Shadowing Practice: Every Study Technique Explained in 18 Minutes - Learn English Speaking with Video

I'm a learning coach and I'm going to break down the most popular learning

and studying techniques as well as rank them in terms of whether they are worth your time.

Starting with highlighting or underlining.

When you look at surveys around learning strategies, highlighting or underlining remains one of the most popular learning strategies used across the world.

The idea behind why it's meant to work is that by highlighting something, it draws your attention to it, which helps your brain understand what you're reading.

But unfortunately, that's just not how your brain works.

And so when you look at studies around the effectiveness of highlighting as a learning strategy, decades of research show that it is extremely useless.

In fact, one of the most useless, non-effective strategies that you could ever really use.

The only utility is in being able to quickly go back and find certain keywords when you're actually doing real learning.

So I give highlighting or underlining an F.

If you throw away your highlighter and never use it again, there's a chance that you may actually just automatically become a more efficient learner.

Second technique is re-reading.

If highlighting is the most common technique that people use, re-reading is probably second.

This is when you just go over the same passage of text multiple times, trying to remember it, trying to understand it.

The idea is that increased repetition and exposure helps you to remember it better.

And while that is technically true, the effect is marginal.

However, I have to give this one an F tier as well, because there are just so many other things that you could be doing that are much more beneficial than rereading.

Rereading is an enormous waste of time.

If you have to reread often, it probably means that you're not engaging very active learning processes.

It creates an illusion of learning because you gain familiarity and start recognizing the things that you're reading over and over again, which tricks your brain into thinking that it's actually learning it,

even though the memory is not very strong.

And rereading by itself does not support schema building, which is when you create networks and connected bodies of information.

That's what translates into whether you can solve problems, answer difficult questions, actually use your knowledge in more useful ways.

Now, unfortunately, these two techniques, which are super useless, are also super common.

And those two things actually go hand in hand.

Techniques that are not very effective are often not effective because we don't use our brain very actively.

But because we don't have to use our brain very actively, it takes very little effort.

And so useless techniques are often very easy to perform.

And because we as humans love doing things that are easy and don't take much effort, those techniques end up becoming more popular.

It also doesn't help that learning is a cognitive skill, which means that most of it is invisible.

So even if it's really bad, you don't see the impact of that until weeks or months later, and it's hard to point your finger at one particular technique and say that's the reason you're doing badly.

But what about the third one on our list?

Blurting.

The blurting method has been going viral on social media for the last few years at least.

It involves reading through a topic and then writing out everything from memory as best as you can, then reviewing the material, seeing where the gaps are,

and repeating that process on where your gaps were.

Now, of all the learning techniques that go viral, most of them not very good, this one at least has some credibility to it because it's essentially just a rebranding of an existing technique, which is called a brain dump,

which is a specific form of active recall.

Now, active recall is a good thing to do when you're learning.

It involves learning something and then trying to recall that from your memory.

Because it's harder to recall things from your memory, your brain has to do a little bit more work.

It is more active.

That's why it's active recall.

And because your brain is doing more work, it is more effective.

Because this is a legitimate form of active recall, I would put this in B tier.

Like most types of retrieval practice, it is very easy to perform, but it still forces your brain to think actively.

Whereas something like highlighting is easy to perform, and it doesn't force your brain to think about it.

However, there is no way it can be better than B tier because it has a very limited level of total effectiveness.

Blurting does not force you to evaluate how ideas are connected to each other.

It doesn't force you to think about how one concept influences another concept.

It does not help to organize and build schemas of knowledge, which is actually the most important process that you do to build durable, high quality memory.

And so ultimately it's going to be minimally effective for when you need to use that information at a moderately high level.

If I was ranking this for a postgraduate or working professional level, I would give this an F tier as well, because for most of the ways that you need to use your knowledge, it's pretty much useless.

And even for a purely academic undergrad student, it's still not that great, because there are alternatives that do all of the things that blurting does, but better.

What about number four on our list, which is flashcards?

Flashcards are when you write down a question or a prompt on one side of a card, and then on the other side is the answer.

Now, these are usually done digitally, a popular app that's used as Anki, and you're essentially just quizzing yourself.

Now flashcards by themselves are a form of queued recall, so unlike free recall, which you're doing with a brain dump or blurting, where there isn't really a question or a prompt to get you thinking,

queued recall is when there is a clear question stem and

that directs your brain in terms of the type of thing to recall.

