Shadowing Practice: The Male Reading Crisis - Learn English Speaking with Video
Creating lesson...
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Something strange is happening on my YouTube feed.
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Since I got back into reading daily over a year ago, I've been getting more and more videos about books on my recommended page.
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However, that's not the strange part because we all know big tech is always listening.
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What was strange was that 8 times out of 10, a book-related video was from a woman's channel.
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If I do happen to stumble across a male channel talking about books, it's almost always the same few self-help ones, the subtle art of not giving a fuck 48 Laws of Power,
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Atomic Habits, or Meditations by Marcus Aurelius.
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When you look at the statistics, you realize this isn't all too strange.
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In 2023, it was found that women made up roughly 80% of fiction sales in the US, UK, and Canada.
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Men, on average, also read much less.
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In a 2013 survey, 51% of women read more than 30 books a year compared with 34% of men.
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In 2015, it was 55% and 28%, and in 2018, it was 60% and 20%.
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What happened to men reading for pleasure, or at all?
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What are the cultural and biological factors that led to this decline?
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And what will be the consequences if this trend continues?
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Let's answer those questions in this video.
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First, an update on overall reading trends.
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In a 2022 survey, the NEA reported that 48.5% of adults read at least one book in the past year,
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compared with 52.7% five years earlier and 54.6% ten years earlier.
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The sharpest decline can be observed with novels and short stories, aka fiction, especially among young men.
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In 2017 the share of women reading novels or short stories was down to 50% and in 2022 to 46.9%.
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But men saw their fiction reading rate slip from 35.1% in 2012 to 33.0% in 2017 and then to 27.7% in 2022.
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That clashes with what we know about overall print book sales which have actually increased in the past decade.
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So who is driving this upward trend In sales?
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Mostly women.
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To understand why this is the case, we can look back as far as our adolescence.
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A book trust poll found that 42% of mothers, compared with 29% of fathers, read with their under ones every day,
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while 71% of mothers, compared with 62% of fathers, read with their three year olds every day.
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In another study titled African American White and Latino Fathers Activities with their sons and daughters in early childhood,
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researchers found that fathers of boys engaged in physical play more frequently than fathers of girls, whereas fathers of girls engaged more frequently in literary activities.
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From the time we are born, men adopt common gender roles and therefore have little to no male reading role models.
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Now this is where you can make a nature versus nurture argument.
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Do fathers feel more biologically inclined to prepare their sons for the physicality of the world, or is it because that's what our culture has taught them to do?
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Honestly, I think it's a little bit of both.
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I think men tend to naturally gravitate towards and fixate on things related to the physical rather than the emotional,
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which pushes many men to over-develop that area of their life and under-develop the more intuitive, empathetic, emotional side.
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However, this is 100% not an excuse to allow this trend to persist.
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There is so much lacking culturally in regards to how men treat other men
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and how they perceive other men who are more in touch with their emotional literary side.
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We are told that allowing ourselves to be vulnerable, letting our emotions express themselves, and being moved by words on a page is childish or gay.
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As a result, our interests develop in different ways, and I think this subtly influences us to find books, especially fiction, less enjoyable than they are to women,
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which is backed up by the data.
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In 2018, 24% of 15 year old boys
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and 44% of girls the same age agreed that reading is one of my favorite hobbies,
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while 60% of boys and 39% of girls agreed that I read only to get information that I need.
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That same study found that more than 40% of girls at age 15 reported reading at least 30 minutes a day, compared to only about a quarter of boys who did the same.
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This is very telling of the general sentiment that I hear from a lot of younger guys regarding books, which is that unless they are directly contributing to the enhancement of one's utility,
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they are a waste of time.
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In a New York Times article titled, Why Did the Novel reading man disappear.
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A college literature professor said he had trouble getting many of
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the young men in his courses interested in the material because they did not see the benefit of novels.
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They're more interested in the instrumental, he said.
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Now why this is the case goes incredibly deep.
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There's so many different aspects to this
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and I've talked about masculinity a lot on this channel
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so I'm going to do my best to explain how it relates to reading books here.
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It is not entirely unjustified for young men to feel this way.
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Due to the system we live in, we are taught at a young age
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that we are worth nothing unless we have accomplished some sort of tangible success in our lives.
