Shadowing Practice: Improve Your English FASTER by Reading (It really works!) - Learn English Speaking with Video

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Hey, what's on the topic for today?

Ah, ladies and gentlemen, today I will be presenting to you a secret not known by many people called reading.

And you're going to say, what is the secret?

Well, this is the key to help you learn language faster.

Surprising, because most people think,

well, I should talk more, get more talking practice.

and I need to get vocabulary and I need to listen better.

And, you know, I need to learn how to write.

And I'm going to show you today with the help of Magical E.

He's looking surprised because he doesn't want to be involved.

Don't know why you have a book.

How this is going to help you with this, this, and this.

Let's go to the board.

The first word I'm going to teach you is a word not many people know,

but you have to understand this is an important factor of how our eyes work.

So I'm going to use some language that might be really high.

I'll explain it and just be patient

or you're going to learn a lot about you and improve your language skills at the same time.

Sac-ads, sac-ads, sac-ads, sac-it.

Sac-ads is what I'm going to say.

It could be sac-ads.

This is what we call the way the eye moves.

You see, when we look at things in nature,

and this is important because reading isn't natural.

There are no books in nature.

There are birds and trees and cars.

Our eyes were designed to look,

look, look, look, look, look, look.

It kept us alive.

Because if I just kept looking ahead,

a tiger could come and eat me.

So my eyes would look,

look, look, look, look, but I would see everything.

Now a Sekhat is kind of a fixation.

Our eyes jump, and a fixation means to stay in one place.

But our eyes jump around.

Now if you think about a book, a book has lines.

And if you jump around,

that makes it very difficult to see.

So we're going to, with our understanding now what a Sekhat is,

we're going to learn to train that to help you with reading.

You know, okay, well, how does this help with language?

Hey, grasshopper, one step at a time.

Now, reading is interesting.

You might have noticed I mentioned vocabulary,

and many students say to me, oh, I need vocabulary.

Here you go.

Vocabulary on the go.

There is one little trick that makes all of this work,

so I'm going to mention it now and at the end.

You must pick material for this to work that you know at least 85% of the vocabulary.

So don't pick up a book on physics if you don't read physics.

This will not be helpful.

So, sacads, or how our eyes move.

A little uncontrolled, they jump around.

And you may have noticed this when you're reading.

Sometimes you're reading and you go, ah, where was I?

Because your eye has jumped.

So the first trick I'm going to teach you, see?

This is three S, and if you want to know what the three S's are,

smooth pursuit, sub-vocalization, and sustained.

and I will explain each one for you now.

Well, smooth pursuit is this.

Yeah, some of you are going, what are you doing?

But you followed my finger, didn't you?

You notice my finger did not do this, it went like this.

Well, if we can control the sacads,

we can control how we read,

and it makes it much easier for us to learn.

Why am I starting with this for language learning?

Well, you're not going to read the book and most people don't read,

to be honest, because it takes too long.

And now you understand if your eyes are jumping around,

that makes it worse, especially if it's not your language.

We're going to use the idea of smooth pursuit,

which is using our finger or a pencil to move across a line to help us focus.

That focus will actually turn our brains on so we can learn more.

So, the first secret I'm going to give you is use

your finger for a smooth pursuit to move along the line to keep you focused

so you can keep the ideas in your head.

That's number one.

And in doing this, because you stay on the line,

it will help for vocabulary because in many English sentences we use synonyms.

We'll use one word and a little later use a different word to keep your interest

so you're actually picking up on vocabulary.

So, smooth pursuit is your first secret to helping you with language learning.

So, what's the second one?

When you were a little child,

your mummy would go like this.

The cat is on the chair.

And And she would usually point at one word and say the.

You would look at the word,

she would say it, you would say it.

Now you're a big grown person, right?

You eat your Wheaties, you're strong and good.

You don't do that. But you do.

We all do.

Sub vocalization, sub means under, vocal means speak.

In science they've done tests and they notice when people are reading,

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when they put electrodes, know,

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things on your head, they were noticing people are actually making the sounds.

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Do you remember I said this reading will help you with speaking?

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Well, once you, and this is why you need to know 85% of the language,

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once you're reading, you're repeating these words verbally inside with your throat box or your throat here and in your head, sub-vocalizing.

