Shadowing Practice: Readers are Leaders | Phuong Anh Nguyen Ngoc | TEDxVinschoolHanoi - Learn English Speaking with YouTube

C1
Shadowing Controls
0% completed (0/137 sentences)
If I tell you right now that reading is good, as you probably have heard from years of growing up, parents, or teachers, would you agree with me?
⏸ Paused
All Sentences
137 sentences
1
If I tell you right now that reading is good, as you probably have heard from years of growing up, parents, or teachers, would you agree with me?
2
Most likely, right?
3
So most of us know that reading is good for us, so why is it that we aren't always carrying around a book with us like we would to something that's supposed to be good for us?
4
Well, I'm really not here to criticize you for not doing so.
5
I myself think that not everybody has to do that to prove your love of reading.
6
Let me tell you about my experience with reading.
7
Growing up, I've always loved it.
8
I used to read magazines, fairy tales, comic books back when I was a kid.
9
Back in secondary school, I would read novels and science books.
10
Then came the peak of my so-called reading career in grade 7, where I was doubling up the quantity of books I was reading, and at the same time, I became extremely selective with what I read.
11
Actually, to tell you the truth, being selective with what I read is just a fancy way to cover up the real thing that happened back then, which was me wasting a lot of time questioning whether or not I should pick up a book.
12
Let me just describe to you exactly what was happening back then.
13
I stood in front of a stack of books like this, and I would think, well, if I read this book, is that going to help me solve my homework?
14
No, then I'm not going to read it.
15
And I call that being selective because I thought that was good.
16
But eventually, I realized that I was not being productive at all, and I started asking myself why.
17
I was doing something that was supposed to be good, which was being selective, but then I ended up wasting time instead of actually getting any reading done.
18
So after years of observing and, you know, reflecting on what I did back then, I have come to notice something in teenagers that I would like to call the skepticism in the power of reading.
19
So what is skepticism in the power of reading to me?
20
I would like to define my definition of skepticism in reading as having doubts in the process of reading or thinking of reading as a means to solve an immediate problem.
21
So for this type of skepticism of reading or over practical approach to reading, I classify these people into two types.
22
The first type are the people who never really give reading a chance because they cannot possibly think of how reading can help them in any way.
23
The second type of people are those who have actually had fierce beliefs in the power of books, but after not seeing themselves getting instant results, they give up and their belief is shattered into strong disbelief.
24
For both of these types, there are some mindset shifts that they're going to have to make in order to break free from these limiting beliefs about books.
25
Now let us get started with the first type, the over practical.
26
These people are those who spend time sitting to convince themselves that reading cannot possibly help them get better in any way.
27
They cannot see how reading this book is going to make their lives immediately better.
28
For example, if I'm having this really difficult math homework and reading this book is not going to help, then I'm not going to do it.
29
That is the mindset of people in type one.
30
Now, if you ask these people if they think reading is good, they really like to say yes, so they do think that reading is good.
31
But easier said than done, they only look at the short-term benefits of reading, which is how it's going to benefit them today, tomorrow, or the day after tomorrow, to which they do not see any possibility of what they read changing anything.
32
Don't get me wrong though, these people are not lazy.
33
In fact, on the bright side, They may be someone who is extremely result-oriented, and particularly with what they spend their time on.
34
However, as they think of reading as a means to solve an immediate problem or simply consider it as temporary motivation, they start questioning the process of reading if it doesn't actually help them, for example, to solve their homework.
35
I have been in this position, to be honest with you.
36
And while you may think that, well, why is it so hard to convince these people to maybe just give reading a chance?
37
It's really not that easy.
38
Let me just play it out how a conversation with this type of person would go.
39
You would tell them, why is it so hard just to try reading to see if it works for you?
40
Them, with their super logic, would say, would you study literature to get better at math?
41
Obviously, you're not going to study literature to get better at math, right?
42
And that is their logic.
43
If it doesn't help me solve my homework, if it doesn't help me get better at school immediately, why should I waste hours on it?
44
So now moving on to the next type, which is the disbelievers.
45
These people are interesting, as in, they used to have strong beliefs in books.
46
They used to be the ones, like me, standing here right now telling you that reading is good.
47
But the thing is, after reading several times and not seeing themselves turning into geniuses overnight.
48
They give up.
49
They lose the motivation.
50
So for this type of people, the problem really isn't with their expectations for results because as leaders, we should always expect an outcome to come out of everything that we do.
51
The problem is with their degree of expectations that they set for their results.
52
When you read something and you expect results to come overnight, and reality doesn't turn out that way, it can be extremely discouraging and even frustrating.
53
So therefore, no matter how strong your initial belief in books were, you eventually just stop believing in them and then you refuse by what you consider a package of waste of time and energy along with a complimentary gift of disappointment ever again.
54
And that's how we arrive at the second type of people.
55
Now, for both types, there are some realizations that they are going to have to make in order to break themselves free from these limiting beliefs.
56
The problem with type 1 is that they limit themselves to only what they think can happen.
57
For example, if I'm reading this book, I need to know exactly how it's going to benefit me and I need to see that scenario.
58
But really, among the many things that we can predict, what happens to us, failures, and especially opportunities, is not one of them.
59
You should not be overly worried about how what you read today will benefit you tomorrow and be overly attached to how exactly that will play out because we don't know.
60
I know that right now you have the energy, the time, the curiosity to learn.
61
I don't know if that also holds true for the future.
62
