Shadowing Practice: Let's Cook By Eating First | Christine Ha | TEDxTaipeiSalon - Learn English Speaking with YouTube
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A question I always get is,
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A question I always get is,
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how did you learn to cook so well?
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And the answer is, first I had to learn how to eat.
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In order to become a better cook,
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you have to become a better eater.
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And what I mean by that is you have to exercise your palate.
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As a child, I actually hated eating.
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I thought it was a waste of time,
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and my mother described me as ham chơi,
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and translated from Vietnamese, that means always wanting to play.
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So I'd much rather play with my toys.
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I thought eating was a waste of time.
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And every time my mother called me to the table to eat,
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I would pout, sometimes cry,
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pick at my food, and take over an hour to eat just a small bowl of rice.
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Sometimes my mother would get so frustrated that she would threaten to hit me with a table leg.
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It wasn't that the food was bad.
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That's not why I didn't like to eat.
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In fact, on the contrary,
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my mother was a very good cook.
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Among all of her friends,
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she was known to make the best Vietnamese beef noodle soup, or pho.
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And for a cultural day at school,
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my mother laboriously wrapped and fried 100 spring rolls for my school.
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And all of my classmates and my teacher devoured those all up.
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Perhaps I didn't appreciate food because I didn't know how much effort and work went into cooking the food.
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My mother was very overprotective of me.
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I grew up as an only child,
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and she didn't let me help her in the kitchen at all.
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She would tell me to stay away from the sharp knives or get away from the hot stove,
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so I didn't learn to cook with her.
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My mother actually died when I was 14,
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and she left me no recipes,
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and I regret to this day never having learned to cook from her.
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At the time, it was a very difficult time for me,
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just not only being 14 and going through adolescence and losing my mother,
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and all of a sudden her food,
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what I think really was part of my childhood, was also gone.
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I actually started learning to cook myself my second year in college,
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and this was because I moved out of the dorms into an old apartment with a small kitchen,
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and I had to learn to feed myself
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because I no longer had the luxury nor the convenience of a dorm cafeteria nearby.
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So I had to eat,
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and so I had to learn to cook.
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And up until this point,
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I could only make three things.
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One was instant noodles, two was frozen pizza,
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and three were eggs, fried or scrambled.
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So I guess I could make four things,
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but I couldn't even, for example,
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steam rice in an automatic rice cooker.
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I didn't know how to measure the water.
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I didn't really understand how a rice cooker worked.
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So you can imagine, I was the bane of Asian parents everywhere.
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And this also gives any of you that don't know how to cook hope,
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because not that long ago I didn't know how to cook,
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and now I cook pretty well.
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But anyway, so I had to feed myself,
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I had to eat, and so I had to learn to cook.
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I went to a bookstore and bought a used cookbook.
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I bought a cheap set of knives,
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pots and pans, and I started reading these recipes word for word and trying to execute these recipes in my small kitchen,
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and at the same time trying to understand the fundamentals of cooking through the process.
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Of course, I botched a lot of dishes during those first few years that I'd learned to cook.
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For example, I tried to make wonton soup
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and all of the wontons burst open in the broth because I didn't know how to wrap them correctly.
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Another time I tried to make fried rice and instead of using old rice,
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I used freshly steamed rice and yes,
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I eventually learned how to steam rice.
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I used fresh rice out of the rice cooker and instead of using a wok,
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I cooked it in a small skillet and so by the time I was done,
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it looked like congee had exploded all over my stovetop.
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My mother may not have taught me how to cook,
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but she did instill in me perseverance and I didn't give up cooking no matter what,
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even though I was pretty bad at it.
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And because I kept cooking and kept practicing and I put my mind to it,
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eventually I cooked a dish that was not only edible but pretty good.
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It was a Vietnamese braised ginger chicken.
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And my friends, who usually only took a few bites of my food and then would claim that they were full,
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this time actually helped themselves to seconds and even thirds.
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And there were no leftovers that night,
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and nothing went into the trash except for the bones from the chicken.
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And it was at that moment that I started to fall in love with food.
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There was something incredibly satisfying and fulfilling about bringing joy to other people through something that I was able to create.
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And cooking, this act of turning raw ingredients into nourishment, was my vehicle.
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Around this same time, I was 20 years old and I was in college,
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and it was the same time I started losing my vision.
