Shadowing Practice: 9 Study Techniques that got me through Cambridge Medical School *science-backed* - Learn English Speaking with Video
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Today we're going through some science -based, tried and tested study tips that will help you study smarter, not harder.
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My name's Izzy, I'm finally a medical student at Cambridge University, and I just finished all of my Cambridge Medical School exams and managed to pass them all.
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So these tips are pretty much how I survived Cambridge Medical School.
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There were some ups, there were some downs, but we made it.
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These tips and tricks will be applicable whether you are something else like that.
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So I study Mandarin in my free time and these tips are very applicable to that as well.
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So without further ado, let's get into the video.
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So firstly, why am I making this video?
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Learning how to learn is actually so important
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and it literally supercharges all of the rest of your time that you spend studying.
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It essentially acts as a productivity multiplier on all of your life.
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And yet we're never really taught how to learn while we're at school, but it's just sort of assumed that we'll kind of figure it out along the way.
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spent years focusing on study techniques
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that have actually been shown by psychological studies to be relatively inefficient for the ultimate goal of understanding and memorization,
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such as taking notes, rereading or highlighting.
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Especially rereading and highlighting, I absolutely loved doing those.
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So I'll go through the nine study techniques that got me through Cambridge Medical School.
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I'll firstly explain them and then I'll go through some practical tips and examples of ways Let's start with Eat the Frog.
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This is actually the title of a productivity book by Brian Tracy
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and is actually inspired by a quote from Mark Twain which goes like this: "If it's your job to eat a frog, it's best to do it first thing in the morning.
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And if it's your job to eat two frogs, it's best to eat the biggest one first." And this is essentially telling us to focus on the difficult things first.
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You don't need to waste time repeating the stuff that you already know or that you're already comfortable with.
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to do in a day or things that you have to study in a day.
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A question that I find really helpful to ask myself
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when revising for an exam is
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if the exam were tomorrow what topic would I feel the least happy about coming up in the exam?
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This often is quite revealing and I'll often try to avoid doing topics
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that I don't like or that I find unpleasant
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but often those are the topics that I actually really need to do and are actually my weak points.
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This also ties in with the Pareto principle
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which is also known as the 80 -20 rule which essentially states that 80 % of our results
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from approximately 20 % of the topics or the inputs that we actually make.
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By focusing on the most important and core topics first
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and moving out from there we can help to prioritize what we're actually studying and what we're focusing on.
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This applies to both studying medicine and also studying languages.
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So for medicine focusing on the core topics and eliminating the ones
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that you find the most difficult first and then moving outwards from there.
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And then for language learning focusing on the core very commonly used words and focusing on the difficult ones you find there,
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and then gradually broadening that circle and including more and more vocabulary, more and more topics.
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So this combination of eating the frog and doing the difficult things and also focusing on the important core topics,
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really helps us to make good decisions when it comes to prioritizing what we're going to be studying on a given day.
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The second study technique that has saved me in medical school is the Pomodoro technique, which you may have heard of before, which involves 25 minutes of work time and intensive study,
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followed by five minutes of a break, and this is repeated.
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really helpful because as per Parkinson's law where work expands to fill the time allocated to its completion,
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studying also does the same and by time boxing our studying to fixed windows of intense studying followed by a break, this means that we can set ourselves like a mini study goal for
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that duration of time and work in these short bursts.
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An article by MIT recommends working in hour -long blocks as
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the most effective with 50 minutes of study time followed by a 10 minutes
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I would say that in my personal experience and the experience of many other colleagues at Cambridge,
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the optimal intervals will vary a lot between people and also actually between topics as well.
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So for me, if it's a topic that I really enjoy or something that I find quite fun, I often can study for a longer duration before needing a break,
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so I can set it to maybe the 50 minutes followed by a 10 minute break.
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But if it's something that I find really quite unpleasant to study
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or I keep avoiding or I find it very mentally taxing, then setting a shorter duration doing a short burst of intense work often works better for me.
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Play around with it, try out different time intervals and see if this works for you.
