Shadowing Practice: What Reading Out Loud Does to Your Brain - Learn English Speaking with Video
Les maken...
1
You have never read a word in silence, not once in your life.
2
Right now, you're listening to me, but when you read on your own, there's a voice doing that too.
3
It's yours, but you can't hear it.
4
In 1958, researchers placed electrodes on people's throat muscles and asked them to read silently,
5
not whispering or mouthing the words, just reading normally in their hands.
6
The thing is, the muscles activated anyways.
7
So as you read, even in silence, you're speaking at a volume that nobody can hear, including you.
8
So there's already a voice in there doing something useful.
9
So what happens when you stop hiding it and just say the words out loud?
10
Quite a lot, it turns out.
11
There are a ton of benefits to reading out loud, and in this video, I'll show you how to use it on purpose.
12
But first, I have to take you back about 4,000 years.
13
We have to understand that reading in silence is actually a new concept.
14
If we go back around 4,000 years and read the clay tablets of ancient Iraq and Syria,
15
we will see that the most common words for reading actually meant crying out loud or to listen.
16
There's even this one letter from that period that starts with, I am sending a very urgent message.
17
Listen to this tablet.
18
They didn't quite have the word for reading.
19
It was all about listening.
20
In that world, reading was normally something you could hear across a room.
21
And someone reading in silence was unusual.
22
Let's take a look at the ancient Greeks.
23
They actually wrote in zigzags.
24
It's called the booster feedon, literally meaning like a cow turning.
25
There was no punctuation, no spacing, or even end of a line.
26
The zigzag actually has a close relationship to speaking, because every time you start a line, your eye has to skip back to the beginning of the sentence.
27
But if you zigzag, you can just continue without stopping.
28
And the Romans did something similar.
29
Classical texts were written like this.
30
But later on, as silent reading took hold, we started spacing out words, then adding lowercase, and finally punctuation.
31
Nowadays, when we think of reading, it's usually to ourselves, like sitting down on a couch, but that was not, for most of history, the case.
32
So why do we read out loud for so long?
33
Well, let's move to the science now and ask, is there any benefit to reading out loud?
34
Let's say you have a list of words.
35
You're asked to read half of them out loud and the other half in your head.
36
Maybe it's not surprising to you, but you will remember the ones you read out loud better.
37
Colin McLeod, a psychologist at the University of Waterloo, has spent much of his career on this topic.
38
And we owe most of the research to him.
39
In 2010, he and his team coined the production effect.
40
That is, that saying words out loud makes you remember them better than reading them in silence.
41
Okay, but the question is, of course, by how much?
42
Let's start with children.
43
In one of McLeod's studies, kids aged 7 to 10 read a list of words where some words were spoken and some were silent.
44
Afterward, they correctly recognized 87% of the words they read out loud and 70% of the silent ones.
45
That's a 17-point difference.
46
And of course, it isn't just a kid's thing.
47
It works for adults all the way into their 80s.
48
In this study, older adults recalled 17% of the words they had read out loud, but only 10% of those read silently.
49
and they performed even better on recognition.
50
What I found so cool is that research has actually gotten pretty specific about what helps.
51
For example, if you type the words, that has some benefit.
52
If you spell them, that also has some benefit.
53
If you mouth the words, but without saying them out loud, or even whispering, that has some benefit too.
54
But out of all of these, hands down, reading the words out loud is the best for recall.
55
The crazy thing is that this even works on words that mean nothing.
56
That earlier study on children had a second experiment where they used invented words, things that had no meaning,
57
and the production effect still worked just as strongly.
58
Meaning had nothing to do with it.
59
So there's something else at play here, and this raises the obvious question.
60
If we read an entire book out loud, will we comprehend it better?
61
Well, it's not so simple.
62
We'll come back to that, and the answer is going to be the most useful thing in this video.
63
But before we get there, we have to talk a little bit more about the production effect.
64
Okay, let's talk more about the methodology.
65
The experiments are set up where you read half a list out loud and half in your head.
66
So you could expect that if you read all of them out loud, you would remember them all even more, right?
67
Well, it's actually the opposite.
68
A cloud study found that if you read all the text out loud, most of the advantages that we saw before disappeared. But why?
69
Well, this 22 study can shed some light.
70
Researchers compared free recall between a group that read words out loud and the other one that read the same words silently.
71
The curve here can tell us what went wrong.
