Shadowing Practice: Self Educated Polymaths Will Win In The Digital Age - Learn English Speaking with Video
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We are living through a period of rapid change.
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In every direction, every facet of life right now, things are changing faster than ever.
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And what separates the rapid development today from the rapid development of previous eras, such as the Industrial Revolution,
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for example, is that we're not developing into a new societal structure and a new world.
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We're not going from an old world into a new world.
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We're going from a world
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that is set in its structure to a world where nothing stays the same for very long at all.
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The Industrial Revolution changed the world into a new way of living.
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But the world that we're going into with the digital renaissance
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and the technological development that we're seeing is a world where everything will just always be changing.
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And it'll be hard to find a set structure.
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Things will develop all the time, and you won't be able to find any real firm sense of grounding in a specific way of going about things.
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Things will just constantly develop, and you will always need to be on the move, and always need to be agile in that sense.
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And that's why the concept of being a self-educated polymath with a sense of intellectual fitness is so important.
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And that's why I want to talk about this book today called The Idea of a University by John Henry Newman,
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where he says that we shouldn't view the intellect as something that just allows us to learn how to do something.
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But we should view the intellect much more how we view the physical body, where you can work on your intellectual fitness.
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And it's so important to do so because by working on your intellectual fitness, you're able to be agile.
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The person who's intellectually fit will be able to be moved from one job to another, from one way of doing things to another,
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and be able to be a faster learner and excel in different facets of life.
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It's the same thing as if you were really good at tennis because you know how to play tennis, you would be better than somebody who is more fit than you,
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but has never played tennis before because they don't know how to play tennis, but you do.
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But if you both change to a completely new sport like basketball, for example, and they've never played basketball and neither have you,
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but they're more fit than you, then all of a sudden they're going to be better at basketball right off the jump because they're just more physically capable.
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They have that agility in that sense.
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And that's how you need to view the intellect.
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While, of course, it is important to know how to do specific things if you want to be a writer, you need to know how to write.
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You need to know the rules of grammar.
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You need to know how to structure a paragraph, how to structure a story.
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Of course, that's important.
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But what separates the great writers from the good writers is
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that the great writers have intellectual fitness where they've gone down all these different rabbit holes.
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They've learned about history.
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They've learned about science.
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They've learned about mathematics.
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And they can work that into their writing.
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They can weave that in.
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They have intellectual agility and intellectual fitness, which allows their work to be more unique.
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And in the age of the digital renaissance, in the age of artificial intelligence,
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your own unique intellectual ability is what is going to set you apart from other people
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and allow you to have a firm sense of your own intellectual fitness
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so that if you need to pivot in your career, if you need to pivot in life because technology has streamlined a specific process
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and all of a sudden something you were doing or the way you were going about your own work doesn't work anymore, it's not efficient in the current age and you need to develop,
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you need to change, you need to adapt, you can do that at a better ability because you have that intellectual fitness.
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And John Henry Newman believed that this is what universities should teach, that universities shouldn't just always be about practical memorization techniques
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and be so rigid in its rubric and in its structure of education,
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but universities should also allow the students to learn purely for the sake of learning,
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because learning and education in itself is a good thing.
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It doesn't always need to be practical.
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It doesn't always need to be applicable, because when you just learn for its own sake, like when you read philosophy, there's nothing practical about that.
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I mean, you're either going to be a priest or an academic.
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You're not going to be able to build a proper business and structure out of just studying philosophy.
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But it does help your brain.
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It allows you to be more intellectually fit, which allows you perhaps to think about business in a different way.
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And then when you learn how to go about the business you're looking to start, you have your own unique approach to it, if that makes sense.
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You just have basic agility of the intellect.
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And so to get back to the digital age, to get back to AI, it is extremely important.
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But the good thing is today, we don't necessarily need universities to do that, Because we have YouTube, we have the internet, we have social media, we can follow our own curiosity in
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so many different angles that we are able to self-educate
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and become a self-educated polymath and increase our intellectual fitness without the need of a university
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and we can do it basically completely free.
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However, the one caveat to this self-education trend
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that we're seeing online right now is that it is easier to go into echo chambers.
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If you're going down a rabbit hole of history, for example, it's easy to go down one side's version of history
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and completely miss some facts that happened on the other side and not be able to hold two truths at once,
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which isn't going to make you intellectually fit.
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It's just going to make you intellectually biased.
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And it's very important when going down this self-education route, when trying to be a self-educated polymath,
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to remember that you need to always be curious and always understand
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that you need to challenge yourself and find things you disagree with, as that's what actually makes you intellectually fit.
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There's a really great idea that comes from C.S.
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Lewis when it comes to your own reading,
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which is that you should always assume that the person who wrote the book you're reading may know something that you don't.
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The importance of that is that you know that maybe you will disagree on certain elements.
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Maybe you know something this writer doesn't, but you should assume that they know something you don't because it allows you to open up your curiosity,
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open up your mind, and be receptive to actually expand your mind,
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to actually learn, to actually increase your intellectual fitness without blocking off learning new things just
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because you want to hold strong to your own bias.
