Shadowing Practice: Science Writing: Practice Makes It (Almost) Perfect - Learn English Speaking with Video

Thanks for coming today.

When I first started as a scientist, I started as a scientist because I loved science.

I took a genetics course when I was an undergraduate.

It was really interesting.

I started working in a lab, and I decided that I wanted to go to graduate school, earn my PhD, and then run my own lab.

And what I didn't know when I made that career choice is

that what I would ultimately spend probably 70

or maybe a higher percentage of my time doing was writing

and I might well have been dissuaded if I had known

that I wouldn't have this wonderful just sitting in my lab thinking of new experiments

and executing those experiments but it turns out

that once you get to the stage in the career

that I'm at now a lot of times

that gets left to other people in the lab and

so I spend a lot of my time writing now

and reading and that's okay I enjoy both of those things

but I didn't really understand

when I started in science how important writing was going to be

and so the first thing that I have is just some examples of things

that one might do on a regular basis is either an academic scientist

or a government or industry scientist and so one of the most important things is giving presentations.

So I write a lot of lectures.

Those include presentations that I give either to classes that I teach

or I go out and give seminars and tell people about my work and that of course requires writing.

I give poster presentations at meetings.

My students do this as well.

I spend a lot of my time writing grant proposals or writing scholarly articles.

Those of course could be review articles or research articles.

Another thing that I spend a lot of my time doing is peer review

and so I read proposals that other people have submitted to funding agencies I read papers

that people have submitted for publication

and then some other kinds of things I don't write books

but my some of my colleagues do I write a lot

of recommendation letters I write a lot of research summaries

and abstracts in my own department we have you know a progress report due every year

if you have a grant from one of the major your funding agencies, you'll have to tell them each year, the work that you've done and the progress that you've made in that work.

But there are just a lot of kinds of things

that you have to do as a science that are related to the science, but maybe not the things that you expected to do when you first realized you had this drive and love for science.

So it turns out that all of these examples that I've given to you, in my opinion, have really one thing in common.

And what that commonality is, is that they require that the writer or the lecturer

or whatever really put forth some sort of argument and then back that argument up, okay?

When you write a grant proposal or you write a research paper in particular, that is the most important thing that you're going to do.

You're going to make an argument to your reviewers and then support that argument with facts, basically, okay?

So it really doesn't make you seem all that smart

if you're always making lots of typos if you don't use proper sentences and structure in your writings, particularly when you need to provide an explanation about something really complicated like science is complicated.

And of course that's supposed to make you laugh, but the reality is when you send your proposals and your papers off or when you give a lecture or something,

you really want to be clear, you want to have no grammar errors if possible, you don't want to have spelling errors all over the place,

you really need to think about your writing and make sure that it's clear and error -free, okay?

And so why is good writing important?

Well, because you're communicating your ideas in your research findings as a scientist, right?

And so you need those ideas to be clear, and that helps you limit the misunderstandings that people might have about what you're trying to say.

And so what you, for instance, in a grant proposal, sometimes you'll get these reviews back from people that look at those proposals,

and what you don't want to have happen is somebody go well they didn't discuss such

and such in the proposal and then you say

but yes I did it's on page 15 because what

that indicates is that

while you may have discussed it you may not have discussed

it clearly enough for your reviewer to understand the point sometimes it's a bad reviewer

but a lot of times it's

because you're not being clear in describing what you are trying to describe it is also really important particularly for grant proposals,

that you be very concise in your wording.

Grant proposals almost always have a page limit or a word limit

and so you have to think carefully about how can I describe my idea succinctly, okay?

And then of course you want to make sure that the information you're providing is accurate.

Okay?

And I'm going to posit that somebody who writes well,

that helps them think clearly about whatever they're talking about or whatever they're writing about, okay?

So it helps inform you and make you think more clearly about what you're doing.

When I was a graduate student, there were two really painful things that they made us do in my department.

One of them is that we had to give seminars basically every year on our research.

And for those of us who took

that very seriously it made us better speakers at the end of the day

because a lot of times what you're going to do

when you get into academic science is you're going to give talks just like the one I'm giving today.

