Shadowing Practice: How To Be Dangerously Self-Educated | Napoleon's Philosophy - Learn English Speaking with Video
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Napoleon Bonaparte is a well -known self -educator and is often cited as being a huge bookworm.
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And even before becoming emperor, he wrote a manuscript for a novella which ended up never being published in his lifetime.
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And while there are so many videos and books and articles about the highly talked about controversial figure of the past,
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I hardly see any videos go into depth around his strategies for learning
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and how he was able to retain so much of the information that he'd studied from books because even on war campaigns,
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he would study books on war history.
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He would read fiction novels.
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He would read Plato, Socrates.
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He was a huge bookworm.
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And even while in the midst of travel, in the midst of warfare, right in the thick of it,
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he would still continue to study and take notes.
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And so I thought it'd be a good idea to look at his three major strategies for self -education
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and what we can learn from it and how we can apply it in our own day -to -day life.
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And so without further ado, let's get into his first tip for self -learning, which is to take notes in the book.
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He was a huge writer in all of the books that he'd read.
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He wouldn't just write notes on other pieces of paper,
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but he would write notes in the margins of each page of the book that he was reading.
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And the reported reason for why he did this is
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so he can actually have a dialogue with the person who wrote the book.
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When he'd read something that perhaps he disagreed with, he would argue with it in the margins.
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If he read something that he did agree with, then he would underline it and write why he agreed with it.
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This allowed him to be in a constant flow and dialogue with the book, which allows you to retain more information once you're done reading it.
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And there have been countless studies which have proven this to be very true.
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But also another reason for why he would do that is because when he'd come back and read the book,
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potentially six months later or a year later, he would be able to see where his head was at at the time of reading the book
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and know if he's changed his opinion or
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if potentially what he was arguing against he now believes to be true because he's had more life experience.
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It allows you to actually see the growth of your own education
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and go back to books and remember what you were thinking about the first time you read it.
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That allows you to continue your educational growth and also not forget lessons that you'd learned in the past.
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Because I think we can all relate to this where we remember more information from debates
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and arguments that we've had with other people than we do from most of the books that we read.
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And so by actually arguing with the book
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and being alive in the book and treating the book as something that's living right now and not just something to read,
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but something to actively engage with will allow you to retain
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so much more information and go deeper into the words that are being written.
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As it's one thing to write notes on another piece of paper
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or to contemplate the page or the chapter you just read after reading it,
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but it's another to actually engage with it like it's its own living thing.
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And honestly, I have tried this and I really, really enjoy it.
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I'm a huge note taker, but I don't just take notes in other books now.
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I now take notes in the books that I'm reading and write on the side of the page.
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However, I will say
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it does ruin the option of being able to pass the book over to someone else as potentially
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you wrote some very private information that you want to keep to yourself
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and you have to buy another copy if you plan on sharing books
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or giving away books that you like as a gift.
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But with that said, let's move on to tip number two from Napoleon for becoming a self -educator,
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and that is to read books under stress and plan to put it into immediate action.
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And like I said earlier in the video, Napoleon would read books while in the middle of warfare.
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And the reason he did this is that he believed that
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if you were under stress and you had to read with a purpose
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and retain information and read for a strategic advantage in whatever you're campaigning against or whatever you're looking to do in life,
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then you will have to put it into immediate application.
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And if you're putting it into immediate application, you want to extract the best knowledge and the best tips
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and the best strategic advice that you can from these books and put it into your life straight away.
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So you're going to remember more, but you're also going to be able to see if those lessons work.
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Now, of course, most of us are not gonna be in the middle of a military war campaign.
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We're not gonna have that level of stress.
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But the thing you can take from this is whatever you get from a book, if you find it valuable,
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try and find some way to apply it immediately and see if it actually works for you.
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See if you're comfortable with it.
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See if it's able to work in reality, if it's not just an abstract idea.
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And when you're also reading to put something into application straight away, you're going to be a lot more focused.
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on what you read.
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And once again, it puts you in an engagement with the book.
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It puts you in a dialogue with a book where you're actively seeking any sort of juice
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or informational lessons from the book that you can apply straight away.
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And now this doesn't work for every book that you read,
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because of course you're going to read some books and want to read it for leisure and keep it fun.
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But this is in regards to self -education.
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And I think the best way to learn is to constantly push yourself to put it into practice.
