Shadowing Practice: Body Language Expert Explains How to Show Confidence | WIRED - Learn English Speaking with Video
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People that are supremely confident, when they enter the room, they feel comfortable in that room.
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They don't hesitate to look around.
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Their gestures are smooth, but they're very broad.
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And that has to do with confidence.
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And for a lot of people, this is very difficult.
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I remember the great actress, Helen Mirren, saying, one of the most difficult things to learn as an actress is how to walk onto a scene.
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I've thought about that even in my career, how early on the difficulty of mastering that, how do you walk onto a crime scene?
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How do you walk into the public and demonstrate that I am confident and so forth?
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We can all work a little bit on our nonverbal so we come across as more confident.
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When we talk about confidence, it's so many things.
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It has to do with our posture, the way we present, how we look.
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Where's our chin?
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Where are the eyes looking and gazing?
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Our gestures are loose, but they're smoother.
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As we walk about, we walk as though we are on a mission.
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I'm walking out to shake your hand, or I'm walking out to a podium, or I'm walking to where I'm going to sit.
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So the less confident we are, the less eye contact we make.
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The less confident we are, the more reluctant we are to look about.
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You know, when I look at someone I admire, like Colin Powell, when he walks onto a stage,
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Even before he speaks, he has total command of the room, and he does that because he brings two things into this equation.
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One is a tremendous amount of knowledge and experience.
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Plus, he has shaped and defined himself into a statesman.
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We've got to think of America as a family, where every member of the family cares about every other member of the family.
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I think sometimes people mistake machismo or theatrical displays of power as confidence.
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Confidence can be very quiet.
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Jane Goodall hears this ethologist, very meek, very mild, and yet wherever she goes, she commands the room.
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One of the things you notice is they sort of have this command of themselves, and in doing so, that command transmits outward.
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The other thing that confident people realize is the temporal aspect of leadership.
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If you're in charge, you're in charge of time.
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I'm going to take my time to walk out.
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I'm going to take my time to answer your question.
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I will answer it in the pace, manner, and tone that I choose.
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And in doing that, we are demonstrating that we are confident and in control.
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Where do we get that confident voice?
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Where do we get those confident gestures?
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This is what's called socialization.
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We notice the principal who acts this way.
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We like this leader because of this or that trait.
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So I try to model their behaviors and say this is a shortcut.
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And if I have to work on my vocabulary, that's what high status people do.
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If I have to change my gestures, to fit in in this society, and then that's what I'm going to have to do.
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That doesn't mean it changes me completely.
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It just means that this is what is required of me, and this is what I want to achieve at this moment in time.
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I think of Cary Grant.
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Here's an individual born in the UK, grew up very poor, and as he said in his biography, I became Cary Grant.
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I adopted all the behaviors that I saw from high -status individuals.
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Just think about that, but make up your mind.
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And it is difficult to prescribe this, but one of the easiest things that we can do, you know, if you're a woman,
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maybe you want to model yourself on the actress Cate Blanchett or some other actor and say,
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you know, when they're being interviewed, how do they look?
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They look so confident.
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They look interesting.
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They have such a command presence.
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You know, we're not born this way.
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These are things that we have to develop and say, how do I want to be perceived and what can I do to achieve that?
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Are there better behaviors that you can do?
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Here's a simple one.
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How many of you, somebody says, where'd they go?
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And you go like this.
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And as it turns out, this is one of the most hated signs around the world.
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And yet if we just go like this, he went that way.
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were already perceived differently.
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Little things.
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I tell the story often of when I first came into law enforcement, they said, well, you know,
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you've got to get out there and make some arrests.
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And the first time I went out there and my voice just went really high, stop, you're under arrest.
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That sounds horrible.
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And you have to work at having that command presence where you say, stop right there, don't move.
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That's almost theatrical.
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Yeah, but it's what is needed.
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So let's do this exercise.
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I want you to say no. Just go ahead.
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Say it out loud.
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All right, now let's do it right.
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Say it as I say it.
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No. No. No. Do you see the difference between the way you said it and this way?
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Did you notice that your voice kept getting deeper?
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But did you also notice that the fingers became wider and wider?
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The more confident you became, the wider your fingers were spreading.
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There's a big difference between saying no, stop, and going no, stop.
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This potentiates the message.
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But to get to this, we actually have to practice it.