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It started in one of my eyes,
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my right eye, it went blurry,
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and so I went home and I changed out my contact lens thinking it was just a dirty contact lens.
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I put on a new one,
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a disposable one, and it was still blurry,
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so I went to the eye doctor,
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And the eye doctor said he couldn't figure out what was wrong with my eye.
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He referred me to a neuro-ophthalmologist.
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And that neuro-ophthalmologist couldn't figure out what was the root cause of my vision loss in one of my eyes.
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I underwent multiple tests, MRIs,
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a lumbar puncture, several blood tests,
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and they still couldn't figure out what was wrong with my eye or what caused it.
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It wasn't until five years after that,
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when I was 25, that I was officially and correctly diagnosed with neuromyelitis optica or NMO for short.
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What NMO is, it's a rare autoimmune condition that affects the neurological system,
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primarily the optic nerves, so the nerve that connects your eyeball to your brain,
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and the spinal cord.
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When I was 23, I had a very bad and serious spinal cord inflammation where over a course of four days,
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I became completely paralyzed from my neck down.
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I couldn't feed myself, use my hands,
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I couldn't brush my teeth,
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grip a pencil, I couldn't even sit up.
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Obviously, I couldn't walk.
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It was very frustrating because I felt like an adult trapped in an infant's body,
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and I couldn't will my fingers to move or my toes to move.
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It took a lot of medicine and occupational and physical therapy,
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but over several, several months,
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I was able to recover completely from that inflammation,
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obviously since I'm standing here before all of you today talking and moving my arms around.
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But my optic nerves didn't fare so well.
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And gradually over eight years my vision deteriorated and to the level
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that it is today and when people ask me what I do see I liken it to
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coming out of a really hot shower and Gazing into
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that steamy mirror and that's kind of what I see so washed out colors very vague shapes
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Mostly shadows and that's my world
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People often also ask me if my sense of taste has heightened since I've lost my vision.
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I wouldn't say that I've become a super taster per se,
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but I have become much more aware of my other four senses.
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Now that my eyes don't function so well,
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I have to rely on my ears,
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my nose, my hands, and my mouth to inform me of my surroundings.
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So for example, my ears will tell me if I'm about to bump into a wall because the acoustics will change.
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and you can live that out by example just something simple by covering your ears
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and letting go and you can tell that there's a different sound
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so that's how I kind of tell
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if I'm walking near something like a wall my nose will tell me
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if the garlic in the pan that I'm cooking is turning from raw to
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that nice window of fragrant
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and aromatic to burnt my fingers now have learned to read Braille
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so I can figure out which button on the elevator to push to get to the floor I want to get to.
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And my tongue has become better at tasting the different nuances of food.
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So yes, I will say that losing my vision has made me become a better eater.
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But you don't have to lose your vision to become a better eater.
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So don't worry, you don't have to go blind.
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But I will teach you four practical tips for all of you to become better eaters.
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One, the first tip is to try everything.
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I'm currently a judge on MasterChef Vietnam
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and this is a season that's currently airing right now in Vietnam
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and as a judge you have to taste everything
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that the contestants cook and for this season I had to eat some things
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that I've never tried before that were very foreign to me.
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For example I had to try ants,
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ant eggs, grub, crickets and scorpion and in America these are not common ingredients
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that we cook with or eat
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so I have to admit I was a little bit nervous
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when I had to try the foods of the contestants
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but I'm the kind of person that believes in experiencing everything in life
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so I said screw it and I went for it
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and as it turns out some of the bugs were actually kind of good
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so which goes to show that you just never know unless you try
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so I really believe that the more you taste the more you will know
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and understand food and And the more experiences you have,
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the more creative and compassionate you'll be.
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So that's one, try everything.
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Number two, try everything twice.
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Even if you didn't like it the first time,
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you need to give it another chance.
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For example, when I was in college,
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I tried raw tuna for the first time.
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I didn't grow up with the luxury of eating sushi,
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so I've never had raw fish before.
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And the first time I had it, I was uncomfortable.
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I didn't like that it was cold and slimy and it tasted fishy.
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But a year later, I tried it again,
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and surprisingly, I fell immediately in love with sushi.
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And today, sushi is one of my favorite foods.
