Shadowing Practice: English Listening Practice Podcast - Deep Thinking - Learn English Speaking with Video

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Welcome to the Listening Time Podcast.

Hey everybody, this is Connor and you're listening to episode 138 of the Listening Time Podcast.

Thank you all for listening.

I want to encourage you and motivate you to keep on practicing with your English listening

and just know that you are improving,

maybe slowly, but you're improving if you're practicing.

So great job.

I want to congratulate you on being here today and listening and practicing your English.

Today, in this episode, I'm going to talk about the topic of deep thinking, thinking deeply.

The reason why I chose this topic is because I was inspired by my last advanced episode that I recorded.

I think that episode will be released in February for all of you listening time family members and VIPs.

So it probably won't be released until after this normal episode.

But I recorded an advanced episode about solitude, about being alone.

And it got me thinking about thinking.

When I was recording that episode,

one of the things that I was thinking about is about how when I'm in solitude,

when I'm alone, I can often think deeply and think about things in a more profound way,

not just a superficial way.

And I think that it's important to think deeply in general about different things.

And so I want to talk about that today.

It's kind of a deep topic, but I'm sure you'll like it.

And before we start, remember that if you want to practice with my advanced episodes, where I speak at normal speed,

then make sure to sign up to become a Listening Time family member.

The link is down below in the episode description. And

if you feel ready to start practicing with conversations where I speak to other native speakers from different parts of the U.S.,

then make sure to sign up for my U.S.

Conversations podcast.

That link is also down below in the description.

And of course, if you need the transcript for this episode, That's also down below as well.

And if you like this podcast, then please share it with anyone else you know who might find it useful.

And please give it a five-star rating and write a review.

All right, let's get started.

Are your ears ready?

You know what time it is.

It's listening time.

Okay, let's talk about deep thinking.

So first of all, why is it important to be a deep thinker?

Why is it important to practice thinking deeply about different things?

Well, I think there are many reasons.

One of them is that when you start to think more deeply about things, you understand more.

And you don't just understand the what, you start to understand the why.

I think you get my point.

You don't just know some information and say this information is correct.

You might figure out why that information is correct or why something is the way it is.

And I think that discovering the why is very useful.

It's very beneficial for us, for our brains.

It sparks a certain curiosity in English when we say that something sparks something else,

we're saying that it causes that other thing to happen.

It triggers that other thing.

So when I say that it sparks a sense of curiosity,

I'm saying that it causes you to be curious.

And being curious is often, usually, a good thing, right?

We want to know more, explore, discover, etc. That's part of being human, right?

So I think that thinking deeply helps to highlight this part of ourselves as humans.

So that's really cool.

Another reason why it's important to try to think more deeply about things

is that you can correct and refine your own ideas.

The word refine refers to improving something little by little,

maybe correcting the small deficiencies in something.

You're perfecting it.

So you can refine your ideas or you can simply correct ideas that you had before that were wrong,

maybe, or that weren't as accurate as they could have been.

So you can correct and refine your own ideas and reconsider things.

You can revisit old ideas or opinions or whatever,

and you can change them if you need to.

And this is something that many people struggle with.

Many people struggle with correcting themselves when they have some idea that is challenged

and then there's a contradiction there

but they just maintain their old idea even though they are presented with something new

that makes them reconsider if they're not willing to think a little bit deeper and examine their own thoughts,

then they might just maintain all of the ideas that they always had and they don't change anything for the better.

So we don't want to be like that.

We want to be able to reconsider things and correct and refine our ideas,

our thoughts, etc. So that's another important thing.

And another reason why it's important to think deeply is because it can help you make better decisions in life.

You can actually start to understand causes and effects, right?

When you actually think deeply about certain actions or behaviors or choices,

you can start to predict the consequences before they happen because you actually think deeply about that thing.

You don't just do it without thinking.

You reconsider the thing.

You try to explore the causes and effects, the pros and cons.

You try to discover the why.

and that can help you make better choices and have more satisfactory consequences or benefits from the decisions that you make.

So that's another one.

And one other reason why you should think more deeply about things is because it makes you more creative and more interesting.

It's more interesting to talk to people

that are deep thinkers than it is to talk to people who don't really think very deeply

and their thoughts are just shallow or superficial.

So that's another reason.

And how do we become deeper thinkers?

What are some ways we can expand our capacity for thinking

and start to practice deep thinking in our daily lives and get those benefits?

Well, I wrote down a few tips here.

The first one is to have a healthy amount of skepticism.

What is skepticism?

Well, this simply means that you don't just believe everything that you're told or everything that you hear or read.

You question what you're told or what you're taught.

