Shadowing Practice: not regretting your life is easy, actually - Learn English Speaking with YouTube
B2
So, as someone who's watched two John Green videos and two Hank Green videos on how to live your life, I think I have consumed basically all relevant media on this topic.
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So, as someone who's watched two John Green videos and two Hank Green videos on how to live your life, I think I have consumed basically all relevant media on this topic.
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But to be honest, listening to other people telling you how to live your life the right way, no matter how smart you think they are, is kind of like learning how to tie a tie by watching someone tie a tie.
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Especially from this angle, it's not going to work.
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I mean, literally you can't see anything, and all the orientations are reversed, and they're doing whatever with their hands at light speed.
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They could be airbending for all you know and even
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if you stand behind them and watch and pretend it's your hands It's still not your hands doing it.
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So it just doesn't click That's how life is you have
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to actually do a lot of it to get better at it And how do you do more life?
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Well, no one really knows but I can for sure tell you that's not just existing
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Because you can exist for quite a long time without doing anything significant on the other hand
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And if you do more stuff, go to more places, and meet more people, you will fill up your life progress bar faster.
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So if you're not exactly sure what to do with your life, or what dream you want to go after, the easy solution is to just do more life.
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And you'll probably come to some kind of answer much faster
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than someone who's just waiting for an answer to come to them.
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Bro, that's a cop-out answer.
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How?
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You can't just say it's easy actually and then be like, oh just figure it out yourself.
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That's literally a cop-out answer.
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Well actually I think that almost any other singular one-sentence answer would have been a cop-out.
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Like, follow your dreams and never give up.
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For some people, that's all you need to hear and you'd stop
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and know exactly what to do and you'd go be a CEO
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or something and donate to charity and lock people inside burning buildings for entertainment and live happily ever after.
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For other people, following your dreams and never giving up is just bad advice.
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Like if you're 5'8 and exceptionally good at physics but your dream is to play in the NBA, you maybe have a 1 in a million chance of doing it.
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In 999,999 cases, you will start training 6 hours a day, wear down your kneecaps, tear your ACL,
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and give up a stable income just for a chance at maybe getting into the Japanese league.
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But if you had just continued what you were already good at, you know, researching rocket science or something, you probably would have had a happier life.
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if it wasn't necessarily your dream.
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Thank you, Hank Green.
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Some people will be happier going all in on their dreams.
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Other people will be happier going all in on something they already have the tools to do.
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It's your job to figure out where you are on this line.
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But that's not to discourage you from your dreams, because there's actually a really famous video of a Carnegie Mellon computer science professor named Randy Pausch,
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who at age 47 got diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, and he got to give one last lecture to a room full of students knowing
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that he only had six months to live.
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So he goes over how, as a child, he had about six specific dreams.
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Some of them were big, some of them were impossible, and others were pretty achievable.
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But in one way or another, he got to achieve, or mostly achieve, all six of them.
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Not only is it pretty entertaining to listen to, but it also just goes to show how achieving stuff early in your life will teach you lessons
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that will make you better at achieving more stuff later.
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And before you know it, one day you look back and you've got like a whole Wikipedia article's worth of achievements.
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By the way, I know this is already a long lecture to watch, but if you ever find a 1 hour 15 minute video with 21 million views,
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that means there's got to be something valuable in there.
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Even later, Randy Pausch actually wrote a book called The Last Lecture, where he basically wrote you an entire guide to achieving your dreams and how he applied it to his life.
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And I know you might have tuned out when I said the word book, At least I tuned myself out when I said it, but lucky for us, there's actually a full guide to the book condensed
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and summarized with an expert analysis on an app called Shortform, today's sponsor.
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For basically any non-fiction book you've ever wanted to read, Shortform has a condensed full guide to that book,
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which you can start reading with literally two or three clicks on your computer or two or three taps on your phone.
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This is like a treasure trove of knowledge that is such good value for what you get out of it.
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Like, I've been using this for over a year and a half, and as someone who used to watch hours and hours of YouTube slop and call it learning, I can now actually pick whatever topic I want
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and read a full guide to a book on that topic at any instant.
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Shortform is the reason I found this book in the first place.
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In fact, it's actually how I discover most books these days, because they add new ones every week, and you can choose pretty much any category you want.
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If you want to try it yourself, right now you can sign up for their 5-day free trial using the link shortform.com slash easy actually
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which will also give you a 20% discount off the annual subscription.