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The next tip is to aim for understanding first and then memorization.
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So often throughout medical school and even when learning Mandarin, you could either take two routes.
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You could either rote memorize everything
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and just have all these random facts kind of floating around in your head
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or you can try to go down an understanding route where
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gaps in that understanding where there's maybe just facts
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that you have to know and you can't actually go from a first principles place of understanding.
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In a way there are only two real components to good learning or good knowledge which is understanding plus memorization.
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The understanding is there to give us a mental model for how things generally work in
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that system or in that topic that we're learning about and then the memorization almost adds just the extra bits
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just derive things from first principles.
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So the next tip links into that quite well
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because it helps to promote a clear and concise understanding of any topic that you're trying to learn.
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And it's a technique known as the Feynman technique, which is named after Richard Feynman, a physicist who famously used this technique a lot throughout his career and teaching.
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It essentially means teaching the topic or concept to somebody in a simple and clear way.
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So that someone with very little basis in that subject matter, would be able to understand your explanation to them.
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And by being able to teach it to somebody else, that demonstrates that you really need to have a solid understanding of the topic itself.
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There are two ways that you can put this into practice.
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Firstly, if you're on your own and you don't have anyone else with you, you can just try explaining out loud as if there were another person there.
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Or like maybe you could explain to any fluffy toys that you have on your bed or something like that.
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Just to actually go through the process of trying to explain it and trying to teach it.
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Secondly, if you do have friends who are studying a similar topic to you, or even just family members or other friends who aren't doing the topic,
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you could try explaining to them and see how it goes.
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The next tip is to focus on practice testing, which is a form of active recall.
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It's a common misconception among students
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that the best way to learn is by reading through notes or textbooks and essentially trying to put information into our brains.
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by Dunlosky et al showed that we actually learn best
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when we try to take information out of our brains by actively recalling it.
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When we're tested on a fact or a topic, neurochemicals that stimulate memory formation and attention are released in our brain and help us to really solidify those memories.
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So whether we get it right or wrong, it doesn't really matter because as long as you check the answer afterwards and find out what the correct answer actually was,
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your brain is so much more and file it away as a memory for future use.
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It's essentially a way of saying to your brain, "Hey, this information is actually useful.
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"Look, we're trying to remember it.
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"Why don't you remember it for next time?" And
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that helps our brains soak up all of this new content much more quickly.
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Try turning your notes or textbooks into flashcards or taking mock tests.
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For example, for all of my clinical medical exams, I found
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that one of the most effective ways for me to study
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was to actually do practice questions on a website called Past Medicine, question bank, which would actively test me on my knowledge and also my understanding.
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I would get instant feedback as to whether I was right or wrong, and then also have access to a page with more information
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so I could fill in any gaps in my knowledge or understanding afterwards.
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This made it almost feel like a game, and I would almost try to reframe it as a game so I could stay engaged with doing it.
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This isn't sponsored by the way, that's just how I revise for my medical school exams.
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The next tip synergises really well with the last tip about practice testing and active is space repetition, essentially how you can beat the forgetting curve.
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In a number of studies about human memory retention, researchers came up with a graph visualizing how the brain retains memory over time, also known as the forgetting curve,
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which looks a bit like this.
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So essentially after we initially learn something, we will gradually start to forget it over time, unless we revise that piece of knowledge or that fact,
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and then we reset the forgetting curve.
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Then after resetting this
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before we forget it
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and the curve is a little bit less steep as the information starts to enter our long -term memory instead.
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Spaced repetition is essentially how you can beat the forgetting curve
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and to put this into practice my favorite way to do this especially for language learning is to use Anki
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which is a spaced repetition software which combines both active recall and spaced repetition.
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I love this for learning Mandarin vocabulary but it also works for studying anything else that you need to memorize things for.
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Essentially Anki is a an app which does flashcards on either your computer or your phone,
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and the software will automatically calculate when you should space your repetition of it.
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You can also do spaced repetition and active recall with manual flashcards, and I'll link some resources down below explaining how you can do this, but I don't personally do this myself.
