Shadowing Practice: Become a great strategic thinker | Ian Bremmer - Learn English Speaking with Video
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Music Thinking
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strategically is meta -thinking.
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It's thinking about thinking.
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It is not responding to headlines.
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It's not what CNN wants to talk to me about on any given day or Fox News.
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It is instead trying to think about, for me, where the world is heading.
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That means pattern recognition, lots of different macro themes at the country level,
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at the company level, at the individual level,
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and how they create trade -offs in leaders that are affected frequently by many of them,
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but have very different priorities, needs, and timeframes.
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It's very easy to say, okay, I just saw this headline, and I have a large amount of personal history and data,
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and that will allow me to immediately frame what I think that means, where I should place it in my existing worldview,
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and is there any information there that's dissonant?
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That is completely unstrategic thinking.
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Strategic thinking is what goes on outside of that.
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It is how do I create my worldview?
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What would change it?
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What are the pieces that I prioritize?
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What are the ones that aren't so important?
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Why do I prioritize them that way?
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Does that make sense today?
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What's changed in the last 10 years or 20 years?
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The world changes so quickly, and yet people don't revisit their worldview nearly as quickly as the world changes.
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And yet, of course, you should revisit your worldview on a continual basis.
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Not because you were wrong.
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I mean, you may have been wrong.
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But much more likely is you had some level of rightness.
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You weren't analytically wrong.
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The world moved.
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And if you're not moving, you're going to become wrong.
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I mean, any analytic view will become wrong over time.
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And strategic thinking, I think at its base, is an effort to prevent that from happening.
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Great strategic thinkers are curious and open.
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They are fine with being wrong,
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admitting that they're wrong, talking about what that means, and moving on.
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There are also people that are very curious about different worldviews.
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People that have respect for worldviews and opinions and analysis that are dramatically different from their own and that engage with them,
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those are people who tend to be good strategic thinkers.
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I don't necessarily say opposing worldviews because worldviews don't need to be opposing.
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They just need to be different.
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I happen to be born in the United States, and that of necessity gives me a worldview of that context.
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But if I, same human being, happened to be born in China, would that give me an opposing worldview?
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No, I'd be the same person.
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I just have a different worldview.
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People that are much more comfortable simply following folks that confirm their priors may be outstanding tactical thinkers,
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but are not good strategic thinkers.
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Of course, this is not easy to do.
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I mean, it's kind of like going to the gym.
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The first time is daunting.
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Once you do it every morning, stopping doing it would feel daunting.
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But you have to actually build up that training, that practice.
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And it takes time because your brain doesn't like it when you start engaging with things that you don't agree with.
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It finds it unnerving.
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But if you do it enough and you start breaking down your own internal barriers to say, no, it's not that I don't like this person.
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It's not that that opinion turns me off.
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It's just that they come from a different story.
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They're not villainous, right?
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The fact that you're
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Israeli or Palestinian doesn't make the other person wrong.
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They're both heroes of their own stories.
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They just have different stories.
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If you're prepared to understand, accept, and embrace that, then you tend to be a better strategic thinker.
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Nelson Mandela would probably be at the top of my list in terms of global strategic thinkers.
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He is not only someone of extraordinary moral courage and personal conviction,
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he also is someone that recognizes for the long future of his country
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that he needed to put aside personal vendettas
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and even the desire to mete out immediate justice in order to ensure that his country had a future.
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He took the long view on values and ethics and human development in a way that very few political figures really do.
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My only regret is that I never had the opportunity to meet him personally.
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Maybe that allows me to lionize him more
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because a lot of world leaders who I have a lot of respect for
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that I've spent a lot of time with personally do become more humanized in ways
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that don't always comport with how much you respect them once you've spent time with them.
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That's not always true, but it's frequently true.
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This speaking lesson is built on the video “Become a great strategic thinker”. The speaker keeps coming back to these words: worldview, strategic, thinker, thinking, opposing. This video has 49 sentences and 809 words to shadow. The speech runs for 6:18. The speaker talks at a steady 129 words per minute, a comfortable pace for shadowing. 85% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English; the rest is worth studying before you start. 12 of its 49 sentences are questions, so it is good practice for question intonation and short answers.
Key vocabulary in this video
15 words from the video worth learning, with pronunciation and meaning:
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| strategic adjective | /stɹəˈti.dʒɪk/ | Of or pertaining to strategy. |
| oppose verb | /əˈpoʊz/ | To attempt to stop the progression of; to resist or antagonize by physical means, or by arguments, etc.; to contend against. |
| curious adjective | /ˈkjʊɹ.i.əs/ | Tending to ask questions, or to want to explore or investigate; inquisitive; (with a negative connotation) nosy, prying. |
| engage verb | /ɪnˈɡeɪd͡ʒ/ | To engross or hold the attention of; to keep busy or occupied. |
| headline noun | /ˈhɛd.laɪn/ | The heading or title of a magazine or newspaper article. |
| necessarily adverb | /ˌnɛs.əˈsɛɹ.ə.li/ | Inevitably; of necessity. |
| recognition noun | /ˌɹɛkəɡˈnɪʃ(ə)n/ | The act of recognizing or the condition of being recognized (matching a current observation with a memory of a prior observation of the same entity). |
| moral adjective | /ˈmoɹəl/ | Of or relating to principles of right and wrong in behaviour, especially conforming to principles of rectitude. |
| priority noun | /pɹaɪˈɒɹɪti/ | An item's relative importance. |
| confirm verb | /kənˈfɝm/ | To strengthen; to make firm or resolute. |
| regret verb | /ɹɪˈɡɹɛt/ | To feel sorry about (a thing that has or has not happened), afterthink: to wish that a thing had not happened, that something else had happened instead. |
| extraordinary adjective | /ɪksˈtɹɔːrdɪn(ə)ɹi/ | Out of the ordinary; exceptional; unusual. |
| courage noun | /ˈkʌ.ɹɪd͡ʒ/ | The quality of being confident, not afraid or easily intimidated, but without being incautious or inconsiderate. |
| nelson noun | A score of 111, sometimes considered to be unlucky. | |
| folk noun | /foʊk/ | People, persons. |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Meaning |
|---|---|
| break down verb | To stop functioning. |
| build up verb | To erect; to construct. |
| put aside verb | To save or keep (something) to be used at a later time. |
Sentences worth repeating
Short, complete lines from the video that you can reuse in everyday conversation:
- It is how do I create my worldview?
- What are the pieces that I prioritize?
- What are the ones that aren't so important?
- Why do I prioritize them that way?
- It's not that that opinion turns me off.
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 | are affected · be born |
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | I've spent · you've spent |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 20 contractions and reduced forms, such as don't, they're, doesn't. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “th” sounds: ethics /ˈɛθ.ɪks/, thinker /ˈθɪŋ.kɚ/
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: recognition /ˌɹɛkəɡˈnɪʃ(ə)n/, conviction /kənˈvɪkʃən/
- Long words — get the stress right: necessarily /ˌnɛs.əˈsɛɹ.ə.li/, recognition /ˌɹɛkəɡˈnɪʃ(ə)n/, priority /pɹaɪˈɒɹɪti/, extraordinary /ɪksˈtɹɔːrdɪn(ə)ɹi/, necessity /nɪˈsɛsəti/
How to practise with this video
- Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
- Shadow it sentence by sentence at normal speed, repeating each one until your rhythm matches the speaker.
- Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like strategic, oppose, curious.
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.