Shadowing Practice: TED TALK~ 不要等到三十歲才來後悔二十歲没有好好過活，人生是現在就已經開始【中英字幕】 - Learn English Speaking with Video

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Tanya Cushman Reviewer When I was in my 20s,

I saw my very first psychotherapy client.

I was a PhD student in clinical psychology at Berkeley.

She was a 26 -year -old woman named Alex.

Now, Alex walked into her first session wearing jeans

and a big slouchy top and she dropped onto the couch in my office

and kicked off her flats and told me she was there to talk about guy problems.

Now, when I heard this, I was so relieved.

My classmate got an arsonist for her first client and I got a 20 -something who wanted to talk about boys.

This I thought I could handle, but I didn't handle it.

With the funny stories that Alex would bring to session,

it was easy for me just to nod my head while we kicked the can down the road.

30's the new 20, Alex would say, and as far as I could tell, she was right.

Work happened later, marriage happened later, kids happened later, even death happened later twenty -somethings like Alex and I had nothing but time.

But before long my supervisor pushed me to push Alex about her love life.

I pushed back.

I said sure she's dating down, she's sleeping with a knucklehead, but it's not like she's gonna marry the guy.

And then my supervisor said, not yet, but she might marry the next one.

Besides, the best time to work on Alex's marriage is before she has one.

That's what psychologists call an aha moment.

That was the moment I realized 30 is not the new 20.

Yes, people settle down later than they used to, but that didn't make Alex's 20s a developmental downtime.

That made Alex's 20s a developmental sweet spot, and we were sitting there blowing it.

That was when I realized that this sort of benign neglect was a real problem and it had real consequences,

not just for Alex and her love life but for the careers and the families and the futures of 20 -somethings everywhere.

There are 50 million 20 -somethings in the United States right now.

We're talking about 15 % of the population,

or 100 % if you consider that no one's getting through adulthood without going through their 20s first.

Raise your hand if you're in your 20s.

I really want to see some 20 -somethings here.

Okay, y 'all, it's awesome.

If you work with 20 -somethings, you love a 20 -something, you're losing sleep over 20 -somethings, I want to see, okay,

awesome, 20 -somethings really matter.

So, I specialize in 20 -somethings because I believe

that every single one of those 50 million 20 -somethings deserves to know what psychologists,

sociologists, neurologists, and fertility specialists already know.

That claiming your 20s is one of the simplest yet most transformative things you can do for work, for love, for your happiness,

maybe even for the world.

This is not my opinion.

These are the facts.

We know that 80 % of life's most defining moments take place by age 35.

That means that 8 out of 10 of the decisions

and experiences and aha moments that make your life what it is will have happened by your mid -30s.

People who are over 40, don't panic.

This crowd is going to be fine, I think.

We know that the first 10 years of a career has an exponential impact on how much money you're going to earn.

We know that more than half of Americans are married or are living with or dating their future partner by 30.

We know that the brain caps off its second and last growth spurt in your 20s as it rewires itself for adulthood,

which means that whatever it is you want to change about yourself, now is the time to change it.

We know that personality change is more during your 20s than at any other time in life.

And we know that female fertility peaks at age 28, and things get tricky after age 35.

So your 20s are the time to educate yourself about your body and your options.

So when we think about child development, we all know that the first five years are a critical period for language and attachment in the brain.

It's a time when your ordinary day -to -day life has an inordinate impact on who you will become.

But what we hear less about is that there's such a thing as adult development, and our 20s are that critical period of adult development.

But this isn't what 20 -somethings are hearing.

Newspapers talk about the changing timetable of adulthood.

Researchers call the 20s an extended adolescence.

Journalists coined silly nicknames for 20 -somethings like Twixsters and Codults.

It's true.

As a culture, we have trivialized what is actually the defining decade of adulthood.

Leonard Bernstein said that to achieve great things, you need a plan and not quite enough time.

Isn't that true?

So what do you think happens when you pat a 20 -something on the head

and you say you have 10 extra years to start your life?

Nothing happens you have robbed that person of his urgency

and ambition and absolutely nothing happens

and then every day smart interesting 20 -somethings like you

or like your sons and daughters come into my office and say things like this I

know my boyfriend's no good for me

but this relationship doesn't count I'm just killing time

or they say everybody says as long as I get started on a career by the time I'm 30, I'll be fine.

But then it starts to sound like this.

My 20s are almost over and I have nothing to show for myself.

I had a better resume the day after I graduated from college.

And then it starts to sound like this.

Dating in my 20s was like musical chairs.

