Shadowing Practice: 1 6 What Illusions Teach Us - Learn English Speaking with Video
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Neuroscience has largely worked out the basic information processing steps that lead to the construction of our conscious experience of the world.
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Light reflects off of surfaces in the world.
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This reflected light passes through the cornea, pupil and lens before being detected by photoreceptors in the retina.
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Let's call the moment that light is detected by cells in the retina time zero.
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Our conscious experience of events in the world does not happen at time zero, but rather a quarter to a third of a second later.
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During that quarter to one third of a second, a tremendous amount of very complex unconscious
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and pre-conscious processing takes the two-dimensional pattern of pixel-like activations at
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the retina to a highly constructed three-dimensional conscious experience of objects and events occurring in the world.
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Some of the work in my lab has focused on the operations
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that happen in this quarter to one third of a second
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before we become conscious of what is apparently happening in the world.
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I have been especially interested in visual illusions
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because they are mistakes made by the constructive processes that go into the creation of our conscious visual experience.
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They are mistakes that can tell us useful information about the processes that go into the construction of our conscious experience.
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In the case of a visual illusion, we might see something that we know is not really there.
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It looks like something is there or is happening that we know cannot really be happening.
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Take this example of what is called apparent motion.
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In one frame, I show two dots, and in the next frame, I show two other dots.
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Even though there is no motion in this image sequence, your visual system creates a motion sequence.
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But this motion sequence is ambiguous.
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Some of you probably see vertical motion, and others see horizontal motion.
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Whatever you see, you can now force your visual system to construct the opposite motion.
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Let's say you're seeing horizontal motion now.
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To force your brain to see vertical motion, cover the right two jumping dots with your hand.
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Now, you'll see the remaining two dots go vertically.
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Now, when you take your hand away, you will continue to see the motion jump back and forth vertically.
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Likewise, if you want to force your visual system to see horizontal motion, cover the bottom two dots with your hand.
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Now the top two will jump back and forth, and when you remove your hand, the horizontal motion will continue.
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This apparent motion is, well, only apparent.
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It's not real.
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There's no net horizontal or vertical motion in the image, and none of the dots are actually moving at all.
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We are experiencing a motion consciously that does not exist.
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It is a construction of those processes that create our conscious experience.
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Apparent motion is a case where we see something that we know is not really out there in the world.
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There are other cases where we fail to see something that we know is, in fact, happening in the world.
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A beautiful example of this occurs in a phenomenon called motion-induced blindness.
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You can see that there are three yellow dots and a blinking fixation point.
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In addition, there's a rotating array of crosses.
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What you'll notice, if you carefully look at the blinking dot in the middle is
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that one or two or all three of the yellow dots will vanish from your consciousness.
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But if you make a sudden eye movement, poof, all three yellow dots appear again.
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So we have cases where we consciously experience something that we know is not really happening in reality,
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as when we see horizontal or vertical apparent motion in a sequence of static dots,
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And we also have cases where we fail to see something that we know is happening in reality.
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So what are we to take from all this?
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While it's safe to assume that there is a reality in itself, it might turn out to function in a radically different way
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than it seems to function to us given what we can glean from our flawed sensory constructions.
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Yet all we have are our senses
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and the constructions of our conscious experience to go on in deciphering what is happening in reality.
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Beyond these limitations, we can only try to do the best
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that we can in our efforts to figure out the nature of reality as it really is, beyond how it may seem to us.
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This C1 speaking lesson is built on the video “1 6 What Illusions Teach Us”. The speaker keeps coming back to these words: motion, dot, conscious, experience, happening. This video has 51 sentences and 754 words to shadow. The speech runs for 4:17. The speaker talks at a natural 176 words per minute, close to everyday conversation. 82% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English; the rest is worth studying before you start.
Key vocabulary in this video
The 15 most advanced words in the video, with pronunciation and meaning:
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| dot noun | /dɑt/ | A small, round spot. |
| horizontal adjective | /ˌhoɹəˈzɑn.təl/ | Perpendicular to the vertical; parallel to the plane of the horizon; level, flat. |
| retina noun | /ˈɹɛt.ə.nə/ | The thin layer of cells at the back of the eyeball that contains rods and cones sensitive to light, which trigger nerve impulses that pass via the optic nerve… |
| vertically adverb | /ˈvɝ.tɪ.kəli/ | In a vertical direction or position. |
| consciously adverb | In a conscious manner; knowingly, volitionally. | |
| blink verb | /ˈblɪŋk/ | To close and reopen both eyes quickly. |
| illusion noun | /ɪˈl(j)uːʒ(ə)n/ | A distortion of sensory perception where real stimuli lead to a false or misleading impression of reality. |
| construct verb | /ˈkɑn.stɹʌkt/ | To build or form (something) by assembling parts. |
| dimensional adjective | /daɪˈmɛn.ʃə.nəl/ | Of or pertaining to dimensions. |
| detect verb | /dɪˈtɛkt/ | To discover or find by careful search, examination, or probing. |
| blindness noun | /ˈblaɪndnəs/ | The condition of being blind; unable to see. |
| cornea noun | /ˈkɔː(ɹ)ni.ə/ | The transparent layer making up the outermost front part of the eye, covering the iris, pupil, and anterior chamber. |
| decipher verb | /dɪˈsaɪfə(ɹ)/ | To convert a code or cipher to plain text. |
| fixation noun | /fɪksˈeɪʃən/ | The act of fixing. |
| neuroscience noun | The scientific study of the nervous system. |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| figure out verb | To come to understand; to discover or find a solution; to deduce. | |
| hand away verb | To give up or give away for a price that is too low; to squander. | |
| pass through verb | To go through, to travel through, to transit or lie across a place or from one place to another. | |
| work out verb | /ˌwɝk ˈaʊt/ | To calculate. |
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | has largely worked · has focused · have been |
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | being detected · is detected · is called |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 3 contractions and reduced forms, such as you'll, you're. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: illusion /ɪˈl(j)uːʒ(ə)n/, dimensional /daɪˈmɛn.ʃə.nəl/, fixation /fɪksˈeɪʃən/, vanish /ˈvænɪʃ/, limitation /lɪmɪˈteɪʃən/
- Long words — get the stress right: horizontal /ˌhoɹəˈzɑn.təl/, vertically /ˈvɝ.tɪ.kəli/, dimensional /daɪˈmɛn.ʃə.nəl/, ambiguous /æmˈbɪɡ.ju.əs/, limitation /lɪmɪˈteɪʃən/
How to practise with this video
- Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
- Start at 0.75× speed, shadow it sentence by sentence, then go back to normal speed once it feels easy.
- Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like dot, horizontal, retina.
What is the Shadowing Technique?
Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.