Shadowing Practice: How to Read Anything Faster Than Everyone Else - Learn English Speaking with Video
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In this video, I'll teach you to read faster than everyone around you.
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As a learning coach for the past 13 years and as a former medical doctor,
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I'll show you the strategies that I use to double my reading speed while improving my comprehension, even for dense textbooks and research articles.
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If you want to read faster, the most important thing you have to realize is that words per minute do not matter.
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What matters is the level of comprehension you have after reading.
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But what does level of comprehension even mean?
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Most people say that if you've read something and then you understand what you read, you've comprehended it.
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But there's a difference between understanding something enough to answer a
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simple question about it versus being able to write an entire dissertation about it.
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And so comprehension is not this binary thing.
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It's not how fast can you read and did you comprehend it?
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It's how fast can you read and what level, what depth of comprehension were you able to achieve?
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And I found that the reason most people struggle to read faster
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while maintaining comprehension is that they're using the wrong level of reading strategy for the level of comprehension they need.
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So in this video, I'll show you the four levels of comprehension and the fastest reading strategy for each level.
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These strategies will not only increase your words per minute, but also allow you to remember, understand, and apply what you've read.
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So starting with the first level comprehension
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which is literal literal comprehension is just word for word understanding
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if you buy a piece of furniture and you need to assemble it
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and read the instructions you need just a literal level of comprehension
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and there are actually a lot of speed reading techniques
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that help you with this first level of comprehension a lot of people talk about this idea of sub vocalization
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or stopping sub vocalization sub vocalization is when you're reading something
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and you sort of mutter the words out as you're speaking
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or you could even be saying it in your head
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but also means that your reading speed is limited to how fast you can mouth out the words
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or how fast you can say it inside your head and
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so some techniques focus on stopping
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that sub vocalization there are other techniques such as grouping words together
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so instead of reading one word at a time you're actually reading two
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or three or four or five words in one go
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and you can use these strategies
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and train yourself to read at over a thousand words per minute
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which is about seven or eight times faster than the average university student.
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And I actually did that.
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When I was 17, I spent summer holidays just training my reading speed.
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And my comprehension was like 80 to 90%.
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Unfortunately, it was only 80 to 90 % at this first literal level,
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which is actually the least valuable and least transferable level.
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Because if you're doing any type of learning or studying or advanced reading, literal understanding alone is just not going to get you very far.
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And so So personally, I think there's only one strategy in common speed reading techniques
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that actually is valuable at increasing your reading speed for this level
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while also being something that helps you at every level beyond it.
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And that strategy is something called smart skimming.
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Smart skimming is where you take a piece of text and instead of just reading it linearly first,
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you're going to scan through it to look for the headings, subheadings, bolded words, anything that sticks out at you that it might be more important.
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And by skimming through, you're going to get a general understanding about what this is talking about.
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Now, I call it smart skimming because you should control when to go faster and skim and when to slow down.
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For example, if you see a heading that you think is really important, then slow down to read it and then read the paragraph underneath it
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and then skim through until you see the next thing that could be important and then slow down to read that.
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You can also apply this for a single sentence where there might be half of a sentence
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which is kind of just filler words but there are only a few keywords
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and if you just know those keywords you can get a sense for what it's talking about.
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And so by doing this you don't sacrifice your comprehension really at all
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but you can increase your words per minute by maybe 30 to 50 percent straight off the bat.
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As I said this is a great strategy not only to just get literal comprehension
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but an overall great reading strategy that you can use for any level of comprehension.
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Now, for most of you, you're already going to be beyond level one and you're going to be on at least level two.
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Level two is implied.
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Implied comprehension is about being able to not only understand it literally, but then read between the lines.
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You're able to read a passage and say, it literally said this, but I think it was also suggesting this and this and this.
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You can form additional conclusions beyond what was just explicitly explained to you.
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This is also the level at which you usually feel that you've properly understood the thing that you've read.
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But this also introduces a danger because just because you've understood something
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that you've read at the time when you've read it doesn't mean
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that you're going to be able to remember that later or
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that you're going to be able to use that information in whatever way you need to use it.
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Two weeks later when you're trying to explain it to someone else you only remember
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that at the time you understood it but the actual facts and concepts themselves slightly escape you.