Everybody was running around and having fun.

But then sometime around 30, it was like the music turned off and everybody started sitting down.

I didn't want to be the only one left standing up,

so sometimes I think I married my husband because he was the closest chair to me at 30.

Where are the 20 -somethings here?

Do not do that.

Okay, now that sounds a little flip, but make no mistake, the stakes are very high.

When a lot has been pushed to your 30s, there is enormous 30 -something pressure to jumpstart a career, pick a city, partner up,

and have two or three kids in a much shorter period of time.

Many of these things are incompatible, and as research is just starting to show,

simply harder and more stressful to do all at once in our 30s.

The post -millennial midlife crisis isn't buying a red sports car.

It's realizing you can't have that career you now want.

It's realizing you can't have that child you now want

or you can't give your child a sibling too many 30 -somethings

and 40 -somethings look at themselves and at me sitting across the room

and say about their 20s what was I doing what was I thinking

I want to change what 20 -somethings are doing

and thinking here's a story about how that can go it's a story about a woman named Emma.

At 25 Emma came to my office because she was, in her words, having an identity crisis.

She said she thought she might like to work in art

or entertainment but she hadn't decided yet so she'd spent the last few years waiting tables instead.

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Because it was cheaper she lived with a boyfriend who displayed his temper more than his ambition.

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And as As hard as her 20s were, her early life had been even harder.

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She often cried in our sessions, but then would collect herself by saying, you can't pick your family, but you can pick your friends.

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Well, one day, Emma comes in and she hangs her head in her lap, and she's sobbed for most of the hour.

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She'd just bought a new address book, and she'd spent the morning filling in her many contacts.

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But then she'd been left staring at that empty blank that comes after the words, in case of emergency, please call.

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She was nearly hysterical when she looked at me and said, who's going to be there for me if I get in a car wreck?

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Who's going to take care of me if I have cancer?

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Now, in that moment, it took everything I had not to say, I will.

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But what Emma needed wasn't some therapist who really, really cared.

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Emma needed a better life, and I knew this was her chance.

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I had learned too much since I first worked with Alex to just sit there while Emma's defining decade went parading by.

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So over the next weeks and months, I told Emma three things that every 20 -something, male or female, deserves to hear.

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First, I told

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Emma to forget about having an identity crisis and get some identity capital.

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By get identity capital, I mean do something that adds value to who you are.

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Do something that's an investment in who you might want to be next.

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I didn't know the future of Emma's career and no one knows the future of work, but I do know this.

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Identity capital begets identity capital.

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So now is the time for that cross -country job, that internship, that startup you want to try.

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I'm not discounting 20 -something exploration here, but I am discounting exploration that's not supposed to count.

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Which, by the way, is not exploration.

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That's procrastination.

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I told Emma to explore work and make it count.

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second I told

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Emma that the urban tribe is overrated best friends are great for giving rides to the airport

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but 20 -somethings who huddled together with like -minded peers limit

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who they know what they know how they think how they speak

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and where they work that new piece of capital

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that new person to date almost always comes from outside the

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inner circle new things come from what are called our weak ties, our friends of friends of friends.

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So yes, half of 20 -somethings are un - or underemployed, but half aren't, and weak ties are how you get yourself into that group.

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Half of new jobs are never posted, so reaching out to your neighbor's boss is how you get that unposted job.

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It's not cheating, it's the science of how information spreads.

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Last but not least, Emma believed that you can't pick your family, but you can pick your friends.

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Now this was true for her growing up, but as a 20 -something,

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soon Emma would pick her family when she partnered with someone and created a family of her own.

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I told Emma the time to start picking your family is now.

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Now you may be thinking that 30 is actually a better time to settle down than 20 or even 25, And I agree with you,

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but grabbing whoever you're living with or sleeping with when everyone on Facebook starts walking down the aisle is not progress.

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The best time to work on your marriage is before you have one, and that means being as intentional with love as you are with work.

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Picking your family is about consciously choosing who

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and what you want rather than just making at work or killing time with whoever happens to be choosing you.

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So what happened to Emma?

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Well, we went through that address book

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and she found an old roommate's cousin who worked at an art museum in another state.

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That week, Ty helped her get a job there.

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That job offer gave her the reason to leave that live -in boyfriend.

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Now five years later, she's a special events planner for museums she's married to a man

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she mindfully chose she loves her new career she loves her new family

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and she sent me a card that said now the emergency contact blanks don't seem big enough now

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Emma's story made that sound easy

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but that's what I love about working with 20 -somethings they are so easy to help

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20 -somethings are like airplanes just leaving LAX bound for somewhere west

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Right after takeoff, a slight change in course is the difference between landing in Alaska or Fiji.