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So let's do it again.
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No. Now go out there and teach your children how to do that.
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I love sometimes selfies in the mirror.
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One of my pet peeves is what we hear every day with what's called up talk.
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Up talk is where someone says something and then they end making it sound like a question mark.
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So it sounds like this.
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Four score and seven years ago.
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Four score and seven years ago.
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Our fathers brought forth on this continent, our fathers brought forth upon this continent, a new nation.
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My company has done research on this and we've asked CEOs and we've asked executives and some will say,
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well, you know, I've gotten used to it and so forth.
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But when we ask them, does it really matter?
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They also, yeah, we'd rather not see it.
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I get pushback from people that say, well, you know, this is just the way that I speak.
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and no doubt, but don't expect the same results.
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We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard.
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Because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills.
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The cadence in our speech is extremely powerful for a couple of reasons.
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One, we know that when people machine gun a statement, when they talk very fast,
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we are less likely to listen to them over a long period of time.
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But when we talk in cadence, we are sort of held still listening to what will come next.
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And I'll give you an example from that great speech
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Martin Luther King gave, as you notice with a cadence, I have a dream.
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And then he pauses, that one day, and then he goes on.
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And Churchill used the same thing.
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Churchill's notes literally would create spaces for how long he would pause.
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From Stettine in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the continent.
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These pauses make people listen.
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And one of the things that we teach is if you want people to listen to you, use cadence to get their attention,
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hold their attention, but then look forward to what that next set of words will be.
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It lets them know at a subconscious level, this is the person in charge.
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And we know that they're in charge because they have temporal control over this.
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They're not in a hurry.
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So, you know, a lot of times people say to me, well, does confidence look like, you know, chest out, shoulders back, chin up?
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Yeah, that looks pretty good.
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But, you know, a lot of times confidence is just sitting comfortably in a chair.
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And that may have more to do with how much space you control.
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It may have to do with the gestures that you use.
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You probably notice that I use a lot of steepling.
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I tend to interlace my fingers and so forth.
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Thank you.
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These are gestures that contribute to that communication that I'm trying to get across, that I am confident about what I'm talking about.
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So it's not just about puffing your chest out, or certainly not about talking louder or anything.
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It's about controlling my environment, but making sure that what I'm transmitting at all times is confidence.
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And that means I'm prepared.
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I'm ready to answer.
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I'm going to answer you now.
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I'm going to answer you effectively and I'm going to make sure that you understand what I said.
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I'm here to convey.
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I'm not here to convince.
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A lot of times people who are lacking confidence are trying to convince you of something.
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Hey, if I'm confident, I just say it once.
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It's this way and that's it.
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I convey the information rather than sit there and try to beat it into you by repeating it 10 different ways.
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Compare the gestures I'm about to do.
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It's about temporal movement, controlling time, so the person in charge has the time to look up at their own pace.
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The gestures are smooth.
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There's no hesitation.
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There's no quick movements.
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There's no jitteriness.
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There doesn't have to be.
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I'm in charge.
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When I feel this confident, I feel like I have to be in a hurry,
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that I've got to look up and I've got to answer right away
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and there's a lot of preening behaviors and these are detracting from me.
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I was really shy a few years ago.
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Probably this is changing a little bit.
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People are horrified to speak in public.
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I used to be horrified to speak in public.
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I still get nervous to speak in public.
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But here's some tricks I found that you might find useful.
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The first one is don't hesitate ever to say, you know what, this is scary.
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Be honest with yourself.
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This is unnatural.
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Number two, take refuge in knowing that if I sit down and study this material, I will know it better than my audience.
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The third thing I always do is I rehearse.
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It really helps so that the first time you hear it in a forum, it doesn't scare you.
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When it's time to do the presentation, one of the things I like to do is to warm up.
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I find a good solid wall and I will just lean into it like I'm holding this wall up,
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pressing against it just as if I were doing a push -up.
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And one of the things that that does is it releases a lot of muscular tension.
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And because I'm doing it very wide, it makes me feel more powerful and I need to walk on that stage as though it's mine.
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With full confidence, it is only then that I look at my audience.
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And then I just take a second to get myself together and to begin.
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With practice, obviously you're going to get better and better and better.
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Let's face it, people are not born confident.
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They're just not.
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We can become confident with the assistance of our parents who encourage us.