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I would really highly recommend Anki as it automates everything for you, and all you need to do is make the cards and then everything just happens, and you do your reviews every day,
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and then you suddenly remember new facts.
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Tip number seven is leveraging some memorization techniques to help remember things that are kind of tricky.
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So my favorite ones for these are mnemonics.
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So this is really helpful for medical school
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because often there's long lists of causes for a certain condition
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or other things like that where we don't want to forget any one item off it.
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So a mnemonic helps to make sure that we can remember that.
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Another tip is doing mind maps.
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So sometimes I would almost use mind maps as try to remember all the things on it,
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and then check with the list of all the points that I actually should have got.
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And by making it in a mind map format, it helps our brains to visually remember where all the bits of the topic are and where all the different facts are.
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Another memorization technique I found super helpful for learning languages, in particular Mandarin, is to create a personal connection to certain words or facts.
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Find another way that you can link it in For example, on some of my Mandarin learning Anki flashcards,
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I'll include a photo or maybe something
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that reminds me of a story that's related to that piece of vocab or that sentence.
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And that will just help to get my brain in gear and paying attention to be like, oh, this is actually important information or, oh, this is actually interesting.
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And again, that stimulates our brain to release those neurochemicals that help to support fact retention.
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Tip number eight is to make a study schedule, including rest, and also to track your progress.
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essentially to zoom out on all of your revision or your studying
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and there's a few layers to this firstly creating a routine
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for your studying helps your brain feel ready to learn at
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your usual allocated time this also helps to make sure
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that we don't end up studying late into the night
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or doing all -nighters as actually there are some studies
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that show that doing an all -nighter can actually really impair your memory retention
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and even your rational thinking for the next few days
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pressure to study and keep on top of things
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which I think is a healthy thing in moderation
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because in my personal experience with no pressure at all I can often feel very relaxed
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and very happy to procrastinate for many weeks so by creating a schedule
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and realizing oh actually there's not that much time I should probably get going
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that just helps to make sure that actually some things are happening and some things are being learned.
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The final layer is that by tracking your progress to master a topic or to understand something,
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and B, also gives you an idea of what you really need to focus on next for your studying.
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So it gives you information essentially about you as a learner and also about what you need to do next.
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I like to create a sort of daily routine
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when I'm studying intensively where I try to wake up
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and go to sleep at a similar time and eat meals around a similar time.
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So I did this especially when I was preparing intensively for lots of the heavy knowledge -based exams at Cambridge.
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calendar so often I would actually make a revision timetable calendar in Google calendar in like a different color
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and pop that into my Google calendar to schedule all my time.
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I can show you in detail how I do this
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if you're interested and I can make a video about my schedule if that's interesting to you guys.
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The final tip, tip number nine, is to keep reassessing how everything's going.
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This means essentially doing an audit on a couple of things.
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So firstly on your academics, how your studying is going, whether you feel like you're actually to learn using the techniques you're applying.
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Secondly, just checking in in terms of your well -being.
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This is so important when studying and scheduling in breaks
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and scheduling in time for self -care
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and looking after yourself is literally the foundation of any studying
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that you want to do because if you're not taking care of your health and your well -being, you're not sleeping right, you're not eating right or exercising,
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then how on earth are you supposed to be effective at anything else that you want to do?
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So ensure that you're taking care of yourself, make sure that all right so if i had checked in with myself
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and thought of how i could help support my mental
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and physical well -being better i may have been able to actually enjoy life a little bit more
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and enjoyed the journey rather than just struggling through
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and just about surviving and managing to do my exams after all i've realized
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that it's more important to enjoy the journey than to focus
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purely on the destination to quote einstein insanity is doing the same things over and over to achieve different results.
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So if you find something's not working either in terms of your actual studying
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or in terms of your well -being then adjust something, keep trying different things and keep reassessing.
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I like to reassess how things are going maybe every week
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or so but obviously this interval can be adjusted depending on how long you're studying for.
