Pratica di Shadowing: The Male Reading Crisis - Impara a parlare inglese con i video
Creazione lezione...
1
Something strange is happening on my YouTube feed.
2
Since I got back into reading daily over a year ago, I've been getting more and more videos about books on my recommended page.
3
However, that's not the strange part because we all know big tech is always listening.
4
What was strange was that 8 times out of 10, a book-related video was from a woman's channel.
5
If I do happen to stumble across a male channel talking about books, it's almost always the same few self-help ones, the subtle art of not giving a fuck 48 Laws of Power,
6
Atomic Habits, or Meditations by Marcus Aurelius.
7
When you look at the statistics, you realize this isn't all too strange.
8
In 2023, it was found that women made up roughly 80% of fiction sales in the US, UK, and Canada.
9
Men, on average, also read much less.
10
In a 2013 survey, 51% of women read more than 30 books a year compared with 34% of men.
11
In 2015, it was 55% and 28%, and in 2018, it was 60% and 20%.
12
What happened to men reading for pleasure, or at all?
13
What are the cultural and biological factors that led to this decline?
14
And what will be the consequences if this trend continues?
15
Let's answer those questions in this video.
16
First, an update on overall reading trends.
17
In a 2022 survey, the NEA reported that 48.5% of adults read at least one book in the past year,
18
compared with 52.7% five years earlier and 54.6% ten years earlier.
19
The sharpest decline can be observed with novels and short stories, aka fiction, especially among young men.
20
In 2017 the share of women reading novels or short stories was down to 50% and in 2022 to 46.9%.
21
But men saw their fiction reading rate slip from 35.1% in 2012 to 33.0% in 2017 and then to 27.7% in 2022.
22
That clashes with what we know about overall print book sales which have actually increased in the past decade.
23
So who is driving this upward trend In sales?
24
Mostly women.
25
To understand why this is the case, we can look back as far as our adolescence.
26
A book trust poll found that 42% of mothers, compared with 29% of fathers, read with their under ones every day,
27
while 71% of mothers, compared with 62% of fathers, read with their three year olds every day.
28
In another study titled African American White and Latino Fathers Activities with their sons and daughters in early childhood,
29
researchers found that fathers of boys engaged in physical play more frequently than fathers of girls, whereas fathers of girls engaged more frequently in literary activities.
30
From the time we are born, men adopt common gender roles and therefore have little to no male reading role models.
31
Now this is where you can make a nature versus nurture argument.
32
Do fathers feel more biologically inclined to prepare their sons for the physicality of the world, or is it because that's what our culture has taught them to do?
33
Honestly, I think it's a little bit of both.
34
I think men tend to naturally gravitate towards and fixate on things related to the physical rather than the emotional,
35
which pushes many men to over-develop that area of their life and under-develop the more intuitive, empathetic, emotional side.
36
However, this is 100% not an excuse to allow this trend to persist.
37
There is so much lacking culturally in regards to how men treat other men
38
and how they perceive other men who are more in touch with their emotional literary side.
39
We are told that allowing ourselves to be vulnerable, letting our emotions express themselves, and being moved by words on a page is childish or gay.
40
As a result, our interests develop in different ways, and I think this subtly influences us to find books, especially fiction, less enjoyable than they are to women,
41
which is backed up by the data.
42
In 2018, 24% of 15 year old boys
43
and 44% of girls the same age agreed that reading is one of my favorite hobbies,
44
while 60% of boys and 39% of girls agreed that I read only to get information that I need.
45
That same study found that more than 40% of girls at age 15 reported reading at least 30 minutes a day, compared to only about a quarter of boys who did the same.
46
This is very telling of the general sentiment that I hear from a lot of younger guys regarding books, which is that unless they are directly contributing to the enhancement of one's utility,
47
they are a waste of time.
48
In a New York Times article titled, Why Did the Novel reading man disappear.
49
A college literature professor said he had trouble getting many of
50
the young men in his courses interested in the material because they did not see the benefit of novels.
51
They're more interested in the instrumental, he said.
52
Now why this is the case goes incredibly deep.