72
We can see that from the words around 5 to 8, they recalled more than the silent ones because the words were still echoing in their head.
73
The problem is that the earlier words were recalled less accurately, because as we're reading words out loud,
74
we're suppressing the things that we were putting in our memories right before that.
75
So even though there was a benefit at the end, there was no benefit with the beginning words.
76
And on average, those who read out loud and silently walked away even.
77
Now watch what happens position by position when people alternate.
78
A loud, silent, a loud, silent.
79
The recall curve zigzags.
80
Every spoken word spikes and every silent word sags.
81
So we can see that in this case, it seems like memory is rewarded by contrast.
82
A spoken word stands out because the words on either side of it were silent.
83
Later, when you reach for it, it arrives with a mental and vocal note attached.
84
You remember, oh, I said that one.
85
You can check it against your own record.
86
But the silent words have no such tag, so they lose the comparison.
87
Okay, so what can you actually take away from this?
88
Reading everything out loud will benefit you, but the benefit might be small.
89
Reading the parts that matter out loud, on the other hand, will give you a large advantage you will likely memorize it better.
90
And that's actually convenient because it's unlikely you're going to read a whole chapter out loud anyway.
91
But we're not quite done with the practical advice.
92
In 2018, researchers designed an experiment with four conditions.
93
They had almost 100 students come in and record themselves reading a list of words.
94
And then they came back two weeks later.
95
In that second session, they studied the words in four different ways.
96
1. Reading them aloud.
97
2. Listen to a recording of their own voice.
98
3. Listen to someone else's recording of the words.
99
And lastly, reading the words in silence.
100
Then they tested them on recognition.
101
Read aloud, 77%.
102
Hearing your own voice, 74%.
103
Hearing someone else, 69%.
104
69 and reading in silence
105
65% that's a clean trend you can see the obvious staircase
106
and You can see that the gap between hearing your own voice and somebody else's was the largest Why?
107
Well research shows that your brain marks self referential material as worth keeping in a way It doesn't flag a stranger
108
The authors conclude that, quote, This may well underlie why rehearsal is so valuable in learning and remembering.
109
We do it ourselves, and we do it in our own voice.
110
So you might think, well, this sounds like pretty bad news for audiobooks and lectures, right?
111
Well, what listening does is a whole separate story, and we have a whole video on it.
112
Link in the description.
113
Now, I've made reading out loud seem like a magical learning tool.
114
And honestly, it is.
115
But there's a big catch.
116
Because reading aloud seems pretty great for memory.
117
But does that translate into really understanding what you're reading?
118
Well, the data shows that largely,
119
no. A 2024 study ran four experiments using reading comprehension passages.
120
People read them aloud or in silence, then answered two kinds of questions.
121
Some asked for specific details they remembered, basically looking for words or facts in the text.
122
The other questions asked whether they'd grasped what the passage was arguing.
123
And the study aligned with everything I've told you so far.
124
Reading aloud helps with memory questions.
125
But on comprehension, it just wasn't reliable.
126
Even though people could remember more, they actually couldn't understand or comprehend what the text was saying.
127
This all reminded me of that feeling when you're driving with music, but you turn it down so that you can see better.
128
It's kind of like this.
129
Sometimes you need an undivided mind, without voice, without sound, in silence, to understand what you are reading.
130
And that's what we'll see next.
131
The power of reading in silence.
132
That voice from when you read silently has a name, sub-vocalization.
133
It feeds a piece of working memory that psychologists call the phonological loop, the part that holds sound in place while you think.
134
The measurements actually go back to the 50s.
135
In 1958, scientists ran electromyography on the laryngeal muscles during silent speech and found that the muscle activity tracked reading.
136
Silent reading then borrows the same speech system and runs it below the threshold of hearing.
137
And brain imaging agrees.
138
Reading aloud and reading in silence activate largely the same networks with adding motor and auditory regions on top.
139
But silent reading is a new thing.
140
There's a new type of reading that pushes this even further.
141
Speed reading.
142
There's a whole industry built on it, and the pitch is that the inner voice is a bad habit left over from learning to read as a kid.
143
Some even claim that at some point you have to dispense with sound if you want to speed read.
144
However, a major review reveals that speed reading comes at the cost of comprehension.
145
Because when you speed read, you're skimming.
146
And on difficult material, that inner voice is the thing that holds the sentences together.
147
So as we've seen, it seems that every new development of modern reading has been actually making us quieter.