The other thing

that they did to us is they made us write up a research report every year in our department

and our department was actually fairly unusual in doing that

but what it made you do is it made you think very deeply about your research aims

and goals and the progress that you were making and And

so writing helps bring sort of these things to a head even

and helps you think more clearly about what you're doing

and then hopefully you can help that inform your next draft of whatever you're writing.

Okay, so a few thoughts that I have on writing is that it really doesn't matter what career path you take.

It is important to be a good communicator.

It is important to be a good writer.

If you are an academic scientist, an industrial scientist, if you become a physician, if you become a school teacher.

I think it's really important to be a good writer

because who is going to take you seriously and believe in your credentials

and your ability to do something if you can't communicate, okay?

I also am going to say that organization, content, spelling,

and grammar are always important and I highlighted spelling

because that's one of the things

that people often will let get through a grant proposal

that they've edited lots of times and maybe they're using spell check and it's not catching some of the vocabulary

or maybe they edited for other things

and they just really didn't pay attention to the spelling

and i even had a colleague recently who got grant proposals review back from a grant

that was not funded and someone even commented on the number of spelling errors

that were in the proposal this kind of thing irritates reviewers

100

i'm busy you're busy you don't want to read a proposal that's full of errors

101

and spelling errors are some of the easiest ones for people to identify.

102

Sometimes I'm sure that I have errors of some sort of grammatical error in every proposal

103

that I send but I really try hard to minimize those

104

and people may be a little bit less able to distinguish some of those

105

but they're going to catch the spelling and they're going to notice that.

106

I also believe very strongly that writing is improved by revision and continual practice.

107

Another thing that I suggest

108

that you want to do is you want to read examples of writing in whatever your field is.

109

And it's actually very instructive to identify examples of good writing as well as bad writing

110

because that will help you as you read more papers and you begin to see, well, which one was more clear and which one wasn't.

111

That will help you learn to become a better writer.

112

and so you should practice some more.

113

When you write things you need to spend a lot of time editing.

114

Every time I'm working on a proposal

115

and I start writing on it again a second day I actually saved my proposal every single day

116

and I keep this huge running list of each day

117

that I've worked on the proposal

118

because some days I make some really major changes to proposals

119

and maybe I go oh no I didn't actually want to do

120

that and so if I've saved it every day I can go back the day before

121

and you know change things and mix them back in

122

but you constantly are going to need to be rereading

123

and thinking and editing papers and proposals as you're writing them

124

and then you want to practice some more

125

and you want to practice some more

126

that will help you become a better writer okay a few other simple writing tips

127

that I have for you is that you want to keep it simple

128

when you're writing we are not here to write poetry We are not here to write pretty flashy sentences.

129

Most scientists really want to get to the meat of the problem and get the information.

130

And so you want to write concise, clear sentences where you limit the flowery language, you limit the jargon as much as you can.

131

We each have particular words and jargon that we will use for our fields, but you want to limit that to some extent.

132

And you want to not use so many abbreviations that makes it impossible for somebody to read whatever you've written, unless they're right there in your field, okay?

133

Because that also is frustrating, particularly as a reviewer or if you're trying to read a paper

134

that you think might be interesting and inform your work

135

and you can't get through it because they've got so many abbreviations in there that you can't read it, okay?

136

You, of course, want to write in complete sentences, and that often is going to mean subject, verb, object.

137

I would also suggest, particularly for a grant proposal or something, that you want to have discrete paragraphs for each major idea and transition.

138

Don't use contractions or exclamation points in the formal writing that you might do.

139

And grant proposals are going to have word limits.

140

And so what you really want to do is make everything

141

that you say essential and important to whatever point you're trying to make in your paper or your grant proposal.

142

You also should not generally make unsupported statements of fact or opinion.

143

You want to have, if you say something, you want to have an example that backs that up.

144

If I write something and I'm not sure did I use the right word, did I need a comma there, did I need a semicolon,

145

I go to my grammar book and and I admit that to even my undergraduates that I teach.

