Shadowing Practice: Get Band 9 After Using These Reading Strategies - Learn English Speaking with Video
Creating lesson...
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Over 20 years, I've discovered that the key reason
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that students don't get the score that they need in the reading test is not because they're bad at reading.
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It is often they're just following the wrong advice.
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And if you follow the wrong advice, you're going to get a much lower score.
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So what we're going to cover today is the big myths, common advice that students believe about the test that doesn't actually work.
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Then we'll look at the real difference.
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What really separates out the people who struggle with the IELTS test to the people that easily get a bad 7, 8 or 9.
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strategies that you can use to apply to all the different types of questions on test day.
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So the biggest myth about IELTS reading and IELTS in general is just practice more.
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All you have to do is just practice and you will magically get the score that you need.
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Let's look at why that is wrong because many of you watching might completely disagree with that.
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So I want to tell you about two of my friends, Johnny and Emma.
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Johnny is a farmer.
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His dad was a farmer.
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He grew up on a farm.
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His dad
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was like nine years old Johnny has been illegally driving his dad's car around his farm
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and then we have Emma Emma is my other friend
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and she never touched the steering wheel of a car she never learned how to drive until she was 18
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and she got a driving instructor to tell her exactly what to do who do you think failed their test
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and who do you think passed their test Johnny with 10 years a six weeks of driving experience.
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You've guessed it, Johnny failed multiple times and Emma passed first time.
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Why was that even though Johnny had hundreds, even thousands of hours of practice?
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Well, Johnny had never been taught how to drive properly.
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He had been driving incorrectly, practicing the wrong thing, ingraining those bad habits for years and years and years.
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tricks that don't actually work they practice practice practice using those tips
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and tricks and their reading skills get worse not better the second big myth
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that i see very very common advice is all you need are time management tips
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and this is magically going to improve your score this is completely wrong why
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so you'll probably recognize this guy Usain Bolt he was the fastest
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he go on to google and google time management tips no why did he win gold
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because he was better at running than all these other guys
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these other guys weren't bad at time management they were worse
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at running he was the best runner therefore he finished the
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race in the fastest time this is exactly the same with
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the ielts reading test i did the test the real test and i got band 9 in reading
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because I'm a native English speaker, of course I should get a Bandai, but I did it in 20 minutes.
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How did I do it in 20 minutes?
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Through time management techniques?
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No, I'm just really, really good at reading in English.
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So you don't have a time management problem, you have a reading skills problem.
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You need to address the actual problem and fix the problem that you actually
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I got a new class when I used to teach 16 students in the classroom.
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First question I asked at the start of the first reading class, I would say, what's the key to getting a high score?
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Hands would go up, it would always say skimming and scanning.
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And then I would give them a practice question and say, okay, just skim and scan and find the correct answer.
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None of them were able to do that.
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Why did you think that was the correct answer?
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Well, that's what everybody says.
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Well, what everybody says is not necessarily the thing that you should be doing.
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average reading score worldwide is a band six.
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If the common advice was correct, the average score would be much much higher than a band six.
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So many of you might disagree, so let me demonstrate this to you.
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I want you to imagine that we are in a helicopter and we're flying over New York and I say to you,
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your task is to find McDonald's in Times Square.
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So we're flying over Manhattan here, Jersey, right here we have Queens, we have Brooklyn, we have different areas.
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Skimming is just getting a general idea of where you are.
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It is giving you a general idea of what the reading text actually means.
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So we're flying over here, we have a general idea that we are in the correct place.
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But can you see McDonald's?
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No, we are too far up.
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So skimming helps, but it doesn't help you find the correct answer.
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We land the helicopter.
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You still have the task of finding McDonald's in Times Square.
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Scanning, does that help you find the correct answer?
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Well, scanning helps you find the general location, the correct paragraph, the correct area.
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It doesn't actually help you find the correct answer.
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So if we look here, we know we're generally in Times Square.
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Okay, this looks like Times Square, but where's
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scanning just tells you you're in the right area you're getting warmer close reading is the skill
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that actually gets you the correct answer and it's one
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that is very very rarely taught in most IELTS classrooms and
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if you didn't use that skill you would just be flying around New York
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or flying around America not really knowing what to do that's
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what most students do on test day they're just looking at stuff
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and not really knowing where the correct answer is and Most classrooms will only teach you two reading skills.
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They'll teach you skimming and they'll teach you scanning.
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We actually teach five.
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So number one, understand the question.
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Simply if you do not understand the question, the question type, what it is telling you, the instructions, you will never be able to answer it correctly.
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We do teach skimming, we do teach scanning, then close reading, carefully analyzing the text, carefully thinking about it once you have found the area that you're looking for.
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And then very, very importantly, overlooked is deciding the correct answer.
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So you might have, okay, it could be this or it could be that multiple choice, for example, or true, false, not given.
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We need to logically think through and use a system for finding the correct answer.
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Okay, so what you might be thinking now is you said system, you said strategy, just teach me one system and I can go in and magically get a band nine.
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I wish that were true.
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If it were true, my life would be much easier and I would give it to you.