And notice that I said a healthy amount of skepticism.

Of course, you don't want to go overboard here and just not believe anything that anyone tells you at any point.

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By the way, the phrase go overboard means that you go to an unhealthy extreme.

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You're taking it too far, right?

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So you don't want to go overboard.

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You don't want to just say that everything that everyone teaches you is a lie.

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A lot of things are lies.

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A lot of things are worthy of being examined further and you can maybe develop a better idea upon further examination.

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but of course not everything is a lie.

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Not everything needs to be rejected when you hear someone say it

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but it's important to have a healthy amount of skepticism

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because many people don't have this and when they're told something they automatically believe it or when they hear about something,

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they don't actually try to go further and understand the why.

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They just hear about that thing and then they just repeat it to other people.

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And that's not a characteristic of a deep thinker.

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So you want to be able to hear things or learn things and then research them for yourself.

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Actually learn to do your own research, learn to learn things on your own,

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and learn to develop maybe a more complete perspective regarding different things.

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So you don't just want to read a news headline and then think that you know all about that topic

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or that event.

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By the way, the word headline refers to the title of some article, some news article.

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So many people, probably most people, will read a lot of news headlines,

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just the title of an article and then they just repeat that and tell other people about it,

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but they don't actually read the article.

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And they definitely don't read the article and then do further research

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to try to confirm or maybe add to their knowledge of that thing.

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So most people don't do that.

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They just read the headline and then they think they know what happened or what's going on about whatever subject.

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So we don't want to do that.

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We want to be deeper thinkers and actually take the time to learn,

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read, and do all that to research certain things.

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And one last point about this is that deep thinkers know that everyone has an agenda.

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And you too.

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Me too.

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That's not necessarily a problem.

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But it's important to understand this.

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That everyone has an agenda.

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Everyone has a reason for doing or saying certain things.

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and they want to convince you of certain things, everyone has an agenda.

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And that's not a problem, but it's important to understand that so that we can be more objective

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and we can do more research on our own and not let other people's agendas interfere with that.

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So all of this will help you have a healthy amount of skepticism.

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And another tip that I have is that you shouldn't force yourself to have an opinion about everything.

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So nowadays, I think that it's expected of you to have an opinion about everything.

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if someone says, what do you think about blah, blah, blah, they're not expecting you to say, I don't have an opinion.

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They don't normally accept that answer.

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They might even get frustrated with you and say something like, how is it possible that you don't care about this?

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Or How is it possible that you don't have an opinion about that?

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Because people expect you to have an opinion about everything.

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But in my opinion, that's not good.

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Because if you don't know about something, if you've never researched something before,

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if you don't have any interest in a certain subject,

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you shouldn't really have an opinion about it

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because you just simply don't care enough or haven't learned enough to have your own opinion.

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And most people nowadays, they will force themselves to have an opinion about everything.

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Even if they really don't, they'll try to force themselves to have one.

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And when they do that, they're simply adopting another person's opinion.

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You're just adopting the quote unquote right opinion that you think you're supposed to have.

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So that's not a characteristic of a deep thinker.

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A deep thinker is able to acknowledge when they simply don't know about something,

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or they don't have an interest in something and haven't learned about it,

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and they don't need to force themselves to have an opinion just to please other people, okay?

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So be content with not always having an opinion about something

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so that you don't just rush into opinions and adopt other people's thinking, right?

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That's not what a deep thinker does.

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And another tip that I have that will help you become a deeper thinker is to read.

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I talk a lot about reading.

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I love reading.

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I think it's a really beneficial activity.

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And one of the benefits is that it helps you think more deeply, in my opinion.

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When you read, you see other people's thoughts.

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You can compare your own ideas to the ideas presented to you in that book.

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And of course, you learn about a lot of different things.

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Even if you read fiction, like me, I read mostly fiction.

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However, I learn a ton when I read, even though it's not a nonfiction book.

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It's not meant to teach me.

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I still learn a lot.

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And when you read a lot,

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you start to make connections between different ideas and different things in different books.

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You start to compare things.

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You can see how this starts to get your brain moving, right?

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when you read one book and you say, oh, that reminds me of something I read in this other book,

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or, oh, that's different from what this other author said, etc. You start to question things,

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compare things, you start to shape your own opinions about things.

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And of course, a lot of that is related to nonfiction, right?

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But like I said, even with fiction, this happens.

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So for example, recently, I've been reading a lot of books from the 1800s,

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a lot of novels from that century, just for pleasure, just for fun,

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because I really like reading books that we might consider classic.

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And when I read these books from the 1800s,

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my mind starts to connect different things from the different books, the different stories.

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I start to notice things about the society that is described in these different books.

