Shadowing Practice: How To Improve Your Reading Comprehension - Learn English Speaking with Video

The more you read, the better you read.

Hi there, Steve Kaufmann here, and today I want to talk about how to improve reading comprehension.

Uh, it's a subject, a question that I get asked quite often, uh, but first, if you enjoy these videos, please subscribe.

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Reading comprehension is crucial.

Now, a lot of people actually feel that they have good reading comprehension, but they have trouble speaking.

However, there are also a lot of people who don't have great reading comprehension, who read slowly, and this of course is an obstacle to improving in the language, even in our own native language.

The faster we can read, the more quickly we understand what we're reading, the faster we can acquire information through reading and that ability to read, the speed with which we read, that sort of functional literacy, that that, uh, those skills they build on themselves.

It's, it's a bit like the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.

If you have uh, better reading skills, you read faster.

As you read faster, you learn more, you get better at reading and just get better and better and better.

So how do we, for people who have trouble reading in the language they're learning, is there a way to break that, um, kind of vicious circle?

Well, first thing is to read, as I just indicated, to be a good reader, to improve your comp...

reading comprehension, you have to read a lot.

Okay? But let's say you have trouble reading.

It could be for any number of reasons.

First of all, if you're reading in a foreign language, you're not used to reading in that language.

You may not be used to reading in the, um, the script, you know, but there again, the only solution is to do more of it.

You just have to do more of it.

But the other things that I find helpful are listening.

Okay. Listening combined with reading is very powerful.

I find that if I read something, you know, without, like, without preparation, I have more difficulty reading it.

If I can listen to it first, I have an idea of what's there.

I have some momentum.

Momentum even in so far as the intonation is concerned.

Then I do better when I go to read.

Also, in languages where I have trouble reading, like Arabic and Persian, I use LingQ and I go in sentence mode so that I might go through the lesson once in sentence mode and then again in in lesson mode.

But it, it just helps me to focus in on one sentence at a time.

And then of course, in order to be able to have good reading comprehension, you need a large vocabulary because every time you come across a word that you don't know, it's, it disturbs you.

You're, you've got a certain flow and you've got meaning.

And ideally, you want the meaning to flow into your brain without you having to translate in your own lang...

into your own language.

And every time you hit a word you don't know, it slows you down.

You gotta look up the word you've lost that, uh, momentum.

So building up vocabulary is extremely important, but in a way it sort of gets back to the same thing.

In other words, the more you read, the better you read.

The more you read, the more words you acquire.

The more words you acquire, the better you read.

So it's all a virtuous.

You have to continuously sort of put yourself in front of reading material, and also I would suggest you vary the difficulty level between challenging material, which might have a lot of new words and easy material that has very little in the way of new words.

I have found that since my goal is to become a fluent reader in whatever language I'm learning, but at the same time to acquire more words, I have found that 15% unknown words as we count them at LingQ is kind of a sweet spot.

I'm acquiring enough new words.

I'm not just reading material that has all known words.

However, if that sort of unknown words total is 30%, 25%, it's too difficult.

It slows me down.

I don't develop any genuine fluency in, uh, in the language.

So to improve your reading comprehension, read more, increase your vocabulary.

Use audio use tools like, you know, the sentence view at LingQ.

Immerse yourself more in the language.

If there are structures that give you trouble, like some people complain that, you know, in German you've got the separated verbs, uh, you know, long sentences with a verb comes at the end.

Or people reading in Japanese that find that because that those languages are structured little diff...

differently, it's difficult to read.

True. But that's all the more reason why you have to read more.

And that's all the more reason why you have to listen more, because very often when you hear those sentences spoken by the native speaker with a normal cadence, the normal intonation, the normal rhythm, it's easier to understand because the voice of the narrator of the speaker, putting the emphasis in the right place makes those sentences easier to understand.

When you don't have the benefit of that audio and you're just reading very often you, you're pushing uphill here, you don't have that momentum that, that, that sense of, of, of what the meaning is, which the narrator will often impart.

So I definitely recommend, particularly in languages where you find it difficult to read, because the structure is so different that you use audio.

By the same token, there are people who say, I can read, I have no trouble reading but I don't understand what I hear.

So I think if those people would also put more emphasis on listening, like I, I had a good friend who, who enjoyed reading French literature but couldn't understand an audio book.

And I said, you should listen to an audio book that you're reading so that you get the two working together to make you a better reader.

Not only better able to understand spoken, the spoken language, this happened to be French, but also that you become a better reader.

So those are some of the things...

I had made some notes, but I can't remember uh, what I had written down here.

But, uh, you know, it all comes down to the same, uh, in other words, to become good at a language, and of course, the good listening comprehension leads to good reading comprehension.

Good reading comprehension means you have a large vocabulary, with that, you're also going to be able to speak better, use words better.

It's all tied, it's all interconnected.

So, uh, I hope that's, And, uh, to improve your reading comprehension.

Read more and use audio to help you get that momentum going to improve your reading.

Thank you for listening.

Bye for now.

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 Practice: How To Improve Your Reading Comprehension - Learn English Speaking with Video

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What is the Shadowing Technique?