Shadowing Practice: How to Accept Criticism (Gracefully) - Learn English Speaking with Video

There's a reason one sentence of criticism from your boss can ruin your entire week

because your brain doesn't just hear you missed the mark.

It hears if you keep missing the mark, you're gonna lose your job and we are gonna fire you.

So today I'm going to walk you through four mistakes almost everyone makes when responding to criticism.

And then I'll show you the filter that I use to decide what to take in, what to clarify and what to let go of.

better and the one thing that holds them back is their inability to handle criticism

and feedback in a constructive way

because many wonderful opportunities for growth they actually arrive disguised as criticism

if you've never learned how to handle this you'll spend your entire life rejecting the very type of feedback

that could have changed your life mistake number one you get defensive the second criticism comes your way

when someone critiques you it rarely feels like they're

A lot of the time people genuinely just don't know how to give feedback in a way that's constructive.

I promise you 90 % of the time the people giving you criticism, they aren't actually trying to destroy you.

They're trying to help you improve They just never learned how to do it well

and because most people suck at giving feedback the criticism comes across

and feels like an attack But it's actually just information that you can actually use to get better that I knew.

And every single time I showed him a new card routine, whoa!

Try that again.

Oh Not editing whatsoever.

That was just all real.

That was real magic

But every single time I would show my cousin a piece of sleight of hand a new card routine

that I've learned He would always say things like watch your

angles Vin Everyone on your left can see how you did

the trick you flash the second card looking back He was just trying to help me, but at the time I got super offended.

I wasn't hearing any of the feedback I was just hearing you're not good enough Vin

in myself and then I was just thinking he was being overly critical of me and I actually don't need this anymore.

Okay Peter, that's the wrong edit.

Can we just do that again please?

And that's what I'm talking about.

And because I reacted so badly to the feedback my cousin Hung was giving me, eventually He stopped giving me feedback.

completely.

And think about that for a second.

The person who was most qualified to help me improve, he stopped helping me because I trained him to stop because of my inability to receive feedback.

So for about a year after that, I kept practicing on my own without getting any feedback from anybody.

And then I started to perform for real people, for audiences, and then they'd start to say things to me like, "Oh Vin, I saw the card in your hand.

Wait, it went into the other hand.

Oh, I saw you palm it." And then it hit me.

My cousin Hong wasn't trying to make me feel bad when he was giving me the feedback.

He was actually trying to help me and save me from those exact moments.

If someone cares about you enough to hand you the gift of growth, don't slam the door on it because it arrives in bad packaging.

Because if you keep slamming the door, you train the people around you to stop sharing anything useful.

Your friends stop being honest with you.

Your team stops raising the issues that they feel inside.

Your mentor holds back when giving you feedback.

And your manager softens everything until it becomes almost pointless and meaningless.

more that are preventing you from growing.

That's what happens when everyone around you has been trained to protect your feelings instead of telling you the truth.

Now of course not all criticism comes from a good place.

Which leads me to...

Mistake number two.

You treat all criticism the same.

I learned this one the hard way too, unfortunately for me.

I started creating content back in 2009.

I loved more than anything making mini short films.

Even appeared in the background as an extra of one of my favorite youtubers here on youtube, Wong Fu Productions.

And after I uploaded my first few short films on my youtube They weren't even critiquing the story.

They were critiquing and mocking the way I shot the footage, the way I looked, my appearance.

And those comments made me feel extremely insecure.

It made me so insecure that I actually stopped making videos with my face in them.

When I started making magic videos, I decided to only show my hands my legs and yeah, yeah, my crotch.

And that's why they called me the crotch magician.

And because then they teased me about that, I then stopped creating content altogether for a good while.

Looking back now, what fascinates me isn't the fact that people called me ugly.

It's what I started to believe because of those comments.

Somewhere along the way, I adopted the idea that only attractive and good looking people should create content.

That if people thought I was ugly or you were ugly, you should stay out of the spotlight, regardless of how much value you have to offer the world.

Which sounds completely ridiculous.

But that's what criticism can do if you're not careful.

You stop evaluating whether or not the criticism is true and you start building your whole damn life around it.

After I decided to stop creating content, I remember seeing all my camera gear sit there in the corner, my lights and my microphone, and every single time I saw them, it really hurt.

Because they weren't reminders of my journey as a creator, they were reminders of the criticism and the meanness that existed within those comments.

At that stage of my life, I didn't know how to sort the criticism properly, so I gave the comments far more weight and authority than they deserved,

and it cost me three whole years.

through to the person's profile.

No scope 360, eh?

They have no videos on their channel, no body of work, no evidence that they have ever created anything.

they were just a spectator telling those in the arena how

they should be fighting can you see the problem here the problem was

that i was treating all criticism as

if they deserved the same amount of authority upon realizing this

instead of asking myself is this criticism i now ask who is this criticism coming from

because criticism and credibility they're not the same thing earlier this year i was in dubai

and i happened to be in the same room as mr beast one of the biggest in the world.

Now if Mr Beast looked at one of my thumbnails of my videos and said, "Vin, I think you could improve the packaging and make it stronger." Would I listen?

