Shadowing Practice: All 11 Levels of Intelligence - Where Do You Fall? - Learn English Speaking with Video

Somewhere on Earth right now, there's a person who can look at a chessboard and see 40 moves into the future.

And there's another person who can't tell you whether tomorrow exists.

Both of them are human.

Both of them have a brain doing exactly what it was built to do.

The strange part isn't that the gap exists.

It's how thin the line is between where you are and where they are.

Today, we're climbing all 11 levels of human intelligence from the mind that lives entirely in right now.

All the way up to the mind so sharp it can't find a single other person to talk to.

Quick note before we start this is not a scoreboard for human worth.

It's not a prediction of anyone's life.

And it's definitely not ammo for roasting your friends.

It's a map.

And you're on it somewhere.

Let's find out where.

Let's get started.

Number 11.

The Eternal Right Now Here's something most people never think about.

Your entire personality depends on you remembering that yesterday happened.

Take that away and everything unravels.

At the very bottom of the intelligence spectrum sits the rarest group on the planet, profound intellectual disability IQ under 20,

roughly 0.02% of all humans.

That's about 1.6 million people worldwide,

and most of them fall into a clinical category tied to serious neurological damage from before they were even born.

And this is where it gets genuinely humbling humbling.

The mechanism here isn't slow thinking, it's the near total absence of the tools we take for granted.

No language to communicate, no memory to look back on, no logic to reason forward with.

Imagine a 30-year-old who doesn't know that fire burns or that heights are dangerous,

who can't grip a spoon or understand that food needs chewing before swallowing.

That's not a lack of effort.

That's a brain that never got the hardware installed.

Here's the part people find hard to sit with.

Most standard IQ tests physically can't measure below 40 the floor of the test.

So an IQ of under 20 mostly lives in old clinical files, not modern results.

And if you're wondering whether anyone has scored a literal zero,

the answer is yes in the tragic cases of babies born without a cerebral cortex who survive only hours or days.

But here's the twist that gets me.

The famous wild boy of Aviron, raised alone in the woods, never learned to speak properly even after years of care.

Yet his emotional system stayed razor sharp.

He couldn't understand your words, but he could smell your kindness, your fear, your irritation reading you entirely through tone,

which tells you something quietly profound connection doesn't always need language.

Sometimes it just needs a nervous system that's still paying attention.

Number 10, the one-step mind.

You know how a dog sees a leash and instantly loses its mind because leash means walk.

That exact wiring one object one instant conclusion is the whole cognitive world of the next level up.

Severe intellectual disability, IQ 20 to 34, about 0.1% of people, which sounds tiny,

until you realize that's roughly 8 million humans, nearly a city.

Here the brain switches on just barely.

Psychologists call it single-step associative thinking, and it does exactly what it sounds like.

See the bowl, think eat.

See the shoes, think going outside.

Two things, one link no chain.

And weirdly, that little spark is enough to matter with years of patient training a person can learn to feed themselves,

pull on simple clothes with no buttons, use the bathroom.

Small victories that took a decade to build.

But abstract thought stays completely offline.

No concept of money.

No tomorrow.

No yesterday.

No future or past.

Their entire existence has exactly one time stamp on it now.

A grown adult here thinks and feels roughly like a three to six-year-old.

And there's this specific heartbreaking quirk in how they talk.

It's called echolalia.

Ask, did you eat yet?

And the brain doesn't have time to unpack the meaning and answer, so it just repeats you word for word like a parrot.

They respond with sound instead of thought, whatever goes in comes straight back out.

Colin Farrell's son James, who has Angelman syndrome, lives in this territory and improved slowly over years of relentless support,

which honestly reframes the whole video.

If you can follow what I'm saying right now and find any of it mildly funny, That's not a given.

That's luck you didn't earn.

Number nine, the six-year-old adult.

There's a special kind of cafe popping up around the world sometimes called the Cafe of Angels, where the person bringing your coffee took months to learn the job

and does it with more joy than anyone you've ever tipped.

That's the face of the next level.

Moderate intellectual disability, IQ 35-49, around 0.3% of the population.

