Shadowing Practice: How to Learn Vocabulary in ANY Language (backed by science) - Learn English Speaking with Video
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I'm going to show you how to learn lots
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and lots of vocabulary in any language because
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if you've ever felt like you're just learning the same words over
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and over again and forgetting anything new well you're definitely not alone.
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I've been teaching and learning languages for over 25 years, I've taught thousands of students, I've written books in over three dozen different languages now
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and I've become convinced that forgetting vocabulary has almost nothing to do with memory.
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It's almost entirely a method problem and once you understand that well, words will stop vanishing from your brain and start sticking instead.
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And best of all, there's a really fascinating science behind all of this as well.
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So in this video, I will show you the real reason why words keep slipping out of your mind,
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what your brain actually needs to do in order to remember them,
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and then the one simple method you can follow that will help these new words stick,
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even if you are a complete beginner and have the worst memory on the planet.
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So there's something about learning vocabulary that's been winding me up for years, and it's probably the number one reason that students run out of steam
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and give up on languages all together i've seen
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this happen a thousand times you have a great learning session with a teacher
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or by yourself and there's a whole bunch of new words on your flashcards
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or you're learning in an app
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or even with those beautiful visual dictionaries you know the ones with the pictures in
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and when you test yourself at the end you get all 10 words right success well done
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but then a few days later what happens well you try to remember them
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and nine and a half of those words are completely gone.
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Sound familiar?
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This is where it all starts to unravel, because that's usually the moment that people start believing, well, I'm just horrible at languages,
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I have a terrible memory, and it can be very disheartening, and believe me, I've been there a lot.
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Most people think that forgetting words means they've got a bad memory, but that's not what's happening.
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See, your brain doesn't store words the way that most people imagine in some kind of big mental dictionary.
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No, it's actually more like this.
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This is the first time we've been able to map the semantic systems of the brain in such detail discovering
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that words are grouped by meaning and revealing just how complicated
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and widespread the word maps in our heads really are your
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brain already has this incredible map of meanings built from your
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personal life experiences think of a dog your brain already has a place for everything
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it knows about dogs the furry animal the barking sound the feeling of touching it
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and probably a few dogs
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that you've loved yourself over the years the word dog is simply the label
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that your brain attached to all of that now suppose
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that someone tells you that xian means dog well you can memorize it sure
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but that doesn't mean your brain knows
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that the word xian belongs in the dog category
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and this is where most vocabulary learning goes wrong people take the word out of the language
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you see a word on the left a translation on the right
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and nothing going on around it at all which feels organized like you're in some kind of filing cabinet,
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but your brain's got no reason whatsoever to hang on to the word xian, which is French for dog, by the way.
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And when you sit down with a word that has no story, no feeling, no memory, no earthly reason to be there,
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your brain has no obvious place to put it.
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And so it does the sensible thing.
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It chucks it out.
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It's being efficient.
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You see, it was actually helping you all along.
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And that's why you keep forgetting words.
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You never really learned the word.
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You learned the translation, but luckily methods can be changed.
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But before I you how.
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I put together a guide that's going to help you here called Binge Worthy Resources.
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It's a downloadable list of the very best movies, shows, and podcasts across more than 15 languages that we teach here at Story Day.
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All of these resources have been tested by myself and my team
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so that you know exactly what to press play on today, because the faster that you find content that you actually enjoy,
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guess what, the faster those words are going to start stacking up.
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If you like this list, it's pretty comprehensive, just scan the QR code on the screen with your phone
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or grab the link below in the description
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because everything I'm about to show you is going to be a lot easier
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when you actually have content to apply it to that is actually useful for you and enjoyable.
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So if memorizing a word to death is not enough to make it stick, what does your brain actually need instead?
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Well, that's easy.
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It needs a way to hook that new word onto the meaning that it already knows.
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Like, you've got to hook it up to all of those doggy things up there in your head.
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And it turns out that there are three things that help your brain do exactly that.
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They are repetition, context, and retrieval.
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And what this means is you've got to meet that same word again and again quite a few times.