Cued recall is generally easier than free recall but they both have their pros and cons.

But the real benefit of flashcards is that often

when you do it digitally it's paired with a spacing algorithm and this takes advantage of something called the spacing effect.

In learning science the spacing effect says that

when you learn something you wait a while and then you review that material again your retention is stronger. And

so testing yourself with with a flashcard on a spacing algorithm

where an app tells you every time a set of cards

are due is a great pairing of the spacing effect with active recall.

But unfortunately, I have to still give it a B tier because it suffers from the exact same limitations as blurting.

Because flashcards still test you on isolated facts

and discrete recall without forcing you to evaluate the importance of ideas relative to each other, flashcards still do not promote schema building.

And so again, if you're gonna have to solve complex problems write essays, have deep discussions, make decisions based on what you have learned.

A lot of the most useful things

that we're actually learning for flashcards become almost useless

and again for professionals this would drop to like a F

or an E tier because most of the things

that you would normally put on a flashcard as a working professional you can just look that up.

However there are exceptions to this rule for example

when I was working as a doctor I had to have memorized all the common medications and their doses.

Flashcards were a great fit for that purpose

but I think it is generally overhyped

and people depend on it much more than they should

which is nothing like number five mind mapping you're probably familiar

with mind mapping it usually involves writing a topic in the middle of the page

and then having all sorts of different notes sort of branching out from it

and I would actually rank mind mapping from anywhere from a D through to an S tier

and the way that most people do it I think is closer to a D pretty much useless

and this is because mind mapping is the first of the techniques from this list

which is actually not easy to perform correctly.

Something like flashcards or blurting, you can't really screw that up.

With mind mapping, the way that most people do it is

that they still think about the information in the same way

that they're used to thinking about it and then they just draw a mind map.

The problem here is that because learning happens in the brain, if you don't change the way you think about it, the technique that you do physically is not going to help you.

The idea with mind mapping is that if you do it correctly, you use a very strict specific technique that promotes certain types of thinking

if you do not deliberately change your thinking in the way

that mind mapping encourages you to then you will not get the benefit of the technique

that would make it a D tier like I've been saying deeper learning

and schema building comes from comparing ideas against each other evaluating how important each idea is compared to the others

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and you want to see how everything fits together in a cohesive organized big picture

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when you try to do this on something new that you're learning especially if it's complicated it's gonna feel confusing and overwhelming.

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Mind mapping helps by allowing you to externalize all that thinking

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so that you can see it on paper you can work with the ideas visually.

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Instead of just feeling like things are confusing and disorganized you can express that confusion and disorganization on paper, look at it and clean it.

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Much like how it's easier to clean your house with the lights on rather than with your eyes closed.

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But the act of organizing your thoughts and decluttering

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and thinking about how things are connected this takes a lot

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of mental effort it takes a lot of deep thinking and

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that is all very high quality learning stimulus the memory

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that forms from that is going to be deep and robust

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and very useful so if you let yourself think in

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that way and use mind mapping to stimulate

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that then mind mapping will become an S tier

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if I had to pick only one learning technique

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that is my personal favorite I I would definitely go with mind mapping executed correctly.

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And in fact, I have traveled around the world giving workshops to thousands of different learners.

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And I've heard countless times people tell me they've tried mind mapping and it hasn't worked for them.

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And when I actually sit down and look at their process and coach them through the correct process, there is not even a single instance where it has not been effective.

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Because it's how your brain works.

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The human brain thinks in connections.

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Memory is stored when it forms connections.

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So when you use a technique that's designed to help form connections, it works every time.

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You wouldn't be surprised that someone gets stronger by lifting weights.

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It's the same thing.

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It's just biology.

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And number six on the list is very similar because this is the Feynman technique.

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Now, there are a lot of variations to the Feynman technique, but the core principle is that you want to learn something

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and then try to teach or explain it to a complete beginner.

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Some people say explain it to a 10 year old.

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Some people say teach it out loud.

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Some people say write it down.

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And it doesn't really matter how you perform it

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because the most important part is that you are forcing yourself to take complex knowledge, think through the narrative and the logic of what you have learned,

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and make decisions around which parts of this topic are more important or less important.

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How can I simplify this, remove the jargon, so that I can teach the core message accurately and concisely to a complete beginner.

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That is a very sophisticated, deep level of thinking and processing that you have to do.

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And again, that's very active.

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So therefore, because our brain is doing a lot of work, it is going to be very beneficial for our learning.