Compared to the level below, this is a genuine leap.

Here the brain finally boots up symbolic thinking.

It can grasp basic symbols.

Letters.

The alphabet.

Simple ideas of time and money at their most stripped down money, buys things tomorrow comes after today.

This is the range most associated with Down syndrome, where the brain is far more developed just running on a slower processor.

Multi-step reasoning is hard, and applying old knowledge to a brand new situation is harder.

A grown adult here lives with the mind of roughly a 6-9 year old.

But language blossoms in a way it never did before.

Real conversations, full sentences, with a subject and a verb.

They can bathe themselves, cook simple meals, and with careful teaching, do craftwork or packing or gardening to earn actual income.

Independence in small honest pieces.

And here's where it turns dark.

So pay attention.

Their awareness is real but shallow, which makes them dangerously easy to manipulate, exploit, and cheat out of wages.

Medical reports flag this level as high risk for abuse.

The cruelest part.

When it comes time to stand in front of the police or a court and describe what happened to them, they often can't and predators know it.

Which means the exact trait that makes them gentle, that shallow.

Trusting awareness is the same trait that lets people get away with hurting them.

That one should sit in your chest for a second.

8. The Invisible Gap Here's the weird thing about this next level.

You could talk to one of these people for an entire evening and never once suspect anything.

100

That's what makes it strange.

101

Mild intellectual disability, IQ 50-69, and this is the crowd of full 85% of all intellectual disability cases.

102

Their brains run at about the level of a 9-12 year old.

103

And unlike the levels below, science often can't point to a clean cause.

104

Maybe genetics.

105

Maybe a chromosomal thing, premature birth, severe malnutrition injury, or just a home that never taught them much.

106

The brain here runs on what's called concrete operational thinking.

107

They can go to school, read, write, add, and subtract.

108

What they can't do is metaphor.

109

Tell them the early bird catches the worm, and they'll picture an actual bird.

110

Hand them a poem full of hidden meaning and watch the circuit smoke.

111

Which is exactly why this is sometimes called an invisible disability.

112

In casual conversation, nothing seems off.

113

They love, they get jealous, they hold grudges about an ex-completely normal human stuff.

114

The trouble starts when life demands abstraction raising kids who ask questions beyond your understanding navigating a world

115

that keeps getting more complicated.

116

And this is where your sympathy should sharpen into anger.

117

Because history is full of these people being tricked into carrying drugs, coerced into false confessions, made to take the fall for someone smarter.

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Barry Lee Fairchild, IQ around 63, was convicted of a crime he almost certainly didn't commit and exonerated far too late

119

The invisible disability has an invisible cost and someone else usually collects it 7.

120

Almost but not quite Ever met someone who works twice as hard as everyone else and still ends up looking average?

121

Before you judge them, understand this level Borderline intellectual functioning, IQ 70-79, about 6.7% of people.

122

It's the in-between zone not disabled smarter than everyone we've discussed, but still a step behind the rest of the world.

123

Science calls them slow learners, which is a rude name for a real thing.

124

They can grasp abstract ideas just at the surface, and it takes them a long, exhausting while to get there.

125

Their memory works, but mechanically pure, wrote the human equivalent of memorizing without understanding.

126

Throw them a situation that needs flexible on-the-spot thinking and the wheels lock up.

127

So they compensate the only way they can by grinding.

128

Twice the effort of a normal person and the payoff still doesn't match the sweat.

129

And here's the quietly brutal part.

130

When a company hits a rough patch, this is statistically the first group shown the door.

131

Their social and adaptive skills just can't argue for them.

132

Reports also link this range to higher rates of depression and substance issues, which makes grim sense when your whole life is running uphill.

133

But, and I love this part, put them in a job with a clear process,

134

steady rhythm, repetitive tasks, that smarter people would quit out of boredom and their relentlessness becomes a superpower.

135

The meticulous tailor who never complains.

136

The craftsman who does the boring thing perfectly every single time without needing novelty to stay sane.

137

Respect where it's due.

138

Number six, The Backbone.

