your phone
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or grab the link below in the description
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because everything I'm about to show you is going to be a lot easier
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when you actually have content to apply it to that is actually useful for you and enjoyable.
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So if memorizing a word to death is not enough to make it stick, what does your brain actually need instead?
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Well, that's easy.
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It needs a way to hook that new word onto the meaning that it already knows.
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Like, you've got to hook it up to all of those doggy things up there in your head.
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And it turns out that there are three things that help your brain do exactly that.
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They are repetition, context, and retrieval.
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And what this means is you've got to meet that same word again and again quite a few times.
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You need to see it used in meaningful, realistic situations, not just there on the page in your textbook, but actually being used meaningfully.
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And then you have to make your brain work just a little to remember what it already knows.
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Now, here's the fascinating part.
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Your brain already knows how to do all of this.
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It's been doing it your entire life in a very specific way, through stories.
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That's right, a good old story will do the trick because stories naturally do three things.
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They bring the important words back, that's your repetition.
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They give those words meaning through whatever's happening that's your context, and they keep nudging your brain to work things out for itself, and that's retrieval.
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And this is a completely different experience from just staring at a list of words in your textbook.
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Let me show you what I mean.
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Just follow here with your eyes.
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It's a little story in Italian.
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Every evening, Bella stops by the park near her house.
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She always sits on the same wooden panchina beneath an oak tree.
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There's an old man who always smiles and waves from a pankina opposite her.
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One evening, his pankina is empty, but a piece of paper is tied to one of its legs.
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Bella walks over, sits down, and unties the note from the pankina.
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Now, I never told you what pankina means, but I wonder if you've already worked it out.
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It's a bench, of course, and I never asked you to memorise that word.
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I never translated it while I was reading.
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Instead, the story brought it back four different times, and each little encounter gave your brain another clue.
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It's in a park, it's wooden, it has legs, you can sit on it.
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Without even realizing it, your picture of what that word meant became clearer each time.
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You weren't even trying to remember a word, you were following a story and your brain worked out the meaning by itself.
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Now obviously that's a very simple example,
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but the process is exactly the same because your brain just did the three things that every new word needs.
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You heard pankina four times.
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That's repetition.
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You saw it in different situations with new clues.
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That's context.
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And every time your understanding changed, your brain had to reach back through the story and connect the clue to what it already knew,
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and that is retrieval.
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And the real difference is, instead of memorizing a definition, your brain built an experience of sorts around the word.
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And experiences are much harder to forget.
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So here's the obvious question.
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If one tiny story can teach you a new word like that, what happens when you read stories like this every single day?
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Well, first of all, your vocabulary is automatically building.
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It's unstoppably building, necessarily building.
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Every story introduces more words you didn't know, but something much more interesting starts happening as well.
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The words you've already learned stop staying inside those stories.
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They start turning up somewhere else, even when you least expect it.
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Maybe in another story, maybe in a podcast, a movie, a conversation.
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And this is why stories are so effective.
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When I accidentally discovered this phenomenon for myself, this was way back when I was learning Spanish,
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I'd be walking down the street and all these new Spanish words from a story
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that I'd been reading in a book the night before would be popping into my head.
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I remember this one word, el obispo, which is a very kind of like unusual word.
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It means bishop in Spanish.
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No reason that you'd ever kind of set about memorizing this word, I certainly didn't try, but it was the character,
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one of the main characters in this story that I was reading,
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and because it popped up so much in the story and I was trying to figure out what it meant,
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it ended up just taking up resonance in my head without me even trying.
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And so my ear would start to catch random strangers using these words.
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It was like my brain became hyper aware of the words, you know, like as soon as you see this red car,
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some way to see it everywhere right even they've always been red cards.
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This is the sort of thing that happens
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when you learn vocabulary inside a story
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and every time you hear the word in a different place your understanding gets a little deeper
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because each new encounter adds another little piece to what
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that word means to you
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and then it starts to snowball week after week month after month you're
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so aware of those words that you start noticing them everywhere.