53
There's so many different aspects to this
54
and I've talked about masculinity a lot on this channel
55
so I'm going to do my best to explain how it relates to reading books here.
56
It is not entirely unjustified for young men to feel this way.
57
Due to the system we live in, we are taught at a young age
58
that we are worth nothing unless we have accomplished some sort of tangible success in our lives.
59
And how our culture defines tangible success is usually in the form of wealth or status.
60
Wealth usually comes in the form of money, but status can mean many different things.
61
Social status, physical status, career status, intelligence status, etc. If you cannot signal that you have something substantial to provide to the world, you are treated like a ghost.
62
And I'm not saying this isn't the case for women, women's worth is often derived from their outward appearances,
63
but typically women are not socially punished as harshly if they're not reaching a certain outward appearance.
64
So since this is what our culture and system magnifies in men,
65
naturally men are going to gravitate towards activities that translate into skills that will stop them from being treated like a ghost.
66
And on the surface, the only books that are justifiable to that cause are self-help books, but only a very particular type of self-help book.
67
Self-help books tagged with memoir, biography, and autobiography have more female readers, while those tagged with science, business, psychology, and religion have more male readers.
68
In other words, men are less interested in learning about people's stories, struggles, and emotions,
69
and more interested in learning about how to gain what society values in men like money and power over others.
70
And this is a massive reason why I decided to write my first novel, which, as of the day I'm publishing this video, has finally been released.
71
I have for so long wanted to create a piece of work that would allow people, men specifically, to see the value in reading fiction in order to enhance their understanding of the world,
72
and I believe my debut novel, Echoes Across Infinity, does just that.
73
Echoes Across Infinity is about a 21-year-old named Elliot who lives in a post-pandemic world, aka our modern world, and due to a freak accident, ends up losing his mother.
74
Through the trauma he endures, he begins to have uncontrollable visions of a foreign world, which he soon finds out is a parallel reality.
75
Throughout the book, Elliot struggles with understanding his place in the world and how to grapple with his emotions, and using the parallel reality,
76
learns how to transform his beliefs to create an identity he is genuinely proud of.
77
This book is a blend of sci-fi, self-improvement philosophy, and psychology.
78
It is a culmination of over 500 days of work, and I have never been more proud to promote something in a video.
79
I genuinely believe this is a story worth reading, even if you aren't a guy, and it's the perfect gateway into fiction, so if you are interested in reading it,
80
you can pick it up by going to one of the first links in my description.
81
Please go check it out, because if you enjoy my videos, I think you will really be able to relate to the main character and you will absolutely love this book.
82
And if you still aren't convinced yet, I think you will be by the end of this video.
83
What's only exacerbated this trend of men putting their attention solely on things that result in utility is, of course, our economic situation as well.
84
Capitalism breeds hustle culture.
85
Hustle culture teaches the idea that you can be the most handsome, successful, popular dude if you just work every waking hour.
86
And if you work every waking hour, you know what you don't have time for?
87
Reading for pleasure.
88
It better be a book about creating a Roth IRA, explaining the psychology of money, winning friends and influencing people, or being a manipulative dictator.
89
And I'm not even saying that self-help books are inherently bad, but they They don't leave the same type of impact that fiction books do, a type of impact that is severely lacking in the modern world,
90
which I will discuss more deeply when I go over the consequences towards the end of this video.
91
Additionally, I think this helps us understand something that may or may not be shocking to you.
92
Men are way more reluctant to read female authors than women are reluctant to read male authors.
93
Newly analyzed data drawn from Nielsen Book Data's Consumer Research shows
94
that for the top 20 best-selling female writers of fiction and nonfiction purchased in the UK in 2023, fewer than 20% of purchases were made by men,
95
with the majority of these focused on the classics as opposed to works by contemporary writers.
96
In comparison, 44% of the top 20 best-selling male writers of fiction and nonfiction were bought by women.
97
Going off what we know about the culture and our economy, my hunch is that men are less open to receiving ideas
98
and insights from someone like a female author who they might
99
think not be able to help them with something regarding tangible value.