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A lot of people will just chalk this up to having a bad memory,
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but actually this is just a side effect of stopping at level two comprehension.
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At this level, you tend to be able to understand what you're reading.
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However, you don't necessarily have a great memory or a great depth of mastery,
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which means that you can't necessarily apply this information for complex problem solving or decision -making.
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Now, the thing that allows you to achieve level two comprehension is actually just language fluency.
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And so this is not a difficult level to achieve, especially if you're a native speaker.
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Having said that, if you're not a native speaker of the language or you're tackling a level of reading with very,
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very technical words, written in a very complicated way that you're not used to,
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then the fastest strategy to unlock this level more consistently is going to be immersion.
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Immersion just refers to exposing yourself to this language at the level that you need by reading more widely and more often.
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Building fluency in a language is a very complicated field with its own entire field of research, which I can't get into in this video.
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But what continually stands out is this concept of immersion.
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The more you expose yourself at that level and attempt to read and write at that level, the faster your fluency is going to grow.
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Now, for most people, they get stuck at level one and level two.
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But level three is actually the point at
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which you can really start becoming faster than everyone else that's because at level three there is a bottleneck flip
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bottleneck flip see as you progress from level one through to
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level two as your words per minute increases your overall ability to read
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and understand and cover material in a meaningful way also increases
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if you go from 50 words per minute to 150 words per minute you are tripling your ability to cover content,
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which means you're going to read this three times faster.
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At level one and level two, your primary bottleneck is words per minute.
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But starting from level three, it's not enough just to have a literal or temporarily understood comprehension of what you've read.
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And almost all of the reading that you're going to do in higher education
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and professional life requires a minimum level three of comprehension.
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And so from level three, the bottleneck flips from being words per minute to your comprehension speed.
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And I found that this is actually at around 150 to 200 words per minute, which is not that fast.
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At that point, it doesn't matter if you double
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or triple your words per minute because your bottleneck is how much of that you are able to comprehend and how deeply.
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Now, if this concept of the bottleneck flipping is new to you, then it tells me one thing, a very important thing.
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It tells me that you haven't joined my newsletter
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because one of the first emails that you get in my newsletter series is about reading speed.
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And I talk about this very concept in that email.
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And so if you have found this video useful so far
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and you want to get more of these insights delivered to your inbox every single week, only taking a few minutes to read,
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then you might be interested in joining my free weekly newsletter.
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And a lot of the concepts I talk about on YouTube are in my newsletter as well as some
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that I don't even talk about in my videos.
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So if you're interested in joining that, again, it's totally free.
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I'll leave a link to that in the description below.
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Now, on to level three.
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Level three is called the critical level of comprehension.
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And the key difference between just understanding something and critically understanding something is that at level three,
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we're now making judgments about the value of what we are reading and what we've understood.
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And it seems like a small difference, but mastering level three is the key to being a faster reader than everyone around you
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because most people do not engage in this crucial step.
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When you're reading for level three comprehension, you realize that it doesn't matter how many pages of the book you'll flick through.
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What matters is how much of this knowledge sticks into your brain at the end of that reading session.
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What matters is that when someone asks you a question, you know how to answer it.
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You can teach this knowledge.
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You can use it for your daily work or your study.
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And so to achieve this, you actually start doing things that slow down your words per minute
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that thing about sub vocalization
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I talked about before where you mouth out the words as you say it well it turns out
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that sub vocalizing is actually a strategy that can increase your comprehension and
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so sometimes we can choose to sub vocalize deliberately
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we completely pause from reading just to think about what we've consumed
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and during those thinking breaks we make these value judgments
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and instead of just taking the information at face value
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we are now in the driver's seat generating our own knowledge simply using the reading as a data point.
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The book is simply a source of information
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that sparks our brain to think about the topic and form our own meaning and form our own conclusions.
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And so the fastest strategy to achieve a level three comprehension is question and critique.
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Question and critique is an incredibly simple strategy but also incredibly powerful.
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It simply means that when you read something, after each concept, pause and ask yourself a series of questions about what you've just read.
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The types of questions
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that I find really useful for hitting level 3 quickly are
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questions like why was this important enough for the author to explain it?
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Why do I need to care about this?