146

I don't know everything, no one does, and so keep a good grammar book beside you.

147

The other thing that you need to be very careful about doing, of course, is proofreading your work.

148

It is always useful to ask colleagues to read things that you've written.

149

You may think sometimes, oh, well, they don't know enough about my experiments or, you know, something like that,

150

but they can always help identify errors in grammar and spelling and other kinds of issues of organization and stuff.

151

And so even somebody who is not closely related to your research interest can be very helpful as you're writing, because they can help you proof your work.

152

And then, of course, you want to revise, revise, revise.

153

And so I was just looking.

154

I had an eight -page proposal.

155

I gave you guys a little piece of that proposal that was due recently, and I must have had 15 iterations of that chopped down from a 15 -page proposal.

156

And so you're just constantly going back to that and revising

157

and putting it down and thinking about it for a couple of days

158

and coming back to it and revising it some more for clarity.

159

So, ah, here's the book that we were talking about.

160

It's called A Short Guide to Writing About Biology, and the edition that we're using right now in my course is the sixth edition from 2007,

161

and so I wholeheartedly believe in the statement put forth by the author, I don't know how to say her last name, that all writing benefits from revision.

162

So what are the components of successful proposals and manuscripts?

163

Well the most important one is good ideas, and I don't want you to leave here today thinking that

164

if I'm just a great writer that that's good enough because it's not.

165

You have to start with a really great idea, okay?

166

You also need strong preliminary data for a grant proposal or a strong completed data set for a paper, okay?

167

And then you need to support either your preliminary data

168

or your completed results and your good idea with an argument about why they're interesting and important, and where you might go from there with this, okay?

169

So your job, and you'll notice I'm mostly focusing on the thing that I think most of us will spend most of our time doing, which is writing proposals and writing papers.

170

And so your job is to convince reviewers.

171

You want to convince them that the work that you're doing is important and interesting.

172

That's tough to do sometimes.

173

But sometimes it's hard to figure out what is the argument that I want to make, and how do I want to frame this, okay?

174

And so it's going to depend, for instance, on a grant proposal on what funding agency are you targeting.

175

So if you're going to send a proposal to the National Science Foundation, for instance, you don't want to talk about how you're going to cure cancer because they don't care about that.

176

But if you are writing a proposal for the National Institutes of Health, they care about curing cancer.

177

And so that might be part of your argument for why the research is interesting whereas

178

if you sent maybe a similar set of experiments to the

179

NSF you'd figure out a different way to frame your argument and why your research is interesting.

180

The other things that you're trying to convince your reviewers of is

181

that you have both the expertise to perform the experiments and the expertise to interpret those experiments.

182

And then as I've already mentioned you want to make sure

183

that this work is appropriate and the argument

184

that you're framing is appropriate to the funding agency or even the journal that you're targeting.

185

So when you're writing a proposal, for example, you need to think of an interesting question or set of experiments.

186

You need to obtain your supporting results and data.

187

And that lends itself to determining is this proposal that you have, is the research feasible?

188

Because the Funding agencies really want to know, can this work be done?

189

Can this person execute the set of experiments that they're describing?

190

You want to create an outline when you're writing a proposal of what you're going to discuss.

191

I always start with an outline and think about the things that I'm going to write about.

192

and write a draft and sometimes that is the most painful part of the process

193

and so what I would say to you is as you are starting to write a paper

194

or a grant proposal just get something on paper, get some ideas down and just get something there

195

that you can work with and go back and edit and keep working on and keep thinking about and keep revising.

196

I also suggest that you get peer feedback, and I've mentioned this before.

197

You might want to get peer feedback at this juncture, whatever you're doing, particularly for a proposal,

198

but you certainly would like to get peer feedback once you've got something pretty good on paper

199

that you can give to a colleague who's willing to take their time

200

and to read it and help you figure out the places

201

that you've either done a good job making your argument

202

or a poor job or they might be able to help you

203

and say you know I really don't think that's the experiment

204

you want to do did you think about this experiment instead

205

and those things are very valuable as you're getting ready

206

and this is true for papers as well as for grant

207

proposals okay different people are going to have different experiences

208

and training and background and somebody might think of something

209

that you haven't thought about

210

that might be interpreted to be a fatal flaw in whatever you're doing

211

and so it's very important to get feedback from somebody

212

and then of course you want to get this feedback

213

and revise your draft to keep going and revising over and over until the deadline comes basically.

