Shadowing Practice: 1 7 What is Information - Learn English Speaking with Video
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Sometimes it's useful to look at the roots of a word to figure out what it might mean.
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For example, the words will and volition both descend from the root to want in Indo-European languages.
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In many such languages you can still hear this meaning.
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In German I want is ich will, whereas in Italian it's volio.
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You can also hear the same root in our word voluntary, done of one's own free will because one wants to.
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We can also do this for the word information, which is related to the verb to inform.
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This descends directly from the roots in and formare in Latin,
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implying the formation of something new in the mind of the person who's being informed.
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It refers to teaching or instructing someone something new that they did not know before.
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In ordinary language, information is commonly thought of as a noun describing a thing
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that we can locate out there in the world whether a book in a library or a web page on a server.
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But a pattern of energy, whether a book or a web page or a compact disc,
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is only informative for an interpreter or decoder capable of decoding it.
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Change the system of interpretation from English to Mandarin
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and the pattern w-o-m-e-n goes from referring to female adults
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or women in English to meaning we or us in Chinese which is pronounced woman.
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Similarly
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if you read the word B-A-D assuming it to be an
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English word it means something very different from what a German would read bat to be
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because in German that word would be decoded to mean bath.
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So the informational content is not specified by pattern of input, but by how it is read out or interpreted.
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The meaning bad or bath is not inherent to the word BAD, but depends on how it is interpreted.
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Things like books and web pages
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and CDs should all be thought of as potential information whose potential to become information depends on whether
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and how they're decoded by decoders or interpreters that can take them as input to be decoded or interpreted.
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Claude Shannon, the founder of information theory, did not think of information as a thing but as a process of informing.
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He simplified the idea to include a sender that sends an encoding
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or message along some communication channel to a receiver who decodes it like a speaker and listener in a phone conversation.
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If uncertainty is reduced from two possibilities, say zero or one, to one certainty,
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say one, say the answer is yes when we were not sure if the answer would be yes or no,
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that reduction in uncertainty from two possible outcomes to one actual outcome comprises one bit of information.
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So information is a process
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that involves a reduction in uncertainty for a receiver of inputs who gets informed by that increase in knowing.
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But Shannon's conception does not capture everything about information.
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For example, it misses out on meaning almost entirely.
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If the question I asked was, will you marry me, and the answer came back yes, I would be overjoyed, and if it came back no, I might be devastated.
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But if the question had been, do you like dogs, I might not actually care that much if the answer came back yes or no.
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meaning is central to what we live for.
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We don't want to hear yes when we ask someone to marry us because we just want a reduction in uncertainty.
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We want to hear yes because we want to be loved by the person we love
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and we want to spend the rest of our life together with them.
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Another thing
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that Shannon's possibility reduction conception of information seems to miss out on is its emphasis on acts of encoding and decoding.
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But we don't only decode or interpret encoded messages.
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Not everything is like a sentence that we decode.
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Some acts of interpretation happen in the absence of any act of encoding or sending at all.
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For example, a person can interpret a pile of rocks
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that just happened to lie in the shape of some religious symbol as a message from God.
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The pile of rocks might have been left there randomly by a glacier thousands of years ago just by chance, so lacks any objective message, intent, or meaning, but seeing
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that symbol in the pile of rocks might be very meaningful to the person who saw it as a message from God.
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So an encoder, or act of intentional encoding, is not necessary for information to come into existence through an act of decoding or interpretation.
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In our example, the person finds the random pile of rocks meaningful, so for him, it carries or conveys meaningful information, in this case for him,
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a message to him from God.
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Nor is a communication channel necessary
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because a receiver might decode internally generated hallucinations as a message from God or as ghosts or whatever.
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The crucial point is that information arises principally from acts of decoding inputs
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or interpreting signs or detecting patterns and energy that are received.
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No active encoding or sending is required.
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Note that information is fundamentally an epistemological construct.
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It's a change in the state of the knowledge of someone
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who comes to know something new who is informed by that information.
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The single best definition of information that I have ever heard was proposed by the biologist Gregory Bateson.
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He said, information is a difference that makes a difference.
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It's a detected difference that's meaningful to an animal given its needs and goals and desires.
