Shadowing Practice: Professor Explains the Truth About Learning a Language After 50 | Dr. Simone Pfenninger - Learn English Speaking with Video
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Is it ever too late to learn a language?
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The short answer is no. It's never too late.
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Obviously, there are limits.
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I think scholars talk about a critical period.
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It's a pretty old hypothesis, and you can probably already sense that there's a couple of issues with that.
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You talked about bilingual schools.
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These types of schools are pretty expensive.
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Do you think it's worth it at all?
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Yes, I do.
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It's not so much about the length of study.
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It's more about intensity and how condensed those hours are.
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Dr. Simone Fenninger, you're a professor right now at the University of Zurich, which is, you know, the biggest university in Switzerland, if I remember correctly.
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A well-known university in Europe and worldwide.
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You were an associate professor at the University of Salzburg in Austria in second language acquisition, which is to say, you know,
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language learning for the common folks and psycholinguistics.
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And a lot of your work has to do with age and language learning.
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The first thing I want to ask is, is it ever too late to learn a language?
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The short answer is no. it's never too late.
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There are essentially no inherent limits to second language acquisition.
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Obviously, there are limits, but those are more shaped by the circumstances that surround the learner.
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And that may include time, the time that you have on your hands,
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support, available resources, access to target language speakers,
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the target language culture, prestige, the prestige, the status of the target language, among many other variables.
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So very often,
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the age differences that we observe reflect differences in the situation of learning rather than in the capacity to learn, if that makes sense.
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So I find rather than asking, is it ever too late?
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The more interesting question for me as an SLA scholar is why do some individuals acquire new skills more efficiently
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and more rapidly than others?
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Right.
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It's the same in psychology when they investigate why some individuals are more affected by cognitive decline than others.
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What's the recipe, right?
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What do they have that others do not have?
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That is really interesting to investigate.
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So there is not one standard magical age when abilities change abruptly in a way that affects learning and development,
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you know, from one day to the next.
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The current consensus among cognitive scientists is really that the brain remains plastic throughout life.
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And by plasticity, I mean just the brain's ability to reorganize neural connections in response to a learning experience
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so the message really is that the brain is modified by experience at any age
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and all experiences leave their mark across the lifespan
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so experiences constantly shape how we respond to future situations experiences create knowledge obviously
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and expertise for learning and experiences can change the brain.
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But there's no magical age when we say, okay, now the window is closed and you're doomed.
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I think scholars talk about a critical period.
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Is that a thing?
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To what extent does it affect us, if at all?
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Yeah, I mean, that's a
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hypothesis called the critical period hypothesis that goes back to the 50s and 60s of the last centuries.
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It's a pretty old hypothesis and it was first formulated for first language acquisition rather than second language acquisition.
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And over the years it's made its way into second language acquisition, but originally it was formulated for first language acquisition.
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And there's two main assumptions to this hypothesis.
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One is, like I said, it's this idea that there's a clear cutoff line.
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There's a clear cut end sometime early in life,
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after which you're no longer able to attain what they call native-like proficiency any longer.
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So yeah, the window of opportunity has closed.
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So the key word there is really discontinuity, right?
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There's a threshold
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at some point like a cliff if you want um
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which is very different i'd like to emphasize
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that from uh just general age-related differences
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that we describe in our research you know for example the observation
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that in certain contexts earlier is better
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when it comes to language learning that's very different
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that does not imply that there's a a cutoff
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or a sort of a bend in the proficiency age function
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so that is one assumption there's discontinuity and the second assumption
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that this hypothesis makes is
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that all the learners within the critical period they should be
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capable of perfect native-like l2 mastery irrespective of their first language
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and everybody outside of a critical period should fail to gain native-like mastery
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and you can probably already sense that there's a couple of issues with
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that one is that for decades scholars have tried to find the end of that critical period.
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For Lyme-wage and humans, originally, I think in the 50s, Penfield and Roberts and Lenneberg,
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who devised the critical period hypothesis, they said it's age nine, around age nine, or 12,
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the onset of puberty, because they said that is when the brain becomes, and he said, increasingly stiff and rigid.
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But as I've just said, that is no longer in line with current neurobiological wisdom.
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So it's been super difficult to find that cutoff.
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Scholars, there's assumptions that range from, I think, one year of age all the way through the end of adolescence.
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You find everything.