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That's shortform.com slash easy actually.
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The link will be down below.
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Alright then, so hopefully
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so far I've prevented you from going down the standard human life crisis pathway
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which after a bit of thinking I've realized is usually connected to Japan.
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But of course it's a scary thought that eventually you'll have to pick one thing to do with your life, that thing usually being your career.
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It's easy to have this idea that
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when you pick your career by age 25 or something
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that you'll just set up your entire life
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and then ride it out in a simulation until the end with absolutely nothing you can change afterward.
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But in reality there's a lot of things you can't just uproot your entire life to go
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and do but at any time there is still an infinite number of possible things you can do.
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Like maybe you have 50k in student loan debt to become a doctor
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and you don't want to switch out of becoming one, you can still start making YouTube videos or get good at math while studying to be a doctor.
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Once you realize that, you stop worrying about what to do with your life and you start thinking, well of all the possible things I could do today, what do I want to do?
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So there isn't just one singular two step guide that you can follow to live a good life.
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That's like trying to draw an owl in two steps.
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You can't.
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I mean you can draw a pretty good owl with practice
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and time but it's just misleading to try and fit it into two steps.
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So is that it?
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No, there's actually two more things I learned thanks to this video.
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Number one, floss and wear sunscreen.
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This advice isn't really about the floss or the sunscreen, but it's more about realizing that you will get older.
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And the things you do now are deciding the fate of the older you, especially health-wise.
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Flossing and sunscreen are great examples because most people know you're supposed to do them, but you don't really feel any immediate benefit and especially when you're young,
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your skin is fine and your teeth are healthy and it seems like it's going to be that way forever.
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But the you in 30, 40, 50 years, that is who you wear sunscreen for.
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Number two, keep an ongoing memoir of what you do and what you experience.
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Not necessarily a journal, because in a journal you're supposed to write down your daily thoughts
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and feelings and that is quite a lot of effort to be doing every day.
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We've probably all tried it and given up on day two because it was the exact same entry as day one.
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But with the memoir, you only really write down significant things that you do in your life, as well as significant events that happen to you, so that you always have a record of what you have done with your life.
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And I'm not saying it has to be super detailed or even physical.
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It could literally just be an inconspicuously titled Google Doc, written in white text starting on page 2 so
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that nobody knows about it and no one can find it except you and your nearest Google data center.
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If that helped, I'm collecting donations in the form of subscribes to fund the next video.
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Why Practice Speaking with This Video?
This video offers insightful reflections on life choices and the importance of taking active steps toward personal fulfillment. By practicing your speaking skills using the transcript, you can not only improve your fluency but also engage with thought-provoking content that resonates with the struggles of many English learners. The context of finding your path in life allows you to express your opinions, describe your aspirations, and share personal experiences—all of which are crucial for developing conversational skills. Additionally, using engaging content like this enhances your motivation to practice regularly, making the learning journey enjoyable and rewarding.
Grammar & Expressions in Context
Within the transcript, several grammatical structures and expressions stand out as particularly useful for English learners. Here are a few key points to focus on:
- “How to live your life” - This phrase exemplifies the structure used for discussing advice, which is common in conversational English. It demonstrates how to formulate questions about life choices.
- “You have to actually do a lot of it” - Here, the use of the word "actually" adds emphasis and can help you understand the importance of active engagement in any endeavor, including language learning.
- “If you're not exactly sure what to do...” - This conditional structure is frequently used in English to express uncertainty. Practicing conditional sentences can improve your ability to speculate and give advice.
- “Following your dreams and never giving up” - This is a common motivational phrase. Understanding how to use such idioms can make your conversations feel more vibrant and relatable.
Common Pronunciation Traps
While practicing the transcript, pay attention to some tricky words and sounds that might interfere with clear communication:
- “Regretting” - Watch out for the soft “g” sound and practice elongating the ‘r’ sound to improve clarity.
- “Achieve” - This word contains a ‘ch’ sound that may be challenging for non-native speakers. Focus on pronouncing it distinctly.
- “Significant” - This word has several syllables, and stressing the right syllables can be tricky. Practice it using the shadowspeaks technique to enhance your natural rhythm.
By regularly using the shadowing technique with videos like this, you can refine your pronunciation and fluency while discussing relatable topics. Make sure to record yourself and compare your speech with the original audio for effective improvement!
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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