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And for that reason, I rank the Feynman technique at A tier.

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Everything flashcards and blurting does well, Feynman technique does better.

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It still uses active recall because you have to teach it or explain it from memory, but it forces you to hold yourself at a higher standard and think through the material deeper.

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You can also pair the Feynman technique with something like flashcards if you do need that fine, specific, detail retrieval.

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Now, the reason I don't give it an S here is that I found that the Feynman technique is expertise limited.

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When you yourself are a beginner at something and you're trying to teach something to a beginner, you don't really know if the way that you have explained it is good or bad.

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It's harder to give yourself accurate feedback.

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Now, fortunately, and this is one of the rare instances where AI becomes really valuable, you can teach it to an AI

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and get the AI to give you feedback at the level that you want it to evaluate you on.

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And I personally use that method all the time.

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For me, it's a great method to use while I'm driving and I'm just sort of dictating to my phone.

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And so if you're able to get an expert-assisted or AI-assisted Feynman technique, I would put that in S-tier right alongside well-executed mind mapping.

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Now, by the way, this is not an exhaustive list of every single learning technique because that would be impossible.

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And I do mean actually impossible.

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For example, when I use AI assistance on the Feynman technique, is that a new technique or basically an adaptation of the existing technique?

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The thing is with learning strategies, you can make your own.

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The most important thing is that you have a clear understanding of the principles that are important that drive learning.

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And the most effective strategies use certain principles in an effective way,

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whereas ineffective strategies use not many of those principles or actually sometimes violate those principles, for example, in the case of highlighting.

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So if you wanna learn about more learning strategies, or if you wanna learn about the key principles that drive those strategies,

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then a good place to check out will be my free weekly newsletter.

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These are newsletters that I write myself.

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They take about five minutes to read with a practical takeaway at the end.

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And almost every single newsletter focuses on what I think is a key game-changing principle or insight.

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They're based on a combination of learning science as well as my own experience, and they're a great place to start if you're wanting to go a little bit deeper on this subject.

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You can unsubscribe at any time, but if you're interested in joining, I'll leave a link for you in the description below.

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Now let's move on to number seven, which is the Cornell note-taking method.

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This is like the OG viral note-taking method.

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This was viral before social media even existed, which makes me wonder how did it even get viral.

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Now there are some variations of this over the years as well

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but the base method involves having a page that's divided into three sections.

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On the left you have a column where you write yourself questions, on the right you have a column where you're writing notes during class or lectures,

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and at the bottom of the page is a section for writing summaries of the notes that you wrote above it.

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And I will have to say that while this is a method

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that can be optimized in so many different ways and by itself is pretty limited, it is a great starter method for a beginner learner.

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Writing questions on the left side column deliberately creates something called semantic priming, which is basically your brain getting ready to make more connections.

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That schema building that I was talking about earlier, priming makes it much easier for your brain to build those schemas.

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The summarizing is sort of like a mini Feynman technique at the bottom of each page.

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It forces you to look through

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and see what is the most important thing within the notes

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that I wrote and how would I condense that into something that's a little bit simpler and more organized.

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So again, this is all involving deeper levels of thinking than simply just writing notes verbatim or rereading or highlighting.

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However, unfortunately, I can only give it a C tier

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because in my experience and also having looked at like countless people's Cornell note-taking notes,

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what I've noticed is that there isn't enough guidance on how to do it correctly versus incorrectly.

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And similar to mind mapping, most people do it incorrectly.

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In order for this to be really effective, the questions you ask have to be deeper and more thoughtful.

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They have to be questions that rely on you connecting ideas together to be able to answer.

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But a lot of people write questions that are very superficial.

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What is this word?

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What is this concept?

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How does this process work?

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These are all very isolated and don't do much to enhance your memory.

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The note taking on the right column is just reference material.

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I mean, that's not usually producing much benefit.

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And in the summary at the bottom most of the summarization that takes place is more like editorial.

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They're just taking big sentences and turning them into smaller sentences.

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There often isn't deep rearranging of the ideas and simplification

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and one of the biggest limitations often to really simplify an

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idea like you do with the Feynman method you need to be looking at the topic as a whole

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but unfortunately the way Cornell notes are designed is

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that you tend to just be summarizing what's on that one page

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and the other issue is

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that unlike mind mapping the technique in itself doesn't really cue you to think at that deeper level.

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There is no feedback to indicate that your questions aren't very good.