Absolutely.

Because he's spent years studying attention, audience psychology, at a level that very few people on earth have done.

But, on the other hand, if a random user on YouTube who has an account that has an egg as its profile picture comments "Bro, your content sucks", that doesn't carry the same weight.

Let me give you another example.

I would never take content creation advice from my mom, but if Peter, my head of creative, gives me feedback on my content, I'm listening.

Now, would I listen to Peter's advice on parenting?

Absolutely not!

Peter's a terrible father!

What?

I don't even have kids!

Exactly.

Case in point.

Terrible father.

He doesn't even know they exist.

100

Shameful.

101

Do you know what else is shameful?

102

Peter has asked me right now in this moment in the video to do a call to action to say, by the way, if you're new to my channel

103

and you want to join me for a free two hour

104

masterclass where I'm going to teach you how to speak with more clarity and also to stop rambling, make sure you click the link in the description or scan the key.

105

QR code just on screen over here.

106

And I'll teach you how to turn your thoughts into words faster by communicating with frameworks.

107

God damn it, Peter.

108

That's so shameful.

109

Before we get to the next point.

110

Oh, thank you.

111

I just needed to quickly have a sip of water.

112

Oh, just wash the shame out.

113

I hate working with Peter.

114

Mistake number three, you let a vague criticism So what do you think then?

115

"Ahh, it's not good Peter.

116

I'm just not feeling the vibe." "Oh man, I knew he never liked me.

117

He probably regrets hiring me.

118

Now he has to think about firing me, but he just doesn't know how to say it." "So then he just criticizes my edits

119

so I can get the picture without him actually saying it." In that situation, when I gave Peter feedback, I was being far too vague.

120

And when someone receives vague criticism, instead of clarifying it, they just create a story in their heads about what it means.

121

to that's what makes vague criticism so dangerous the comment itself is unclear

122

but the story

123

that you start to build around it in your own head

124

becomes painfully clear it's not good becomes i'm not good now

125

you're not responding to the feedback anymore you're responding to the story

126

that you created in your own head vague criticism gives you just enough information to feel bad

127

but not enough information to improve don't assume the first comment is the whole critique get curious Yeah.

128

Pause.

129

Sometimes if you just leave a little bit of silence, the other person will naturally explain what they mean and give you more context.

130

And if they don't, you take control.

131

Ask them a question that turns the criticism or the vague criticism into specific information.

132

For example, if somebody is being vague, you can just ask, hey, when you said that, What did you specifically mean? because the very moment you ask for clarity,

133

one of two things will happen.

134

Either the person gets really specific and gives you something useful, or you realize they were only one layer deep and they had nothing to add.

135

That one question protects you from building a whole negative identity around feedback that was never fully formed in the first place.

136

Let me show you the two examples I'm talking about.

137

So what do you think, Ben?

138

Ah, Peter, I'm just not feeling the vibe.

139

When you say vibe, - No. Well, I was just bored, just making conversation.

140

I was only one layer deep in this scenario.

141

Just not really feeling the vibe Peter.

142

Yeah.

143

When you say vibe, what do you mean by that?

144

Well, it's kind of the soundtrack is off.

145

The edit's really good, brother.

146

But I just feel like the music is a bit too slow.

147

We need to speed up the pace.

148

Maybe something more upbeat.

149

Maybe something more inspiring.

150

Yeah, I love that.

151

Thanks for the feedback.

152

That right there.

153

That's the difference.

154

So the next time somebody gives you vague feedback, slow it down.

155

Ask the next clarifying question.

156

Make sure the feedback earns its meaning.

157

And you know what?

158

This has made me curious.

159

I want to say it's a little bit more.

160

I want you to drop a comment down below.

161

Let me know when somebody's given you a vague piece of feedback, and what story did you start to create around it?

162

Maybe re -examine those to see if those stories that you created are even true.

163

Leave a comment, I'd love to hear from you.

164

Mistake number four, you think the goal is thicker skin.

165

It might sound like the goal is to build thicker skin when you talk about criticism and feedback, but I actually think that advice is a little bit dangerous.

166

When people say you need thicker skin, affect you.

167

If every piece of criticism feels like an attack of course you'll start to build armor around yourself to protect yourself.

168

You'll become harder to hurt.

169

It kind of makes sense but here's the issue.

170

The same armor that keeps the attack out also keeps out the insights.

171

A troll online says something cruel it hits the wall good it hits the armor it did its job

172

but then the mentor points out a blind spot of yours and it hits the same wall it hits the same armor.

173

Your Same damn armor, same damn wall.

174

Your partner says, hey, when you do this, it makes me feel unheard.

175

Yep, you guessed it, same armor, same wall.

176

And now the thing you built to protect yourself is also preventing you from growing.

177

That's why I believe the goal isn't to build thicker skin.

178

The goal is to use a better filter.

179

And that's exactly what I want to give you right now.

180

Step number one.

181

Pause.

182

Don't react right away and ask yourself one question.

183

What is one useful thing that I can take from this?

184

The moment criticism hits, your body wants to defend, deflect and justify.