214

So as I already mentioned a lot of times particularly for grant proposals there's going to be a page limit

215

or a word limit and boy that is sometimes the tough part right

216

so you think oh if I had 50 pages I can really describe this and get all this information there, but you're not going to have 50 pages.

217

For NSF, you have 15.

218

For NIH, you have about 25.

219

For some of the other funding agencies that kind of varies in between that or in some cases even shorter, I've written some two -page grant proposals.

220

Boy, those are the hardest ones to write, right?

221

Because you've got to persuade somebody in two pages, you've got an interesting idea, you've got a great set of experiments to execute and how you're going to interpret all of the experiments and results.

222

That's very tough.

223

So what you need to do is you've got to strive for clarity as you're writing.

224

You have to identify the most important points.

225

You want to make sure that you state an idea once.

226

I notice in my own writing as I write proposals, I might have the same idea, you know, three different places in my proposal.

227

And you've got to figure out, do I really need that in those three different places for clarity, or is that just extra stuff that's thrown in there?

228

Maybe I can write that at the beginning and then when I'm introducing the section, but I don't need it the third time that I've got it, okay?

229

Deadwood phrases are phrases that use more words than necessary to convey a point.

230

And I underlined a few that I know that I use sometimes, that I know that I come across pretty frequently in writing for my class.

231

And so a majority of X.

232

Well, why say a majority of?

233

Just say most, okay?

234

How about we come to a conclusion?

235

we came to the conclusion that X.

236

Why don't you just say we concluded X, okay?

237

Fewer in number.

238

Well, that just means fewer.

239

Why say fewer in number?

240

I mean, some of these, you read them and you start to laugh because it's so ridiculous.

241

But I can guarantee you that every time I write something, there are probably 15 or 20 of these in a proposal or an early draft, okay?

242

And so these are some things that, as I'm really fine -tuning my papers and my proposals, these are the kinds of things that then I turn my attention to is getting rid of this kind of chaff.

243

Another kind of dead word is needless repetition of the same idea in different words.

244

First priority, well that's a priority.

245

Green colored, well what else are you?

246

You're green.

247

True facts, well those are facts, okay?

248

And so we all do this in our writing and

249

so this is one of the things

250

that I really focus my undergraduate writing students on is getting rid of this kind of stuff from their writing, okay?

251

You're seeking to say it in the fewest words possible with the most meaning.

252

So a few final thoughts on writing proposals and manuscripts.

253

I've already said all these, but let me say them again.

254

You need good ideas.

255

You need clear, concise writing.

256

You need to proofread and edit the material and have someone help you do that.

257

I recommend that for everybody.

258

Have somebody read your draft.

259

You need to revise and revise.

260

You need to put it down for a few days, come back to it.

261

Don't wait until the last minute to write something, particularly a grant proposal.

262

You need a few days to sort of mull it over and come back to it and look at it afresh.

263

And so my mantra is that You know, you don't start off, you're not just going to write something that's going to be great.

264

You get much better at it by writing and writing and writing.

265

And so all of you are early in your careers, you're just starting to write as scientists.

266

It is hard at the beginning.

267

It gets easier.

268

It's not easy, but it gets easier.

269

And the more you do it, the better you will be at it.

270

When I was a postdoctoral student, I actually spent some of my fellowship money

271

and I went to a grant proposal writing workshop just as I was getting ready to start writing my own big grants, my own PI, independent PI grants.

272

And it was really instructive because at that point, I'd written some papers.

273

I was getting better at that, but I had no idea how to begin writing a grant proposal.

274

And sometimes stepping away from your advisor and doing that

275

and going to a workshop that's being hosted by somebody who's very experienced can be helpful.