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You need to always assume that other people know something you don't, because the simple fact of the matter is, is that you can't know everything, and that no matter who you meet on the street,
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they will know something that you don't.
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They will be right about something that you were wrong about.
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You can't be perfect, you can't know everything, and so when going down this self-education route, when trying to become a self-educated polymath,
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it's always important to keep up that curiosity, to always assume that other people know things you don't, and have some humility in that sense.
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Once again, that comes back to your own curiosity.
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If you can be curious without ego, you're going to expand your intellectual fitness more, you're going to be able to learn more,
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you're going to become a better self-educator, and you're going to be much more equipped for this modern world, where things will always be changing,
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things will always be adapting.
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When you think back just 20 years ago, you would never think that there would be philosophy podcasts
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that are earning millions of dollars a year due to their own media that they're putting out.
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That just wouldn't seem plausible.
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That wouldn't seem possible.
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An academic who's into philosophy wouldn't build some successful seven-figure business model, but because of technology, it's changed the way the world works.
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That opportunity opened up, and they were able to capitalize on that due to their own intellectual agility.
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And this happens in every different direction now.
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This is so, so, so important.
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So always remember to not just treat learning and education as something that needs to be practical,
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but remember that learning for its own sake is also really great and is going to be crucial in today's age.
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But with that said, I hope you guys enjoyed this video and until next time, take care.
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This B2 speaking lesson is built on the video “Self Educated Polymaths Will Win In The Digital Age”. The speaker keeps coming back to these words: intellectual, fitness, self, structure, allow. This video has 98 sentences and 1540 words to shadow. The speech runs for 9:07. The speaker talks at a natural 169 words per minute, close to everyday conversation. 88% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English, so the vocabulary is easy to follow.
Key vocabulary in this video
The 15 most advanced words in the video, with pronunciation and meaning:
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| intellectually adverb | In an intellectual manner. | |
| educate verb | /ˈɛd͡ʒ.əˌkeɪt/ | To instruct or train. |
| agility noun | /əˈd͡ʒɪl.ɪ.ti/ | The quality of being agile; the power of moving the limbs quickly and easily; quickness of motion |
| intellect noun | /ˈɪntəlɛkt/ | The faculty of thinking, judging, abstract reasoning, and conceptual understanding; the cognitive faculty. |
| polymath noun | /ˈpɑliˌmæθ/ | A person with extraordinarily broad and comprehensive knowledge. |
| curiosity noun | /ˌkjʊɹ.iˈɑ.sə.ti/ | Inquisitiveness; the tendency to ask and learn about things by asking questions, investigating, or exploring. |
| agile adjective | /ˈæd͡ʒ.aɪl/ | Having the faculty of quick motion in the limbs; apt or ready to move; loose-jointed. |
| facet noun | /ˈfæs.ɪt/ | Any one of the flat surfaces cut into a gem. |
| pivot noun | /ˈpɪv.ɪt/ | A thing on which something turns; specifically a metal pointed pin or short shaft in machinery, such as the end of an axle or spindle. |
| renaissance noun | /ɹəˈneɪs(ə)ns/ | A rebirth or revival. |
| adapt verb | /əˈdæpt/ | To make suitable; to make to correspond; to fit or suit. |
| rabbit noun | /ˈɹæbɪt/ | A mammal of most genera of the family Leporidae, with long ears, long hind legs and a short, fluffy tail. (Those of the larger kind are instead called hares) |
| disagree verb | /dɪsəˈɡɹi/ | To fail to agree; to have a different opinion or belief. |
| bias noun | /ˈbaɪ.əs/ | Inclination towards something. |
| capitalize verb | /ˈkæpətəˌlaɪz/ | In writing or editing, to write (something: either an entire word or text, or just the initial letter(s) thereof) in capital letters, in upper case. |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Meaning |
|---|---|
| go down verb | To descend; to move from a higher place to a lower one. |
| open up verb | To open. |
| get back to verb | Return to (an activity) |
| keep up verb | To maintain; to preserve; to prevent from deteriorating or falling. |
| live through verb | To survive a difficult period or event |
| put out verb | To blind (eyes). |
| think back verb | To think about a time or experience; to recall. |
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 never played · they've never played · they've gone |
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | is set · be moved |
| Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing | somebody who is · person who wrote |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 47 contractions and reduced forms, such as you're, don't, we're. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “th” sounds: polymath /ˈpɑliˌmæθ/, mathematics /mæθ(.ə)ˈmæt.ɪks/
- Long words — get the stress right: agility /əˈd͡ʒɪl.ɪ.ti/, curiosity /ˌkjʊɹ.iˈɑ.sə.ti/, capitalize /ˈkæpətəˌlaɪz/, memorization /ˈmem(ə)ɹaɪˌzeɪʃn̩/, educator /ˈɛd͡ʒəkeɪtɚ/
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 intellectually, educate, agility.
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.