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Now check this out, this is pretty cool.
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This linguistics professor Arnold Zwicky actually gave this phenomenon a name, the frequency illusion.
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It's a bit of a strange name because it's no illusion at all.
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And the funny sciencey part is once your brain tags a new word as meaningful, it actively hunts for it.
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So what happens is you start catching that word in videos, books, street signs, everywhere.
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And every one of those little encounters helps it settle into your memory
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it's like your own natural spaced repetition system sorry flashcard lovers
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there's actually a better way suddenly vocabulary stops being an object
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that you memorize and becomes something that you actually acquire naturally for good
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and that is brilliant news for language learners
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because it doesn't happen in one magical moment it grows through lots of small meaningful encounters
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that gradually add together now there is one little trick to making this all work get this bit right
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and everything we've talked about starts falling neatly into place.
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You need the right kind of stories.
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Ideally one with audio because every new word that you learn has two sides.
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There's what it means and there's what it sounds like.
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Reading teaches your brain the meaning.
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Listening teaches your brain the sound.
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Put them together and suddenly you're learning the whole word and it's way harder to forget.
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This is much more memorable and this is especially true with languages where the spelling is quite tricky.
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If you've ever tried learning French, for example, you know exactly what I mean.
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That's why it can't just be any old book.
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You want a story that comes with the audio, that's interesting for you, and that is at your current level.
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and this bit is the most important bit of all.
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Now there is a name for this, it's called
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comprehensible input, which simply means you understand enough to keep following the story
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while still bumping into a few new words along the way.
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So it's comprehensible, you can understand it, and it's input.
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Input is reading and listening, comprehensible.
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Input means reading at your level, not something that's too hard that you're struggling to understand.
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If you can get the gist of what's going on, if you can follow the story to whatever degree and enjoy it,
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you're at the right level and your brain will be able to make a good guess at the rest.
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So aim for stories where you already understand most of what's happening.
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Ideally, I would say about 80 to 90 % is a good rule of thumb.
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If you can understand 80 to 90 % of what you're reading, you're in the right ballpark.
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If you're stopping every sentence to tap away at Google Translate or check GPT, no, it's too hard.
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If you understand every single word, then that's too easy.
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You want something that's right in the middle because that's where your brain can start making those good guesses.
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Now here's the really important bit.
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When you come across a word that you don't know, don't just stop immediately and reach for the dictionary.
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If you can still make sense of the story without knowing what that word means, keep going.
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Only look it up when you genuinely need to.
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Like if there's a word that's been blocking your overall understanding of the story and you really need to know it,
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then you can look it up because your goal is not to know every single word.
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It's to keep following the story.
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If you do that consistently, those words will just keep showing up until your brain no longer has to guess.
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That's one meaningful encounter at a time.
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And the real benefit of reading as it relates to acquiring vocabulary is not
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that you try to memorize every word that comes up, but it's to read so much, so widely, so extensively, that the volume of stuff
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that you're ingesting is so huge that you cannot help but just acquire a bunch of vocabulary.
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So what happens if you actually do all of this?
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Well let's say that spend 20 minutes a day reading stories at the right level for you for about three months.
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Well, after a while, you stop even thinking about vocabulary.
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You just pick up a new story, and instead of constantly getting stuck, you just keep reading.
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Because you're stopping less, you read more.
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And because you read more, you learn even more words.
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You won't suddenly know thousands of new words, of course, but you will notice something much more exciting.
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You will stop reaching for the dictionary so often.
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Words that used to feel completely unfamiliar, it, you'll just kind of know what they mean.
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Even if you can't literally give the English translation, it's a fantastic experience.
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You might not even remember where you first came across these words.
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Maybe it was a lovely little word like luciole.