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It's so hard to model thresholds in my field and to say for all individuals,
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this is the age after which this or that happens.
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Um, so that is one issue.
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And the other issue is, I mean, what is native likeness?
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I mean, how do you define that?
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How do you measure that?
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Um, and also how can,
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or, or can monolingual native likeness be found in multilinguals at all?
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Is that possible or such as an impossible benchmark?
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And so empirically speaking, it's been super difficult to verify or falsify the critical period hypothesis.
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So like I said, the current consensus is that there is no standard age at which things change drastically.
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That's pretty encouraging because I get a lot of questions of people asking, you know, you know, I'm 50, I'm 60, maybe even beyond.
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Is it possible for me to learn a language?
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And even, you know, people younger in their 20s and their 30s, just thinking that, you know,
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I'm not old, but I'm past that quote unquote critical period and so is it too late.
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But then why is it that when I see kids and they don't need to put any work in, well, at least it looks like it,
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and they just sort of absorb the language and they end up, even if it's their second language, they end up speaking like a native speaker, especially in terms of accent,
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whereas for adults it seems to be, well, not really the case in most cases.
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In general, there are obviously
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differences in how how we learn or we learn languages differently at different ages and
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that also motivates different pedagogical approaches right children even in schools not even in a naturalistic setting they learn languages
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and languages are being taught very differently um compared to how we adolescent
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so that makes perfect sense and also i mean as you go through life, the environments also in which we learn also change, right?
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So once you no longer have to go to school,
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for example, you may start learning additional languages in more informal environments and less so in all programs.
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You may meet a significant other who speaks another language.
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So the environments change.
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And then I think we also generally, we keep adapting our ideas about what we want to do
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and learn in life as we as we get older and
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so things keep changing naturally and so it makes sense
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that there's many learning contexts where yes children are clearly at an advantage
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when they acquire additional language there's a lot of immigrant studies for example
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that carried out or collected data in so-called naturalistic learning contexts.
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For example, if a family moves to another country and you observe and you document
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the progress that they make when it comes to language learning, and very often we find that the children outperform younger starters,
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outperform older starters, right?
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In the long run, definitely.
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Um, not across all domains though.
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I mean, it's a little more nuanced.
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I mean, there are domains of language that are a little more susceptible to age effects.
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For example, pronunciation is very vulnerable age effects.
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Um, so foreign accent, um, whereas lexical semantics, vocabulary is a little less vulnerable to age effects.
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So this is not a sort of an all size fits all.
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But yes, I mean, earlier is better in a naturalistic setting.
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Now the question is, and you've just asked it,
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the million dollar question is why children outperform older starters in those settings?
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Because there's a variety of possibilities.
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The first one that usually comes to mind is some kind of cognitive or neurobiological advantages, right?
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As we are affected by what we call cognitive decline and cognitive decline sets in gradually
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in young adulthood and affects cognitive functions that are necessary or that are in part necessary for language acquisition.
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Parts of working capacity, for example,
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or information processing or recalling new information,
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processing speed and so on.
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And those start declining, yes, gradually in early adulthood something that children are not affected by.
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Right.
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And so that's possibly one reason.
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I would say there's also a ton of what we call age-related circumstances that they profit from.
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So if you think about a family that moves to another country, the children ideally may go to school
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and in a school setting they're immersed fully immersed in the
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target culture right um they're they make new friends um they have regular
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and rich interactions with a variety of target speakers um children
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also have very positive attitudes to learning new things they're they're generally speaking, relatively risk taking.
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They usually have greater commitment of time or energy than adults.
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They may have a greater support system like teachers and parents or caregivers or older siblings that support them.
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And those are all what we call, those are optimal L2 learning conditions, if you think about it,
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and those are all that are equally important as cognitive.
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factors and if you think of adults then or their caregivers for an adult immigrant
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their main social network may involve people from their own ethnolinguistic group
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and that's it right and they may have you
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or maybe no native speaking colleagues at work
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so their learning conditions may be far from ideal
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so the question really is
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if adults had similar optimal l2 learning conditions would they do
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equally well you know what i mean what is what is more important the cognitive side of the story
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or everything that comes with age all the age-related circumstances
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super hard to tease those two apart
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but those are those are some of the reasons why in
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some contexts yeah earlier is better there's a ton of context so where that um assumption does not hold empirically.