276

And I got a set of books from this workshop.

277

I still use these books and their template for writing grant proposals

278

because it really helped me understand the components of a grant proposal, how to write clearly what should be in your specific aims page.

279

It was really important.

280

So I had a good experience with that, and I would recommend that you investigate on your campus, Texas A &M, or where you go for your postdoc,

281

investigate whether or not there are workshops that are offered on campus or elsewhere that you might attend and go to.

282

Many funding agencies will give you an option of fonts to use.

283

Don't use the smallest one.

284

Your reviewers do not want to read the smallest font

285

that the funding agencies will allow you to use it it's hard to read it's annoying

286

and i will say that when so i always start off at 12 point font

287

and i try to write my proposals in 12 point font i don't always end up in 12 point font

288

but don't go down to 10 i don't like to read

289

that nobody i know likes to read that

290

but anyway the goal here was to figure out how can

291

i get this thing down i've got to get down to one page how can i do

292

that five lines down I have a whole sentence that I deleted

293

that I decided just really wasn't that important

294

so I'm talking I had to explain to this funding agency who my research personnel were going to be

295

and so I'm talking about the fact

296

that my XXX who is my research assistant for four years

297

prior to beginning graduate school will do something well I realized they didn't actually need to know all of

298

that information it wasn't that important

299

when I needed to get down to my page it wasn't really important

300

that this person was my research experience assistant for four years before beginning graduate school.

301

All that really mattered is that X was in the lab and X was going to train the students.

302

So you have to go through and you have to figure out well how important is each statement that I'm making here.

303

I have a sentence about halfway down that talks about Ms. X who has contributed to the project by providing evidence.

304

Well what did she do?

305

She showed something.

306

Okay there's an example of one of these Deadwood phrases

307

that I've gone and gotten rid of where I had almost an entire sentence dedicated to saying nothing, basically, okay?

308

This is the kind of thing that you do when you're working on a grant proposal.

309

Once you have your major ideas down, you've got your major experiments outlined, the arguments that you're going to make,

310

then you have to go through and get rid of all the stuff that just really doesn't matter.

311

Listing off this litany of equipment, well, they don't actually need to know that.

312

I've already told them that my lab is equipped for genetics

313

and molecular biology and that implies that I have all of these things

314

that I've listed like thermal cyclers and a gel imaging system, a spectrophotometer.

315

If I'm, if I'm equipped to do experiments then I have these things.

316

And so the things that were important

317

that I tell them about were the things that were unusual like I have a very special microscope.

318

I have some special equipment for working with fruit flies that other labs would not have.

319

And that was the equipment that was important to tell them about.

320

This proposal was an eight -page proposal.

321

Seven of it was actually a description of experiments.

322

That seven pages actually came from a 15 -page proposal that I cut down to seven.

323

So I really had to think about how am I going to take the same experiments

324

and the same ideas and now put them in seven.

325

And that is a tough thing to do.

326

I just think it's really important to have something either online or on a bookshelf that you can have access to because, you know, I forget how to use a semi -colon, you know, and that kind of thing.

327

And so it's good to have those.

328

Between, among, affect, effect, I've got a whole list of words

329

that I provide to my undergraduates of things that we commonly mess up while we're writing.

330

So these writing books that are, you know, either biology or chemistry specific or science specific, we'll help walk you through what does a science CV look like

331

and how do you present data in a paper and that kind of thing and talk about interpreting results and statistics.

332

Okay, well thank you for coming today, I appreciate your attention.

✨ Recommend Video

46 sentences

Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson

This C1 speaking lesson is built on the video “Science Writing: Practice Makes It (Almost) Perfect”. The speaker keeps coming back to these words: proposal, writing, grant, write. This video has 332 sentences and 4628 words to shadow. The speech runs for 24:53. The speaker talks fast, about 186 words per minute, so expect linked and reduced sounds. 85% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English; the rest is worth studying before you start.