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And kind of subconsciously, I've started to compare society then to society now,

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and to learn a lot about how things used to be,

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what used to be acceptable and not acceptable.

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And I've also seen a lot of my own faults reflected in these different characters in these stories.

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By the way, the word fault refers to something wrong, right?

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Something not good.

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So my faults refers to the things about me that aren't good.

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So I even see my own faults reflected in some of these characters,

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and it makes me think more deeply about my own personality,

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my own behavior, and this is all from reading fiction for pleasure.

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I'm not even trying to.

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learn things.

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I'm just reading for pleasure

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and reading a lot helps me to think more deeply about different things

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and this activity really sparks these processes in your brain and it's something that I really like about reading.

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So that's another tip that I have.

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And one last tip that I want to give is to reduce the noise around you.

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So what do I mean?

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Well, allow yourself to be in silence sometimes.

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I know for many people this is really hard,

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but it's beneficial to be able to be in silence for certain periods of time throughout your day,

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throughout your week.

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And for example, one thing I like to do is to drive in silence.

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So if I'm alone in my car,

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I might just not have any music or podcast or anything playing

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and just allow myself to be silent in the car and allow myself to think.

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And when you reduce this noise that we constantly hear all around us,

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you can actually focus on your thoughts and focus on different ideas and develop different ideas.

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Another thing that I do is I take walks by myself.

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I love taking walks.

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And many times when I take walks.

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I listen to podcasts or audiobooks.

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By the way, I pretty much only listen to podcasts in other languages.

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It's for language learning, not for pleasure in my own language.

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So I often listen to podcasts for language learning or listen to my audiobooks.

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However, sometimes I like to walk by myself with nothing else,

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no headphones in, not listening to anything,

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and I find that my brain starts thinking,

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and sometimes I have some deep thoughts when I walk outside by myself with no music,

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no podcasts, no audiobooks or anything like that.

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And it's kind of like when you take a shower and you have a lot of good ideas while you're showering.

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I'm sure some of you know what I'm talking about.

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I also experience this when I walk in silence outside in nature or just on the street,

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I also have that same experience.

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So that's really cool.

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And then, of course, one last point about this tip is you should reduce the amount of social media you consume.

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Because when you consume social media,

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you're only consuming other people's ideas and opinions.

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And yes, this can be good, of course, but if you do it too much,

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then you don't really think a lot for yourself.

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You're just consuming things from other people and not really stimulating your own brain to think deeply about different topics, right?

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So social media tends to have that effect on us where it's kind of like just watching Netflix.

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You're not really stimulating your brain in a meaningful way.

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So I've mentioned this before.

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Many of you might not agree with me, but I think that it's important to reduce the amount of time that you spend on social media.

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that will also help your thought processes and you might find more time to think deeply about things.

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All right, that's it for today.

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I hope this episode was interesting for you.

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Remember that if you feel ready to practice with native English at normal speed,

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then make sure to become a listening time family member so

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that you can get my advanced episodes where I speak at normal speed.

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And if you want to practice with conversations between two native speakers, then make sure to sign up for my U.S.

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Conversations podcast.

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You'll really enjoy that.

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It's a lot of fun.

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I talk to people from all over the country about different topics.

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And of course, I provide the transcript for you with the definitions of keywords and phrases as well.

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So the links for those are down below in the episode description.

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And if you like this podcast,

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please share it and please give it a five-star rating on Spotify or Apple Podcasts and write a review.

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All right.

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Thank you for listening to this episode and I'll talk to you on the next episode of Listening Time.

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"sparks a sense of curiosity" – Vivid phrase to describe what triggers interest (e.g., "Learning about space sparks a sense of curiosity in me").
"You don’t just understand the what, you start to understand the why" – Useful for explaining deeper understanding (great for discussions!).
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The host’s clear, steady speech makes this video ideal for shadow speech (or the shadowing technique), where you repeat phrases aloud immediately after hearing them. Focus on mimicking the stress in words like "profound" (PRO-found) and "beneficial" (ben-E-FISH-al) to improve english pronunciation. Notice how the host pauses before key points (e.g., "And so I want to talk about that today")—this rhythm helps listeners follow along. Practice shadowing these pauses to make your own speech sound more natural. Remember, even small improvements add up—keep at it, and you’ll soon find your conversations flowing more smoothly!

Grammar in this video

The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:

Structure	In the video
“Used to” used to + verb — a past habit or state that is no longer true	used to be
Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it	was inspired · will be released · won't be released
Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now	you've never researched · haven't learned · I've started

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 →

Shadowing Practice: English Listening Practice Podcast - Deep Thinking - Learn English Speaking with Video

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