139

This is the group that quietly keeps every country running while getting exactly zero credit for it.

140

Below average IQ 80 to 89, around 16.1% of the world.

141

Modern society is basically built so these people can function independently without constantly hitting walls.

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And that's not an insult, that's the entire point of civilization.

143

Their adult brains can handle formal thinking.

144

They understand metaphors, get the joke in a sarcastic line, and can plan short-term into the future.

145

The only real limitation is processing speed and memory capacity.

146

Think an i3 chip with modest storage.

147

Everything works, it just takes a little longer to load.

148

Heavy academic material or complicated math formulas require more patience.

149

And here's the honest bit.

150

This group leans on the crowd because their critical thinking isn't their sharpest tool tool.

151

If everyone believes it, they'll probably believe it too.

152

But don't mistake that for weakness.

153

This is the group with a genuinely practical head on their shoulders.

154

Ask them to choose between grinding for a year on some prestigious path versus taking the smart, efficient shortcut that gets the same result.

155

They'll pick the shortcut every time.

156

And honestly, they're usually right.

157

They weigh costs and benefits like adults who've stopped trying to impress anyone, Which if you think about it, is a kind of intelligence the higher levels keep forgetting they have.

158

Number 5, the national average.

159

Congratulations, statistically, this is probably you.

160

IQ 90-109, the national tier of humanity.

161

And here's the wild fact this level is the ruler everyone else gets measured against.

162

The number 100 was literally created by testing a huge population and planting a flag in the middle.

163

In other words, the entire world you see was designed by and for this group's convenience.

164

The adult brain here is fully developed, flexible, decent at solving its own problems.

165

Plenty of career options, plenty of room to live a full life.

166

But there's one hilarious psychological trap baked right in, and it comes precisely because this group is the majority.

167

It's called consensus bias, and it goes like this.

168

I think this and lots of other people think this, therefore this must simply be correct.

169

Anyone who disagrees is dumb.

170

Even someone smarter who disagrees still dumb.

171

The sheer size of the group becomes its own proof.

172

Which would be fine if being common meant being right, but obviously it does not.

173

The majority has been confidently spectacularly wrong about a thousand things throughout history.

174

And that's the strange comedy of the average mind it mistakes.

175

Everyone around me agrees, for the universe agrees.

176

It's the most human bias there is, and if it stung a little just now, that's only because you recognized yourself in it.

177

Number four, the ones who peaked at school.

178

You know that kid in class who got picked for every competition, the district exams, the national rounds, the trophies?

179

There's a good chance they lived here.

180

Above average IQ 110 to 119, about 16.1% of the world.

181

Sharper brain than the crowd, and often the people who end up holding the important seats in society.

182

Their real edge is strong critical thinking, plus faster data processing, a nicer CPU, a better graphics card.

183

Not overwhelming, and definitely not automatic.

184

They still have to train to use the hardware they were handed.

185

Software's better, but you've still got to learn the program.

186

And here's the thing, school never tells you, being the smartest kid in the room only proves you're the smartest kid in the room.

187

It guarantees nothing about success, happiness, or a life that feels worth living.

188

Because IQ is just one variable in a very crowded equation.

189

But there's a specific psychological pothole waiting here, and it's a sneaky one.

190

These people know they're smarter than most, but they're not quite exceptional enough to do something truly extraordinary.

191

So they set sky-high expectations for themselves.

192

And when reality doesn't cooperate, they nosedive into pressure and existential doubt.

193

Even weirder, some become less effective than an ordinary person.

194

Because the ego inflates faster than the skill does.

195

They won't take the simple low-paying job beneath them, but they don't actually have the chops for the hard high-paying one either.

196

So they float insulted by everything.

197

Turns out, smarter than average can quietly become too proud to grow.

198

And that's the trap that gets these people every time.

199

Number three, the pattern hunters hunters.

200

Show two people a car.

201

One sees four wheels and a windshield.

202

The other sees the drivetrain, the power source, the steering system, the safety cage, an entire machine they've never opened mapped in their head from a glance.

203

That second person lives here.

204

IQ 120 to 129.