185

But if you can buy yourself just five seconds and ask that one question, you force your brain to switch from threat into learning mode.

186

serious attention.

187

Step three, is there specific feedback?

188

If not, and it's really vague and wishy -washy, Ask a question to qualify it and to get specifics.

189

Step number four, Take what's useful and let the rest pass on by.

190

You're not building a wall that blocks everything, you're building a filter that sorts the good stuff from the bad stuff and the useless stuff.

191

What's credible, specific and constructive gets to come in.

192

What's vague, unearned and sometimes even just mean passes through you and keeps on moving straight into the trash can.

193

You don't have to store it, you can just let it go.

194

Criticism, feedback and honest conversations are so important because sometimes the people around you can see things that you cannot.

195

If you're willing to stay open long enough to hear the feedback and receive the criticism, it can change the trajectory of your life.

196

Every opportunity for growth often arrives disguised as criticism.

197

And if you learn how to recognize it, filter it

198

and then use it you'll gain access to lessons that most people spend their entire lives looking for.

199

I'll see you in the next video.

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Woordenschat en spreektips bij deze les

Deze spreekles op niveau B2 is gebaseerd op de video “How to Accept Criticism”. Deze woorden komen het vaakst terug: criticism, feedback, vague. Deze video bevat 199 zinnen en 2447 woorden om na te spreken. Het gesproken deel duurt 13:29. De spreker praat snel, ongeveer 182 woorden per minuut, dus reken op verbonden en ingeslikte klanken. 86% 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
vague bijvoeglijk naamwoord	/veɪɡ/	vaag
armor zelfstandig naamwoord	/ˈɑːɹ.mɚ/	pantser, harnas
vibe zelfstandig naamwoord	/vaɪb/	vibraties
shameful bijvoeglijk naamwoord	/ˈʃeɪmfəl/	beschamend
constructive bijvoeglijk naamwoord	/kənˈstɹʌktɪv/	constructief
clarify werkwoord	/ˈklæɹ.ɪ.faɪ/	klaren
crotch zelfstandig naamwoord	/kɹɑt͡ʃ/	aftakking, vork
insecure bijvoeglijk naamwoord	/ɪnsəˈkjʊɹ/	onbeveiligd
disguise werkwoord	/dɪsˈɡaɪz/	vermommen, zich vermommen
clarity zelfstandig naamwoord	/ˈklæɹ.ɪ.ti/	helderheid, klaarheid
mentor zelfstandig naamwoord	/ˈmɛn.tɔː/	mentor, leidsman
inability zelfstandig naamwoord	/ˌɪnəˈbɪlɪti/	onvermogen, impotentie
pause zelfstandig naamwoord	/pɔːz/	pauze
slam werkwoord	/ˈslæm/	toeslaan
reminder zelfstandig naamwoord	/ɹɪˈmaɪndə(ɹ)/	geheugensteuntje

Phrasal verbs die je zult horen

Woord	Betekenis
look back werkwoord	achterom kijken, terugkijken
come across werkwoord	overkomen
point out werkwoord	aanwijzen, aanduiden

Zinnen om te herhalen

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

Can we just do that again please?
I don't even have kids!
Do you know what else is shameful?
When you say vibe, what do you mean by that?
I want to say it's a little bit more.

Uitspraak om op te letten

De spreker gebruikt 53 samentrekkingen en verkorte vormen, zoals you're, don't, I'm. Spreek ze kort uit, zoals je ze hoort.

De “th”-klanken: thumbnail /ˈθʌm.neɪl/, altogether /ɔl.tuˈɡɛð.ɚ/
Lange woorden — let op de klemtoon: inability /ˌɪnəˈbɪlɪti/, trajectory /tɹəˈd͡ʒɛktəɹi/, credibility /kɹɛd.əˈbɪ.ɫɪ.ti/, whatsoever /ˌ(h)wʌtsoʊˈɛvɚ/, altogether /ɔl.tuˈɡɛð.ɚ/

Klanken die Nederlandstaligen lastig vinden:

Stemhebbende eindmedeklinker — /b/, /d/, /g/, /z/, /v/ niet verscherpen: vague /veɪɡ/, vibe /vaɪb/, constructive /kənˈstɹʌktɪv/, disguise /dɪsˈɡaɪz/, pause /pɔːz/
/æ/ — opener dan de Nederlandse “e”: clarify /ˈklæɹ.ɪ.faɪ/, clarity /ˈklæɹ.ɪ.ti/, slam /ˈslæm/, react /ɹiːˈækt/, fascinate /ˈfæsɪneɪt/
/g/ — een harde plofklank, geen Nederlandse “g”: vague /veɪɡ/, disguise /dɪsˈɡaɪz/, altogether /ɔl.tuˈɡɛð.ɚ/, examine /ɪɡˈzæmɪn/

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 vague, armor, vibe.

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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Woordenschat en spreektips bij deze les

Belangrijke woorden in deze video

Phrasal verbs die je zult horen

Zinnen om te herhalen

Uitspraak om op te letten

Zo oefen je met deze video

Wat is de Shadowing-techniek?