Back when I was having this problem as well, there was this story that really inspired me to maybe step out of my comfort zone to test this theory out.
63
It's a story about Steve Jobs I came across.
64
So we know who Steve Jobs is, right?
65
Hello, iPhone users.
66
He is the CEO and founder of Apple.
67
And I mean, this guy, we all know that he is really good, right?
68
He graduated from Stanford.
69
He is one of the geniuses that we know.
70
We know that he runs Apple.
71
So basically, he does what has to do with information technology and business.
72
So we would expect a person like this to be stuffed with knowledge from business books and books on IT.
73
But back in university, he took a calligraphy class just for fun.
74
So calligraphy is basically, to put it simply, the art of writing fancy letters that you can see in cards and birthday cards.
75
You know what I'm talking about.
76
He took it just for fun.
77
And personally for me, I would never imagine a way calligraphy would help with someone who is doing business in information and technology.
78
And maybe he didn't know how that would help either.
79
But eventually, his knowledge on calligraphy, the knowledge that he took from that calligraphy class came into use when he was designing the interface for the MacBook.
80
This story really inspired me to maybe try out and stop doubting so much of whether or not what I am learning now will come to use in the future.
81
And I've now, I've come to learn that every single piece of knowledge that you are taking in will come back to help you at one point in your life, especially when you'll least expect it.
82
That is why you should stop doubting so much about whether or not you should learn something.
83
Be selective with your time, but don't be so doubtful that you're wasting your energy on it.
84
There's this quote from the book The Courage to be Disliked by Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitake Koga that I really love.
85
It is about the future as you can see on the slide right here.
86
The lives that lies ahead of you is a completely blank page and there is no trap that has been laid out for you to follow.
87
There is no story there.
88
I don't want you to be overly obsessed with how the future will play out that you waste so much of your present time doubting instead of being productive.
89
I don't want you to be worried about opportunities not coming.
90
The question that I want you to ask yourself is when these opportunities you want come are you going to be prepared for them?
91
Now moving on to the second type.
92
These people are those who disbelieve in book just because success does not come overnight and they fail to realize that.
93
Now I also have my personal story with this.
94
Back in grade 8, I was kind of bad at math.
95
There was this geometry test where a score pretty low.
96
I didn't like that at all so I came home.
97
I found a geometry book that I would read and I expected myself to become genius immediately next week.
98
The following week there was a test.
99
I did it, the score got returned, it wasn't a lot better.
100
The week afterward, I also did a test.
101
It also didn't get a lot better than the previous one.
102
So then I came home and I was like, you know, you see, obviously reading this book is not gonna help because I wasn't even reading on the topic that I was doing at school back then.
103
So I just threw it aside and told myself that, you know, next time if I score low on a test, just don't count to extra reading.
104
It doesn't help.
105
Well, life really love throwing surprises at us.
106
Right the following semester at school we did every single thing that I had previously read on.
107
Now it took me an entire semester for what I read to be useful and it could have been any time frame.
108
Three months, six months, even a year.
109
Don't set your expectations too high and unrealistic.
110
Think of reading as a process of layering your knowledge, building layer after layer until you're competent enough that opportunities start coming to you.
111
I've heard the saying, although I don't exactly remember where I heard it, but when you're competent enough what you want, the opportunities, the people, the networks, they will all start coming to you.
112
Your job is not to predict.
113
Your job is to get yourself prepared and ready to take those opportunities when they come to you.
114
Now, just to sum it up, you may find yourself in one of these two types I talked about.
115
Maybe you are just hesitating a lot to pick up a book because you cannot convince yourself how it's going to help you.
116
Or maybe you have had strong beliefs in them but eventually you get disappointed because they didn't give you results as fast as you expected.
117
The solution I would like to propose here for you, the first and hardest thing that you are going to have to do is to shift your mindset.
118
You need to shift your mindset from the mindset of doubting, questioning, and over worrying about the future to the mindset of learning and focusing on the task at hand, which is reading.
119
When you're too busy focusing on doubting and questioning, which isn't really productive, you're actually going to miss out on a lot of knowledge that you should be acquiring from reading.
120
Now, if you're comfortable with the idea of doing a lot of seemingly irrelevant reading, then you can start small.
121
Give yourself a time frame of maybe three or six months.
122
And then every month, include a book that is of the topic that you have never read on before.
123
Start with something that may be relevant to you.
124
Maybe start something that is in the field of study you intend to go for later on.
125
Then, every month, just try to step out of your comfort zone as you go along.
126
Pick a book of a field that you've never tried before, of something that you've always been interested in, but you think that has nothing to do with you.
127
I want you to think of this as stepping out of your comfort zone.
128
You don't know if what I'm saying is true or not, and I do not encourage anyone to blindly believe the words of someone until you have actually experienced it yourself.
129
So I would like to invite you to try this and see if it works for you.
130
Maybe you'll find that reading is actually great and you regret not having started it earlier or maybe you will just once again confirm that I'm not telling the truth at all and it doesn't work for you.
131
Either way, you're not going to regret having seeked out the answer because this is stepping out of your comfort zone to try out something that you've never tried before.
132
is seeking the answers for the questions that you have and that is what leaders do.
133
They have to seek the answers for the questions that nobody else has the courage to go seek for.
134
Either way, you doing something to test it out into the unknown, stepping out of your comfort zone, is really recognizable already.
135
But if you're the one who's holding yourself back from receiving the benefits of reading that it can bring to you.
136
Now is the time for you to step up from these limiting beliefs and become the leaders that you have the potentials to be.
137
Thank you.