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You need to see it used in meaningful, realistic situations, not just there on the page in your textbook, but actually being used meaningfully.
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And then you have to make your brain work just a little to remember what it already knows.
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Now, here's the fascinating part.
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Your brain already knows how to do all of this.
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It's been doing it your entire life in a very specific way, through stories.
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That's right, a good old story will do the trick because stories naturally do three things.
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They bring the important words back, that's your repetition.
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They give those words meaning through whatever's happening that's your context, and they keep nudging your brain to work things out for itself, and that's retrieval.
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And this is a completely different experience from just staring at a list of words in your textbook.
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Let me show you what I mean.
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Just follow here with your eyes.
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It's a little story in Italian.
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Every evening, Bella stops by the park near her house.
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She always sits on the same wooden panchina beneath an oak tree.
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There's an old man who always smiles and waves from a pankina opposite her.
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One evening, his pankina is empty, but a piece of paper is tied to one of its legs.
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Bella walks over, sits down, and unties the note from the pankina.
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Now, I never told you what pankina means, but I wonder if you've already worked it out.
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It's a bench, of course, and I never asked you to memorise that word.
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I never translated it while I was reading.
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Instead, the story brought it back four different times, and each little encounter gave your brain another clue.
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It's in a park, it's wooden, it has legs, you can sit on it.
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Without even realizing it, your picture of what that word meant became clearer each time.
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You weren't even trying to remember a word, you were following a story and your brain worked out the meaning by itself.
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Now obviously that's a very simple example,
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but the process is exactly the same because your brain just did the three things that every new word needs.
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You heard pankina four times.
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That's repetition.
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You saw it in different situations with new clues.
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That's context.
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And every time your understanding changed, your brain had to reach back through the story and connect the clue to what it already knew,
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and that is retrieval.
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And the real difference is, instead of memorizing a definition, your brain built an experience of sorts around the word.
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And experiences are much harder to forget.
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So here's the obvious question.
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If one tiny story can teach you a new word like that, what happens when you read stories like this every single day?
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Well, first of all, your vocabulary is automatically building.
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It's unstoppably building, necessarily building.
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Every story introduces more words you didn't know, but something much more interesting starts happening as well.
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The words you've already learned stop staying inside those stories.
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They start turning up somewhere else, even when you least expect it.
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Maybe in another story, maybe in a podcast, a movie, a conversation.
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And this is why stories are so effective.
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When I accidentally discovered this phenomenon for myself, this was way back when I was learning Spanish,
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I'd be walking down the street and all these new Spanish words from a story
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that I'd been reading in a book the night before would be popping into my head.
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I remember this one word, el obispo, which is a very kind of like unusual word.
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It means bishop in Spanish.
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No reason that you'd ever kind of set about memorizing this word, I certainly didn't try, but it was the character,
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one of the main characters in this story that I was reading,
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and because it popped up so much in the story and I was trying to figure out what it meant,
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it ended up just taking up resonance in my head without me even trying.
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And so my ear would start to catch random strangers using these words.
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It was like my brain became hyper aware of the words, you know, like as soon as you see this red car,
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some way to see it everywhere right even they've always been red cards.
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This is the sort of thing that happens
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when you learn vocabulary inside a story
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and every time you hear the word in a different place your understanding gets a little deeper
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because each new encounter adds another little piece to what
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that word means to you
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and then it starts to snowball week after week month after month you're
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so aware of those words that you start noticing them everywhere.
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Now check this out, this is pretty cool.
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This linguistics professor Arnold Zwicky actually gave this phenomenon a name, the frequency illusion.
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It's a bit of a strange name because it's no illusion at all.
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And the funny sciencey part is once your brain tags a new word as meaningful, it actively hunts for it.
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So what happens is you start catching that word in videos, books, street signs, everywhere.
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And every one of those little encounters helps it settle into your memory
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it's like your own natural spaced repetition system sorry flashcard lovers
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there's actually a better way suddenly vocabulary stops being an object
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that you memorize and becomes something that you actually acquire naturally for good
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and that is brilliant news for language learners
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because it doesn't happen in one magical moment it grows through lots of small meaningful encounters
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that gradually add together now there is one little trick to making this all work get this bit right
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and everything we've talked about starts falling neatly into place.