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This definition of information is perhaps less mathematically precise than Shannon's, but it captures the centrality of meaning in the life and mind of an animal.
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It's not really so much about the reduction of possibilities to one's certainty that makes information biologically meaningful.
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There can be a huge reduction of possibility that's of no consequence, depending on what an animal is trying to do.
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If it's looking for food, it might not matter very much that the sky has just gone from cloudy to sunny.
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What matters is finding food.
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In comparison to a change in the whole sky, the appearance of a tiny little fly,
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say for a frog, might be more meaningful in terms of fulfilling its needs for food.
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Conversely, a tiny detected difference can have enormous implications depending on the context.
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For example, a detective might find a tiny piece of hair and on the basis of that, solve the case and identify the perpetrator.
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So for purposes of this course, we'll think of information not as a thing, but as a process of informing where some difference is detected by a detector,
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such as a neuron, and if it is a difference that makes a difference,
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that detector will cause other events to happen in a cascade of such acts of informing.
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Thank you.
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This video has 77 sentences and 1165 words to shadow. The speech runs for 7:13. The speaker talks at a natural 161 words per minute, close to everyday conversation. Only 78% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English, so the vocabulary is demanding.
Key vocabulary in this video
15 words from the video worth learning, with pronunciation and meaning:
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| inform verb | /ɪnˈfɔɹm/ | To communicate knowledge to. |
| reduction noun | /ɹɪˈdʌk.ʃən/ | The act, process, or result of reducing. |
| meaningful adjective | /ˈmiː.nɪŋ.fl̩/ | Having meaning, significant. |
| interpret verb | /ɪnˈtɜː.pɹɪt/ | To decode the meaning of a topic and then act, whether to continue researching the topic, follow through, act in opposition, or further the understanding… |
| input noun | /ˈɪnpʊt/ | The act or process of putting in; infusion. |
| depend verb | /dɪˈpɛnd/ | To be contingent or conditioned; to have something as a necessary condition |
| pile noun | /paɪl/ | A mass of things heaped together; a heap. |
| detect verb | /dɪˈtɛkt/ | To discover or find by careful search, examination, or probing. |
| uncertainty noun | /ʌnˈsɜːtənti/ | Doubt; the condition of being uncertain or without conviction. |
| interpretation noun | /ɪnˌtɜːpɹəˈteɪʃən/ | An act of interpreting or explaining something unclear; a translation; a version. |
| receiver noun | /ɹəˈsi.vɚ/ | A person who receives something in a general sense; a recipient. |
| refer verb | /ɹɪˈfɜː/ | To direct the attention of (someone toward something). |
| bath noun | /bɑːθ/ | A tub or pool which is used for bathing: bathtub. |
| capture verb | /ˈkæp.(t)ʃɚ/ | To take control of; to seize by force or stratagem. |
| marry verb | /ˈmæɹi/ | To enter into the conjugal or connubial state; to take a husband or a wife. |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| come back verb | To return to a place. | |
| figure out verb | To come to understand; to discover or find a solution; to deduce. | |
| read out verb | /ˌɹiːd ˈaʊt/ | To read something and say the words to inform other people; to call. |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 4 contractions and reduced forms, such as don't, they're, we'll. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: reduction /ɹɪˈdʌk.ʃən/, interpretation /ɪnˌtɜːpɹəˈteɪʃən/, capture /ˈkæp.(t)ʃɚ/, conception /kənˈsɛpʃən/, crucial /ˈkɹuː.ʃəl/
- Long words — get the stress right: uncertainty /ʌnˈsɜːtənti/, interpretation /ɪnˌtɜːpɹəˈteɪʃən/, interpreter /ɪnˈtɝ.pɹɪ.tɚ/, ordinary /ˈɔɹdɪnɛɹi/, similarly /ˈsɪm.ə.lə.li/
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 inform, reduction, meaningful.
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| Conditional sentences if + clause, will/would + verb — a condition and its result | if the answer would be · If the question I asked was, will you |
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | is related · being informed · is pronounced |
| Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing | information, which is · Chinese which is · person who saw |
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | have ever heard · has just gone |
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.