100
Their motives for reading are different.
101
Conversely, women are more open-minded and receptive towards receiving different viewpoints that come from men, and on top of that,
102
their motive for reading is more frequently one of leisure.
103
But that's just my theory, I would love to know what you think about this particular data point by leaving a comment.
104
And since these trends in book sales have persisted for so long, the market has adapted to them, only further exacerbating this trend.
105
In the New York Times article I mentioned earlier, the author highlights a walkthrough of a book chain in New York City.
106
He states, Eventually, Mr. Kiyono took me to the front to look at an attractive customer favorites display.
107
Here, pastel and vivid colors dominated the covers of books by romance and romantic-y stalwarts like Carly Fortune and Sarah J Maas,
108
the author of the popular Account of Thorns and Roses series.
109
It was also found that by 2020, for the first time in history, women were publishing more books than men,
110
contributing to increased revenue for the industry for both male and female consumers.
111
And I think many of these sales can be attributed to BookTok.
112
BookTok is the site of TikTok where readers recommend and review their favorite books for their audiences.
113
And if you search BookTok and scroll for even just a little, you will see that the majority of creators are women, and that they are mostly recommending the same types of books,
114
like Romanticy, that are being displayed front and center in bookstores.
115
So because of recent developments in reading, online and physical retailers start pushing more female dominated book genres to the forefront of their stores,
116
thereby attracting more women than men, thereby disincentivizing men to actually browse books and choose something other than a self-help book mentioned by a guru online.
117
This is not a bad thing of course, when you're a business and you see that the majority of your customers are women,
118
of course you're gonna adjust your store or your marketing to appeal to the majority of your customers.
119
And it's great that both men and women are publishing around the same amount of books now, which allows for better representation.
120
But if this were to continue, I think men will find it increasingly hard to justify picking up a fiction book, or really any book for that matter.
121
So what are the consequences of this?
122
Well, we're already starting to see some of them and they don't look too good.
123
One global study found
124
that fourth grade girls had higher average reading achievement levels in
125
almost all of the 50 countries surveyed than boys in the same grade, a trend that has held since 2001.
126
According to the OECD, data looking at 15 year olds across developed countries, girls outperform boys in reading in every single OECD nation surveyed.
127
And what happens when those guys grow up?
128
They lag heavily behind in the very things they want to achieve by avoiding fiction.
129
Studies show that people who read books not only live longer than people who don't read books, but also have a longevity advantage compared to those who read newspapers or magazines,
130
even after adjusting for covariates such as age, education level, wealth, and health.
131
The Barbara Bush Foundation found that high literacy rates are associated with a stronger economy, healthier families, safer communities, increased civic engagement,
132
and therefore more opportunities to break multi-generational cycles of poverty.
133
Multiple studies also show that reading fiction books specifically increases empathy and understanding of others more than reading non-fiction.
134
So ironically, the very thing more men today are neglecting is the very thing
135
that would indirectly translate to the tangible status and wealth they desire.
136
And not only that, but reading fiction is perhaps the greatest defense mechanism against social media brain rot,
137
which has overtaken almost all of our free time in place of genuinely healthy forms of escapism.
138
So men, this is my message to you.
139
You might think that reading is a waste of time, especially reading fiction,
140
but you need the opportunity to place yourself in the mind of another in order to truly start understanding yourself.
141
As men, we rarely have the chance to feel comfortable enough to open up to people, especially our guy friends, and that's a huge problem.
142
But when you read fiction, you temporarily inhabit the minds of the characters.
143
You gain a deeper understanding of how their emotions work, why they react the way they do, and how that hurts or contributes to their lives.
144
And when you do that, what you are really doing is gaining a deeper understanding of yourself.
145
You learn how to put your emotions into words, you learn how to handle conflict better, you become more open-minded to other people's beliefs and points of view,
146
and therefore you are far more equipped to handle the real world when you return to it.
147
Humans are wired to learn through stories, not self-help facts without any emotional stakes tied to them.