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Because I know, and I'm sure you know, we can all go down rabbit holes where we think we're learning a lot
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because we're watching a lot of videos or reading a lot of books, but we're never putting anything into practice.
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We're never putting anything into action.
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And when you don't do that, then you're not really learning anything.
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Because learning is not just about having the information and knowing what to do, but it's also knowing how you can do it.
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For example, we can all look at videos of the perfect golf swing,
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but if we go out to play golf just because we know what the perfect swing is,
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doesn't mean we're actually going to be able to do it.
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I think that's a really great example as to how important application
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and actually doing it is as opposed to just reading it.
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And so putting yourself in an environment where maybe you're setting a deadline for a paper
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or an essay
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or something you can write in private where you can actively put into application what you're learning
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and try and get some real world feedback
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or see how comfortable it is for you to apply it
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or see where you're struggling to apply the information that you're learning.
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And so it's really just about putting pressure on yourself to not get stuck in
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that loop of constantly consuming and thinking that that is helping you learn
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and thinking that because you can recite things or know things
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that that means you're a learned person and an educated person
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when in reality the learned person also needs to know how it applies in life as well.
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Very similar to that goodwill hunting scene where
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Robin Williams says to Matt Damon, yes, you can tell me what's in the Sistine Chapel.
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You can tell me about specific wars in Spain hundreds of years ago, but you can't tell me how it felt.
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You can't tell me how the Sistine Chapel smelt, what the feeling was in your soul.
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You can't tell me what it was like to love another person.
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And so it's much more about the real world application on top of the theory.
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With that said, moving on to lesson number three from Napoleon, which is to revisit core books all the time.
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Now, Napoleon wouldn't just read a book once, twice, three times, or four times he would go back time and time again.
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He really loved to go back and reread Plato
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and reread different philosophers and different historical biographies on wars because you never know what you've missed.
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And also you can never walk through the same river twice because once you've walked through a river, once you've had an experience,
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once you've read a book, you're therefore a changed person.
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And when you read it again, when you walk through that river again, so to speak, it's going to be a different experience.
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You're going to get something else from that book.
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And what makes the great books so great is the fact
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that they are way too deep and way too complicated to fully grasp everything on the first go.
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And it requires you to live some life on top of just reading.
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And then you can come back to it
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and take something more from it or see where you've grown
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or understand different concepts or just see it in a new way.
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And that is very, very important.
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And so Napoleon was a huge advocate for going back to a certain set of core books.
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Not every book.
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Not every book deserves to be reread over and over again.
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But certain books that are the most important ones, the ones that you hold dear to yourself,
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the ones that you think laid the foundation for your self -education,
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go back and read those time and time again as you're always going to get something else from it.
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If you're reading David Hume, if you're reading Nietzsche, if you're reading Plato, if you're reading Aristotle,
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there are so many great books out there that you can't just read five times or just 10 times.
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You've got to read them at least 20, 30 times over your lifetime in order to have the full
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experience of what those books can do for you in your self -education.
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And I think that was a really important one
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because I think in today's world where we have so many books that are coming out,
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it can be very easy to never go back and reread a great book.
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And when you know that you should, when you know that that's the right thing to do,
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it means that you're going to be very focused on not reading every book that ever gets published, on not going down every rabbit hole.
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You're going to be very focused on what you read.
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You want to read with a purpose.
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You want to choose your books wisely because you want to keep enough mental room,
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enough time in your life to go back and reread those great books.
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It's why I'm honestly, I'm someone who barely reads books that are published in the 21st century,
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because I think there are so many great books in the last 2000 years
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that how can I possibly squeeze much more in there?
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Now, there are some great books that have been published recently, and I do try and get to them,
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but I try my best to be as disciplined in not reading every shiny new object,
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just because it has a good cover just because it might have a nice plot,
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read the important books, the ones that you learn a lot from, go back and reread them time and time again.
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And Napoleon has the same advice there.
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And that wraps up today's video on Napoleon's three tips for self -education.
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And I think this was an important one to talk about because I think a lot of people today are self -educated.
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When you look at the internet, when you look at the boom of educational content on the internet,
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when you look at the boom of philosophy online, that's all people who are looking to be self -educated.
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And I do wanna say it's important to get a real education.
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You know, there's a lot of talk out there that university degrees are pointless today.