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For example, if we take immersive home settings, home environments, if children grow up multilingual,
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this is something here in Europe that has become very common, right?
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That children are being raised multilingually.
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And parents keep asking us, what's the recipe?
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What can I do, right?
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What are the factors that guarantee a multilingual outcome?
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And there we sometimes do find age effects and sometimes we don't.
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Sometimes a little older, if you start acquiring the second language a little older, it's not necessarily a disadvantage because older children,
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say a six-year-old, can profit from increased cognitive maturity.
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And that basically means that certain cognitive functions are further developed.
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The same functions that I've just mentioned, working memory capacity, abstract reasoning, executive control.
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And those are important for language learning.
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So they may be better developed or further developed.
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An older child may also have a good basis in their first language.
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You can profit from that.
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When it comes to additional language learning, literacy skills is one that comes to mind, reading and writing abilities.
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And so we usually tell those parents, even the absolute earliest possible start.
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So birth does not guarantee a bilingual outcome.
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There are bilingual children who are exposed to two or more languages from birth.
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And they absolutely grow up, you know, to become productive multilinguals with varying proficiencies in their languages, but still fairly productive.
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And then others only develop receptive skills in one of their languages.
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And yet others completely attrite, meaning their knowledge stagnates, fossilizes,
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and then they no longer use the language at all.
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and they're not being encouraged to use it by their caregivers for whatever reason.
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And so that's a very common scenario.
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So there, age plays a role, but the evidence is mixed, and then you have classroom settings.
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That's the third.
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Learning context where earlier is better, that assumption doesn't really stand up empirically, interestingly.
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I want to talk a little bit more about cognitive decline, but first, yeah, you talked about these, you know, bilingual schools.
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These types of schools are pretty expensive, usually like, you know, college level sort of tuition fees.
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Do you think it's worth it at all?
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Yes, I do.
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I actually do.
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I think this is one of the contexts where we find beautiful
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starting age effects because the language is really it's not
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so much about learning an additional language that's not
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so much about language learning it's more about using the language as a means of communication to do something else
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and that's a very authentic way of using the second language
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so you may use it for example to do math or biology right
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So it's not so much about grammar or vocabulary or accuracy, fluency, complexity.
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It's about math or biology just through another language.
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It's a means of communication.
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And of course, also the intensity of language exposure is great in bilingual schools.
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And high intensity instruction, we know that promotes the continuous activation, processing and consolidation of linguistic structures.
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So it's interesting in second language acquisition, it is not so much about the length of study in years or in instructional hours.
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It's more about intensity and how condensed those hours are blocked.
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That for some reason is a lot more effective.
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Really?
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Okay.
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And so that's what happens, right?
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In bilingual schools, it's super, super intense.
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It minimizes also the impact of forgetting and interference because you are continuously focused on the target language without constant breaks.
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It really simulates, you know, it's a form of immersion really.
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It's like a naturalistic setting.
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It's very authentic.
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And yeah, no, it's there's usually, usually those students make great progress, but as As you rightly pointed out,
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those schools are incredibly expensive also here in Switzerland, and they're usually not state funded.
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They're private schools.
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So we are trying to promote them because when it comes to early foreign language learning, this is the approach.
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This intensive, immersive approach works really well, particularly with young learners.
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Yeah, you talked about something I wanted to talk a little bit more about, then we'll move on to cognitive decline.
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But you said that intensity potentially is more important than the total length of studying.
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And this is something I've been sort of suspecting for a long time.
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It seems to me that really going all in on the language, even for a limited amount of time,
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seems to have a sort of exponential effects on your ability.
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do you think that is?
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It's just that you're getting exposed to the same stuff at, I don't know, it's like a frequency that is good for memorization or I don't know.
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Yeah, yeah, you're, you benefit from, I mean, obviously there's increased input, output and room for interaction.
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That's always good.
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And you just benefit from being exposed to a higher frequency and density of linguistic input over shorter periods,
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rather than receiving the same amount of input distributed over a longer period of time.
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It's also motivating because you can tell you're making progress, right?
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And sometimes this drip feed approach, you know, if you have one or two instructional hours per week in primary school,
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sometimes students report that they find this frustrating that they're not really making a lot of progress.
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But of course, you can't just add instructional hours to the primary school curriculum.
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That doesn't, it doesn't work like that.
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And so that's a nice compromise, right, to teach school subjects in the target language, or at least some of them.
