Shadowing Practice: How to Journal (Like a Philosopher) - Learn English Speaking with Video
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So if you want to start journaling, it's actually pretty simple.
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There are basically three steps.
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First, just get a journal.
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Find one that you like.
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I like these Lloyd's term soft covers lately.
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Second, get a pen that you like to write with.
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I really like fountain pens, but you should just pick whatever works for you.
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And third, the step is to just write.
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Make a habit of it.
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Try to write every day if you can.
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And if you can't write every day, just write when you feel like it.
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It really is that simple.
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But every time I talk about journaling on this channel, I get one question I'm going to give you a guide to journaling.
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I'm going to tell you what to do when the words aren't flowing.
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And along the way, I am going to talk about journaling's relationship to self -improvement, which is one reason so many of us journal, and also the philosophy behind it all.
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If I'm struggling to write, I found that there is a reliable structure that I can follow that lets me write about a page's worth of content.
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First, I write a paragraph about something that happened that day, or if I'm journaling in the morning, something that happened the day before.
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I'm just writing about some event in my life, something that was notable.
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I'm being selective here.
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I'm not writing about everything that happened to me, and I am not aiming for this to be a comprehensive account of my entire day.
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So as an example, a few days ago, I was writing in my journal about something that happened at work.
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Basically, this event occurred.
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The details don't really matter for this video, but it was something that I found very stressful, but it turned out to be a misunderstanding on my part.
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and There was some stress for me until it was resolved.
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That was a notable enough event that I decided to write about it in my journal.
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So after I've written my factual account of the event in my life, I then try to write about something that I did well.
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This is something I can feel proud of.
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This is an achievement or a little bit of a success, a small victory,
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or even just an instance where I was able to reliably fall back on a habit that I've built up over time.
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to actually figure out what I would need to do to solve the problem.
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Now, because it turned out it was a misunderstanding, I didn't actually have to do much.
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But what I was proud of was
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that I broke the problem up into some smaller problems and started solving the most important ones.
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After I've written that paragraph, I write a paragraph about what did not go well.
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This is an opportunity for me to identify problem areas in my life, to identify places where I want to improve.
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These can over again.
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Or it could be bad habits that I've cultivated that I want to try and break.
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So I'm someone who's prone to anxiety.
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And when a problem arises, I tend to spiral for a little bit.
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I can usually then collect myself and solve the problem.
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But I always go through that anxiety spiral.
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And I want to stop doing that.
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So I try and identify times when I let my anxiety get the best of me.
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And then I try and think about how I can avoid that.
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What are the conditions that make
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to follow because one very effective technique for combating anxiety is figuring out where the anxious mind goes wrong
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and actually being able to reason with yourself
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so far i have written about an event i have written about something i'm proud of
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and something that i'm not proud of a success and a failure
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but after that there's still something else worth writing and
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that is when i try and zoom out
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and think about the bigger picture this part really isn't a paragraph it can
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pages on those days when I have a lot to think about.
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What I'm really trying to do is figure out what this event has in common with other events in my life.
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Or really, I am trying to fit this event into a larger narrative about my life.
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I am giving a sort of internal logic to my life story, and I am using my journal as an opportunity to do that.
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Let's talk a little bit more about this and the philosophy behind it.
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Many philosophers, just to name a few, Charles Taylor, Alistair McIntyre, Martin Heidegger, there are many others, but those are some notable names.
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They think of persons as primarily storytelling beings.
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So what makes us
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persons as opposed to mere animals is that we are able to construct and tell a narrative about ourselves.
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It's not as if we all have a formal narrative written down.
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Despite being someone who has consistently journaled for about a decade, it's not like I have written an autobiography of myself.
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And even those who write autobiographies don't write totally comprehensive accounts of their lives.
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But as we live our lives, we are thinking about how events relate to one another,
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We are looking for coherence and we are placing them in a more or less linear format.
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We're being selective.
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We think about some events more than others, but all the time as we live, we are constructing a narrative about ourselves.
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As we tell this story about ourselves and construct this narrative, really we are constructing who we are.
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What I think is interesting though, is that most of us don't take an active role in this construction.
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We do it out of habit and routine. to break the routine.
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It is designed actually to take a more intentional and active role in telling my life story to myself.
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If my life is a story.
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I want to be its author.