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And how our culture defines tangible success is usually in the form of wealth or status.
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Wealth usually comes in the form of money, but status can mean many different things.
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Social status, physical status, career status, intelligence status, etc. If you cannot signal that you have something substantial to provide to the world, you are treated like a ghost.
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And I'm not saying this isn't the case for women, women's worth is often derived from their outward appearances,
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but typically women are not socially punished as harshly if they're not reaching a certain outward appearance.
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So since this is what our culture and system magnifies in men,
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naturally men are going to gravitate towards activities that translate into skills that will stop them from being treated like a ghost.
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And on the surface, the only books that are justifiable to that cause are self-help books, but only a very particular type of self-help book.
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Self-help books tagged with memoir, biography, and autobiography have more female readers, while those tagged with science, business, psychology, and religion have more male readers.
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In other words, men are less interested in learning about people's stories, struggles, and emotions,
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and more interested in learning about how to gain what society values in men like money and power over others.
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And this is a massive reason why I decided to write my first novel, which, as of the day I'm publishing this video, has finally been released.
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I have for so long wanted to create a piece of work that would allow people, men specifically, to see the value in reading fiction in order to enhance their understanding of the world,
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and I believe my debut novel, Echoes Across Infinity, does just that.
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Echoes Across Infinity is about a 21-year-old named Elliot who lives in a post-pandemic world, aka our modern world, and due to a freak accident, ends up losing his mother.
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Through the trauma he endures, he begins to have uncontrollable visions of a foreign world, which he soon finds out is a parallel reality.
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Throughout the book, Elliot struggles with understanding his place in the world and how to grapple with his emotions, and using the parallel reality,
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learns how to transform his beliefs to create an identity he is genuinely proud of.
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This book is a blend of sci-fi, self-improvement philosophy, and psychology.
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It is a culmination of over 500 days of work, and I have never been more proud to promote something in a video.
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I genuinely believe this is a story worth reading, even if you aren't a guy, and it's the perfect gateway into fiction, so if you are interested in reading it,
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you can pick it up by going to one of the first links in my description.
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Please go check it out, because if you enjoy my videos, I think you will really be able to relate to the main character and you will absolutely love this book.
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And if you still aren't convinced yet, I think you will be by the end of this video.
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What's only exacerbated this trend of men putting their attention solely on things that result in utility is, of course, our economic situation as well.
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Capitalism breeds hustle culture.
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Hustle culture teaches the idea that you can be the most handsome, successful, popular dude if you just work every waking hour.
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And if you work every waking hour, you know what you don't have time for?
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Reading for pleasure.
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It better be a book about creating a Roth IRA, explaining the psychology of money, winning friends and influencing people, or being a manipulative dictator.
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And I'm not even saying that self-help books are inherently bad, but they They don't leave the same type of impact that fiction books do, a type of impact that is severely lacking in the modern world,
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which I will discuss more deeply when I go over the consequences towards the end of this video.
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Additionally, I think this helps us understand something that may or may not be shocking to you.
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Men are way more reluctant to read female authors than women are reluctant to read male authors.
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Newly analyzed data drawn from Nielsen Book Data's Consumer Research shows
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that for the top 20 best-selling female writers of fiction and nonfiction purchased in the UK in 2023, fewer than 20% of purchases were made by men,
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with the majority of these focused on the classics as opposed to works by contemporary writers.
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In comparison, 44% of the top 20 best-selling male writers of fiction and nonfiction were bought by women.
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Going off what we know about the culture and our economy, my hunch is that men are less open to receiving ideas
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and insights from someone like a female author who they might
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think not be able to help them with something regarding tangible value.
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Their motives for reading are different.
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Conversely, women are more open-minded and receptive towards receiving different viewpoints that come from men, and on top of that,
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their motive for reading is more frequently one of leisure.
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But that's just my theory, I would love to know what you think about this particular data point by leaving a comment.
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And since these trends in book sales have persisted for so long, the market has adapted to them, only further exacerbating this trend.
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In the New York Times article I mentioned earlier, the author highlights a walkthrough of a book chain in New York City.
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He states, Eventually, Mr. Kiyono took me to the front to look at an attractive customer favorites display.