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Likewise, at 21 or 25 or even 29, one good conversation, one good break,

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one good TED Talk can have an enormous effect across years and even generations to come.

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So here's an idea worth spreading to every 20 -something you know.

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It's as simple as what I learned to say to Alex.

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It's what I now have the privilege of saying to 20 -somethings like

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Emma every single day.

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30 is not the new 20, so claim your adulthood, get some identity capital, use your weak ties, pick your family.

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Don't be defined by what you didn't know or didn't do.

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You're deciding your life right now.

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Thank you.

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Thank you.

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157 sentences

Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson

This speaking lesson is built on the video “TED TALK~ 不要等到三十歲才來後悔二十歲没有好好過活，人生是現在就已經開始【中英字幕】”. This video has 165 sentences and 2123 words to shadow. The speech runs for 14:44. The speaker talks at a steady 144 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 words from the video worth learning, with pronunciation and meaning:

Word	Pronunciation	Meaning
adulthood noun		The state or condition, for humans and other animals, of physical and psychological maturity: being an adult.
define verb	/dɪˈfaɪn/	To determine with precision; to mark out with distinctness; to ascertain or exhibit clearly.
exploration noun	/ˌɛkspləˈɹeɪʃən/	The process of exploring.
whoever	/huˈɛvɚ/	Who ever: an emphatic form of who.
marry verb	/ˈmæɹi/	To enter into the conjugal or connubial state; to take a husband or a wife.
settle verb	/ˈsɛtəl/	To determine (something which was exposed to doubt or question); to resolve conclusively; to set or fix (a time, an order of succession, etc).
discount noun	/ˈdɪskaʊnt/	A reduction in price.
enormous adjective	/ɪˈnɔː.məs/	Extremely large; greatly exceeding the common size, extent, etc.
blank noun	/ˈblæŋk/	The white spot in the centre of a target; hence (figuratively) the object to which anything is directed or aimed, the range of such aim.
supervisor noun	/ˈsupɚˌvaɪzɚ/	A person with the official task of overseeing the work of a person or group, or of other operations and activities.
ambition noun	/æmˈbɪʃ.ən/	Eager or inordinate desire for some object that confers distinction, as preferment, honor, superiority, political power, or fame; desire to distinguish one's…
psychologist noun	/ˌsaɪˈkɑl.ə.d͡ʒɪst/	An expert in the field of psychology.
developmental adjective	/dɪˌvɛləpˈmɛntəl/	Related to development.
fertility noun	/fɝˈtɪləti/	The condition, or the degree, of being fertile.
earn verb	/ɝn/	To gain (success, reward, recognition) through applied effort or work.

Phrasal verbs you will hear

Word	Pronunciation	Meaning
go through verb		To travel from one end of something to the other.
settle down verb		To make or become quiet and calm after a period of disturbance or restlessness.
get through verb	/ɡɛt ˈθɹu/	To overcome; to endure.
grow up verb		To mature and become an adult.
kick off verb		To make the first kick in a game or part of a game.
push back verb		To refute or argue against a position or an accusation; to express one's own view on a situation.
run around verb		To be very busy doing many different things.
sit down verb		To assume a sitting position from a standing position.

Grammar in this video

The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:

Structure	In the video
Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it	has been pushed · been left · is overrated
Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now	have trivialized · have robbed · has been pushed

Pronunciation to watch

The speaker uses 36 contractions and reduced forms, such as didn't, can't, you're. Say them the short way, as you hear them.

The “th” sounds: therapist /ˈθɛɹəpɪst/, psychotherapy /ˌsaɪkoʊˈθɛɹəpi/
The “sh” and “zh” sounds: exploration /ˌɛkspləˈɹeɪʃən/, ambition /æmˈbɪʃ.ən/, specialist /ˈspɛʃəlɪst/, intentional /ɪnˈtɛnʃənəl/, internship /ˈɪntɜːnʃɪp/
Long words — get the stress right: exploration /ˌɛkspləˈɹeɪʃən/, supervisor /ˈsupɚˌvaɪzɚ/, psychologist /ˌsaɪˈkɑl.ə.d͡ʒɪst/, developmental /dɪˌvɛləpˈmɛntəl/, fertility /fɝˈtɪləti/

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 adulthood, define, exploration.

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: TED TALK~ 不要等到三十歲才來後悔二十歲没有好好過活，人生是現在就已經開始 【中英字幕】 - Learn English Speaking with Video

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