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I don't think that's the case.
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I do think they have lost some kind of value.
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They don't potentially hold the same amount of value as they used to have, but they are definitely important.
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But with the rise of self -education, you need to know how to educate.
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You at least need to know how you're going to go about your learning
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and not just read anything and go in any direction.
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You need some kind of structure.
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And so I hope this video helped you in some way.
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There are lots of lessons that I've taken from Napoleon in regards to how he educated himself, not really how he lived his life.
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Some differences there, but in regards to self -education, I've learned a lot from him.
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And I think you guys can too.
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And hopefully there was some information in this video that you did learn from.
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But with that said, hope you guys enjoyed the video and until next time, take care.
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This speaking lesson is built on the video “How To Be Dangerously Self-Educated”. This video has 160 sentences and 2308 words to shadow. The speech runs for 12:10. The speaker talks fast, about 190 words per minute, so expect linked and reduced sounds. 90% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English, so the vocabulary is easy to follow.
Key vocabulary in this video
15 words from the video worth learning, with pronunciation and meaning:
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| lesson noun | /ˈlɛs.ən/ | A section of learning or teaching into which a wider learning content is divided. |
| educate verb | /ˈɛd͡ʒ.əˌkeɪt/ | To instruct or train. |
| potentially adverb | /pəˈtɛnʃ(ə)li/ | In a manner showing much potential; with the possibility of happening in a given way. |
| retain verb | /ɹəˈteɪn/ | Often followed by from: to hold back (someone or something); to check, to prevent, to restrain, to stop. |
| argue verb | /ˈɑɹ.ɡju/ | To show grounds for concluding (that); to indicate, imply. |
| dialogue noun | /ˈdaɪəˌlɑɡ/ | A conversation or other form of discourse between two or more individuals. |
| actively adverb | /ˈæktɪvli/ | In an active manner. |
| regards noun | /ɹɪˈɡɑɹdz/ | A greeting to pass on to another person. |
| distress noun | /dɪˈstɹɛs/ | Physical or emotional discomfort, suffering, or alarm, particularly of a more acute nature. |
| strategic adjective | /stɹəˈti.dʒɪk/ | Of or pertaining to strategy. |
| lifetime noun | /ˈlaɪf.taɪm/ | The duration of the life of someone or something. |
| engage verb | /ɪnˈɡeɪd͡ʒ/ | To engross or hold the attention of; to keep busy or occupied. |
| swing verb | /ˈswɪŋ/ | To rotate about an off-centre fixed point. |
| boom verb | /bum/ | To make a loud, hollow, resonant sound. |
| margin noun | /ˈmɑɹ.d͡ʒɪn/ | The edge of the paper, typically left blank when printing but sometimes used for annotations etc. |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| go back verb | To return to a place or state after having been there at a previous time. | |
| walk through verb | To explain (something) to (someone), step by step. | |
| go back to verb | To stem from; to originate in. | |
| go down verb | To descend; to move from a higher place to a lower one. | |
| come back verb | To return to a place. | |
| come out verb | /ˌkʌm ˈaʊt/ | To be discovered; to be revealed. |
| end up verb | To bring to a conclusion. | |
| give away verb | To make a gift of (something). |
Sentences worth repeating
Short, complete lines from the video that you can reuse in everyday conversation:
- We're not gonna have that level of stress.
- See if you're comfortable with it.
- We're never putting anything into action.
- You're going to get something else from that book.
- I don't think that's the case.
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 been · we've had · have tried |
| Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing | learning, which is · person who wrote · studies which have |
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | is often cited · being published · being written |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 68 contractions and reduced forms, such as you're, we're, you've. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: potentially /pəˈtɛnʃ(ə)li/, fiction /ˈfɪkʃən/, controversial /ˌkɑn.tɹəˈvɝ.ʃəl/, leisure /ˈlɛʒə(ɹ)/, informational /ˌɪnfəˈmeɪʃənəl/
- Long words — get the stress right: potentially /pəˈtɛnʃ(ə)li/, educator /ˈɛd͡ʒəkeɪtɚ/, complicated /ˈkɑm.plɪˌkeɪ.tɪd/, controversial /ˌkɑn.tɹəˈvɝ.ʃəl/, biography /baɪˈɑɡɹəfi/
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 lesson, educate, potentially.
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.