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And yeah, you have a sense of progress, achievement, you don't have the constant breaks, there's less room for interference from other languages,
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because you're really focused on one language without constantly switching to.
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Yeah, it minimizes the impact of forgetting, interference.
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It's just, it's a peculiarity of language learning that intensity works so well.
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But it's been shown, I mean, bilingual programs are incredibly successful.
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And talking about cognitive decline, you said that this may be a factor when learning a language,
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but I'm wondering how much of a factor is it?
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Specifically, you know, when your early adulthood?
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Is it a factor at all or is it something that we can just neglect and then in, let's say, in your 50s and then later on in your 70s or 80s?
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It's not, I mean, it's not something that you notice drastically or dramatically in your 20s and 30s.
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It's definitely something that I experience now a little when I start learning a new language from scratch.
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It is one piece of the puzzle, I would say also in older adults, like you said, 50 or 60 or 70.
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I mean, age-related cognitive decline is a thing.
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And these cognitive functions that are known to decline across the lifespan, they're important predictors of second language learning,
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but yeah, they're on a piece of the puzzle.
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There's other skills that also decline, that have an impact on language learning.
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And a big one is hearing ability.
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That declines in a lot of individuals.
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That's also a common phenomenon and hearing is the key to language too, right?
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And language is the key to communication and communication is the key to social participation.
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And so there's that whole chain.
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Visual acuity may also decline.
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And so information about orthography, phonology seems to become more difficult to access with increasing age.
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So that is a thing, you know, that's not something we can sugarcoat.
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However, there's also a ton of skills that either remain stable across the lifespan or the evening proof.
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So adults also have a lot of advantages when it comes to, for example, what they call crystallized intelligence.
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That's vocabulary, accumulated knowledge, analytic abilities,
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pragmatic skills, knowledge of the world,
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human behavior, and then also better understanding of the various registers and styles of language.
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adults, we always find are really experienced and self-directed learners.
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That helps a lot.
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So the interesting question really is for us, which aspects of cognition are most important for different linguistic tasks
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or to what extent can weaknesses in one area be compensated for, you know, with strength in another?
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And there's only a few lifespan studies and most of them are not longitudinal in need, cross-sectional.
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Raphael Berthel in Switzerland carried out one of them about 10 or 15 years ago,
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where they taught an artificial language to, it was over 150 participants who were between 10 and 86 years old.
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So they covered the entire lifespan.
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And it was so surprising that they found that for most of the language skills, artificial language skills that they tested,
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they found that older is not a disadvantage.
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There were very few age-related differences in general.
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And whenever there were age-related differences, they were in favor of older.
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They tested everything from vocabulary learning to pragmatic skills, a phonotactic rule learning.
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And yeah, they found relatively few age-related differences.
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And that's really nice.
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And it's surprising, right?
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Because, you know, with ageist stereotypes that are very common, it's not something that we anticipate, I guess.
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As an adult learning a language potentially from scratch, how can I take advantage of these potential advantages
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that I have as an adult when learning this language compared to a child?
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We have to make the best of what we still have or the knowledge that has kept improving over the lifespan.
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So we can draw on a wealth of experience and accumulated knowledge.
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So that means that whenever we teach adults, older adults or middle-aged adults,
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we say that learning should build on what people already know.
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So you try and connect new information to previous knowledge and
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that can make it easier to form new connections and understand new concepts.
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So that is an important one.
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When it comes to hearing ability that we know the clients with age,
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we use plenty of visual material or more visual material with older adults and younger adults or children,
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and lots of multimodal resources so that you encounter language in a variety of different contexts and not just,
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you know, in a listening comprehension task, for example.
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And then a big one that I always,
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always emphasizes chunking that is the learning of chunks those are multi-word sequences
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that store like individual words like if you take frozen pizza out of the freezer okay
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the whole thing is already it's already prepared
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and you don't have to compose sentences from their parts they're already stored as a whole
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so for example i don't know i don't know as a chump
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that i don't have to compose from its parts i just access retrieve it as a whole and that really
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saves me a lot of time to produce it
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and it also alleviates working memory strains on working memory capacity
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and that is something as i said before it's part of cognitive decline older Second language learners have limited working memory capacity.
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And so that has an impact on your ability to automatically process language.
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And yeah, for example, stringing together sentences from their parts
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and chunking is a nice way and to avoid this problem of composition.