148
and it's convenient, but it's not free.
149
Just side note, if you're more interested in speed reading or reading techniques, the risks, or how to apply them better, let me know in the comments, I'll be happy to make a video.
150
Okay, silent reading has its place and I'll get to where it wins, but let's not forget about the voice underneath.
151
Now, we have to go back to the historical aspect because it's important.
152
We have to ask, how did we start reading in silence to begin with.
153
Silent reading was always possible for people who knew how or were good at it.
154
It just wasn't common.
155
And there's a famous scene.
156
We're in Milan around the year 384.
157
A young man walks into a bishop's study.
158
That young man is Augustine, not yet a saint.
159
And he finds the bishop, Ambrose, sitting with a book.
160
And Augustine stops because something about the scene strikes him as worth writing down and he writes in his confessions.
161
When he read, his eyes would travel across the pages and his mind would explore the sense.
162
But his voice and tongue were silent.
163
And then he later says, but whatever his reason for reading silently, that man undoubtedly had a good one.
164
Now scholars have argued about this scene for a century and I'll leave that to them, but something changed in writing,
165
and it's what we talked about at the beginning of this video.
166
We started putting in something called punctuation.
167
Punctuation literally means putting in points.
168
It wasn't there at the beginning, and through most of the middle ages, it barely functioned.
169
Scribes copying the same manuscript would punctuate it differently from one another, which is why for most writers working more than a couple of centuries back,
170
modern editors have to put the punctuation in themselves.
171
Just think about what a coma is.
172
It's a mark telling you where to breathe, and a period telling you where to stop.
173
Nearly every convention that lets you read in silence began as an instruction for a voice,
174
and the reason anyone bothered writing them down is that the voice was on its way out.
175
And in the universities, a lecture was literally a reading.
176
Lectio, a master, stood at the lectern
177
and read a book out loud to a room
178
because a single manuscript was expensive
179
and reading it out loud was the only way to get a text into a hundred heads at once.
180
So every time you use the word lecture, you're using the Latin word for reading.
181
And what makes it so convincing is that you see this all over, not just in Europe.
182
In China, for example, classical education ran on recitation, chanting the text until they were in you.
183
There's even the saying, 讀书百变,其一自减。 Read a text a hundred times and the meaning appears by itself.
184
For the ancients, reading out loud was not a memory trick or a learning hack, it was just the way they read.
185
But then it stopped because we got cheap print, mass literacy, spaces between words,
186
comas, and so reading became the inward private thing that most of us do now.
187
Okay, now I want to quiz you before we move on.
188
What do we call the effect for when we read something aloud that leads to better retention?
189
What's the effect called?
190
I mentioned it about 10 minutes ago many times.
191
Don't go back.
192
If you remember, great.
193
But if you didn't, that's actually more useful because now you can practice exactly what I've been talking about.
194
It's called the production effect.
195
Saying words out loud makes you remember them better than reading them in silence.
196
You can pause the video and read it out loud with your voice, not in your head.
197
Then you can check tomorrow if you still remember it.
198
It's more likely that you will.
199
So this gives us the first practical tip.
200
Read material out loud when you need something to stick.
201
It could be names, definitions, vocabulary, formulas, or even things you need to do tomorrow.
202
Basically, vocalize what you need to keep.
203
But as we mentioned, deciding what's worth saying out loud also takes discernment.
204
If you speak everything, you've spoken nothing.
205
And in English, we actually have an exact word for this.
206
But in ancient times, it had a different meaning.
207
The Latin verb behind our word intelligence comes from inter, among, plus legere, to gather,
208
to pick out from the chaos, from among things.
209
So it's not accumulating, but it's choosing.
210
That's intelligence.
211
And silence is a better tool when you really need to think.
212
Use silence when wrestling with difficult material, an argument you have to follow, or anything where you need to stop and go back.
213
And if a sentence doesn't make sense, just say it out loud.
214
And while watching this video, you might have thought or wondered, what about language learning?
215
The answer is yes.
216
Language learners get two benefits at once here.
217
You get the memory benefit and also free pronunciation practice.
218
With language learning especially, just say things out loud.
219
And one last piece of advice, before you send anything you've written, read it back to yourself out loud.
220
Speaking will force you to go through every word, instead of letting your eye just glide over what you meant to write.
221
And almost every writer and editor that I know does it.
222
And with children, read to them as much as you can.