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Here, pastel and vivid colors dominated the covers of books by romance and romantic-y stalwarts like Carly Fortune and Sarah J Maas,
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the author of the popular Account of Thorns and Roses series.
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It was also found that by 2020, for the first time in history, women were publishing more books than men,
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contributing to increased revenue for the industry for both male and female consumers.
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And I think many of these sales can be attributed to BookTok.
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BookTok is the site of TikTok where readers recommend and review their favorite books for their audiences.
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And if you search BookTok and scroll for even just a little, you will see that the majority of creators are women, and that they are mostly recommending the same types of books,
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like Romanticy, that are being displayed front and center in bookstores.
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So because of recent developments in reading, online and physical retailers start pushing more female dominated book genres to the forefront of their stores,
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thereby attracting more women than men, thereby disincentivizing men to actually browse books and choose something other than a self-help book mentioned by a guru online.
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This is not a bad thing of course, when you're a business and you see that the majority of your customers are women,
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of course you're gonna adjust your store or your marketing to appeal to the majority of your customers.
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And it's great that both men and women are publishing around the same amount of books now, which allows for better representation.
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But if this were to continue, I think men will find it increasingly hard to justify picking up a fiction book, or really any book for that matter.
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So what are the consequences of this?
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Well, we're already starting to see some of them and they don't look too good.
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One global study found
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that fourth grade girls had higher average reading achievement levels in
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almost all of the 50 countries surveyed than boys in the same grade, a trend that has held since 2001.
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According to the OECD, data looking at 15 year olds across developed countries, girls outperform boys in reading in every single OECD nation surveyed.
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And what happens when those guys grow up?
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They lag heavily behind in the very things they want to achieve by avoiding fiction.
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Studies show that people who read books not only live longer than people who don't read books, but also have a longevity advantage compared to those who read newspapers or magazines,
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even after adjusting for covariates such as age, education level, wealth, and health.
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The Barbara Bush Foundation found that high literacy rates are associated with a stronger economy, healthier families, safer communities, increased civic engagement,
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and therefore more opportunities to break multi-generational cycles of poverty.
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Multiple studies also show that reading fiction books specifically increases empathy and understanding of others more than reading non-fiction.
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So ironically, the very thing more men today are neglecting is the very thing
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that would indirectly translate to the tangible status and wealth they desire.
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And not only that, but reading fiction is perhaps the greatest defense mechanism against social media brain rot,
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which has overtaken almost all of our free time in place of genuinely healthy forms of escapism.
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So men, this is my message to you.
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You might think that reading is a waste of time, especially reading fiction,
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but you need the opportunity to place yourself in the mind of another in order to truly start understanding yourself.
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As men, we rarely have the chance to feel comfortable enough to open up to people, especially our guy friends, and that's a huge problem.
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But when you read fiction, you temporarily inhabit the minds of the characters.
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You gain a deeper understanding of how their emotions work, why they react the way they do, and how that hurts or contributes to their lives.
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And when you do that, what you are really doing is gaining a deeper understanding of yourself.
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You learn how to put your emotions into words, you learn how to handle conflict better, you become more open-minded to other people's beliefs and points of view,
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and therefore you are far more equipped to handle the real world when you return to it.
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Humans are wired to learn through stories, not self-help facts without any emotional stakes tied to them.
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I genuinely think there might not be a better way to solve this issue of men being reluctant to empathize, understand women, show their emotions,
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process them, and become more well-rounded men than getting men into reading fiction again.
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So instead of using your downtime to numb your brain with mindless stimulation, dive into a classic, read a fun fantasy story that transports you to a different world,
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sit with what you've read and try to translate it to your own experiences.
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Help it put words to things and ideas you previously had no way to articulate.
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Because the more that you do that, the more peaceful and fulfilling life becomes.
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And the more peaceful and fulfilling that life becomes, the more you start to get all of those things that you thought you wanted,
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that you might soon come to realize you didn't actually want as a byproduct.
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Whether you're an avid sci-fi reader or you want to get into the incredible genres within fiction, I highly recommend you check out my debut novel Echoes Across Infinity.
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I know I said it already, but I'm just so proud of what I created.
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I really put my all into this, and I'm just so excited for you guys to get your hands on this book and let me know what you think.