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And so to not learn individual words in an isolated fashion,
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but entire chunks of language that you use in different communicative situations.
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That works really well.
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Also for very young learners who are not able to learn a language explicitly yet, you know, based on certain grammatical rules.
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Amassing a corpus of chunks is a nice way to circumvent the age problem, I would say.
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If you're too young to learn the language explicitly or to be too old.
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Yes, so those are some of the recommendations that we usually make.
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Yeah, I have to say talking about chunks, I did a three-month challenge and I made extensive use of memorizing chunks,
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memorizing full sentences, even going beyond sort of small speeches that I knew I would probably use in my final test.
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And this was probably the biggest sort of contributor to my final fluency.
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So how would you recommend that people learn these chunks and how should they sort of select these chunks?
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Yeah, it's really difficult because there are so many of them and some of them are really infrequent.
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Not all of them are frequent, I don't know.
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And so that's a difficult one because we usually pick them up in naturalistic context in the target language culture.
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It's not necessarily something that you can learn explicitly in a course book for example.
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Also in a classroom setting, with a few instructional hours per week, you can only learn so many chunks.
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So this is something that you have to pick up in your free time through reading,
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through any kind of input that rocks your boat,
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be that, you know, YouTube videos in the target language or computer games or social media.
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If it's English, that is the target language.
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That's really easy for us, right?
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Because it's everywhere.
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When it comes to other second languages, it's a little more difficult.
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but anything that appeals to you is great input and so chunks are really picked up via
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via input and via interaction with target language speakers that's another big one
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because that's when you realize oh this is not how you say it it's not grammatically incorrect So for example,
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if you say when you greet somebody and you say,
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hi, how's your health today?
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Okay.
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Nobody says that it's not wrong.
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It's not grammatically wrong.
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It's not lexically wrong.
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You may pronounce it beautifully.
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Yeah, but it's just not what you say.
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Okay.
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You say, Hey, how are you?
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And then you go on and how do you learn that?
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Well, you pick it up by doing it find yourself in the situation
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and you realize the interlocutor is confused if I used the wrong chunk
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and yeah you get you're fully immersed and that's how you pick them up
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so there's usually no way around yeah using either authentic materials or participating in online communities
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anywhere where you can interact, because a lot of them are really deeply rooted also in culture
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and second language acquisition essentially is always also second culture acquisition.
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I want to ask a question that's you know now on
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the language learning internet let's say there are movements like something
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called ALG automatic language growth it's an approach to an approach to learning languages, which states that, you know,
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you should just get input.
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A lot of it, that's the optimal way to get to go about it.
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You know, nothing else really matters.
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Just get input.
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Do you think this is a valid approach for learning languages?
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No, I mean, obviously, input is important.
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And the more, the better, definitely.
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But I mean, there are studies that found that if you just place your child in front of, I don't know, Peppa Pig,
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their language learning outcomes are surprisingly disappointing.
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Although Peppa Pig is super motivating, it definitely catches the child's attention.
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So that's not the problem.
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You can also play it for several hours on end.
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So massive input, intensive input, and yet they pick up surprisingly little.
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And actually, theoretically speaking, if you place that much emphasis on input, this should work pretty well.
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And it does not.
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Input alone is just one third of the battle.
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The other third is output.
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You need opportunities to practice.
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you need opportunities to practice because right now that I'm, when I, when I listen to you right now that you're listening to me,
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you're being relatively lazy, cognitively speaking.
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You don't necessarily engage in a lot of morphosyntactic processing.
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You go straight for a meeting.
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You try to understand what I say.
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You go for content words, right?
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You may fill in the gaps.
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You may do some inferencing, but you don't do a lot of morphosyntactic processing.
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As soon as you respond to me you have to do
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the work right you can't just start dropping lopping off endings um
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or just you know omitting prepositions you have to actually pay attention to every single linguistic detail
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and yeah you have to walk the walk so output is important
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and the third is interaction you have have to interact with other speakers of the target language.
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And interestingly, and I really like that finding your interlocutor doesn't need to have a really high proficiency level.
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You can always learn your interlocutor because they don't have the same proficiency level.
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Right?
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And so just by interacting with each other, you constantly get feedback, right?
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Right now that I'm talking to you, I can see when you're frowning and then I may, you know, reformulate what I said or I may rephrase it.
