Shadowing Practice: Forget Your Reading Journal, Do This Instead - Learn English Speaking with Video

Have you ever finished a book or closed a YouTube video and realized you can't remember anything you just consumed?

You're reading all this stuff, watching all these videos, and you feel like you're learning, but none of it actually sticks.

I am definitely this guy sometimes, tearing through book after book, watching dozens of videos, thinking that consuming more content will somehow make me smarter or more productive.

But I got so fed up with being so overwhelmed

that I took matters into my own hands and created a system that completely changed the way I learned.

In this video, we're going to go through that three-step method, reduce our information overwhelm, and start to actually remember what we read, watch, and listen to.

The real problem with how we consume information today is not actually that the information itself changed.

It's that the content ecosystem is changing the way we interact with that information.

So specifically, information is being given to us all the time now via the internet, social media, stuff like that, in way smaller bite-sized pieces than ever, ever before.

This is leading to information overload, which is a real, well-documented concept that stops us from actually being able to process the information we're consuming,

whether that is something like an essay or a piece of fiction

or a video that we're watching or a podcast that we're listening to.

We are being passive consumers because all of this information is a little bit too much for us to handle.

But the thing is, with information overload, we don't even notice that we're being passive consumers.

We actually do really think that we're learning.

Like, how often have you just been scrolling on TikTok and you're like, oh, that's a cool fact, that's a cool fact, I'll integrate that later,

I'll remember that later, and then an hour goes by and you have literally no idea what your brain has been doing.

In the current content ecosystem that we have, we are stuck in this illusion that true learning is happening just because we can observe the information flowing through our brain.

But what's actually happening is like, it's like we're filling up a cup with water and watching it overflow, but never actually drinking anything.

So we're making this attempt to hydrate, but remaining dehydrated just because we can't turn off the tap.

So our goal then becomes to not just consume information, but also to engage with it.

We want to move it past short-term memory and actually learn how to integrate it into our daily lives.

This includes things like teaching, making content about it, writing essays, a whole host of stuff.

And I'll talk more about how exactly to integrate it into your life later.

But as we go through this video, start thinking about the avenues or ways

that would feel most natural to you to incorporate and use the information that you read.

So for example, for me, I obviously have this YouTube channel.

And lately, as I've been getting back into writing, I'm keeping a section in my newsletter called what I'm working on, which I want to incorporate some key learnings from whatever I'm reading into.

So I essentially get a little mini essay prompt every couple of weeks

and I get a chance to use the information I'm thinking about

and then immediately use it in context and explain it to other people.

If you want to see what I mean, hit the description box below or scan the QR code on screen to sign up for the newsletter.

But for now, all you're going to need is something to read, a notebook to write in, and a writing utensil.

Pencil, pen, whatever it is, up to you.

Let's get started.

So for the purpose of this video, I am going to demonstrate how to engage deeply with what you're learning using physical books, but you can also definitely do these techniques with e-readers,

with YouTube videos, with podcasts, and I completely intend and recommend that you do do these techniques with those kinds of things.

So we're going to talk about how to adapt the process

I'm going to share with you using those other methods like YouTube videos, podcasts, etc. towards the end of the video,

but follow me here with the books example because it's going to be the most familiar to most of us.

So the first step is to turn reading from a passive activity into an active conversation.

I'm going to demonstrate this using How to Read a Book by Mortimer J.

Adler and Charles Van Doren.

You've probably seen this book all over the sort of like intellectual readers space on YouTube.

It's a very popular book about how to read.

And if you are a reader or if you're trying to get back into reading, I highly, highly recommend it.

My method is a little bit different than Adler and Van Doren's method, but it does start in the same general place, which is to make the text yours.

Now, making the book yours does involve annotating.

I like to annotate with a pencil, but if you can't or won't annotate in your books, I'll talk about how to do the same thing in a second.

So when I am annotating, I am looking for important passages that I like.

I'm starring things that I find interesting.

I'm mapping out arguments as I go.

I'm arguing with the author or I'm commenting that I like what the author is saying.

I'm noting important terms I think I'll want to research later.

And I am doing all of this lightning fast, Like truly, I'm just devouring the book.

And as I go through, I'm like, oh yeah, heck yeah, star there, argument there.

Occasionally, I will pause a little bit to write a more, like a bit of a longer passage or a question where I have them.

But really, this process is going super, super fast.