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We can become confident through our own achievements.
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We can become confident by going beyond our boundaries.
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But confidence is something that we can grow, we can nurture.
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I mean, I have seen people in wheelchairs that are supremely confident.
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I have seen elderly people in their 90s who are very confident.
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I've seen children who are holding a violin with such confidence.
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If you want to be confident, know your material, know the information, hone that skill, work at it,
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have that mastery of things and of self, and that's how you will come across as confident,
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no matter what your station in life is.
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Thank you.
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This speaking lesson is built on the video “Body Language Expert Explains How to Show Confidence”. The speaker keeps coming back to these words: confident, confidence, gestures, walk. This video has 180 sentences and 2078 words to shadow. The speech runs for 14:13. The speaker talks at a steady 146 words per minute, a comfortable pace for shadowing. 84% 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
15 words from the video worth learning, with pronunciation and meaning:
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| gesture noun | /ˈd͡ʒɛs.t͡ʃɚ/ | A motion of the limbs or body, especially one made to emphasize speech. |
| finger noun | /ˈfɪŋɡɚ/ | A slender jointed extremity of the human hand, (often) exclusive of the thumb, and the corresponding part, irrespective of including a thumb, in many other… |
| actress noun | /ˈæk.tɹɪs/ | A female who performs on the stage or in films. |
| smooth adjective | /smuːð/ | Having a texture that lacks friction. Not rough. |
| continent noun | /ˈkɑntɪnənt/ | One of the main contiguous landmasses, separated by water or geological features, on the surface of a planet, sometimes including its continental shelves and… |
| pause noun | /pɔːz/ | A temporary stop or rest; an intermission of action; interruption; suspension; cessation. |
| temporal adjective | /ˈtɛm.pə.ɹəl/ | Of or relating to the material world, as opposed to sacred or clerical. |
| pace noun | /peɪs/ | A step taken with the foot. |
| convince verb | /kənˈvɪns/ | To make someone believe, or feel sure about something, especially by using logic, argument or evidence. |
| demonstrate verb | /ˈdɛm.ənˌstɹeɪt/ | To show how to use (something). |
| hurry verb | /ˈhʌ.ɹi/ | To do things quickly. |
| chin noun | /ˈt͡ʃɪn/ | The bottom of a face, (specifically) the typically jutting jawline below the mouth. |
| convey verb | /kənˈveɪ/ | To move (something) from one place to another. |
| hesitate verb | /ˈhɛz.ə.teɪt/ | To stop or pause respecting decision or action; to be in suspense or uncertainty as to a determination. |
| perceive verb | /pɚˈsiv/ | To become aware of, through the physical senses, to see; to understand. |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| come across verb | To change sides; to cross over to work for the opposition. | |
| go out verb | To leave, especially a building. | |
| call up verb | To retrieve from personal or computer memory. | |
| get across verb | To cross; to move from one side (of something) to the other, literally or figuratively. | |
| get out verb | To leave or escape. | |
| go ahead verb | /ˌɡoʊ əˈhɛd/ | To proceed with; to begin. |
| grow up verb | To mature and become an adult. | |
| look around verb | To inspect a building or area. |
Sentences worth repeating
Short, complete lines from the video that you can reuse in everyday conversation:
- Where do we get that confident voice?
- Where do we get those confident gestures?
- Are there better behaviors that you can do?
- How many of you, somebody says, where'd they go?
- Did you notice that your voice kept getting deeper?
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 | I've thought · has shaped · has done |
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | is required · being interviewed · be perceived |
| Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing | people who are · children who are |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 53 contractions and reduced forms, such as I'm, they're, I've. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “th” sounds: smooth /smuːð/, theatrical /θiˈætɹɪkəl/
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: shake /ˈʃeɪk/, presentation /ˌpɹɛzn̩ˈteɪʃn̩/, tension /ˈtɛnʃən/, equation /ɪˈkweɪ.ʒən/, hesitation /ˌhɛzɪˈteɪʃən/
- Long words — get the stress right: theatrical /θiˈætɹɪkəl/, difficulty /ˈdɪfɪkəlti/, differently /ˈdɪf.ə.ɹənt.li/, biography /baɪˈɑɡɹəfi/, vocabulary /vəˈkæb.jə.lə.ɹi/
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 gesture, finger, actress.
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.