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there are different question types and they are testing different things
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and we've step -by -step strategies for all of those different question types.
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I'm going to give them to you.
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It's actually in this ebook that you can download.
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You can go to
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the description and we give you the full ebook that has every single question and every single step -by -step strategy.
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We normally only give that to our VIP students, but you can get it for free today.
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But let's look at why this is really, really important because some of you might download that ebook and
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skim through it and not really understand what you need to do.
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Let me explain the why.
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Why you need different strategies for different question types.
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So I want you to imagine that we are in New York.
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I say to you, you're going to go to Las Vegas and I am going to go to Seattle.
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Would we travel along the exact same route?
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Would we use the same strategy to get there?
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Of course not.
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But that's exactly what many IELTS students do.
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So there are different question types that require different strategies, but they're all following the same route and they end up getting very, very different answers.
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So just like New York, Seattle, Las Vegas are very, very different places, Here are three different question types, and I wanna show you how different these are.
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So matching headings, what it is asking you to do with a matching headings question is understand the main ideas on the paragraph.
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So to look at paragraphs and understand the general meaning of each paragraph.
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True, false, not given, what it is testing is something completely different.
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It's actually the opposite.
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What they're testing is can you closely read things within that paragraph, and then logically analyze the different question options.
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The multiple choice is careful comparison between different things, but also the elimination of different distractors,
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really focusing in on what the question is actually asking you and what the correct answer might be.
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Three completely different questions requiring three completely different strategies.
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So let's look at the strategy for matching headings contained within this ebook.
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So what skills are being tested here?
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between two or more similar headings.
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So the common problems are there's a lot of information to process.
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It takes quite a lot of time if you try and understand every single word.
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There are a few other little problems but that's the main one.
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So let me show you a strategy that we've developed for matching headings that helps you overcome all of these problems.
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So what I want you to do is ignore all of this.
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I want you just to focus in on this paragraph, paragraph D.
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So what we're to look at the headings.
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So most people will first look at the headings.
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They'll kind of get lost or they'll read every single word and waste a lot of time.
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What I want you to do is just focus in on D.
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And I want you to create a title.
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So if you had to write a title for this, what would it be?
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So pause the video, read this and create your own title.
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And I'll do the same.
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So what I'm going to put here for
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world population affected by water problems so it might not say
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that in the actual headings it might be something different
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but large big proportion number population people are affected afflicted by these issues
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so what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna look at the list of headings and I'm gonna see No,
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customers, no. It's not talking about customers.
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What makes the device different?
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No, cleaning water from range of sources?
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No, overcoming production difficulties?
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No, profit, not the primary goal?
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No, a warm welcome for the device?
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No, this is not looking good.
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The number of people affected by water shortages?
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None of these match this.
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This one, 10 at the bottom, is the correct answer.
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So 17D, we're going to put 10.
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Let's check the correct answer.
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As you can see, 17X, correct answer.
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How easy was that? That took...
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30 seconds and you were able to immediately find the correct answer using the strategy that we teach.
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That's the exact same strategy as is included in the ebook.
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But even students who download the PDF, learn all of the strategies, some of them still have issues.
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What we discovered is that the IELTS reading test is not actually a reading test.
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It's something different.
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I'll show you what it is here.
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The title will kind of give it away.
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The reading test is is not a reading test, why?
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Well, have a look here.
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These are real question words and real words in the text from real tests that actually happened.
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So here in the question, it talked about civil calendar, but in the text, it talked about municipal calendar.
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Months were in equal length, 12 months of 30 days.
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Divided the day into two equal halves, split the day into 12 hour periods.
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Two equal halves of a day, 12 hour periods.
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You're probably starting to see that the reading test not just a reading test, it is a vocabulary test, it is a synonyms test.
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Civil and municipal equal length, 30 days within a month, these are all synonyms or paraphrasing.
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If you do not understand the meaning of these words, you will not be able to find the correct answer.
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Therefore, what we do is we help our students improve their vocabulary.
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And the beauty of this strategy is, if you improve your vocabulary, you improve not just your reading score,
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and your writing score all at the same time.
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Because vocabulary is one of those foundation systems that improves everything.
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But like everything, the IELTS test there's a right way and a wrong way to improve your vocabulary.
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The wrong way to improve your vocabulary is to do things like this.
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Memorizing word lists, they just go in one ear and out the other.
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Using flashcards with no context, doesn't really help you remember anything if there's no context around it.
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'Cause you'll just forget everything quickly.
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this just leads to demotivation.
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People can do it for 10 minutes, they can't do it for 10 weeks.
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So what we discovered was a far more effective way.
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It's our vocabulary improvement plan.
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There's scientific research out there that suggests that the maximum number of words
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that human beings in any language can learn in one day is between about 8 to 12.
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Once you start going past 12 new words, your brain kind of fills up and you need a little bit of rest and the next 24 -hour period, that up a little bit more.
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What that means is you need to learn vocabulary over a long period of time, weeks and months.
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How do we get students to do that?
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By reading and learning what they love.
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My little boy loves Japanese manga.
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I would get him to read that.