Because you just want to get through whatever you're consuming, know the shape of it, and then you can go back later and pull out the important threads to do some deeper learning.

So the first time you read something or you watch something or listen to something, just go through it all and note things as it feels natural to note them.

Obviously this is a non-fiction book, it's more of a how-to book, so the things I was doing in this are a little

bit different than what I would do in say a work of fiction.

Dracula is one of my favorite books ever, I reread it every couple of years.

It's so spooky and I just really like it.

So in this latest reread that I did last Halloween, I was marking things up like crazy.

So I was underlining passages that I really liked.

I was asking questions like, oh, is this what they're doing here?

I like this text.

I was noting character details that are implicit in the text, not explicit in the text.

And part of reading for me is also studying how people write.

So this is as much of an educational experience for me as it is a exercise in pleasure.

So I'm pulling out themes like love and friendship.

I'm also noting plot things that make me go like oh my god exclamation point exclamation point.

Like in this the character Mina is sort of like kept in the dark about something

and I was like oh my gosh she has no idea.

But I'm also noting things like oh he's doing a chapter break in the middle of a diary entry.

That's so interesting.

Why is he doing that?

Can I do this myself when to write my own epistolary fiction.

Stuff like that.

And this text is littered with those kinds of notes in addition to things like, oh my god, Dracula has shown up like, whoa.

So you can do this technique, like I said, with anything, even if it's most applicable to things like educational books or videos or podcasts.

But fiction works too, especially

if you are the type of person who will actually get a lot of learning out of reading fiction.

Now, if you can't or won't write in your book or

if you're using a library book or like a textbook that you borrowed from a friend.

I also like to read with a notebook beside me

so what I will do is I will jot down important page numbers from the book

and I'll come in here

and I'll write oh okay on page 242 there's a formula

for um what is this a formula for brand positioning

and by writing down a page number

and an annotation in a separate book I'm still engaging critically with the text and with what the author is arguing, but I'm not actually writing in the book.

And when we have these annotations or bullet points finished, we can go through them and extract the information we actually want to remember.

And we're going to do that using our notebook.

Handwriting, as you are no doubt aware of by now, slows down the mind and forces it to think about what it is writing.

So it creates this mind-body connection.

You take in the information and you output the physical strokes of your pen, feeling the tooth of the paper, the speed of your writing.

Typing just removes a ton of these elements.

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So I do recommend you do this with a notebook.

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And when you're done with a particular book, or in this case, we're going to use Ursula K.

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Le Guin's The Carrier Bag, A Theory of Fiction essay, you're going to go back and look through your annotations.

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Some of these annotations are just going to be fluff, which is totally fine.

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Their purpose was to help you engage with the text and now they're done.

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So that's okay.

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Like this one says, this one says Kubrick is trembling.

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Like I don't need to write that down, but it was just me engaging with what she was saying.

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So during this process, you're going to flip through the writing

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and you're going to find the most important pieces that you underline, the things that really made you go like, oh my god, holy crap.

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And we are going to pull them out and do three things with them.

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So for example, I'm going to take this passage that I underlined and also highlighted with a star, which means I really enjoyed it.

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And I'm going to go ahead and write it out.

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So you're going to copy down the exact quote or passage that struck you.

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I know it seems tedious to copy everything exactly as it is in the text by hand,

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but commonplace books have been used this way for thousands of years, and there is a reason.

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Copying text or quotes or passages directly helps you assume the role of the author, understand their arguments, and the flow of their language,

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and is actually going to help cement what they are saying in your brain better.

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But we're not going to stop here.

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Once you have copied the text exactly, then you're going to write out what the author is saying in your own words.

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You can use bullets, paragraphs, whatever works for you.

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Just make sure it is in your own words.

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Okay, so I'm going to do that with this passage right now.

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Okay, so I've written out what the passage means in my own words.

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You can see that I'm definitely not copying it directly.

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I even tried to use as few words as possible that she uses here.

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So for example, the word humanity is not mentioned in my passage

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because I wanted to find a way to describe what humanity was differently.

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Instead, I wrote what life is about, the lessons and interactions that make us human.

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That is sort of how I'm defining humanity, right?

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So I'm writing it out in my own words.

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I'm defining things differently.

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I'm not trying to mirror her syntax.

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I'm just trying to write myself what I think this passage means.

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And this paraphrasing is super critical to learning more deeply.