Key vocabulary in this video

The 15 most advanced words in the video, with pronunciation and meaning:

Word	Pronunciation	Meaning
revise verb	/ɹɪˈvaɪz/	To review, alter and amend, especially of written material.
reviewer noun		A person who writes reviews for a newspaper or other publication; a critic.
spelling noun	/ˈspɛl.ɪŋ/	The act, practice, ability, or subject of forming words with letters, or of reading the letters of words; orthography.
font noun	/fɑnt/	In metal typesetting, a set of type sorts in one size.
interpret verb	/ɪnˈtɜː.pɹɪt/	To decode the meaning of a topic and then act, whether to continue researching the topic, follow through, act in opposition, or further the understanding…
undergraduate noun		A student at a university who has not yet received a degree.
colleague noun	/ˈkɒliːɡ/	A fellow member of a profession, staff, academic faculty or other organization; an associate, a workmate.
concise adjective	/kənˈsaɪs/	Brief, yet including all important information.
clarity noun	/ˈklæɹ.ɪ.ti/	The state or measure of being clear, either in appearance, thought or style; lucidity.
outline noun	/ˈaʊtlaɪn/	A line marking the boundary of an object figure.
execute verb	/ˈɛksɪˌkjuːt/	To kill, especially as punishment for a capital crime.
abbreviation noun	/əˌbɹi.viˈeɪ.ʃn̩/	The result of shortening or reducing; abridgment.
instructive adjective	/ɪnˈstɹʌktɪv/	Conveying knowledge, information or instruction.
jargon noun	/ˈdʒɑː.ɡən/	A technical terminology unique to a particular subject.
proofread verb	/ˈpɹuːfɹiːd/	To check a written text for errors in spelling, grammar, syntax, and punctuation.

Phrasal verbs you will hear

Word	Pronunciation	Meaning
figure out verb		To come to understand; to discover or find a solution; to deduce.
get down to verb		To start focusing on doing something serious
get through verb	/ɡɛt ˈθɹu/	To overcome; to endure.
go back verb		To return to a place or state after having been there at a previous time.
go through verb		To travel from one end of something to the other.
turn out verb		To end up; to result.
come across verb		To change sides; to cross over to work for the opposition.
go back to verb		To stem from; to originate in.

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	have been dissuaded · have submitted · you've done
Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it	have been dissuaded · are related · is complicated
Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing	somebody who writes · somebody who is · doing, which is

Pronunciation to watch

The speaker uses 140 contractions and reduced forms, such as you're, don't, I'm. Say them the short way, as you hear them.

The “sh” and “zh” sounds: abbreviation /əˌbɹi.viˈeɪ.ʃn̩/, revision /ɹəˈvɪʒ.ən/, afresh /ʌˈfɹɛʃ/, bookshelf /ˈbʊkˌʃɛlf/, contraction /kənˈtɹækʃ(ə)n/
Long words — get the stress right: abbreviation /əˌbɹi.viˈeɪ.ʃn̩/, commonality /ˌkɑ.məˈnæl.ə.ti/, communicator /kəˈmjuːnɪkeɪtə/, grammatical /ɡɹəˈmæt.ɪ.kəl/, iteration /ˌɪt.əˈɹeɪ.ʃən/

How to practise with this video

Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
Start at 0.75× speed, shadow it sentence by sentence, then go back to normal speed once it feels easy.
Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like revise, reviewer, spelling.

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.

Shadowing technique: read the full step-by-step guide →

Shadowing Practice: Science Writing: Practice Makes It (Almost) Perfect - Learn English Speaking with Video

You Have to Write Every Day. ChatGPT Won’t Save You.

Working as a Fire Protection Engineer - First Six Months Experience

What is Social Science?

Life Lessons from A Heart Surgeon - U of T Research Showcase 2026

13k

How AI is Changing Data Scientist's Workflow

How to Write a Cover Letter That Actually Gets Read | Indeed

How I Consistently Study with a Full Time Job: My Scheduling Formula

The Science of Thinking

Becoming a Podcaster - B2 Listening for High-Intermediate Students

(Reading Practice (Improve your pronunciation in English

"This Doesn't Lie" | Build Your Own English Level Checker with Google AI Studio