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So, that also shows you that you just never know unless you give it two chances
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so to be fair try everything twice tip number three
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always be in the moment when you eat get rid of distractions when you eat whether that means
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turning off the tv or putting down your phone
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or simply closing your eyes get rid of other distractions
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and that's kind of how my vision impairment plays into how I've become more in tune with my palate is
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because I've had to rely on one less sense
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so I'm not distracted by the visuals of a plate
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or a presentation I really involve myself in the flavor so
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when you take a bite close your eyes
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and think about what you're putting in your mouth taste the
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flavors what flavors do you taste sour sweet umami salty bitter
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taste the temperature is it hot cold cool the texture crispy
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crunchy think about the visceral reaction you have to this food does it evoke a particular emotion
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or memory and just be in that moment you become a better eater
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when you're fully aware of what you're putting in your mouth
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so take the time to eat slowly and to think
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and feel and actually that's probably how you should do everything in life it's just be self aware
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and be present in the moment.
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Last but not least, my fourth tip on how to be a better eater is to travel.
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The first time I ever went to New York City,
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it was during a spring break trip in college,
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and that's when I started falling in love with traveling.
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Having grown up in California and Texas,
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New York was like a completely different country to me.
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The weather was cold, the subways were crowded,
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the food was expensive, and the streets were pretty smelly.
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But I loved it because I loved being able to experience a completely different culture from my own.
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And that's why I think traveling is very important.
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It keeps you grounded and not feeling like you're the center of the universe,
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I guess, and what you know is all that exists out there.
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So I think that's why traveling is important.
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It really opens up your mind.
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And traveling actually became much more cumbersome for me once I started losing my vision.
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Obviously sightseeing was not as important and frankly quite boring.
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So the way that I started experiencing other cultures was through their food and eating their food.
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So visiting Japan, instead of going to the Shinto shrines,
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I would look for a ramen shop or I would pass over Buckingham Palace to go look for fish and chips.
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And this was the way now that I experienced other cultures.
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And that's what I love about food.
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Food is so universal.
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Everyone in this world needs food for sustenance in order to live.
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You can meet someone from a different country that doesn't speak the same language as you,
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they don't share the same political beliefs or the same religion,
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and you could come from totally different socioeconomic backgrounds.
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But you both can sit down together and share in a meal,
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and that's what all humans have in common.
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That is my love story with food.
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So I invite all of you to go ahead,
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open your minds, take that first bite,
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and fall in love with food too.
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Thank you.
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About This Lesson
In this lesson, you will dive into the fascinating journey of Christine Ha, who emphasizes the importance of learning how to eat in order to become a better cook. Through her personal experiences, you'll learn not only about her culinary beginnings but also the emotional connections we have with food. This lesson will focus on improving your English speaking practice by familiarizing you with her storytelling techniques, vocabulary, and expressions. By engaging in the shadowing technique, you'll enhance your ability to articulate thoughts clearly and improve your English pronunciation, making your spoken English more fluent and natural.
Key Vocabulary & Phrases
- Exercise your palate - Developing one's taste and appreciation for food.
- Laboriously - In a way that requires considerable effort and time.
- Overprotective - Protecting someone too much, potentially limiting their experiences.
- Cultural day - An event highlighting specific traditions or practices of a culture.
- Instant noodles - Pre-cooked and dehydrated noodles that can be quickly prepared.
- Devour - To eat food eagerly and in large amounts.
- Pout - To push out one's lips to show displeasure or sulkiness.
- Regret - A feeling of sadness or disappointment over something that has happened or been done.
Practice Tips
To maximize your learning from Christine's inspiring story, consider utilizing the shadowing technique. Focus on the nuances of her voice and the rhythm of her speech. As you listen to her share her experiences, try to mimic her intonation and pauses. This can be particularly effective given the emotional tone she conveys when discussing her childhood and the bittersweet memories of learning to cook alone. When you practice, pay attention to how she emphasizes certain words, especially when expressing her regrets and culinary discoveries.
Since the speed of her speech might vary, repeat sections of the transcript until you feel comfortable speaking along with her. This practice will not only enhance your vocabulary but will also significantly improve your English pronunciation. By becoming more fluent in expressing personal narratives similar to Christine's, you'll find your English speaking practice both rewarding and enriching.
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.
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