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So you write it out so that you understand the argument and that you understand what the author is saying.

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And then you prove that you understand what the author is saying by translating that and paraphrasing that into your own words, thus cementing it into your brain.

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When you hear yourself explain something or watch yourself write something down, that then becomes your knowledge.

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Writing is thinking.

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Keep that in mind.

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As an additional step, you can also write down what you think of the passage and the author's argument.

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So here we just wrote the author's passage.

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Here we rephrase it into our own words.

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And down at the bottom, or maybe you need a whole other page to argue and critique, you can write down what you think.

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Is anything missing?

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Are there any other places in the text where they provide answers?

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What do you like about the passage and what they're saying?

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This is gonna be just free journaling, so do whatever you want on the page.

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For the demonstration purposes of this video, because it's getting kinda long already, I'm just gonna write, I agree.

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I'll also write, this passage moved me, because it really did.

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I really do think this is a quite a good little essay

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and it did really move me as a woman and a writer of fiction.

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So again this can be as long or as short as you want.

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It can be as critical or as accepting as you want.

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Just really how you actually felt about the passage.

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I also might write because I think there's some other places she talks about this in the book.

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Yeah, on the previous page.

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So page 30.

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Page 30.

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More about womanhood.

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So yeah, write about what you think.

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Leave yourself little breadcrumbs for where you can find more information in the text.

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And then rinse and repeat, baby.

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All right, the last step, and the step that most people skip, is to integrate what you learn into your real life.

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Information that stays in your head or in your notebook is just trivia.

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Information that changes how you behave becomes wisdom.

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So whenever I read or learn something value, I try to apply it in one of four ways.

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I try to teach it to someone else, implement it as a self-improvement experiment, create content about it, or document it where I will actually use it.

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So I'm going to use an example from David Allen's Getting Things Done Here,

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which is an anti-procrastination project planning ritual that I actually have used and has actually saved my life before.

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Um, so the first option, by the way, peep the annotations here, girl is using her own methods.

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Okay, the first option you have is to teach what you learn, right?

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Teaching is super incredibly powerful because it forces you to organize the information, identify gaps in your understanding, and then regurgitate it to somebody else.

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So you don't need to be a teacher to explain it, like, to students or whatever.

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You can just have a conversation with your partner about it, or create a totally private PowerPoint presentation about it or even just practice explaining it out loud to yourself.

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The first thing is what I like to do, explaining it to my partner.

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We often have conversations about what we're learning or what we're thinking about during the day.

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And so having that as a backboard at

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which I can sort of throw whatever I've been learning allows me to integrate teaching into my everyday life.

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So when I learned this, I immediately turned around and explained it to my partner.

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Now let's get back to the video.

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The next way you can integrate information into your life is implementation.

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So after reading about the exercise that I just showed you, I actually applied it.

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I did actually apply it.

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This is an entry of me doing the sort of three-step project planning slash anti-procrastination ritual

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that he talks about in the book.

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I applied the exercise to a real problem that I was having, a real place where I was stuck and it actually did help me get unstuck.

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And the important part of doing this is that when you create a sort of self-improvement experiment, right?

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You are testing the things you learn in your real life.

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Sometimes you're gonna find that things work really well for your brain, like this works super well for me, but other stuff you're gonna find that you just cannot click with for whatever reason,

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but you'll only know that if you try them.

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So I really recommend trying what you learn as soon as you can.

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The third method I recommend for integrating it into your real life is creating content.

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Now I know I just said that the content ecosystem

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that we live in is crazy and is ruining our brains

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and all that kind of stuff

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but as a self-practice giving yourself an avenue whether that's YouTube

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or Substack or a newsletter like I mentioned above

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or even just an essay that you write and share with a friend even if there's no way to post it.

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Try to create some discrete piece of content around it.

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Think about it like the book reports you used to write in school

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or essays you used to write in school where that is a piece of content, right?

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That's a thing that you are creating.

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Maybe you write an article about it for your blog, something like that, because then you're going to be going back through the information, figuring out how you want to explain it,

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referencing your actual experience, talking about how that worked, how it didn't work, and essentially giving your opinion on what you read.

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Difference between teaching and giving an opinion.

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Teaching is going to be a little bit more straightforward about the practical pieces of whatever you learned.

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Content creation can be a little more freeform.