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Or you may want me to clarify something if I'm not being clear.
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So if I start producing errors and that may lead to communication breakdowns, it may lead to you asking me or asking me to clarify.
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Can you see that again?
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What do you mean by that?
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And that makes me aware of the fact that there's a problem in what I said.
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I have to find the locus of the problem and have to fix it.
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And then you may ask me again, no, say that again, say that again.
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I have to re keep repairing what I say.
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And that's how you learn.
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That is very impressive.
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If somebody else, yeah, because at the end of the day, you, you want to communicate, you want to be understood.
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And so feedback is incredibly powerful.
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And in a classroom setting,
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of course, there's also corrective feedback where the teacher makes you aware of certain problems with accuracy or fluency.
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And then again, you have to fix it.
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And so those are, those are the big three.
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And I would not necessarily say that one is more important than the other.
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And what about developing a good accent?
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Because, you know, kids, obviously, you know, generally speaking, if they're immersed in a language, they're going to develop a native-like accent,
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but for adults, it's a little bit more difficult.
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Is it possible?
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And if so, what is the approach that we have to take?
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Yeah, we've moved a little bit away from that.
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The idea that our accents have to be target-like or native-like, right?
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We also try not to use the word native-like.
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Sort of the question, to what extent should we hold second language learners to this native speaker or monolingual benchmark, right?
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And because for an absence, they're just a normal side product of being a multilingual person, right?
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But it's true that originally,
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I mean, classical second language acquisition research has also been all about differences between and similarities between native speakers and non-native speakers.
417
And the goal was to become as native-like as possible or near native.
418
And we've drastically moved away from that.
419
to sort of hold the native speaker as this ideal.
420
Because first of all, it's really difficult to define what a native speaker actually is.
421
Because there's so much variation within that group.
422
So there's a ton of native speakers, but the native speaker is this idealization that is is kind of bizarre.
423
And then also cognitively speaking, I mean, as a multilingual person, I can't be the same as a monoling.
424
I can't cognitively speaking.
425
I'm not several monolinguals within one person.
426
That's not possible.
427
The moment you're exposed to another language, cross-language interaction.
428
That's completely normal.
429
And so, yeah, makes no sense to strive for native speaker pronunciation, for example.
430
And there also shouldn't be a multilingual user's attainment shouldn't be the same as that of a monolingual native speaker,
431
because why should monolinguals be treated as ideal speakers of a language in this multilingual world?
432
um makes no sense i think for an accent transfer interference they're not the sla devil incarnate
433
um right i mean i'm talking to you now i have an accent
434
and i can hear it and that has to do with the fact
435
that my all of my background emojis interfere with my output and
436
there's not much i can do about that
437
and i'm also not sure it should be the goal
438
so we've we've We've moved away from that and I would say in the last 10, 20 years, there have been calls
439
to replace this research goal that explained or trying to explain why late multilinguals are not native speakers.
440
And we should more try and understand the process
441
and the consequences of becoming multilingual and looking at multilinguals in their own right rather than in comparison with native speakers.
442
I want to sort of summarize this for a lot of our listeners who may be, you know, I don't know, in their 40s or 50s or even beyond.
443
If you were, well, I guess you are a person in this age range, how would you go about learning a new language from scratch?
444
And what should you expect also in terms of, you know, realistic timeline for this age range,
445
considering that, you know, you have a full time job and a family potentially?
446
It depends a little bit what your goal is, because there's a lot of different goals in second language acquisition.
447
Is it your goal to be able to use a couple of chunks
448
because you're going to travel to the target country in the near future?
449
Is the goal to raise awareness for other cultures and linguistic diversity in children,
450
for example, and it's not so much about second language proficiency.
451
Is the goal to be able to communicate with a significant other or their family?
452
What exactly is it that you want to achieve?
453
And then it also depends a little bit on, yeah, your resources, how much time you have on your hands,
454
and what learner style that you prefer,
455
For example, I can't really generally recommend learning apps if that's not something that works for you or you're not into that.
456
For others, it works really well, right?
457
Duolingo and whatever they're called.
458
And using them on a daily basis, every day for a long period of time, that doesn't work for everybody.
459
There are individuals who find they need to interact with other individuals
460
because language at the end of the day is a means of communication and they appreciate that.
461
So I would say, I mean, it's never too late.
462
And you should find something that a way of learning that appeals to you.