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Or how is this similar or different to something else that I've read?
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How does it compare to what I already know about this?
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Depending on what I'm reading I might also have some questions that I'm generally curious about.
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It may not necessarily be in the scope of what you are learning
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but it's worthwhile to chase these strands of curiosity
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because that's your brain trying to make meaningful connections
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and the result of making those meaningful connections is
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that you're going to be able to use
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that information in a more nuanced way and it's going to stick into your memory much longer.
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Now unfortunately the reason that most people don't hit level 3 is
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because it takes more time which seems counterintuitive
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that you would actually slow down your reading speed in order to read faster than everyone else
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but the thing is that
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if you don't engage in these strategies then you can be reading using a level 1
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or a level 2 strategy again and again and again
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and you might be reading at a 500 words per minute a thousand words per minute
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but you will have to read the same thing six seven eight times
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you have to spend hours thinking about it and studying it
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and revising it and repeating it just to make it stick into your memory
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and even then your understanding still won't be very deep.
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The way I like to think about it is like solving a jigsaw puzzle.
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It doesn't matter if you are blazingly fast at picking pieces out of the box
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and then putting them down and connecting them together.
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Most of the value is going to come from looking at each piece and thinking about where to put it.
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So if the level of comprehension you're looking for is level 3 or above,
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any time that is spent on just going through words without thinking about what to do with
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that information is actually a waste of time.
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Now this is even more important if the level you're trying to reach is level 4.
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Level 4 is what I call adaptive level of comprehension.
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At this level we are using the information from what we read
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and then applying and adapting it to our own unique often complicated contexts.
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This is the level that you need to reach
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if you want to use the information you've gained to solve really complicated problems and to make really complicated decisions.
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When you're designing high -stakes plans and strategies you have to take the information,
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see what's useful, make that your own and then adapt that with your own expertise to whatever need you have.
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You can imagine at this point how fast you can read through pages is almost completely inconsequential
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which ironically makes you faster than everyone else
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because even by reading a little you're able to achieve a outcome
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and a quality that most people can't achieve no matter how long they spend on it
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so the fastest strategy to achieve level four is abstract, apply, and attack.
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So abstracting something means that you're taking something and then you're generalizing and extracting the essential features of it.
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So if you're a scientist looking at a bunch of data,
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you may abstract the key trends and key observations in order to formulate a new theory.
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It's the ability to take in information,
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see which parts of the information are essential and turn those essential pieces into valuable principles that you can repurpose.
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So once you've abstracted this leads to the second part which is to apply.
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Apply means you take those abstracted concepts and you try to use them in your own personal situations.
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So if there's a project you're working on
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and you're learning about a bunch of things in order to solve a problem in
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that project you're abstracting principles and you're going to try to apply them to your problem
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and apply is not a one
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and done there are many ways you might be able to apply the information
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and especially if you're reading a ton of information there are lots of different pieces of
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that that can be combined in different ways and applied in different ways and this process of deliberately trying to abstract combine,
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compare it together, apply it and see how it works or doesn't work, actually builds expertise and knowledge in your brain.
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Even if you don't come to a solution at the end of that, that knowledge becomes ingrained in your memory very deeply.
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You don't have to go back to your notes, you don't have to read through it again, that knowledge is now yours.
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But if you really want to lock in at level 4, you have to follow up with the attack.
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Attack means that once you've applied it in multiple different ways, and once you've formulated an understanding about what you have read,
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you're actually going to deliberately look for counter -arguments and assumptions.
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This is where using a tool like ChatGPT can be great.
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You can summarize your understanding into ChatGPT, and you can say, what are some of the angles I might be missing?
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What are some perspectives that I might be missing?
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And often, this can lead you down a rabbit hole of further reading.
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And this, again, helps to build a more holistic, balanced, accurate understanding of the topic.
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Now, does it take more time to read those things?
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Yes.
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But remember, we are now operating in such a way where we're building comprehension and extracting learning from what we read
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incomparably faster than someone that is using a level one or level two strategy.
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After a few hours of reading at level three and level four, when you talk about what you have learned,
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it comes across as if you have known this information for months or years.
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You communicate it like an expert it.
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You can immediately use it to solve problems.