205

And the standout skill is generalization, seeing the whole system, not just the surface.

206

It's the difference between looking at the car and looking at it from a drone.

207

These are the abstract reasoners who connect unrelated dots and generate genuinely new solutions, though not every one of them is some breakthrough innovator.

208

Let's be honest.

209

History flags people like JFK around 120, or reportedly Michael Jackson near 125 in this band.

210

Clever enough to read the rules of the social game, but close enough to the average not to seem alien.

211

Basically the pro model of the human brain.

212

But here's where it curdles.

213

This exact intelligence powers a lot of society's most effective criminals, the ones who spot the loophole and think, why not exploit that?

214

And for the honest ones, there's imposter syndrome, that gnawing little voice, asking whether you're actually good or just got lucky.

215

Worst of all, the brain here craves novelty.

216

Drop it into a repetitive, predictable job, and it withers, quits halfway, or invents problems just to have something to chew on.

217

Which is the cruel irony because real success usually rewards the person who can tolerate the boredom.

218

So sometimes the guy whose brain fires too fast is the exact guy who can't sit still long enough to win.

219

Number two, the system readers.

220

There's a certain kind of person who looks at a chessboard and doesn't calculate they just know.

221

Instantly.

222

Like, the answer was always there, that's this level.

223

IQ 130 to 144.

224

about 2.1% of the world.

225

And here the mind pulls far ahead of ordinary thinking, rapid abstract reasoning, blistering learning speed, and the ability to spot patterns

226

that stretch across time connecting why an era unfolded the way it did to what's likely coming next.

227

The mechanism is called Macro Systems Thinking, and it's genuinely a little scary.

228

Billionaires, Company founders, scientists cluster here.

229

Bill Gates around 140, Elon Musk reportedly, similar chess legend Gary Kasparov, near 135.

230

Give this brain the right training, and it can turn a hopelessly complex situation into a chessboard where it holds the pieces.

231

Politicians and inventors dream of this wiring.

232

But being this smart has a signature curse, and it's called intellectual myopia.

233

Tell a normal person, you're wrong, and they might just fix it.

234

Tell an IQ 140 person, you're wrong, and the reply is closer to, what could you possibly know?

235

They're so good they become allergic to being corrected

236

and never admitting fault has a way of quietly poisoning your relationships and your peace.

237

Their brains also refuse to power down.

238

The overthinking, the 3 a.m anxiety.

239

The mind that won't shut off in the shower.

240

And here's the humbling finale, The Term and Study, tracked kids with IQs over 135 expecting future world changers,

241

and got competent engineers and teachers.

242

Meanwhile, two children rejected for scoring under 130 went on to win Nobel Prizes in physics.

243

High IQ is an advantage.

244

It is nowhere near the whole story.

245

Number one, the beautiful loneliness.

246

And at the very top sits the rarest mind of all the genius among geniuses.

247

IQ 145 and up 0.1% of humanity or fewer.

248

First, a reality check modern IQ tests basically cap out around 160.

249

Beyond that, there's no reliable way to measure,

250

so every IQ 200 or IQ 300 you've seen online is old mathematical guesswork with nothing solid behind it.

251

It's almost poetic get smart enough, and nobody's smart enough to measure how smart you are.

252

Einstein's famous 160 was estimated.

253

He never sat a test.

254

Da Vinci's 220 is pure speculation.

255

What defines this level is ultra-connection linking fields that have no business touching.

256

Mathematics, philosophy, anatomy, art, all fused into inventions that redraw the map of human history.

257

It's why da Vinci seemed to be a dozen geniuses wearing one coat.

258

But a brain this far ahead pays a specific price, it's completely out of phase with the rest of the species.

259

Chronic nervous system overstimulation and a loneliness so deep, it's hard to describe.

260

Because there's almost no one who thinks on their level, and even when there is two egos, that size rarely survive in the same room room.

261

Turns out the summit of human intelligence isn't a throne.

262

It's a very quiet, very high place, with room for exactly one.

263

And that's the whole ladder.