148
I genuinely think there might not be a better way to solve this issue of men being reluctant to empathize, understand women, show their emotions,
149
process them, and become more well-rounded men than getting men into reading fiction again.
150
So instead of using your downtime to numb your brain with mindless stimulation, dive into a classic, read a fun fantasy story that transports you to a different world,
151
sit with what you've read and try to translate it to your own experiences.
152
Help it put words to things and ideas you previously had no way to articulate.
153
Because the more that you do that, the more peaceful and fulfilling life becomes.
154
And the more peaceful and fulfilling that life becomes, the more you start to get all of those things that you thought you wanted,
155
that you might soon come to realize you didn't actually want as a byproduct.
156
Whether you're an avid sci-fi reader or you want to get into the incredible genres within fiction, I highly recommend you check out my debut novel Echoes Across Infinity.
157
I know I said it already, but I'm just so proud of what I created.
158
I really put my all into this, and I'm just so excited for you guys to get your hands on this book and let me know what you think.
159
If it sucks, tell me.
160
Write a review.
161
If it rocks, tell me.
162
Also write a review.
163
Please.
164
Either way, if you do end up purchasing it, it really means the world to me because I just put everything into this,
165
and I do genuinely think it's a story worth reading that will lead to a better understanding of yourself and your life.
166
This is usually where I recommend another one of my videos, but I'd rather you log off right now and read a book.
167
Read something.
168
Read, get into a story, get some healthy escapism going, enjoy the outside, just enjoy the summer, and yeah, thank you so much for watching until the end,
169
and I hope that you enjoy my story.
📺 Stesso Canale
✨ Video consigliato
B21
105 frasi
Video
Business EnglishDaily ConversationUniversity Students
B24
849 frasi
Feminist vs Anti Feminist Women | PART 1
Daily ConversationUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
B22
142 frasi
The Internet Didn't Fail. It Was Taken.
American AccentBusiness EnglishDaily ConversationUniversity Students
B24
271 frasi
Why Millennials and Gen Z Are SO BURNED OUT 😩
Business EnglishDaily ConversationUniversity Students
B21
168 frasi
The Masculine Move Most Men Are Too Afraid to Make
Business EnglishInterview EnglishUniversity Students
B2141
24 frasi
Is technology making us lazy and less intelligent? #FOREsight | MOTIVATIONAL BOOKS
Business EnglishDaily ConversationUniversity Students
B22
814 frasi
What It Means To Be A Good Man Today With Tom Junod
Business EnglishDaily ConversationUniversity Students
B21
220 frasi
Brain Rot & Why We Can Not Focus Anymore | English Listening Practice | Daily Podcast | B1-B2 Ep.09
Business EnglishDaily ConversationUniversity Students
B21
458 frasi
She Read 1,200 Pages in ONE Sitting… Has “Intellectual Consumerism” Taken Over BookTok?
Daily ConversationUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
B26
157 frasi
If you're under 30, please watch this video…
Business EnglishDaily ConversationUniversity Students
B21
70 frasi
Sexist Design - Living in a World Designed for the Reference Man - BTN High
Business EnglishUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
B21
98 frasi
Luyện Shadowing Cùng Bài Nói Triệu View Về Việc Đọc Sách Với Chất Giọng Tiếng Anh Hay | Ted Talks
Business EnglishDaily ConversationHigh School Students
Vocabolario e note di pronuncia per questa lezione
Questa lezione di conversazione di livello B2 si basa sul video “The Male Reading Crisis”. Questo video contiene 169 frasi e 2881 parole da ripetere con lo shadowing. Il parlato dura 15:08. Chi parla va veloce, circa 190 parole al minuto: aspettati suoni legati e ridotti. Il 84% delle parole rientra nelle 3.000 più comuni dell’inglese; conviene studiare le altre prima di iniziare.