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And if you can do that after just a few hours of reading, then I guarantee you're going to be faster than everyone around you.
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So those were the four levels of comprehension and the fastest reading strategies to help you achieve each of these levels.
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If you want to learn a little bit more about how you can extend this in the rest of your learning,
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then you might want to check out this video here.
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Thanks so much for watching and I'll see you in the next one.
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This speaking lesson is built on the video “How to Read Anything Faster Than Everyone Else”. The speaker keeps coming back to these words: reading, comprehension, word, faster, strategy. This video has 217 sentences and 3064 words to shadow. The speech runs for 16:16. The speaker talks fast, about 188 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 |
|---|---|---|
| comprehension noun | /ˌkɑmpɹɪˈhɛnʃn̩/ | A thorough understanding. |
| abstract noun | /ˈæbˌstɹækt/ | An abridgement or summary of a longer publication. |
| literal adjective | /ˈlɪt(ə)ɹəl/ | Exactly as stated; read or understood without interpretation; according to the letter; not figurative or metaphorical; following the letter or exact words; not… |
| complicated adjective | /ˈkɑm.plɪˌkeɪ.tɪd/ | Difficult or convoluted. |
| solve verb | /sɒlv/ | To find an answer or solution to a problem or question; to work out. |
| technique noun | /tɛkˈniːk/ | The practical aspects of a given art, occupation etc.; formal requirements. |
| flip verb | /flɪp/ | To throw so as to turn over. |
| newsletter noun | /ˈn(j)uzˌlɛtɚ/ | A periodically sent publication containing current events or the like, generally on a particular topic or geared toward a limited audience. |
| necessarily adverb | /ˌnɛs.əˈsɛɹ.ə.li/ | Inevitably; of necessity. |
| meaningful adjective | /ˈmiː.nɪŋ.fl̩/ | Having meaning, significant. |
| deliberately adverb | /dɪˈlɪb.(ə.)ɹət.li/ | Intentionally, or after deliberation; not accidentally. |
| comprehend verb | /ˌkɑmpɹɪˈhɛnd/ | To understand or grasp fully and thoroughly; to plumb. |
| topic noun | /ˈtɑpɪk/ | A subject; a theme; a category or general area of interest. |
| compare verb | /kəmˈpɛɚ/ | To assess the similarities and differences between two or more things [“to compare X with Y”]. Having made the comparison of X with Y, one might have found it… |
| deeply adverb | /ˈdi(ː)pli/ | To a deep extent or degree; very greatly. |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Meaning |
|---|---|
| slow down verb | To decelerate. |
| read through verb | To thoroughly read something to check or proofread it. |
| check out verb | To record the departure or withdrawal of someone or something (such as guests, employees, books, etc.). |
| come across verb | To change sides; to cross over to work for the opposition. |
| flick through verb | To browse rapidly. |
| go back to verb | To stem from; to originate in. |
| go through verb | To travel from one end of something to the other. |
| stand out verb | To jut out, protrude (from a surface etc.). |
Sentences worth repeating
Short, complete lines from the video that you can reuse in everyday conversation:
- It's not how fast can you read and did you comprehend it?
- Why do I need to care about this?
- How does it compare to what I already know about this?
- What are some perspectives that I might be missing?
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 | you've read · you've understood · haven't joined |
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | is implied · is called · is spent |
| Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing | minute, which is · part which is |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 82 contractions and reduced forms, such as you're, you've, don't. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “th” sounds: underneath /ˌʌndɚˈniθ/, worthwhile /ˌwɜː(ɹ)θˈwaɪl/
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: comprehension /ˌkɑmpɹɪˈhɛnʃn̩/, conclusion /kənˈkluːʒən/, crucial /ˈkɹuː.ʃəl/, instruction /ɪnˈstɹʌkʃən/, observation /ˌɑbzɚˈveɪʃn̩/
- Long words — get the stress right: complicated /ˈkɑm.plɪˌkeɪ.tɪd/, necessarily /ˌnɛs.əˈsɛɹ.ə.li/, deliberately /dɪˈlɪb.(ə.)ɹət.li/, incredibly /ɪŋˈkɹɛdɪbli/, consistently /kənˈsɪstəntli/
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 comprehension, abstract, literal.
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.