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So you're practicing speaking without speaking.

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When we get to number three,

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you're going to go, oh my gosh, these all go together.

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I'm like, yes, they do.

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So by reading, not speaking,

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you're actually getting your brain to vocalize.

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And remember I say it would help with listening.

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Well, who's listening to you, sweetheart?

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Who's in your head?

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You.

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So when you're saying the cat in English and you speak German, das Katzen, right?

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You're actually saying the cat in your head,

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repeating, helping you learn and getting familiarized.

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That means getting to know the word over and over again.

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Now, here's a secret about reading.

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The more you read, the faster you read, the more you comprehend.

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Let me read, read.

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Let me say that again.

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The more you read, the faster you read and the more you comprehend.

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Now, this has happened because I'm jumping ahead to number three.

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Should I go there?

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Let's go to number three.

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So, before I do that,

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sub-vocalization is the voice that's in your head helping you to understand because sub-vocalization helps with comprehension.

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Comprehension means to understand.

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So, not only are we practicing speaking without speaking,

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we're practicing listening without listening.

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Please check it out.

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It's brilliant stuff, the research they're doing on reading and language acquisition or learning language,

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you are actually getting better in understanding

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because written material must be written in a way for someone to understand when the writer is not there.

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So, you're learning the logic of the language or comprehension.

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So, you're learning to comprehend,

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you're learning to speak, you're learning to listen.

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Cool, huh?

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All right.

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So, how is this.. these two working with this this thing called sustained.

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I've got three S's.

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Ah, the secret isn't what I told you.

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When you read, I said if you read,

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you read a lot, you're going to end up reading faster,

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and you're going to comprehend.

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The reason why this mechanism works,

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which isn't discussed a lot, is this.

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Recognition.

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When you were a baby,

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okay, there were these two strange people who would come in the room and go out of the room.

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Sometimes bring you food, sometimes change you,

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sometimes say, mommy, daddy, strange people.

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But after a while, you kept seeing them again and again and again,

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and you recognize them.

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And then you would say,

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not sub locally, you go,

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mom, dad, they go, junior, yes, you recognize us.

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And after a while, you don't have to keep looking,

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you just go, mom, dad,

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mom, dad, mom, dad, mom, dad.

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And then you tell other people,

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this is my mom, this is my dad,

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my dad is my mom because you've seen them

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so many times well i said when you read you speed up it's

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because you recognize the words and every time you read something like the word the the

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or car car your brain after a while goes i recognize

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that i don't need to think

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and that's why you get faster your brain doesn't have to

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go what is a car car is four wheels okay now we understand it goes car Car is car.

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That's how reading speed picks up.

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So, when we say sustained,

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you must read and keep reading,

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and keep reading, and keep reading.

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But now, think about what I told you about in the secrets here.

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Well, if you keep reading and you get better,

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you get faster reading, meaning you can read more books,

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your recognition of words goes up.

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And I know this is true for years of being a teacher.

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I can say many words,

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but I can say this and almost every student gets it if they've been in Canada for two weeks.

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How's it going?

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I can say, how is it going?

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But after they've been here a month,

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I go, how's it going?

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And they all understand because they've heard it so many times that their brain goes,

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I know what that is.

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And I can respond.

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I have comprehension.

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When we go back to here,

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we need this smooth pursuit to keep you on track,

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to recognize the words.

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You have to read again and again,

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and you'll notice many words,

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2,000 of them, in fact,

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are repeated over and over and over again.

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And by using smooth pursuit so you can focus on these words,

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you get to see them,

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you learn them, they become recognized to you or recognizable,

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and then you will comprehend them faster so you can read more,

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which is important, and now you'll understand why I say that,

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because as you speed up,

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because most people don't read because it takes too long,

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but as you recognize these words,

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you can read faster, so you can understand faster, so it becomes easier.

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This is why you need that,

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that's why I started here.

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It may seem weird, but it's like that's why.

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You need to focus so you can catch these words,

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so they become, I want to say ingrained,

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but in your head permanently, yeah?

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As you're doing that, remember what I said is happening, the sub-vocalization.

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So every time you say the,

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your head's going the, the,

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the, the, the, the, some of you still say the,

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and I know you don't read,

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because if you did, you'd be going the, the, the, the.