463
And that makes sense because language learning is a continuous process.
464
We say use it or lose it it's super susceptible to attrition.
465
So you so quickly forget it, right?
466
So you have to find a way of learning
467
that appeals to you and that you can maintain over a long period of time
468
because there's no end in that sense, right?
469
So that's the most important message probably.
470
Nice.
471
Well, Simone, thank you so much.
472
This has been really interesting.
473
You're most welcome.
474
Thanks for having me.
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This video has 474 sentences and 5736 words to shadow. The speech runs for 41:54. The speaker talks at a steady 137 words per minute, a comfortable pace for shadowing. 83% 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
15 less common words from the video, with pronunciation and meaning:
- cognitive /ˈkɑɡ.nɪ.tɪv/ (adjective) — Relating to the part of mental functions that deals with logic, as opposed to affective which deals with emotions.
- input /ˈɪnpʊt/ (noun) — The act or process of putting in; infusion.
- acquisition /ˌæk.wɪˈzɪʃ.ən/ (noun) — The act or process of acquiring.
- decline /dɪˈklaɪn/ (verb) — To move downwards, to fall, to drop.
- hypothesis /haɪˈpɒθɪsɪs/ (noun) — A tentative conjecture explaining an observation, phenomenon or scientific problem and that can be tested by further observation, investigation, or…
- bilingual /baɪˈlɪŋ.ɡwəl/ (adjective) — Having the ability to speak two languages fluently.
- accent /ækˈsɛnt/ (noun) — A higher-pitched or stronger (louder or longer) articulation of a particular syllable of a word or phrase in order to distinguish it from the others or to…
- intensity /ɪnˈtɛnsɪti/ (noun) — The quality of being intense.
- assumption /əˈsʌm(p).ʃ(ə)n/ (noun) — The act of assuming, or taking to or upon oneself; the act of taking up or adopting.
- interaction /ˌɪn.təˈɹæk.ʃən/ (noun) — The situation or occurrence in which two or more things act upon one another to produce an effect; the effect resulting from such a situation or occurrence.
- scholar /ˈskɑlɚ/ (noun) — A student; one who studies at school or college, typically having a scholarship.
- linguistic /lɪŋˈɡwɪstɪk/ (adjective) — Of or relating to language.
- necessarily /ˌnɛs.əˈsɛɹ.ə.li/ (adverb) — Inevitably; of necessity.
- output /ˈaʊtpʊt/ (noun) — Production; quantity produced, created, or completed.
- interference /ˌɪntəɹˈfɪɹɪns/ (noun) — The act of interfering with something, or something that interferes.
Phrasal verbs you will hear
- talk about (verb) — Used to draw attention to the speaker's characterization of someone or something.
- talked about (adjective) — Discussed by many people.
- carry out /ˈkæ.ɹi aʊt/ (verb) — To hold while moving it out.
- do with (verb) — Only used in to do with
- end up (verb) — To bring to a conclusion.
- go about (verb) — To busy oneself with.
- grow up (verb) — To mature and become an adult.
- have on (verb) — To be wearing.
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 81 contractions and reduced forms, such as they're, you're, don't. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “th” sounds: hypothesis /haɪˈpɒθɪsɪs/, authentic /ɔˈθɛn.tɪk/, mathematics /mæθ(.ə)ˈmæt.ɪks/, threshold /ˈθɹɛʃ(h)oʊld/
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: acquisition /ˌæk.wɪˈzɪʃ.ən/, assumption /əˈsʌm(p).ʃ(ə)n/, interaction /ˌɪn.təˈɹæk.ʃən/, potentially /pəˈtɛnʃ(ə)li/, essentially /ɪˈsɛnʃəli/
- Long words — get the stress right: acquisition /ˌæk.wɪˈzɪʃ.ən/, hypothesis /haɪˈpɒθɪsɪs/, intensity /ɪnˈtɛnsɪti/, interaction /ˌɪn.təˈɹæk.ʃən/, necessarily /ˌnɛs.əˈsɛɹ.ə.li/
How to practise with this video
- Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
- Shadow it sentence by sentence at normal speed, repeating each one until your rhythm matches the speaker.
- Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like cognitive, input, acquisition.
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 closed · have tried · I've just said |
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | is modified · is closed · was formulated |
| Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing | Zurich, which is · acquisition, which is · children who are |
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.