Shadowing Practice: 4.6k - Learn English Speaking with Video
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Reading is supposed to be one of those habits that makes your life better, right?
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I mean, we hear it all the time.
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It improves your attention, your focus, your memory, and your understanding of the world.
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And I'm just barely scratching the surface here.
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Despite this, a lot of times it never becomes a habit.
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We're too busy or too distracted, or we just can't focus long enough to really get into it.
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And, honestly, sometimes the thought of starting a new book sounds about as appealing as starting a new workout.
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So, in this video, I want to change that perspective.
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I want to show you how you can fall in love with reading, whether you're starting from scratch or whether you're trying to rekindle an old habit.
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If you want reading to become the best part of your day, this video's for you.
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Now, I used an exercise analogy in the opening, so let's stick with that because I think it explains reading better than anything else.
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So let's say there's two people.
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One forces themselves to run every morning and if they're anything like me, they're probably going to hate every second of it.
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Now let's say the other person, they're playing soccer or basketball or whatever, they're doing this three times a week,
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and they're sweating and they're working hard, maybe even harder, but.. it never occurs to them that what they're doing is actually work.
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Reading works in a similar way, so if you want to build a strong reading habit, then you should focus on books that are of high interest to you,
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rather than on books that you think you should read because, I don't know, maybe your teacher told you to read them,
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or maybe someone on the internet told you that reading this book or that book would make you a well -read person.
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Lately, I've been enjoying these dark Nordic crime novels.
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And some nights I get home from work and that's all I want to do.
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I don't want to watch TV.
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I don't want to scroll through my phone.
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I just want to get through one more chapter.
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That's me though.
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You know, you have to think about what you like.
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You know, maybe it's thrillers or fantasy or science fiction.
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Or who knows, maybe it's non -fiction.
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You know, maybe you like reading, I don't know, about airplanes or history or whatever.
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That doesn't matter.
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The point is, is that we all have our own interests.
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We all have things that we love to indulge in.
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So the trick is to find that thing, you know, whatever you like and start there.
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Because when people fall in love with reading, it's usually because they're reading out of their own interest or their own pleasure or maybe for curiosity or escape.
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You know, that's how it starts.
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And don't listen to people who try to tell you that your reading choices are just junk food.
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You know, even if we just assume for the sake of argument
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that your choices really are about mostly entertainment or just this kind of light reading, even in those cases, you're still doing the mental work.
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stain your attention.
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You have to imagine scenes, follow characters, process language, and you have to stay with the text for an extended period of time.
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Those things aren't bad for you.
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You know, they're not going to rot your brain.
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In fact, it's exactly what you need to retrain your focus
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and attention so that later you can read the kinds of books that are going to require more from you.
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more serious books than a person who reads nothing at all.
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So yes, eventually I do think that you should challenge yourself, but in the beginning, as you're falling in love with reading,
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don't feel bad about choosing books that are fun or highly interesting to you because that's how a solid reading habit starts.
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Achieving a deep state of flow is one of the best feelings that reading can give you, and at least for me,
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it's one of the things that makes reading feel so easy and effortless.
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What I mean by flow is a kind of deep or intense state of immersion.
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You forget that you're reading.
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You forget that your mind and your eyes are decoding letters and words, or that your mind is doing any work at all.
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and you become completely unaware of your surroundings.
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Now the tricky thing about flow is that it can take a bit of time to kind of get settled in, but it only takes a second to break out of it.
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It's kind of fragile.
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So reading is going to come a lot easier to you, of course, if you're able to remove some of those obvious distractions.
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Of course, turning off notifications on your phone, or better yet, I've kind of gotten in the habit of just leaving my phone in the other
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So just do whatever you need to do to protect your attention.
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I would also give the book a little bit of time to take hold of you.
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You know, sometimes it takes a few minutes for the scene to kind of start playing in your mind.
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You have to get settled in.
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You have to kind of get oriented.
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You know, let your mind slow down a little bit.
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And another thing is that, and this kind of goes back to what I was saying earlier, that it really helps if you're reading something that you actually care about.
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You know, flow is much easier to reach if the material is genuinely interesting to you.
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Basically, you just have to give yourself a chance to disappear into the book a little bit.
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So, let's talk about motivation for a little bit.
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You can more easily build a habit around almost anything
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when the reason shifts from "I should do this" to "I
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want to do this." What I'm talking about here is the difference between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation.
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Now, intrinsic motivation is the internal reason.
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You know, you read, for example,
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because it's interesting, because it's or maybe just because it's personally meaningful to you in some way.
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And this is what makes reading sustainable over the long term.
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If someone actually likes what they're reading, then they don't need as much discipline to keep returning to it.
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On the other hand, there is, of course, extrinsic motivation.