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You once saw it in one story and then another and then somewhere else entirely,
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maybe in a movie, maybe you heard someone say it and you didn't ever look it up.
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You just figured out from context that it means fireflies.
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What a wonderful word.
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Now imagine one warm summer evening, you're sitting outside tiny lights begin dancing through the darkness
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and without even thinking you smile and you just know
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and that's where the magic happens the stories
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that once felt difficult became enjoyable
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so you naturally move on to slightly harder ones
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that's how vocabulary really grows one story then another until the language simply becomes part of your life so
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if you just remember
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this one thing let it be this don't ask how do
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i memorize more vocabulary ask how can I give my brain more repetition, more context, and more retrieval?
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Because those are the three things that make words stick.
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And reading stories just happens to be the easiest way to get all three.
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It's a lovely little cycle and something most language learners never get to experience, but you can absolutely experience it.
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And there's one last piece of the puzzle.
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Knowing what to read is only half of the battle, and things like the story learning app make this even easier.
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But you also need to know how to read, so watch this video next because I will show you my exact six -step reading method
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so every story you read teaches you as much vocabulary as possible.
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I'll see you over there.
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Vocabolario e note di pronuncia per questa lezione
Questa lezione di conversazione si basa sul video “How to Learn Vocabulary in ANY Language”. Le parole che ritornano più spesso: word, brain, vocabulary, reading, language. Questo video contiene 214 frasi e 2796 parole da ripetere con lo shadowing. Il parlato dura 13:58. Chi parla va veloce, circa 200 parole al minuto: aspettati suoni legati e ridotti. Il 88% delle parole rientra nelle 3.000 più comuni dell’inglese, quindi il lessico è facile da seguire.
Vocaboli chiave di questo video
15 parole del video che vale la pena imparare, con pronuncia e significato:
| Parola | Pronuncia | Significato |
|---|---|---|
| vocabulary sostantivo | /vəˈkæb.jə.lə.ɹi/ | vocabolario |
| input sostantivo | /ˈɪnpʊt/ | immissione |
| meaningful aggettivo | /ˈmiː.nɪŋ.fl̩/ | significativo, sensato |
| dictionary sostantivo | /ˈdɪk.ʃəˌnɛ.ɹi/ | dizionario, lessico |
| naturally avverbio | /ˈnæt͡ʃ.(ə.)ɹə.li/ | naturalmente |
| translation sostantivo | /tɹænzˈleɪʃən/ | traduzione |
| clue sostantivo | /kluː/ | indizio, pista |
| acquire verbo | /əˈkwaɪɚ/ | acquisire |
| trick sostantivo | /ˈtɹɪk/ | inbroglio |
| hook sostantivo | /hʊk/ | gancio, gancetto |
| wooden aggettivo | /ˈwʊdn̩/ | di legno, ligneo |
| podcast sostantivo | /ˈpɑdˌkæst/ | podcast, audioprogramma |
| phenomenon sostantivo | /fəˈnɒm.ɪ.nən/ | fenomeno |
| enjoyable aggettivo | /ɛnˈd͡ʒɔɪ.ə.bl̩/ | piacevole, gradevole |
| textbook sostantivo | /ˈtɛkst.bʊk/ | libro di testo |
I phrasal verb che sentirai
| Parola | Significato |
|---|---|
| come across verbo | dare l'impressione, avere l'aria |
| come up verbo | venire fuori, emergere |
| end up verbo | andare a finire, finire |
| figure out verbo | scoprire, rendersi conto |
| pick up verbo | tirare su, sollevare |
| pop up verbo | spuntare, saltare fuori |
| put together verbo | assemblare, montare |
| sit down verbo | sedersi, accomodarsi |
Frasi da ripetere
Frasi brevi e complete del video che puoi riutilizzare nella conversazione di tutti i giorni:
- They bring the important words back, that's your repetition.
- Because you're stopping less, you read more.
- I'll see you over there.