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With mind mapping, if you're just drawing random connections everywhere without really thinking about it, you can look at it and realize it's messy.

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With Cornell notes, you look at it and it looks clean.

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And so I think it's great for initiating people onto just getting used to deeper thinking, but it's most useful as a stepping stone to something like mind mapping,

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which does everything Cornell note-taking does but better.

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Now I'm really looking forward to the next one which is number eight interleaving.

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Interleaving is a really interesting one for a number of reasons.

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First of all there are multiple definitions and interpretations of interleaving.

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The classical most popular definition is that in a single study session to interleave you swap and alternate between different subjects.

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So instead of spending two hours studying just biology you study half an hour of biology

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and then half an hour of chemistry and then half an hour of physics

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or when you're testing yourself you mix and match different questions from different subjects in the same session.

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And there is a lot of research that suggests that interleaving is incredibly powerful.

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It is one of, broadly speaking, the most evidence-based learning strategies that we know of.

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But if you think about this technique, why does it work?

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It's kind of strange, right?

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Why is it that switching between different subjects actually helps your brain learn new material?

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And this is a question that a lot of researchers ask.

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And when they looked into it, they realized that you actually don't even need to switch between different subjects at all.

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You can interleave within the same subject.

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The most important thing is

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that you're challenging your brain to think about concepts from different perspectives

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and you're taking two different concepts and you're forcing a comparison between the two of them.

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Research shows that when you take two concepts

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that can easily be confused with each other and you learn both of these side by side, your brain is able to learn each of these individually more effectively

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because it sees the edges of where one concept ends and another concept starts.

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It can differentiate between similar ideas more easily.

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And so even just taking the same concept but then challenging and testing yourself with different types of questions,

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connecting that concept in different combinations with other concepts, this is also a type of interleaving.

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And this is a type of interleaving that I teach because I found that it's more effective overall than the classical definition.

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The reason I personally find this interesting is

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that a lot of influencers have started talking about interleaving

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and they talk about interleaving suspiciously in precisely the way that I talk about interleaving.

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So if you've tried interleaving, depending on who you're getting your information from, your understanding of this method may actually be completely different.

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I think if you're using interleaving in the classical way where you're just mixing different subjects

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and you're actually alternating between different topics in a single session, I give this a B tier.

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There is some cognitive benefit, but if you use my version of it, which is more focused around testing yourself in different angles and at different levels, even within the same topic,

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then I'll put this at S tier.

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When you test yourself in this way, not only are you getting all the benefits of active recall

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and things like the Feynman method where you have to work with the ideas at a deep and complex level, but it's also more efficient for finding gaps in your knowledge,

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because you're deliberately trying to challenge your knowledge in ways that are unfamiliar.

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Like I said, this is not a complete list of every method, but they're the most common from surveys and social media.

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If you want me to rate any other methods, leave a comment below.

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And if you want to go a little bit deeper and learn about some of the most important principles of learning

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that any strategy you use needs to abide by, then check out this video where I break down some of those key principles.

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Otherwise, thanks so much for watching, and I'll see you in the next one.

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Woordenschat en spreektips bij deze les

Deze spreekles op niveau B2 is gebaseerd op de video “Every Study Technique Explained in 18 Minutes”. Deze woorden komen het vaakst terug: technique, learning, brain, mapping, recall. Deze video bevat 248 zinnen en 3844 woorden om na te spreken. Het gesproken deel duurt 18:30. De spreker praat snel, ongeveer 208 woorden per minuut, dus reken op verbonden en ingeslikte klanken. 83% van de woorden hoort bij de 3.000 meest gebruikte Engelse woorden; de rest kun je beter vooraf bekijken.

Belangrijke woorden in deze video

De 15 moeilijkste woorden uit de video, met uitspraak en betekenis:

Woord	Uitspraak	Betekenis
tier zelfstandig naamwoord	/ˈtɪɚ/	laag, rang
flashcard zelfstandig naamwoord	/ˈflæʃˌkɑɹd/	steekkaart
blurt werkwoord	/ˈblɝt/	uitflappen
beginner zelfstandig naamwoord	/bəˈɡɪnɚ/	beginneling, beginnelinge
reread werkwoord	/ɹiːˈɹiːd/	herlezen
underline werkwoord	/ˈʌndɚˌlaɪn/	onderlijnen, onderstrepen
deliberately bijwoord	/dɪˈlɪb.(ə.)ɹət.li/	bewust, expres
simplify werkwoord	/ˈsɪmplɪfaɪ/	vereenvoudigen, versimpelen
summarize werkwoord	/ˈsʌməˌɹaɪz/	samenvatten, opsommen
isolate werkwoord	/ˈaɪ.sə.leɪt/	isoleren
confuse werkwoord	/kənˈfjuːz/	verwarren, in de war brengen
limitation zelfstandig naamwoord	/lɪmɪˈteɪʃən/	begrenzing, beperking
newsletter zelfstandig naamwoord	/ˈn(j)uzˌlɛtɚ/	nieuwsbrief
queue zelfstandig naamwoord	/kju/	rij
prompt werkwoord	/pɹɑmpt/	aansporen, aanmoedigen

Phrasal verbs die je zult horen

Woord	Betekenis
break down werkwoord	stukgaan, kapot gaan
check out werkwoord	onderzoeken
think through werkwoord	doordenken
end up werkwoord	belanden, terechtkomen
go back werkwoord	teruggaan
look forward to werkwoord	uitkijken naar, zich verheugen op
sit down werkwoord	gaan zitten
throw away werkwoord	weggooien

Zinnen om te herhalen

Korte, volledige zinnen uit de video die je in alledaagse gesprekken kunt gebruiken:

What about number four on our list, which is flashcards?
Because it's how your brain works.
I mean, that's not usually producing much benefit.

Grammatica in deze video

De structuren die de spreker het meest gebruikt, met de exacte woorden uit de video:

Structuur	In de video
Present perfect continuous have/has been + -ing — iets dat eerder begon en nog bezig is	has been going · I've been saying
Betrekkelijke bijzinnen who / which + zin — extra informatie over een persoon of ding	building, which is · techniques, which are · skill, which means
Present perfect have/has + voltooid deelwoord — iets uit het verleden dat nu nog telt	have learned · have traveled · I've heard
Lijdende vorm be + voltooid deelwoord — het gaat om wat er gebeurt, niet om wie het doet	is called · are connected · are usually done

Uitspraak om op te letten

De spreker gebruikt 70 samentrekkingen en verkorte vormen, zoals you're, don't, doesn't. Spreek ze kort uit, zoals je ze hoort.

De “th”-klanken: algorithm /ˈælɡəɹɪðm̩/, thoughtful /ˈθɔːtfəl/
De klanken “sh” en “zh”: flashcard /ˈflæʃˌkɑɹd/, limitation /lɪmɪˈteɪʃən/, variation /ˌvɛəɹiˈeɪʃn̩/, beneficial /ˌbɛn.ɪˈfɪʃ.əl/, superficial /ˌsupɚˈfɪʃəl/
Lange woorden — let op de klemtoon: deliberately /dɪˈlɪb.(ə.)ɹət.li/, digitally /ˈdɪd͡ʒɪtəli/, incorrectly /ˌɪnkəˈɹɛk(t).li/, limitation /lɪmɪˈteɪʃən/, effectiveness /ɪˈfɛk.tɪv.nɪs/

Klanken die Nederlandstaligen lastig vinden:

Stemhebbende eindmedeklinker — /b/, /d/, /g/, /z/, /v/ niet verscherpen: flashcard /ˈflæʃˌkɑɹd/, reread /ɹiːˈɹiːd/, summarize /ˈsʌməˌɹaɪz/, confuse /kənˈfjuːz/, organize /ˈɔɹɡənaɪz/
/æ/ — opener dan de Nederlandse “e”: flashcard /ˈflæʃˌkɑɹd/, algorithm /ˈælɡəɹɪðm̩/, translate /tɹænzˈleɪt/, accurately /ˈæk.jə.ɹɪt.li/, adaptation /ˌæd.æpˈteɪ.ʃən/
/g/ — een harde plofklank, geen Nederlandse “g”: beginner /bəˈɡɪnɚ/, organize /ˈɔɹɡənaɪz/, algorithm /ˈælɡəɹɪðm̩/, cognitive /ˈkɑɡ.nɪ.tɪv/

Zo oefen je met deze video

Luister de hele video één keer zonder te spreken en noteer de woorden die je niet kent.
Begin op 0,75× snelheid, spreek zin voor zin na en ga terug naar normale snelheid zodra het makkelijk gaat.
Neem jezelf op en vergelijk met het origineel; let daarbij op woorden als tier, flashcard, blurt.

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.

Shadowing-techniek: lees de volledige stap-voor-stap-gids →

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