Shadowing Practice: My Advice To Young Women - Learn English Speaking with Video
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You have your own natural genius that's different necessarily from me.
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You have a different approach to power.
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I did a video in which I was giving advice to young men in the 21st century.
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And I've been asked to do something similar for young women.
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Now, I don't want to come across as someone who's mansplaining, so please excuse me there.
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But I do have some ideas, and of course I'm coming from a male perspective, so you'll have to take that into consideration.
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One of the things that I think is really important, particularly in social media, so much pressure is put on young women about their image and their looks,
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and that it becomes like the primary value that people see in young women.
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And it's a very crushing feeling, I can imagine, to think that all you're valued for is your looks.
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I know in the past whenever someone has judged me for my looks or my clothes, which doesn't happen very often as a man I thought it.
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Oh, it's ugly.
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I don't like that.
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What's so important about it?
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I have other things that matter So the thing is you have something else
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that matters so much more than your looks and your image
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And you need to key into that and you need to continually tell yourself
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that your mind your spirit what you contribute to the world is infinitely more important than that image and that look.
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Now it's easy for me to say that
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because still in the world women are continually judged for their appearances
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and their thought is hot or not hot
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and you know it's hard to let go of that
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because you know it's where you get attention
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but you need to divorce yourself from that and say
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that I want to cultivate a different quality that gets me attention
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and I've noticed in my studies of history
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and in my observations of women that women and it's a generalization
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so please excuse me and please forgive me for my mansplaining
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but women have a different way of thinking than men now this is hard to generalize
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because it crosses all kinds of gender boundaries
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and there are plenty of men who have a more feminine mindset
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and women who have a masculine mindset so please understand that
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but I interviewed for mastery several women scientists and I noticed they had a different,
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more kind of holistic approach to looking at issues in science.
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It came from a different perspective and it was the source of their power of creating something.
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I interviewed this woman, Yoki Matsuoka from Mastery, who was a brilliant robotic engineer who came up with an incredible invention
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and she had this more kind of interesting holistic approach where
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she just wasn't just looking at creating an arm an artificial limb she was looking at the whole body
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and how it operates women tend to see the larger picture
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more men are more kind of focused in a linear in a narrower sense
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and there's a good side to that there's a disadvantage
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but women tend to see the wider picture they're also more attuned socially to what other people are thinking and feeling.
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Sometimes that's a bad thing, where you're too attuned to what people think about you, but it also makes you more empathetic.
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I wrote in The Loss of Human Nature about the female style of leadership, focusing on Queen Elizabeth I in England,
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and how it's a very, very powerful form of leadership.
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And I advise you to go look at that chapter and see what I was saying about that.
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I also have a chapter about gender and men and women
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and the different accessing for men their feminine side and for women their masculine side.
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The point of what I'm trying to say here is that you have your own natural genius that's different necessarily from me.
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You have a different approach to power.
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And some people have asked me to write a 48 Laws of Power for Women.
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And I don't think I'll ever get there, unfortunately, because it would be too difficult for me to be able to do that.
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But you are dealing with different power issues.
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It's a lot harder for you because you're judged on higher standards.
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You do one small thing, if you're ever mean or something, people judge you negatively.
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But the point is that if you yourself value your thinking,
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your ideas, your creativity, where you contribute in the invisible realm that has nothing to do with appearances,
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the invisible realm, meaning the realm of ideas, even in a spiritual sense, that that will be a value that will ground you in life,
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as opposed to being lost in that hall of mirrors where everything is about appearances and image.
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So start your whole thing in life thinking, I'm not going to get lost in that.
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What I value more than anything else is my mind and developing it.
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And that's extremely important in this world where social media is dominating us.
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We all have like really bad values, but that is a really good value to hold on to and cultivate throughout your life.
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This B2 speaking lesson is built on the video “My Advice To Young Women”. The speaker keeps coming back to these words: value, approach, image, thinking. This video has 62 sentences and 875 words to shadow. The speech runs for 5:10. The speaker talks at a natural 170 words per minute, close to everyday conversation. 86% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English; the rest is worth studying before you start.
Key vocabulary in this video
The 15 most advanced words in the video, with pronunciation and meaning:
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| attune verb | /əˈt(j)un/ | To bring into musical accord. |
| cultivate verb | /ˈkʌltɪveɪt/ | To grow plants, notably crops. |
| holistic adjective | /hoʊˈlɪs.tɪk/ | Related to holism. |
| mastery noun | /ˈmæs.tɚ.i/ | The position or authority of a master; dominion; command; supremacy; superiority. |
| masculine adjective | /ˈmæskjələn/ | Of or pertaining to the male gender. |
| mindset noun | /ˈmaɪn(d)ˌsɛt/ | A way of thinking; an attitude or opinion, especially a habitual one. |
| feminine adjective | /ˈfɛmɪnɪn/ | Of or pertaining to the female gender. |
| continually adverb | /kənˈtɪnjuəli/ | In regular or repeated succession; very often. |
| invisible adjective | /ɪnˈvɪzəb(ə)l/ | Unable to be seen; out of sight; not visible. |
| empathetic adjective | /ˌɛmpəˈθɛtɪk/ | Showing empathy for others, recognizing their feelings. |
| generalization noun | An act or instance of generalizing; concluding that something true of a subclass is true of the entire class. | |
| generalize verb | /ˈd͡ʒɛn.(ə.)ɹə.laɪz/ | To speak in generalities, or in vague terms. |
| infinitely adverb | /ˈɪnfɪnɪtli/ | In an infinite manner; as of anything growing without bounds; endlessly. |
| robotic adjective | /ɹoʊˈbɑtɪk/ | Of, relating to, or resembling a robot; mechanical, lacking emotion or personality, etc. |
| negatively adverb | In a negative manner; so as to be damaging or not positive. |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Meaning |
|---|---|
| come across verb | To change sides; to cross over to work for the opposition. |
| come up with verb | To manage to produce, deliver, or present (something) by inventing, creating, thinking of, or obtaining it. |
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | I've been asked · has judged · I've noticed |
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | I've been asked · is put · being lost |
| Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing | men who have · women who have |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 17 contractions and reduced forms, such as you're, don't, I'm. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “th” sounds: empathetic /ˌɛmpəˈθɛtɪk/, cloth /klɒθ/
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: socially /ˈsoʊʃəli/, invention /ɪnˈvɛnʃən/, observation /ˌɑbzɚˈveɪʃn̩/, crush /kɹʌʃ/
- Long words — get the stress right: continually /kənˈtɪnjuəli/, invisible /ɪnˈvɪzəb(ə)l/, empathetic /ˌɛmpəˈθɛtɪk/, generalize /ˈd͡ʒɛn.(ə.)ɹə.laɪz/, infinitely /ˈɪnfɪnɪtli/
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 attune, cultivate, holistic.
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.