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And this line alone, I'm sure I could find that 50 times on this page.

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So, you get lots of practice without doing it,

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and you get better to listening to it, because you're repeating it.

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Both happen.

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Remember, when you're reading the cat, well, who's hearing?

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You, because you're not saying it to anyone,

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so you get conversation, right?

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Speaking skills improve, not mine,

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And listening skills, recognizing the word,

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so when people speak to you,

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you hear, oh, I know that word.

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Boom.

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I recognize it.

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And finally, sustaining it helps speed up the whole process.

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So these three go together to help you with,

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like I promised, listening, or let's start with the best one,

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speaking, then listening, and reading,

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of course, and you're going to say,

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well, how does this help me with writing?

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I'm not the first to say it and I will not be the last.

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Any good writer will tell you,

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if you want to learn how to write,

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you got to read a lot.

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Why?

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Because the language is on the page with all the grammar, all the spelling.

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And I did mention, for those of you like,

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I have a hard time getting vocabulary,

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there's no one to talk to.

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There are millions of people to talk to.

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They're from different ages, from a thousand years ago to just yesterday.

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they're in books and they have slang

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and they have technical language they have the language of all

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there all you have to do is pick them up

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and they have them at different levels from a kid's level to language learner level to expert

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so the one tool you need is something that's sitting right beside you right now

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and you just have to read

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and grab it now following these three paths use your finger to help you focus for smooth pursuit

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because part of your problem is your eyes jump around and And I should have explained,

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your eyes jump around for exciting or something interesting,

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which you're catching on the page,

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which is great when you are an advanced reader

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and you're wanting to learn to do the next thing I'm going to tell you,

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which is a secret.

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But it's not so good when you're learning the language and you're trying to get the ideas.

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Because remember, a sentence is a full idea that will explain the vocabulary that you're learning.

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So, you need to do this first.

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Then as you're doing it,

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you don't have to practice, it will happen.

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make sure the material you're reading you know at least 85% of the words.

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That will lead to what's called the flow state where it's easier to learn

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because it's just hard enough that you don't get bored but easy enough for you to absorb new information.

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Okay?

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Sustained, we need to do that to get that speed up to go back in the circle again and again.

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Now the last thing I want to tell you is a special trick because people say

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there's no such thing as speed reading and other people say,

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you can speed read and learn and learn.

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The fact of the matter is when you're learning a new language,

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you will speak, or sorry,

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read, not as quickly as a native speaker.

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It doesn't matter the language simply because you're not familiar.

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This is what we're talking about here.

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Yeah.

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So, if you want a trick about speed reading that kind of works, it's called skimming.

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And many of the courses that they're going to ask you to spend,

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you know, $200, $300, they're asking you to skim,

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which isn't really speed reading,

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because if you read too fast, you lose comprehension.

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And comprehension is understanding, and that's the reason why you read, right?

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You want to understand.

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But sometimes you can use this skimming that they teach to your advantage.

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Now this is more for an intermediate to an advanced person who has very good comprehension

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and can read a lot of stuff.

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Because if you're going to school and your English isn't your first language,

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post-secondary like university or college, you gotta read...

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You gotta...

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You have to read a lot of information.

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And this trick I will teach you will help you do that,

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get the most out of it as you're working on these three to get a deeper level of understanding.

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Okay?

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Now, this comes from writing.

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When you write, or when we're taught to write,

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we're taught to write an introductory sentence and an ending or a conclusion sentence.

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In these two sentences, the first one tells you what we're going to talk about,

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and the last one tells you what you should have learned.

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See, if you have to speed up something and you can use your smooth pursuit,

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here's a trick to get you to speed read through books,

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but remember, you're going to miss going through all those vocabulary and getting the repetitions in,

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but this is if you have to,

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and this is a trick, remember?

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It's not a lesson.

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You can always go to a book, open it up.

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Okay.

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Nonfiction, it's best to do this with.

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Read the first sentence of a paragraph,

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then read the last sentence,

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and it will give you the idea of what's happened in between.

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And remember we talked about the say cards? can use

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that boom boom boom to jump around to when did johnny get killed whoa interesting i like this

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so you can use that little trick to help speed

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or boost you up

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but remember it's a trick you want to do actual learning

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use your finger for smooth pursuit smooth keeping it going from line to line

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so you see all of the words after your brain begins to recognize it

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or as that's happening sub vocalization goes in so you're actually practicing

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and speaking without doing so and yes for those people who are going to go,

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well, you're going to speak and you never mentioned that.