223
There's so much research that is just really good for them, from vocabulary to phonology to understanding concepts.
224
There's a real consensus behind it, which is kind of rare in this field.
225
And also, have them read to you.
226
Researchers in Perugia sent students to read extracts from novels aloud to a group of elderly people with dementia.
227
Afterward, the listeners did better on memory tests than they had before.
228
Researchers believe this is because following a story is not a passive act,
229
it pulls you into your own memories and imagination and makes you rethink your past and how it connects to the future.
230
And that is a good way to strengthen your memory muscles.
231
And these participants described a feeling of being given a gift of someone's time, attention, and of course, their voice.
232
So try this sometime this week.
233
Pick something you like, a book, a poem, an article, and read it out loud to somebody.
234
It could be your kid, your partner, a friend, or even your parents.
235
It could be over the phone, that's fine.
236
If you're not used to this, it might feel strange, but then it becomes natural.
237
You will slow down and notice things that you might not have caught before.
238
And if there's nobody around, read it out loud anyway.
239
That's the whole finding, really.
240
It was never about having an audience.
241
It was about using your voice.
242
It was about being the one who said it.
243
Thank you so much for watching.
244
If this in any way changed the way you think about reading or comprehension, please leave a like.
245
And also let me know, what are you going to try reading out loud tonight? night.
246
Thank you.
✨ Aanbevolen Video
B21
723 zinnen
How to Remember Everything || Graded Reader || Improve Your English || Listen And Practice
Business EnglishDaily ConversationUniversity Students
B21
60 zinnen
What reading ACTUALLY does to your brain
Daily ConversationUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
B21
98 zinnen
Luyện Shadowing Cùng Bài Nói Triệu View Về Việc Đọc Sách Với Chất Giọng Tiếng Anh Hay | Ted Talks
Business EnglishDaily ConversationHigh School Students
B21
105 zinnen
Video
Business EnglishDaily ConversationUniversity Students
B22
33 zinnen
Will reading out loud improve your pronunciation & speaking skills?
American AccentBusiness EnglishDaily ConversationUniversity Students
B21
31 zinnen
Psychology of People Who Don't Talk Much
Daily ConversationUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
B2654 zinnen
Stop Translating English ❌ | 99 Sentences to Train Your Brain to Think in English
Business EnglishDaily ConversationUniversity Students
B26
344 zinnen
Read out loud with me! Atomic Habits PART 1 - Practice vocabulary, pronunciation and intonation
Business EnglishDaily ConversationUniversity Students
B21
75 zinnen
Video
Business EnglishDaily ConversationUniversity Students
B23
212 zinnen
Why reading is important ( Improve English )
Business EnglishDaily ConversationUniversity Students
C11,314
6 zinnen
Why Reading (Books) Makes Us Better at Speaking
Business EnglishUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
B21
79 zinnen
How I Practice Speaking French Alone (Using Dialogues)
Daily ConversationUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
Woordenschat en spreektips bij deze les
Deze spreekles op niveau B2 is gebaseerd op de video “What Reading Out Loud Does to Your Brain”. Deze woorden komen het vaakst terug: reading, word, loud, voice, silence. Deze video bevat 246 zinnen en 3000 woorden om na te spreken. Het gesproken deel duurt 20:54. De spreker praat in een gelijkmatig tempo van ongeveer 143 woorden per minuut, prettig om te shadowen. 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 |
|---|---|---|
| silently bijwoord | /ˈsaɪləntli/ | stilletjes |
| punctuation zelfstandig naamwoord | /ˌpʌŋk.t͡ʃuˈeɪ.ʃən/ | interpunctie |
| researcher zelfstandig naamwoord | /ˈɹiˌsɝ.t͡ʃɚ/ | onderzoeker |
| comprehension zelfstandig naamwoord | /ˌkɑmpɹɪˈhɛnʃn̩/ | begrip, verstandigheid |
| lecture zelfstandig naamwoord | /ˈlɛk.t͡ʃə/ | lezing, college |
| comprehend werkwoord | /ˌkɑmpɹɪˈhɛnd/ | bevatten, doorgronden |
| coma zelfstandig naamwoord | /ˈkoʊmə/ | coma |
| activate werkwoord | /ˈæktɪˌveɪt/ | activeren, aanzetten |
| psychologist zelfstandig naamwoord | /ˌsaɪˈkɑl.ə.d͡ʒɪst/ | psycholoog, psychologe |
| vocabulary zelfstandig naamwoord | /vəˈkæb.jə.lə.ɹi/ | woordenschat, vocabulaire |
| manuscript zelfstandig naamwoord | /ˈmæn.jəˌskɹɪpt/ | manuscript, handschrift |
| tablet zelfstandig naamwoord | /ˈtæblət/ | kleitablet |
| curve zelfstandig naamwoord | /kɚv/ | curve, kromming |
| convenient bijvoeglijk naamwoord | /kənˈviː.niənt/ | geschikt, gemakkelijk |
| accumulate werkwoord | /əˈkjuːmjʊˌleɪt/ | opstapelen, vermeerderen |
Phrasal verbs die je zult horen
| Woord | Uitspraak | Betekenis |
|---|---|---|
| go back werkwoord | teruggaan | |
| come back werkwoord | terugkomen | |
| hands down bijwoord | met losse handen, met gemak | |
| set up werkwoord | /ˌsɛt ˈʌp/ | bereiden, voorbereiden |
| slow down werkwoord | afremmen | |
| turn out werkwoord | uitvallen, resulteren | |
| write down werkwoord | opschrijven, neerschrijven |
Zinnen om te herhalen
Korte, volledige zinnen uit de video die je in alledaagse gesprekken kunt gebruiken:
- It's yours, but you can't hear it.