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You need the right kind of stories.
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Ideally one with audio because every new word that you learn has two sides.
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There's what it means and there's what it sounds like.
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Reading teaches your brain the meaning.
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Listening teaches your brain the sound.
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Put them together and suddenly you're learning the whole word and it's way harder to forget.
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This is much more memorable and this is especially true with languages where the spelling is quite tricky.
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If you've ever tried learning French, for example, you know exactly what I mean.
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That's why it can't just be any old book.
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You want a story that comes with the audio, that's interesting for you, and that is at your current level.
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and this bit is the most important bit of all.
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Now there is a name for this, it's called
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comprehensible input, which simply means you understand enough to keep following the story
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while still bumping into a few new words along the way.
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So it's comprehensible, you can understand it, and it's input.
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Input is reading and listening, comprehensible.
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Input means reading at your level, not something that's too hard that you're struggling to understand.
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If you can get the gist of what's going on, if you can follow the story to whatever degree and enjoy it,
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you're at the right level and your brain will be able to make a good guess at the rest.
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So aim for stories where you already understand most of what's happening.
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Ideally, I would say about 80 to 90 % is a good rule of thumb.
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If you can understand 80 to 90 % of what you're reading, you're in the right ballpark.
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If you're stopping every sentence to tap away at Google Translate or check GPT, no, it's too hard.
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If you understand every single word, then that's too easy.
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You want something that's right in the middle because that's where your brain can start making those good guesses.
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Now here's the really important bit.
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When you come across a word that you don't know, don't just stop immediately and reach for the dictionary.
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If you can still make sense of the story without knowing what that word means, keep going.
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Only look it up when you genuinely need to.
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Like if there's a word that's been blocking your overall understanding of the story and you really need to know it,
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then you can look it up because your goal is not to know every single word.
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It's to keep following the story.
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If you do that consistently, those words will just keep showing up until your brain no longer has to guess.
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That's one meaningful encounter at a time.
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And the real benefit of reading as it relates to acquiring vocabulary is not
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that you try to memorize every word that comes up, but it's to read so much, so widely, so extensively, that the volume of stuff
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that you're ingesting is so huge that you cannot help but just acquire a bunch of vocabulary.
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So what happens if you actually do all of this?
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Well let's say that spend 20 minutes a day reading stories at the right level for you for about three months.
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Well, after a while, you stop even thinking about vocabulary.
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You just pick up a new story, and instead of constantly getting stuck, you just keep reading.
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Because you're stopping less, you read more.
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And because you read more, you learn even more words.
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You won't suddenly know thousands of new words, of course, but you will notice something much more exciting.
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You will stop reaching for the dictionary so often.
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Words that used to feel completely unfamiliar, it, you'll just kind of know what they mean.
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Even if you can't literally give the English translation, it's a fantastic experience.
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You might not even remember where you first came across these words.
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Maybe it was a lovely little word like luciole.
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You once saw it in one story and then another and then somewhere else entirely,
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maybe in a movie, maybe you heard someone say it and you didn't ever look it up.
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You just figured out from context that it means fireflies.
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What a wonderful word.
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Now imagine one warm summer evening, you're sitting outside tiny lights begin dancing through the darkness
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and without even thinking you smile and you just know
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and that's where the magic happens the stories
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that once felt difficult became enjoyable
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so you naturally move on to slightly harder ones
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that's how vocabulary really grows one story then another until the language simply becomes part of your life so
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if you just remember
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this one thing let it be this don't ask how do
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i memorize more vocabulary ask how can I give my brain more repetition, more context, and more retrieval?
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Because those are the three things that make words stick.
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And reading stories just happens to be the easiest way to get all three.
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It's a lovely little cycle and something most language learners never get to experience, but you can absolutely experience it.
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And there's one last piece of the puzzle.
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Knowing what to read is only half of the battle, and things like the story learning app make this even easier.