264

Here's what I keep coming back to, no matter how high you're rung, if you never actually work at it, never grind from the basics up, you end up ordinary anyway.

265

The genius who coasts, and the average kid who claws upward eventually meet in the middle.

266

Which, honestly, is the most reassuring thing this entire list has to offer.

267

That's it for today, I'll be making similar videos in the future.

268

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323 sentences

Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson

This B2 speaking lesson is built on the video “All 11 Levels of Intelligence - Where Do You Fall?”. This video has 268 sentences and 3159 words to shadow. The speech runs for 19:48. The speaker talks at a natural 160 words per minute, close to everyday conversation. Only 80% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English, so the vocabulary is demanding.

Key vocabulary in this video

The 15 most advanced words in the video, with pronunciation and meaning:

Word	Pronunciation	Meaning
quietly adverb	/ˈkwaɪ.ɪt.li/	Producing little or no noise.
invisible adjective	/ɪnˈvɪzəb(ə)l/	Unable to be seen; out of sight; not visible.
genuinely adverb	/ˈd͡ʒɛn.ju.ɪn.li/	In a genuine manner; truthfully, truly.
abstract noun	/ˈæbˌstɹækt/	An abridgement or summary of a longer publication.
chessboard noun		A square playing surface divided into eight rows and eight columns, forming sixty-four equal squares arranged in an alternating pattern of colors across both…
humble adjective	/ˈhʌmbəl/	Not pretentious or magnificent; unpretending; unassuming.
boredom noun	/ˈbɔɹ.dəm/	The state of being bored.
café noun	/ˌkæˈfeɪ/	A coffee shop; an establishment selling coffee and sometimes other non-alcoholic beverages, simple meals or snacks, with a facility to consume them on the…
leash noun	/liːʃ/	A strap, cord or rope with which to restrain an animal, often a dog.
shortcut noun	/ˈʃɔːtkʌt/	A path between two points that is faster than the commonly used paths.
repetitive adjective	/ɹɪˈpɛtɪtɪv/	Happening many times in a similar way; containing repetition; repeating.
loneliness noun	/ˈloʊnlinəs/	A feeling of depression resulting from being alone or from having no companions.
novelty noun	/ˈnɑvəlti/	The state of being new or novel; newness.
statistically adverb	/stəˈtɪs.tɪ.kə.li/	In a statistical way.
trait noun	/tɹeɪt/	An identifying characteristic, habit or trend.

Phrasal verbs you will hear

Word	Pronunciation	Meaning
end up verb		To bring to a conclusion.
turn out verb		To end up; to result.
back out verb		To reverse (a vehicle) from a confined space.
find out verb		To discover, as by asking or investigating.
get away with verb		To get away, or escape, taking (something) with one.
lock up verb	/ˌlɒk ˈʌp/	To imprison or incarcerate (someone).
pop up verb		To come up with a "pop" sound.

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	was built · were even born · is sometimes called
Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing	person who can · shallow, which makes · kids who ask
Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now	has scored · you've ever tipped · we've discussed

Pronunciation to watch

The speaker uses 49 contractions and reduced forms, such as can't, you're, doesn't. Say them the short way, as you hear them.

The “th” sounds: mathematics /mæθ(.ə)ˈmæt.ɪks/, mathematical /ˌmæθ(.ə)ˈmæt.ɪ.kəl/, rhythm /ˈɹɪð.əm/, throne /θɹəʊ̯n/
The “sh” and “zh” sounds: leash /liːʃ/, shortcut /ˈʃɔːtkʌt/, shallow /ˈʃæloʊ/, expectation /ˌɛk.spɛkˈteɪ.ʃən/, equation /ɪˈkweɪ.ʒən/
Long words — get the stress right: invisible /ɪnˈvɪzəb(ə)l/, genuinely /ˈd͡ʒɛn.ju.ɪn.li/, repetitive /ɹɪˈpɛtɪtɪv/, statistically /stəˈtɪs.tɪ.kə.li/, reportedly /ɹɪˈpɔːtɪdli/

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 quietly, invisible, genuinely.

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.

Shadowing technique: read the full step-by-step guide →

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