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It can be a little more whatever you want it to be, whether again, that's essay writing or YouTube videos.

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For me, I actually did make a YouTube video about the procrastination method I talk about in this book, and I will leave it linked up in the cards

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if you want to see what final form that sort of took for me.

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But yeah, go check it out because I actually did do the content on this method.

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And finally, what you want to do is you want to document the learnings somewhere you will use them.

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So you don't want to just document it in a notebook, for example, although a notebook can be really helpful.

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And like I said, writing things out is super useful for your brain.

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But the best way to do it is to actually put the information where you're going to use it.

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So, for example, that might be like meal cheat sheets on the fridge

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or it might be like instruction on how to annotate like on a bookmark that you keep in your books.

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For this particular example, the procrastination exercise, I actually have a sticky note that lives in the front of my planner

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that has the three steps of the procrastination exercise so that anytime I'm like going through my day, going through my life here,

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I can come back here and reference these steps and then on the day that I'm experiencing the procrastination or the stress, I can look at this and I can say,

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okay, step one, I got to write out what's bugging me.

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Step two, I got to write out what my success looks like, et cetera, et cetera.

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So put the information somewhere you will actually use it and watch it change your life.

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Because the other thing that this does is

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that it removes the friction inherent in having to look up over and over again

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this technique in the actual book or even in your notebook.

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Like you're not gonna have these things always with you.

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So when you segment it out and put the useful bits where they are most useful, it just removes all of that friction.

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Then you can use your information more and then that's great.

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That's why we're here.

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Finally, let's talk about making this work across all media.

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So e-readers will often have a built-in annotation system right in your Kindle or your Nook if a Nook is still around.

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I don't know.

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I don't really use e-readers, but even the PDF readers on your computer will have some kind of highlighting and noting function.

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So I recommend using that because it's pretty easy when you are reading things digitally.

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For everything else, I want you to use this method we talked about when writing in things like library books, where you write out the page numbers and then you write out your note or your keyword.

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For things like YouTube videos or podcasts, I recommend doing this method that we talked about earlier when reading a library book,

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for example, or something that you cannot mark up.

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Because usually you can't mark up a YouTube video or a podcast, right?

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I think there's some software that allows you to make bookmarks in those pieces of media

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or there are apps you can find

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that allow you to clip a piece from a podcast

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or from a YouTube video or something and it will transcribe it and it will automatically port it into your Evernote.

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I'm not super familiar with these pieces of apps or software

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because again I really believe in handwriting out what you want to learn

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but those exist and you can definitely look them up but

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if learning from things like youtube or podcasts i recommend having a notebook here

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and then instead of writing out the page number you write out the time stamp where something interesting was mentioned

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and then you can complete steps two

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and three as needed writing quotes verbatim paraphrasing them

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and then using them by incorporating them into your daily life

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the key is adapting this principle to any format you're engaging

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with you want to actively engage with the text by commenting

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on what the author is saying inside the book itself

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or in a separate notebook then you want to capture what

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the author is actually saying by hand figure out how to paraphrase it

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so that it cements it in your mind learn how you actually feel about it

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and then integrate it into your real life in those ways

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i mentioned earlier you can pause videos to ask questions argue with articles in your notes

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and always always always write down how you might actually use what you're learning

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because that is going to be the 100 best way to cement what you're learning in your brain forever

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and i would be remiss if i didn't also say

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that sometimes this process means consuming less stuff i mentioned the content ecosystem it is overwhelming

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if you want that information overload to go away

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if you want to actually learn deeply you have to go deep not wide

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so you have to pick your book of fiction

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that you really want to engage with and read over and over and over again, or you pick a book with a methodology

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that you want to learn front to back by heart so that it makes you smarter, makes you stronger, makes you whatever, and then you have to incorporate those things.

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Because if you're just relying on scrolling through 15 second video after 15 second video, I promise you none of that is going to be cemented in your head.

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Now you can of course adapt what I'm recommending to you here for a TikTok video.

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I don't see why not.

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But watch yourself scroll a lot less.

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Watch yourself learn a lot more deeply from that TikTok video

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when you employ some of these methods

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because it really is going to help you engage with what's coming into your ear

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so that it doesn't just go out the other.

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When you engage deeply with fewer things, instead of skimming through everything, you're not just retaining the information better, you're actually enjoying the process more too.

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This three-step system works whether you're reading fiction, diving into personal development books or even watching educational YouTube videos like this one.