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I didn't say you don't.

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This is to get that extra practice when you're not talking to people,

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and especially in countries where there are not a lot of English speakers.

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This is a tool.

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Okay.

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Sustaining and doing that, your memory will pick up

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that you've seen these words before with the sub vocalization that will help you with future pronunciation.

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And because you've done that and you have it in your memory,

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you can read faster.

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Therefore, you can read more.

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And we're working on listening, speaking, and writing.

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Why?

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Because, as I said, commas,

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exclamation marks, all of that is there to give you the idea of how the world...

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Of how the language is used when people speak.

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And if you're in school,

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and that's why I said it's a little bit of a trick,

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and I sped up, I just slowed down.

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First sentence, last sentence of a paragraph will give you some basic understanding of what the paragraph's about.

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And you can use your little saccades power there to go in and find the important information and move from there.

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Anyway, that was a quick lesson from me on how...

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Me and E-Tap on how we can use reading to help increase your vocabulary,

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your listening and speaking skills, yeah?

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And writing to boot. Who knew?

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Look how small this thing is, see?

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It's like $1, all this information for $1.

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You want this one, right?

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Anyway, you have a great day.

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James from EngVid.

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Oh, before I go, just look around here somewhere, whichever thing you're on.

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Press subscribe.

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If you like this or want more content like this, press subscribe.

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We're happy to have you.

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You can do that or go to www.eng as in English,

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vid as in video.com, where there's myself and several other wonderful teachers that will be happy to teach you.

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Have a good one.

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About This Lesson

In this lesson, we will explore the transformative power of reading in the process of learning English. Many learners often focus solely on speaking and listening, but reading is a crucial skill that can enhance your overall language acquisition. By understanding how our eyes interact with text, you'll develop strategies for improving your vocabulary and comprehension. This lesson provides practical insights into how reading can be combined with the shadowing technique, helping you to not only learn new words but also improve your English pronunciation.

Key Vocabulary & Phrases

Saccade - a rapid movement of the eye as it shifts from one fixation point to another.
Fixation - a brief pause during which the eye focuses on a specific point.
Vocabulary - the set of words known and used by a person in language.
Comprehension - the ability to understand and make sense of what is read.
Language skills - the abilities necessary for speaking, listening, reading, and writing effectively.
Practice - the act of rehearsing or practicing language items for improvement.
Reading techniques - strategies to enhance understanding while reading.

Practice Tips

To make the most out of this lesson, consider implementing the following practice techniques:

Utilize the Shadowing Technique: While watching English videos, try shadowing the speaker. This means you should mimic the pronunciation and intonation immediately after hearing it. As you practice, pay attention to how reading complements this technique, especially in understanding new vocabulary in context.
Adjust Your Speed: Start by watching the video at a slower speed if necessary. This can help you catch each word and phrase more clearly. Gradually increase the speed as your comprehension improves.
Focus on Fixations: Practice reading a text out loud while noting your eye movements. Are you moving quickly through the text? How can you improve your fixations to understand the material better? Adjusting your reading habits will be beneficial for both reading and speaking skills.
Engage with the Material: After watching or reading, summarize what you've learned. This enhances your comprehension and allows you to practice using new vocabulary in your own sentences.
Set Goals for Vocabulary Expansion: Aim to learn a set number of new words each week. Use them in sentences, and try to integrate them into your shadowing practices as you engage in IELTS speaking practice.

By incorporating reading into your language learning routine, combined with dynamic techniques like shadowing, you will enhance your English skills faster and more effectively.

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	has jumped · they've done · has happened
Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it	be involved · were designed · must be written
Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing	people who would · person who has · people who are
Verb + -ing enjoy, keep, stop… + -ing — verbs that are followed by the -ing form	kept looking · kept seeing · keep looking

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 technique: read the full step-by-step guide →

Shadowing Practice: Improve Your English FASTER by Reading (It really works!) - Learn English Speaking with Video

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About This Lesson

Key Vocabulary & Phrases

Practice Tips

Grammar in this video

What is the Shadowing Technique?