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If it sucks, tell me.
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Write a review.
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If it rocks, tell me.
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Also write a review.
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Please.
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Either way, if you do end up purchasing it, it really means the world to me because I just put everything into this,
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and I do genuinely think it's a story worth reading that will lead to a better understanding of yourself and your life.
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This is usually where I recommend another one of my videos, but I'd rather you log off right now and read a book.
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Read something.
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Read, get into a story, get some healthy escapism going, enjoy the outside, just enjoy the summer, and yeah, thank you so much for watching until the end,
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and I hope that you enjoy my story.
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This B2 speaking lesson is built on the video “The Male Reading Crisis”. This video has 169 sentences and 2881 words to shadow. The speech runs for 15:08. The speaker talks fast, about 190 words per minute, so expect linked and reduced sounds. 84% 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 |
|---|---|---|
| emotion noun | /ɪˈməʊ.ʃən/ | A person's internal state of being and involuntary physiological response to an object or a situation, based on or tied to physical state and sensory data. |
| genuinely adverb | /ˈd͡ʒɛn.ju.ɪn.li/ | In a genuine manner; truthfully, truly. |
| tangible adjective | /ˈtæn.d͡ʒə.bəl/ | Touchable; able to be touched or felt; perceptible by the sense of touch. |
| reluctant adjective | /ɹɪˈlʌktənt/ | Not wanting to take some action; unwilling to do something. |
| translate verb | /tɹænzˈleɪt/ | To change spoken words or written text (of a book, document, movie, etc.) from one language to another. |
| consequence noun | /ˈkɑn.sɪ.kwəns/ | An effect; something that follows a cause as a result. |
| publish verb | /ˈpʌblɪʃ/ | To issue (something, such as printed work) for distribution and/or sale. |
| escapism noun | /ɪˈskeɪpɪzəm/ | An inclination to escape from routine or reality into fantasy. |
| gravitate verb | /ˈɡɹævɪteɪt/ | To move under the force of gravity. |
| nonfiction noun | Written works intended to give facts, or true accounts of real things and events. Often used attributively. | |
| outward adjective | /ˈaʊt.wɚd/ | Outer; located towards the outside. |
| hustle verb | /ˈhʌsəl/ | To push someone roughly; to crowd; to jostle. |
| fulfill verb | /fʊlˈfɪl/ | To satisfy, carry out, bring to completion (an obligation, a requirement, etc.). |
| dominate verb | /ˈdɑ.məˌneɪt/ | To govern, rule or control by superior authority or power. |
| motive noun | /ˈmoʊtɪv/ | An incentive to act in a particular way; a reason or emotion that makes one want to do something; anything that prompts a choice of action. |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Meaning |
|---|---|
| end up verb | To bring to a conclusion. |
| back up verb | To move backwards, especially for a vehicle to do so. |
| check out verb | To record the departure or withdrawal of someone or something (such as guests, employees, books, etc.). |
| find out verb | To discover, as by asking or investigating. |
| go off verb | To explode. |
| go over verb | To look at carefully; to scrutinize; to analyze. |
| grow up verb | To mature and become an adult. |
| log off verb | Synonym of log out. |
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 | was found · can be observed · are born |
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | have actually increased · has taught · I've talked |
| Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing | sales which have · men who are · books, which is |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 26 contractions and reduced forms, such as I'm, don't, you're. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “th” sounds: thereby /ðɛɹˈbaɪ/, empathetic /ˌɛmpəˈθɛtɪk/, empathize /ˈɛmpəˌθaɪz/, empathy /ˈɛmpəθi/
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: emotion /ɪˈməʊ.ʃən/, publish /ˈpʌblɪʃ/, genre /ˈ(d)ʒɑnɹə/, culmination /ˌkʌl.mɪˈneɪ.ʃən/, stimulation /stɪm.jʊˈleɪ.ʃən/
- Long words — get the stress right: genuinely /ˈd͡ʒɛn.ju.ɪn.li/, escapism /ɪˈskeɪpɪzəm/, adolescence /ˌædəˈlɛsəns/, covariate /koʊˈvɛɹ.i.eɪt/, culmination /ˌkʌl.mɪˈneɪ.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 emotion, genuinely, tangible.
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.