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The key is choosing to go deeper rather than wider.

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If you'd like to go deeper on this particular topic, I have a newsletter where I talk about stuff like this in a lot more depth, so click on the link in the description or scan the QR code on the screen.

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And if you don't have a place in your system for content notes, you might want to check out this video about my thinking book or you can learn to make one for yourself.

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As always, thank you so much for watching, for being subscribed, for being awesome.

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I love you so much and I will see you in the next one.

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Bye.

✨ Recommend Video

75 sentences

Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson

This video has 298 sentences and 4492 words to shadow. The speech runs for 21:47. The speaker talks fast, about 206 words per minute, so expect linked and reduced sounds. 85% 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 less common words from the video, with pronunciation and meaning:

passage /ˈpæsɪd͡ʒ/ (noun) — A paragraph or section of text or music with particular meaning.
fiction /ˈfɪkʃən/ (noun) — Literary type using invented or imaginative writing, instead of real facts, usually written as prose.
engage /ɪnˈɡeɪd͡ʒ/ (verb) — To engross or hold the attention of; to keep busy or occupied.
notebook /ˈnoʊtˌbʊk/ (noun) — A book (physical or digital) in which notes or memoranda are written.
essay /ˈɛs.eɪ/ (noun) — A written composition of moderate length, exploring a particular issue or subject.
podcast /ˈpɑdˌkæst/ (noun) — A program, especially an audio program, produced on a regular basis, delivered over the Internet in a compressed digital format and designed for playback on…
integrate /ˈɪn.tɪ.ɡɹeɪt/ (verb) — To include as a constituent part or functionality.
consume /kənˈsum/ (verb) — To use up.
reader /ˈɹi.dɚ/ (noun) — A person who reads.
deeply /ˈdi(ː)pli/ (adverb) — To a deep extent or degree; very greatly.
argue /ˈɑɹ.ɡju/ (verb) — To show grounds for concluding (that); to indicate, imply.
incorporate /ɪŋˈkɔɹ.pɚ.eɪt/ (verb) — To include (something) as a part.
ecosystem /ˈikoʊˌsɪstəm/ (noun) — A system formed by an ecological community and its environment that functions as a unit.
newsletter /ˈn(j)uzˌlɛtɚ/ (noun) — A periodically sent publication containing current events or the like, generally on a particular topic or geared toward a limited audience.
humanity /hjuˈmænɪti/ (noun) — Humankind; human beings as a group.

Phrasal verbs you will hear

go through (verb) — To travel from one end of something to the other.
talk about (verb) — Used to draw attention to the speaker's characterization of someone or something.
write in (verb) — To write a letter to, e.g. a publication.
write out (verb) — To write at full length or in expanded form.
think about /ˈθɪŋk əˌbaʊt/ (verb) — To ponder.
write down (verb) — To produce or set (something) down in writing; to record something.
do in (verb) — To kill or end; to defeat.
figure out (verb) — To come to understand; to discover or find a solution; to deduce.

Pronunciation to watch

The speaker uses 123 contractions and reduced forms, such as I'm, you're, we're. Say them the short way, as you hear them.

The “th” sounds: thread /ˈθɹɛd/, tooth /tuθ/, methodology /ˌmɛθ.əˈdɑ.lə.d͡ʒi/
The “sh” and “zh” sounds: fiction /ˈfɪkʃən/, essentially /ɪˈsɛnʃəli/, friction /ˈfɹɪkʃən/, capture /ˈkæp.(t)ʃɚ/, sheet /ʃit/
Long words — get the stress right: incorporate /ɪŋˈkɔɹ.pɚ.eɪt/, ecosystem /ˈikoʊˌsɪstəm/, humanity /hjuˈmænɪti/, differently /ˈdɪf.ə.ɹənt.li/, essentially /ɪˈsɛnʃəli/

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 passage, fiction, engage.

Grammar in this video

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

Structure	In the video
Present perfect continuous have/has been + -ing — an action that started earlier and is still going on	has been doing · I've been getting · I've been learning
Conditional sentences if + clause, will/would + verb — a condition and its result	if you can't or won't annotate · if you can't or won't write
“Used to” used to + verb — a past habit or state that is no longer true	used to write
Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now	You've probably seen · has shown · have been

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: Forget Your Reading Journal, Do This Instead - Learn English Speaking with Video

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