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But you also need to know how to read, so watch this video next because I will show you my exact six -step reading method
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so every story you read teaches you as much vocabulary as possible.
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I'll see you over there.
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This speaking lesson is built on the video “How to Learn Vocabulary in ANY Language”. The speaker keeps coming back to these words: word, brain, vocabulary, reading, language. This video has 214 sentences and 2796 words to shadow. The speech runs for 13:58. The speaker talks fast, about 200 words per minute, so expect linked and reduced sounds. 88% 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 |
|---|---|---|
| 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. |
| encounter verb | /ɪnˈkaʊntɚ/ | To meet (someone) or find (something), especially unexpectedly. |
| input noun | /ˈɪnpʊt/ | The act or process of putting in; infusion. |
| meaningful adjective | /ˈmiː.nɪŋ.fl̩/ | Having meaning, significant. |
| dictionary noun | /ˈdɪk.ʃəˌnɛ.ɹi/ | A reference work listing words or names from one or more languages, usually ordered alphabetically, explaining each word's meanings or senses, oftentimes also… |
| naturally adverb | /ˈnæt͡ʃ.(ə.)ɹə.li/ | In a natural manner. |
| translation noun | /tɹænzˈleɪʃən/ | The conversion of text from one language to another. |
| clue noun | /kluː/ | Information which may lead one to a certain point or conclusion. |
| acquire verb | /əˈkwaɪɚ/ | To get. |
| trick noun | /ˈtɹɪk/ | Something designed to fool, dupe, outsmart, mislead or swindle. |
| audio adjective | /ˈɔ.di.oʊ/ | Focused on audible sound, as opposed to sight. |
| hook noun | /hʊk/ | A rod bent into a curved shape, typically with one end free and the other end secured to a rope or other attachment. |
| wooden adjective | /ˈwʊdn̩/ | Made of wood. |
| podcast noun | /ˈpɑdˌkæst/ | A program, especially an audio program, produced on a regular basis, delivered over the Internet in a compressed digital format and designed for playback on… |
| phenomenon noun | /fəˈnɒm.ɪ.nən/ | A thing or being, event or process, perceptible through senses; or a fact or occurrence thereof. |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Meaning |
|---|---|
| come across verb | To change sides; to cross over to work for the opposition. |
| come up verb | To emerge or become known, especially unexpectedly. |
| end up verb | To bring to a conclusion. |
| figure out verb | To come to understand; to discover or find a solution; to deduce. |
| pick up verb | To lift; to grasp and raise. |
| pop up verb | To come up with a "pop" sound. |
| put together verb | To assemble, construct, build, or formulate. |
| show up verb | To appear, arrive, or attend, especially suddenly or erratically. |
Sentences worth repeating
Short, complete lines from the video that you can reuse in everyday conversation:
- They bring the important words back, that's your repetition.
- Because you're stopping less, you read more.
- I'll see you over there.
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| Present perfect continuous have/has been + -ing — an action that started earlier and is still going on | I've been teaching · that's been winding · It's been doing |
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | you've ever felt · I've taught · I've become |
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | are grouped · can be changed · have been tested |
| Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing | xian, which is · man who always · obispo, which is |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 52 contractions and reduced forms, such as you're, you've, I've. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “th” sounds: beneath /bɪˈniːθ/, thumb /ˈθʌm/, earthly /ˈəːθli/
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: dictionary /ˈdɪk.ʃəˌnɛ.ɹi/, translation /tɹænzˈleɪʃən/, illusion /ɪˈl(j)uːʒ(ə)n/, unusual /ʌnˈjuːʒ(u)əl/, efficient /ɪˈfɪʃənt/
- Long words — get the stress right: vocabulary /vəˈkæb.jə.lə.ɹi/, dictionary /ˈdɪk.ʃəˌnɛ.ɹi/, naturally /ˈnæt͡ʃ.(ə.)ɹə.li/, phenomenon /fəˈnɒm.ɪ.nən/, ideally /aɪˈdi.ə.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 vocabulary, encounter, input.
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.