Context & Background

In the TEDx talk titled "Readers are Leaders," Phuong Anh Nguyen Ngoc reflects on the power of reading and the skepticism many teenagers have towards it. The speaker discusses her personal journey with reading, stressing that understanding the true benefits of books extends beyond immediate academic gain. By recognizing different mindsets surrounding reading, she encourages a shift in perspective to embrace the long-term advantages that reading can bring, both in personal growth and knowledge acquisition.

Top 5 Phrases for Daily Communication

  • "Reading is good for us" - A simple affirmation to promote the value of reading.
  • "Being selective with what I read" - This highlights the importance of choosing quality over quantity in literature.
  • "The power of reading" - A phrase that encapsulates the transformative potential of books.
  • "Questioning the process of reading" - Encourages critical thinking about reading habits and expectations.
  • "Expecting outcomes from our efforts" - A reminder that while expectation is important, patience is key in personal growth.

Step-by-step Shadowing Guide

To effectively engage with Phuong Anh's TEDx talk and enhance your English skills through the shadowing technique, follow this structured approach:

  1. Watch and Listen: Start by watching the video without subtitles. Pay attention to the speaker’s pronunciation and intonation.
  2. Break it Down: Replay sections of the video in small segments. After each segment, pause and repeat what you heard, mimicking the speaker's style. This is crucial for improving English pronunciation.
  3. Use a Shadowing App: Consider utilizing a shadowing app that allows you to record your voice. As you practice, playback your recordings and compare them with the original to identify areas for improvement.
  4. Build Vocabulary: Focus on the top phrases listed above. Use them in your daily conversations to reinforce your learning and increase confidence in using English.
  5. Reflect on Your Progress: After a few practice sessions, take note of any changes in your speaking and listening abilities. Engaging with content like this can significantly boost your language skills over time, making it an excellent way to learn English with YouTube.

By consistent practice using this shadow speech method, you’ll notice improvement in fluency and comprehension, all while fostering a deeper appreciation for reading and its benefits.

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.

☕ Buy us a coffee