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This refers to the external reasons for reading.
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So maybe you're reading to hit a goal or to finish a challenge on Goodreads, or maybe you have to read something to learn something for work,
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or maybe you're just doing it because you want to prove to your friends
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that you're intelligent or that you're a well -read person.
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So external rewards can be somewhat useful, actually, in the beginning at least, bit of push.
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But over the long term, it actually works against you.
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Let's say, for example, that with every chapter you read, you reward yourself with 30 minutes of Netflix.
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Now, this might work for a few days, but in the long run, all it's going to do is teach your brain that reading is
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that unpleasant thing that you have to get through in order to get to the thing that you actually want.
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So instead of focusing on whatever you're reading and noticing what's good about it or what's enjoyable about it,
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focusing on that external payoff.
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So I think rewards are fine in principle as long as they reinforce the benefits
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or the identity or the context of reading rather than compete with it.
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Woody Allen is famously quoted as saying that 80 % of success is just showing up, which is to say that the hardest part of doing something is just starting.
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So however often you read throughout your day, make it as easy to start as possible.
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Don't wait for the perfect moment in your day to read.
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You don't need a cozy couch, you don't need a hot cup of tea or two or three hours to kill.
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year for me.
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And for a while, I The only reading I was able to do was in the short breaks throughout the day.
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A few pages in the morning with my coffee, maybe a chapter during lunch, maybe 20 minutes before bed.
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a few pages here, a few pages there, and that might not sound like much, but really it's all you need to get started because if you wait for the perfect conditions,
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you'll never do it often enough for it to become an actual habit.
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And so you should take advantage of whatever time that you have.
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Something else I want to say, you know, even the most disciplined readers have trouble with attention and focus.
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Of course, there are times when I can't get very much reading done throughout the week.
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Life just gets in the way and there's not much I can do about it.
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But the other side of that is that I always come back.
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You know, when you love reading, it doesn't ever disappear completely.
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So, the best advice that I can give you is to start with what you love,
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focus on enjoyment, and let reading become something that you always want to come back to.
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What You'll Practice in This Lesson
In this lesson, you'll learn how to build a sustainable reading habit while improving your English speaking skills through shadowing. The video shares practical strategies for falling in love with reading, and you'll practice mimicking its conversational tone, pacing, and emphasis to enhance your pronunciation and fluency. By the end, you'll feel confident using the shadowing technique to engage with real-world content like this.
Key Vocabulary & Phrases
- Rekindle: To bring back a past feeling or habit (e.g., "I want to rekindle my love for reading").
- Indulge in: To allow oneself to enjoy something (e.g., "We all have things we love to indulge in").
- Flow: A deep state of immersion (e.g., "Achieving flow makes reading feel effortless").
- Retrain: To teach oneself a new skill or habit (e.g., "You need to retrain your focus").
- Scratch the surface: To only deal with a small part of something (e.g., "I'm just barely scratching the surface of reading's benefits").
Practice Tips for Shadowing Success
The video's tone is friendly and conversational, with a moderate speed—perfect for shadowing practice. Here's how to make the most of it: Start by listening to short 10-15 second clips and repeating them immediately, focusing on matching the speaker's rhythm and intonation. This helps improve English pronunciation by training your mouth to form sounds like a native. Use a shadowing app or shadowing site to record yourself and compare it to the original; this feedback will highlight areas to refine.
Pay attention to phrases where the speaker pauses or emphasizes words (e.g., "the trick is to find that thing"). Mimicking these nuances will make your speech sound more natural. If the speed feels challenging, slow down the audio (many shadowing apps offer this feature) and gradually increase the pace as you get comfortable. Remember, the goal is to "shadow speak"—not just repeat, but emulate the speaker's energy and clarity. With consistent practice, you'll not only build a reading habit but also master the shadowing technique to boost your English fluency.
Wat is de Shadowing-techniek?
Shadowing is een wetenschappelijk onderbouwde taalleermethode die oorspronkelijk is ontwikkeld voor professionele tolkentraining en gepopulariseerd door polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. De methode is eenvoudig maar krachtig: je luistert naar native Engelse audio en herhaalt het onmiddellijk hardop — als een schaduw die de spreker volgt met slechts 1–2 seconden vertraging. In tegenstelling tot passief luisteren of grammaticadrills, dwingt shadowing je hersenen en mondspieren om echte spraakpatronen tegelijkertijd te verwerken en te reproduceren. Onderzoek toont aan dat het de uitspraaknauwkeurigheid, intonatie, ritme, verbonden spraak, luisterbegrip en spreekvaardigheid aanzienlijk verbetert — waardoor het een van de meest effectieve methoden is voor IELTS Speaking-voorbereiding en echte Engelse communicatie.