- Let's say you have a list of words.
- Because when you speed read, you're skimming.
- It's more likely that you will.
- If you speak everything, you've spoken nothing.
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 have/has + voltooid deelwoord — iets uit het verleden dat nu nog telt | have never read · has spent · has actually gotten |
| Lijdende vorm be + voltooid deelwoord — het gaat om wat er gebeurt, niet om wie het doet | were written · were spoken · are set |
| Betrekkelijke bijzinnen who / which + zin — extra informatie over een persoon of ding | those who read · people who knew · another, which is |
Uitspraak om op te letten
De spreker gebruikt 38 samentrekkingen en verkorte vormen, zoals you're, I'll, we're. Spreek ze kort uit, zoals je ze hoort.
- De “th”-klanken: rethink /ɹiːˈθɪŋk/, methodology /ˌmɛθ.əˈdɑ.lə.d͡ʒi/, threshold /ˈθɹɛʃ(h)oʊld/, strengthen /ˈstɹɛŋ(k)θən/, underneath /ˌʌndɚˈniθ/
- De klanken “sh” en “zh”: punctuation /ˌpʌŋk.t͡ʃuˈeɪ.ʃən/, comprehension /ˌkɑmpɹɪˈhɛnʃn̩/, recitation /ˌɹɛsɪˈteɪʃən/, referential /ɹɛfəˈɹɛnʃəl/, vocalization /voʊk(ə)l(a)ɪˈzeɪʃ(ə)n/
- Lange woorden — let op de klemtoon: punctuation /ˌpʌŋk.t͡ʃuˈeɪ.ʃən/, psychologist /ˌsaɪˈkɑl.ə.d͡ʒɪst/, vocabulary /vəˈkæb.jə.lə.ɹi/, accumulate /əˈkjuːmjʊˌleɪt/, audiobook /ˈɔdi.oʊbʊk/
Klanken die Nederlandstaligen lastig vinden:
- Stemhebbende eindmedeklinker — /b/, /d/, /g/, /z/, /v/ niet verscherpen: aloud /əˈlaʊd/, zigzag /ˈzɪɡ.zæɡ/, comprehend /ˌkɑmpɹɪˈhɛnd/, curve /kɚv/, electrode /əˈlɛk.tɹəʊd/
- /æ/ — opener dan de Nederlandse “e”: zigzag /ˈzɪɡ.zæɡ/, activate /ˈæktɪˌveɪt/, vocabulary /vəˈkæb.jə.lə.ɹi/, manuscript /ˈmæn.jəˌskɹɪpt/, tablet /ˈtæblət/
- /g/ — een harde plofklank, geen Nederlandse “g”: zigzag /ˈzɪɡ.zæɡ/, grasp /ɡɹæsp/
Zo oefen je met deze video
- Luister de hele video één keer zonder te spreken en noteer de woorden die je niet kent.
- Spreek zin voor zin na op normale snelheid en herhaal elke zin tot je ritme gelijk is aan dat van de spreker.
- Neem jezelf op en vergelijk met het origineel; let daarbij op woorden als silently, punctuation, researcher.
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.