Vocaboli chiave di questo video
Le 15 parole più avanzate del video, con pronuncia e significato:
| Parola | Pronuncia | Significato |
|---|---|---|
| emotion sostantivo | /ɪˈməʊ.ʃən/ | emozione |
| genuinely avverbio | /ˈd͡ʒɛn.ju.ɪn.li/ | veramente, genuinamente |
| tangible aggettivo | /ˈtæn.d͡ʒə.bəl/ | tangibile, palpabile |
| reluctant aggettivo | /ɹɪˈlʌktənt/ | riluttante |
| translate verbo | /tɹænzˈleɪt/ | tradurre |
| consequence sostantivo | /ˈkɑn.sɪ.kwəns/ | conseguenza |
| publish verbo | /ˈpʌblɪʃ/ | pubblicare |
| nonfiction sostantivo | saggistico, saggistica | |
| hustle verbo | /ˈhʌsəl/ | affrettarsi, darsi da fare |
| fulfill verbo | /fʊlˈfɪl/ | completare |
| dominate verbo | /ˈdɑ.məˌneɪt/ | dominare |
| motive sostantivo | /ˈmoʊtɪv/ | motivo, movente |
| thereby avverbio | /ðɛɹˈbaɪ/ | in tal modo, perciò |
| adjust verbo | /əˈd͡ʒʌst/ | adattare, adeguare |
| genre sostantivo | /ˈ(d)ʒɑnɹə/ | genere |
I phrasal verb che sentirai
| Parola | Pronuncia | Significato |
|---|---|---|
| end up verbo | andare a finire, finire | |
| check out verbo | investigare | |
| find out verbo | scoprire | |
| go off verbo | esplodere | |
| grow up verbo | crescere | |
| make up verbo | /ˌmeɪk ˈʌp/ | comporsi |
| pick up verbo | tirare su, sollevare |
La grammatica di questo video
Le strutture che chi parla usa di più, con le parole esatte del video:
| Struttura | Nel video |
|---|---|
| Forma passiva be + participio passato — conta ciò che accade, non chi lo fa | was found · can be observed · are born |
| Present perfect have/has + participio passato — un’azione passata che conta ancora adesso | have actually increased · has taught · I've talked |
| Frasi relative who / which + frase — un’informazione in più su una persona o una cosa | sales which have · men who are · books, which is |
Pronuncia a cui fare attenzione
Chi parla usa 26 contrazioni e forme ridotte, come I'm, don't, you're. Pronunciale nella forma breve, così come le senti.
- I suoni “th”: thereby /ðɛɹˈbaɪ/, empathetic /ˌɛmpəˈθɛtɪk/, empathize /ˈɛmpəˌθaɪz/, empathy /ˈɛmpəθi/
- I suoni “sh” e “zh”: emotion /ɪˈməʊ.ʃən/, publish /ˈpʌblɪʃ/, genre /ˈ(d)ʒɑnɹə/, culmination /ˌkʌl.mɪˈneɪ.ʃən/, stimulation /stɪm.jʊˈleɪ.ʃən/
- Parole lunghe — attenzione all’accento: genuinely /ˈd͡ʒɛn.ju.ɪn.li/, escapism /ɪˈskeɪpɪzəm/, adolescence /ˌædəˈlɛsəns/, covariate /koʊˈvɛɹ.i.eɪt/, culmination /ˌkʌl.mɪˈneɪ.ʃən/
I suoni difficili per chi parla italiano:
- /h/ — va soffiata, non è muta: hustle /ˈhʌsəl/, inherently /ɪnˈhɛɹəntli/, enhancement /ɪnˈhæns.mənt/, hobby /ˈhɑ.bi/, enhance /ɪnˈhæns/
- Consonante finale — senza aggiungere una vocale dopo: reluctant /ɹɪˈlʌktənt/, translate /tɹænzˈleɪt/, consequence /ˈkɑn.sɪ.kwəns/, publish /ˈpʌblɪʃ/, gravitate /ˈɡɹævɪteɪt/
- /æ/ — più aperta della “e”: tangible /ˈtæn.d͡ʒə.bəl/, translate /tɹænzˈleɪt/, gravitate /ˈɡɹævɪteɪt/, adolescence /ˌædəˈlɛsəns/, exacerbate /ɪɡˈzæsɚˌbeɪt/
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 emotion, genuinely, tangible.
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.