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My wife loves cooking, so I would get her to read cookbooks.
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And what that forces you to do is learn words within context.
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When we see a word that we don't understand, we underline it, we look at the other words around it, based on that.
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That's exactly the same way babies and children learn the English language.
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Again, everything is based on real research of what actually works within language acquisition.
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And that means that you retain the vocabulary, you actually remember it.
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Because if my little boy is, and I actually, this is how I actually teach him, I get him to read about Banga and find new words and find vocabulary.
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I get him to write essays about that thing because he is going to
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do it without even knowing about it and then he looks forward to actually practicing.
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So here's the vocabulary improvement plan.
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You can download this but You can look through it step by step.
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It is pretty great.
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We love it.
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Our students love it.
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And the most important thing is get a little notebook and just add new stuff to it every day.
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And within weeks, within months, you have a full notebook full of new words, and it makes everything much, much easier.
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So now you're more comfortable with everything to do with IELTS reading.
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Let's move on to speaking.
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This B2 speaking lesson is built on the video “Get Band 9 After Using These Reading Strategies”. The speaker keeps coming back to these words: reading, test, correct, answer, word. This video has 206 sentences and 2550 words to shadow. The speech runs for 15:08. The speaker talks at a natural 168 words per minute, close to everyday conversation. 89% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English, so the vocabulary is easy to follow.
Key vocabulary in this video
The 15 most advanced words in the video, with pronunciation and meaning:
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| vocabulary noun | /vəˈkæb.jə.lə.ɹi/ | A usually alphabetized and explained collection of words e.g. of a particular field, or prepared for a specific purpose, often for learning. |
| skim verb | /skɪm/ | To pass lightly; to glide along in an even, smooth course; to glide along near the surface. |
| paragraph noun | /ˈpæɹəɡɹæf/ | A passage in text that starts on a new line, the first line sometimes being indented, and usually marks a change of topic. |
| scan verb | /skæn/ | To examine sequentially, carefully, or critically; to scrutinize; to behold closely. |
| bind verb | /ˈbaɪ̯nd/ | To tie; to confine by any ligature. |
| magically adverb | /ˈmæd͡ʒ.ɪ.kli/ | In a magical manner; by magic, or as if by magic. |
| myth noun | /mɪθ/ | A traditional story which embodies a belief regarding some fact or phenomenon of experience, and in which often the forces of nature and of the soul are… |
| classroom noun | /ˈklɑːsɹʊm/ | A room, often in a school, where classes take place. |
| logically adverb | /ˈlɑd͡ʒɪˌkli/ | In a logical manner, with logic. |
| synonym noun | /ˈsɪn.əˌnɪm/ | A term (word or phrase) which is synonymous with others. |
| notebook noun | /ˈnoʊtˌbʊk/ | A book (physical or digital) in which notes or memoranda are written. |
| analyze verb | /ˈæn.əˌlaɪz/ | To subject to analysis. |
| disagree verb | /dɪsəˈɡɹi/ | To fail to agree; to have a different opinion or belief. |
| helicopter noun | /ˈheliːˌkɔptə(ɹ)/ | An aircraft that is borne along by one or more sets of long rotating blades which allow it to hover, move in any direction including reverse, or land; and… |
| farmer noun | /ˈfɑɹ.mɚ/ | A person who works the land and/or who keeps livestock; anyone engaged in agriculture on a farm. |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Meaning |
|---|---|
| end up verb | To bring to a conclusion. |
| fill up verb | To make (something) completely full. |
| go past verb | To elapse. (said of time) |
| go up verb | To move upwards. |
| look forward to verb | To anticipate, expect, or wait for, especially with a feeling of approval or pleasure; to be excited or eager to. |
| look through verb | To take a view of the contents of; search in, either with the eyes or by hand. |
| think through verb | To fully consider, so as to understand all the consequences of. |
Sentences worth repeating
Short, complete lines from the video that you can reuse in everyday conversation:
- Why did you think that was the correct answer?
- Scanning, does that help you find the correct answer?
- Would we travel along the exact same route?
- Would we use the same strategy to get there?
- How do we get students to do that?
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| Conditional sentences if + clause, will/would + verb — a condition and its result | If it were true, my life would be |
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | I've discovered · has been · You've guessed |
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | been taught · being tested · are affected |
| Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing | people who struggle · students who download |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 54 contractions and reduced forms, such as I'm, we're, you're. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: flashcard /ˈflæʃˌkɑɹd/, shortage /ˈʃɔː(ɹ)tɪd͡ʒ/, elimination /ɪlɪmɪˈneɪʃ(ə)n/, proportion /pɹəˈpɔɹʃən/, instruction /ɪnˈstɹʌkʃən/
- Long words — get the stress right: vocabulary /vəˈkæb.jə.lə.ɹi/, helicopter /ˈheliːˌkɔptə(ɹ)/, incorrectly /ˌɪnkəˈɹɛk(t).li/, illegally /ɪˈliːɡəli/, elimination /ɪlɪmɪˈneɪʃ(ə)n/
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 vocabulary, skim, paragraph.
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.