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For learning Mandarin for example every single week I'd write a slightly longer journal entry about how my studying was
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things or adjust things because studying and life generally is a dynamic thing
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and we need to respond to the needs of the moment
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and to the new information that we're getting about how things are going.
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So those are my top nine tips for studying smarter not harder.
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I hope this video was entertaining or useful or helpful in some kind of way.
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If you enjoyed this video you might like this one over
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here where I put some of these techniques into practice and show you how I do and find what works for you,
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find what feels good for you.
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Thank you so much for watching, take care of yourself, and I will see you in the next video.
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Bye!
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This B2 speaking lesson is built on the video “9 Study Techniques that got me through Cambridge Medical School *science-backed*”. The speaker keeps coming back to these words: studying, topic, tip, study. This video has 188 sentences and 2924 words to shadow. The speech runs for 15:39. The speaker talks fast, about 187 words per minute, so expect linked and reduced sounds. 83% 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 |
|---|---|---|
| memorization noun | /ˈmem(ə)ɹaɪˌzeɪʃn̩/ | The act of committing something to memory or memorizing. |
| repetition noun | /ˌɹɛp.əˈtɪʃ.ən/ | The act or an instance of repeating or being repeated. |
| firstly adverb | /ˈfɜɹstli/ | In the first place; before anything else; first. |
| curve noun | /kɚv/ | A bend, such as in a road. |
| flashcard noun | /ˈflæʃˌkɑɹd/ | A card used to aid rote memorization. One side of the card contains data of one kind, or a question, and the other side contains the associated response which… |
| reassess verb | /ˌɹiː.əˈsɛs/ | To assess again; to revise an earlier assessment; to reevaluate. |
| revise verb | /ɹɪˈvaɪz/ | To review, alter and amend, especially of written material. |
| interval noun | /ˈɪntɚvəl/ | A distance in space. |
| retention noun | /ɹɪˈtɛnʃən/ | The act of retaining or something retained. |
| adjust verb | /əˈd͡ʒʌst/ | To modify. |
| duration noun | /dʒʊˈɹeɪ.ʃən/ | An amount of time or a particular time interval. |
| allocate verb | /ˈæl.ə.keɪt/ | To set aside for a purpose. |
| intensively adverb | In an intensive way. | |
| memorize verb | /ˈmɛm.əˌɹaɪ̯z/ | To fully learn so as to have entirely available to the memory; to learn by heart, commit to memory. |
| mnemonic noun | /nəˈmɑnɪk/ | Something (especially a series of ideas, letters, words, etc.) used to help in remembering a thing; a memory aid. |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Meaning |
|---|---|
| go through verb | To travel from one end of something to the other. |
| come up with verb | To manage to produce, deliver, or present (something) by inventing, creating, thinking of, or obtaining it. |
| end up verb | To bring to a conclusion. |
| find out verb | To discover, as by asking or investigating. |
| go down verb | To descend; to move from a higher place to a lower one. |
| read through verb | To thoroughly read something to check or proofread it. |
| tie in with verb | To become associated with (a person or group of people); to connect with. |
| try out verb | To test (something) to see how it works or whether it is suitable. |
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | been shown · is actually inspired · is also known |
| Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing | knowledge which is · technique, which is · friends who are |
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | have actually been shown · has saved · i've realized |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 43 contractions and reduced forms, such as you're, we're, don't. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: memorization /ˈmem(ə)ɹaɪˌzeɪʃn̩/, repetition /ˌɹɛp.əˈtɪʃ.ən/, flashcard /ˈflæʃˌkɑɹd/, retention /ɹɪˈtɛnʃən/, duration /dʒʊˈɹeɪ.ʃən/
- Long words — get the stress right: memorization /ˈmem(ə)ɹaɪˌzeɪʃn̩/, repetition /ˌɹɛp.əˈtɪʃ.ən/, prioritize /pɹaɪˈɒɹ.ə.taɪz/, vocabulary /vəˈkæb.jə.lə.ɹi/, applicable /əˈplɪk.ə.bəl/
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 memorization, repetition, firstly.
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.