Shadowing Practice: How Much Sleep Do You Actually Need? - Learn English Speaking with Video
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Tired? We all know the feeling; irritable, groggy and exceptionally lazy. Chances are you didn't sleep enough last night, or the past few nights. But what exactly is "enough sleep?" And more importantly, can you ever "catch up" on it?
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While the very function of sleep is still debated by scientists, we do know that it's necessary to function efficiently and productively. After all, we spend 24 years of our lifetime sleeping, it had better be important. Researchers have tested how much is required each night by assigning groups of people to four, five, and eight hours of sleep over extended periods of time. After 14 days, those with eight hours of sleep exhibited few attention lapses of cognitive issues; however, those with six or four hours of sleep showed a steady decline. In fact, after only two weeks, the six hour group showed a similar reaction time to a person with a blood alcohol concentration of 0.1%, which is considered legally drunk. The four hour sleepers suffered even more, occasionally falling asleep during their cognitive tests. In both groups, brain function decreased day by day, almost linearly with no sign of leveling off.
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Scientists have dubbed this cumulative effect as sleep debt. So can we recover from it?
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After a night or two of little sleep, studies show that the body and brain can fully recover with a few nights of good sleep. However, with long term sleep deprivation on the scale of weeks to months, the recovery of cognitive function is much slower, requiring many more nights of quality sleep. On the timescale of months to years, it is unknown whether brain function can be fully repaired, or if it causes permanent damage. Paradoxically, with chronic sleep deprivation, your sleepiness or how tired you feel does eventually level off, meaning that you become less and less aware of your objective impairment over time.
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So how long should you sleep? Most studies tend to show that seven to eight hours of sleep is the average ideal for humans. Apart from the cognitive issues, individuals who consistently sleep less than seven hours a night have an increased risk of heart disease, obesity and diabetes, not to mention a 12% higher risk of death. On the flip side, studies have shown that while sleeping more than eight hours does not impair brain function, it also carries an increased risk of heart disease, obesity and diabetes, and a 30% increased risk of mortality!
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So too much sleep may also be a bad thing.
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But variation most certainly exists, and our genetics play a large role. In fact, individuals genuinely unaffected by only six hours of sleep were found to have a mutation of a specific gene. When scientists genetically engineered mice to express this gene, they were able to stay awake for an extra 1.2 hours than normal mice. It turns out these short sleepers have more biologically intense sleep sessions than the average person.
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Ultimately, while it's important to know the ideal average of seven to eight hours exists, let your body and brain help you figure out its own needs. After all, no one shoe size fits all. If you want to know how to get better quality sleep each night in order to conquer the hurdles of sleep deprivation, we have some tips and research for you over on ASAPThought.
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You can find a link in the description below to that video.
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Thanks to Audible.com for giving you a free audio book of your choice at audible.com/asap.
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Audible is the leading provider of audio books with over 150,000 downloadable titles across all types of literature. We recommend the 'A Song of Ice and Fire' series, which the Game of Thrones TV show is based off of. It's kept us up through the nights and caused a lot of lost sleep! You can download this audio book or another of your choice for free at audible.com/asap. And with a subscription you can get one free book a month, so you can read the whole series! Special thanks to Audible for making these videos possible.
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And subscribe for more weekly science videos!
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This video has 12 sentences and 689 words to shadow. The speech runs for 3:23. The speaker talks fast, about 204 words per minute, so expect linked and reduced sounds. 82% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English; the rest is worth studying before you start.
Key vocabulary in this video
15 words from the video worth learning, with pronunciation and meaning:
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| cognitive adjective | /ˈkɑɡ.nɪ.tɪv/ | Relating to the part of mental functions that deals with logic, as opposed to affective which deals with emotions. |
| audio adjective | /ˈɔ.di.oʊ/ | Focused on audible sound, as opposed to sight. |
| scientist noun | /ˈsaɪəntəst/ | One whose activities make use of the scientific method to answer questions regarding the measurable universe. A scientist may be involved in original research… |
| ideal adjective | /aɪˈdi(ə)l/ | Pertaining to ideas, or to a given idea. |
| gene noun | /d͡ʒiːn/ | A theoretical unit of heredity of living organisms which may take several values and (in principle) predetermines a precise trait of an organism's form… |
| mouse noun | /maʊs/ | Any mammal of the many rodent families (especially Muridae) that have a small body and a long tail. |
| recover verb | /ɹɪˈkʌvɚ/ | To get back, to regain (a physical thing; in astronomy and navigation, sight of a thing or a signal). |
| diabetes noun | /ˌdaɪəˈbiːtiːz/ | Diabetes mellitus; any of a group of metabolic diseases whereby a person (or other animal) has high blood sugar due to an inability to produce, or inability to… |
| obesity noun | /ə(ʊ)ˈbiːsɪti/ | The state of being obese. |
| suffer verb | /ˈsʌfɚ/ | To undergo hardship. |
| repair verb | /ˈɹiːpɛɚ/ | To restore to good working order, fix, or improve damaged condition; to mend; to remedy. |
| decline verb | /dɪˈklaɪn/ | To move downwards, to fall, to drop. |
| intense adjective | /ɪnˈtɛns/ | Of a characteristic: extreme or very high or strong in degree; severe; also, excessive, towering. |
| lifetime noun | /ˈlaɪf.taɪm/ | The duration of the life of someone or something. |
| occasionally adverb | /əˈkeɪʒənəli/ | On occasion: at relatively infrequent intervals, from time to time, sometimes. |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Meaning |
|---|---|
| figure out verb | To come to understand; to discover or find a solution; to deduce. |
| turn out verb | To end up; to result. |
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | have tested · have dubbed · have shown |
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | is still debated · were found · is based |
Pronunciation to watch
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: occasionally /əˈkeɪʒənəli/, concentration /ˌkɑn.sənˈtɹeɪ.ʃən/, shoe /ˈʃu/, variation /ˌvɛəɹiˈeɪʃn̩/, subscription /səbˈskɹɪpʃən/
- Long words — get the stress right: obesity /ə(ʊ)ˈbiːsɪti/, occasionally /əˈkeɪʒənəli/, concentration /ˌkɑn.sənˈtɹeɪ.ʃən/, consistently /kənˈsɪstəntli/, genuinely /ˈd͡ʒɛn.ju.ɪn.li/
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 cognitive, audio, scientist.
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.