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but I also want to be a good author And that takes practice.
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Journaling is my practice.
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The idea is that I want to go beyond a fragmented account of my life.
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Julia Anis, who is an ethicist and a scholar of ancient philosophy who I really admire, calls this making sense of one's life as a whole.
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She discusses this at length in the first chapter of her book, The Morality of Happiness, a book that I highly recommend.
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Even if you're not an academic philosopher, it's pretty readable.
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According to Anis, ancient ethics begins with one simple question.
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Am I satisfied with my life as a whole, with the way that it has developed and the way that it promises to continue?
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For ancient philosophers like Aristotle, the central problem of ethics is happiness, or what they would call eudaimonia.
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We could also call that human flourishing.
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Achieving happiness is no easy task.
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It takes work, and a lot of that work is reflective work, reflecting on one's life as a whole.
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And that is exactly what a regular practice of journaling can provide.
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So if you have been struggling to get started with journaling, maybe give this format a shot.
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All you have to do is write about something that happened to your day, write about something you're proud of, something where you can improve, and then try to place it in the larger context of your life.
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Write that story about yourself.
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This B2 speaking lesson is built on the video “How to Journal”. The speaker keeps coming back to these words: write, event, journaling, written, narrative. This video has 90 sentences and 1252 words to shadow. The speech runs for 6:44. The speaker talks fast, about 186 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
The 15 most advanced words in the video, with pronunciation and meaning:
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| construct verb | /ˈkɑn.stɹʌkt/ | To build or form (something) by assembling parts. |
| 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. |
| philosopher noun | /fəˈlɑsəfɚ/ | A lover of wisdom. |
| notable adjective | /ˈnəʊtəbl̩/ | Worthy of note; remarkable; memorable; noted or distinguished. |
| misunderstand verb | /mɪs.ʌn.də(ɹ)ˈstænd/ | To understand incorrectly, while believing one has understood correctly. |
| autobiography noun | /ˌɔː.tə.baɪˈɒɡ.ɹə.fi/ | A self-written biography; the story of one's own life. |
| spiral noun | /ˈspaɪɹəl/ | A curve that is the locus of a point that rotates about a fixed point while continuously increasing its distance from that point. |
| selective adjective | /səˈlɛktɪv/ | Of or relating to the process of selection. |
| ethics noun | /ˈɛθ.ɪks/ | Morality. |
| coherence noun | /koʊˈhɪɹ.ən(t)s/ | The quality of cohering, or being coherent; internal consistency. |
| cultivate verb | /ˈkʌltɪveɪt/ | To grow plants, notably crops. |
| ethicist noun | /ˈɛθɪsɪst/ | A person, especially a philosopher, who studies ethics (principles governing right and wrong conduct). |
| readable adjective | /ˈɹiː.də.bəl/ | Legible, possible to read or at least decipher. |
| reliably adverb | In a reliable manner. | |
| flourish verb | /ˈflʊ̈ɹ.ɪʃ/ | To thrive or grow well. |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| figure out verb | To come to understand; to discover or find a solution; to deduce. | |
| fall back on verb | To turn to as a substitute; to rely on as a backup. | |
| go through verb | To travel from one end of something to the other. | |
| turn out verb | To end up; to result. | |
| write down verb | To produce or set (something) down in writing; to record something. | |
| zoom out verb | /ˌzuːm ˈaʊt/ | To decrease the focal length of a zoom lens in order to obtain a reduced magnification of the image, or a wider-angle view. |
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 | I've written · I've built · I've cultivated |
| Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing | improvement, which is · someone who has · those who write |
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | was resolved · is designed |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 25 contractions and reduced forms, such as I'm, I've, don't. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “th” sounds: ethics /ˈɛθ.ɪks/, ethicist /ˈɛθɪsɪst/
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: flourish /ˈflʊ̈ɹ.ɪʃ/, intentional /ɪnˈtɛnʃənəl/, anxious /ˈæŋkʃəs/
- Long words — get the stress right: philosopher /fəˈlɑsəfɚ/, misunderstand /mɪs.ʌn.də(ɹ)ˈstænd/, autobiography /ˌɔː.tə.baɪˈɒɡ.ɹə.fi/, intentional /ɪnˈtɛnʃənəl/
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 construct, paragraph, philosopher.
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.