La grammatica di questo video
Le strutture che chi parla usa di più, con le parole esatte del video:
| Struttura | Nel video |
|---|---|
| Present perfect continuous have/has been + -ing — un’azione iniziata prima e ancora in corso | I've been teaching · that's been winding · It's been doing |
| Present perfect have/has + participio passato — un’azione passata che conta ancora adesso | you've ever felt · I've taught · I've become |
| Forma passiva be + participio passato — conta ciò che accade, non chi lo fa | are grouped · can be changed · have been tested |
| Frasi relative who / which + frase — un’informazione in più su una persona o una cosa | xian, which is · man who always · obispo, which is |
Pronuncia a cui fare attenzione
Chi parla usa 52 contrazioni e forme ridotte, come you're, you've, I've. Pronunciale nella forma breve, così come le senti.
- I suoni “th”: beneath /bɪˈniːθ/, thumb /ˈθʌm/, earthly /ˈəːθli/
- I suoni “sh” e “zh”: dictionary /ˈdɪk.ʃəˌnɛ.ɹi/, translation /tɹænzˈleɪʃən/, illusion /ɪˈl(j)uːʒ(ə)n/, unusual /ʌnˈjuːʒ(u)əl/, efficient /ɪˈfɪʃənt/
- Parole lunghe — attenzione all’accento: vocabulary /vəˈkæb.jə.lə.ɹi/, dictionary /ˈdɪk.ʃəˌnɛ.ɹi/, naturally /ˈnæt͡ʃ.(ə.)ɹə.li/, phenomenon /fəˈnɒm.ɪ.nən/, ideally /aɪˈdi.ə.li/
I suoni difficili per chi parla italiano:
- /h/ — va soffiata, non è muta: hook /hʊk/, horrible /ˈhɔɹ.ɪ.bəl/, comprehensive /ˌkɑm.pɹəˈhɛn.sɪv/, whatsoever /ˌ(h)wʌtsoʊˈɛvɚ/, comprehensible /kɒmpɹəˈhɛnsɪbəl/
- Consonante finale — senza aggiungere una vocale dopo: input /ˈɪnpʊt/, trick /ˈtɹɪk/, hook /hʊk/, podcast /ˈpɑdˌkæst/, textbook /ˈtɛkst.bʊk/
- /æ/ — più aperta della “e”: vocabulary /vəˈkæb.jə.lə.ɹi/, naturally /ˈnæt͡ʃ.(ə.)ɹə.li/, translation /tɹænzˈleɪʃən/, podcast /ˈpɑdˌkæst/, tag /tæɡ/
Come esercitarsi con questo video
- Ascolta tutto il video una volta senza parlare e annota le parole che non conosci.
- Inizia a velocità 0,75×, fai shadowing frase per frase e torna alla velocità normale quando diventa facile.
- Registrati e confronta con l’originale, facendo attenzione a parole come vocabulary, input, meaningful.
Cos'è la tecnica dello Shadowing?
Shadowing è una tecnica di apprendimento delle lingue supportata da studi scientifici, originariamente sviluppata per la formazione dei traduttori professionisti e resa popolare dal poliglotta Dr. Alexander Arguelles. Il metodo è semplice ma potente: ascolti un audio in inglese di madrelingua e lo ripeti immediatamente ad alta voce — come un'ombra che segue il parlante con un ritardo di solo 1–2 secondi. A differenza dell'ascolto passivo o degli esercizi di grammatica, lo shadowing costringe il tuo cervello e i muscoli della bocca a elaborare e riprodurre simultaneamente i modelli di discorso reale. La ricerca dimostra che migliora significativamente la precisione della pronuncia, l'intonazione, il ritmo, il discorso connesso, la comprensione dell'ascolto e la fluidità del parlato — rendendolo uno dei metodi più efficaci per la preparazione alla prova di speaking dell'IELTS e per la comunicazione reale in inglese.