Shadowing Practice: Think Fast. Talk Smart | Matt Abrahams | TEDxMontaVistaHighSchool - Learn English Speaking with YouTube
C2
Transcriber: David Hsu Reviewer: Mirjana Čutura People hate me.
⏸ Paused
Speed:
All Sentences182 sentences
If sentences are too short or too long, click Edit to adjust them.
1
Transcriber: David Hsu Reviewer: Mirjana Čutura People hate me.
2
People fear me.
3
You see, I'm a communication professor.
4
And these people who fear me and hate me are some of the brightest, most creative, most entrepreneurial people I know.
5
I wield a tool.
6
And that tool I wield is what makes them fear and despise me.
7
As a professor, I have the ability to do what's called "cold calling." That's where I look at a student and say, "What do you think?
8
What do you feel about what we just discussed?
9
How does this impact you?" And this causes panic, not just for my students but for everybody: that moment where we are called upon to speak articulately.
10
Can we do it?
11
Now, rest assured, I never cold call on my students.
12
I think it's rude, and I know it's hard.
13
But people fear it.
14
Eighty-five percent of people say they fear speaking in public.
15
And quite frankly, I think the other 15% are lying.
16
I think we could find a situation that makes them nervous too.
17
So today, my goal is to share with you some tips and techniques that you can use to help you be more comfortable and confident when you're speaking, in other words, to be able to think fast and talk smart.
18
To do this, we're going to look at four different steps.
19
First, we're going to talk about the approach we take.
20
Then, we'll speak about the audience we talk to, the context in which we find ourselves and finally, the structures we use to help our messages get across.
21
So, let's start by talking about approach.
22
You know, I was reminded about the importance of approach many, many years ago, when my wife and I first moved in with each other.
23
You see, we fought a lot over little things, things mostly that happened in our bathrooms.
24
We called these our bathroom brawls: "Is the toilet seat up?" "Is the toilet seat down?" By far, the biggest fight my wife and I ever had was over toothpaste.
25
(Laughter) You see, my wife's a roller, and I'm a squeezer.
26
And all of you out there who are rollers, I appreciate the fine artwork you create out of your toothpaste.
27
But you know that the most awful thing that can happen to you is to have a squeezer come by and ruin all that effort you've put in.
28
But to me, getting toothpaste out of a tube is an act of aggression.
29
I feel powerful in the morning and in the evening.
30
(Laughter) And we would fight incessantly over little things like this.
31
And finally, my wife, who is much smarter than I, said, "Timeout. What are we doing here? We've just been married.
32
We love each other, yet we're fighting all the time.
33
We need to look at this differently." And as soon as we started looking at our bathroom brawls as opportunities - opportunities to learn about each other, to make concessions, to collaborate - things changed.
34
And I'm happy to say, after 15 years of marriage, we no longer fight over toothpaste.
35
(Laughter) This same approach is true in communication.
36
Most of us, when we are in situations where we need to communicate, we see them as threatening.
37
We see them as opportunities for failure.
38
And I'd like to suggest that we need to change that.
39
We need to approach communication in an open way, see it as an opportunity to share our ideas, our beliefs, our innovations.
40
And when we take a perspective of openness, all of a sudden, something that we dread becomes something that we embrace.
41
So, the first step to effective communication is to approach it in an open way.
42
But that's not enough.
43
We need to think about the audience that we're speaking to.
44
And to me, the way to approach it is the opposite the way most people do.
45
Most of us think about, "Here's what I want to say" or, "Here's what I need to say." I would suggest that's exactly wrong.
46
You need to think about, "What does my audience need to hear?" And it sounds just like verbal jiu jitsu, where I'm moving words around, but in fact, it's a fundamental difference.
47
If I ask myself, "What does my audience need," it puts me in service of my audience.
48
It's about their needs.
49
And in order to understand those needs, I have to do some reconnaissance.
50
I have to ask myself who they are.
51
The three things I think we need to ask about our audience are, "What is their knowledge?" "What is it that they know?" and if they don't know enough, "What can we do to scaffold that information so that they have the tools they need?" In addition to knowledge, we need to be thinking about their expectations.
52
And by expectations, I mean, What is it that they expect of me?
53
Most audiences have heard the types of presentations you're giving: maybe it's a pitch, maybe it's some kind of advertisement or marketing, maybe it's a TED talk.
54
Your audience has heard those kinds of presentations before, so what do they expect of you?
55
And then you can choose to conform to those expectations or not.
56
You know, I have two young kids, and I learned that sometimes violating their expectations actually is the most effective thing I can do for the communication we need.
57
My boys sometimes make me upset.
58
And when they make me upset, I used to raise my voice to no avail.
59
Nothing happened.
60
I was ignored.
61
And that's tough for a communication guy.
62
So, what I started to do - when I'm really upset with my boys, I lower my voice.
63
And they stop dead in their tracks.
64
Violating expectations sometimes can actually help you as a communicator.
65
The final thing we need to think about is, "What are their attitudes?" The way you approach your communication is influenced by what your audience thinks about what you're talking on: Are they in favor of it? Are they against it?
66
Or they're hesitant? Agnostic?
67
Those are the things you need to be asking yourself when you communicate.
68
So, we need to appreciate our audience.
69
When my older child was in kindergarten, I volunteered.
70
I came into his classroom, the teacher had to leave to take a call or something, and I was in charge of an art project.
71
Oh, was that a mistake.
72
The kids were running around.
73
I was saying, "Stop this, Johnny." "Sally, stop doing that." Nobody listened.
74
The Yoda-like teacher returned, saw the chaos that had ensued in her brief absence and simply looked at the children and started rewarding the positive behavior.
75
"Janet," she said, "what a lovely way you've cleaned up your crayons." "Samuel, thank you so much for walking with the scissors." (Laughter) The students stopped in their tracks, changed their behavior.
76
I learned then that you need to understand your audience and what they need.
77
And to this day, I try to apply those principles.
78
I also learned that I could never teach elementary school students.
79
If guilt and shame doesn't work, I can't teach them.
80
(Laughter) So, knowing your audience really matters.
81
But beyond knowing your audience, you have to appreciate the context in which you speak.
82
Whenever you speak, you are in a particular context.
83
And to me, context comes in a bunch of different varieties.
84
The first thing about context we need to think about is the time.
85
What time of day are you communicating?
86
If you're talking early in the morning, you might have to have a little more energy to keep people moving.
87
Same thing after lunch when people are having that food coma experience.
88
I taught high school many, many years ago.
89
And I don't think my principal liked me very much because she gave me freshmen right before lunch and right after lunch.
90
And if you know anything about 14- and 15-year-old kids, they need lots of food and lots of social experience.
91
So, by the time my first class of freshmen came to me after four hours of class, they were dead tired.
92
They could barely move, let alone think.
93
Right after lunch, when my second batch joined me, they were amped-up on their food, their caffeine, their friends.
94
It was a frenzy in my classroom.
95
And I had to teach them the same thing.
96
How did I do it?
97
I changed the way we approached the class.
98
The class before lunch was highly collaborative, people were moving around, lots of activities; after lunch, a little more mellow.
99
You must address the context, the timing so your message can be effective.
100
Context also involves emotion.
101
Most of us when we communicate, we think about information: What's in my head, in my heart I need to communicate to you?
102
But we also communicate a feeling.
103
Maybe we're trying to get people excited and motivate them.
104
Maybe we're trying to scare them, create that burning platform that motivates them to change.
105
Sometimes, we're just trying to instill confidence: You should believe in what I'm saying.
106
But we need to think about the emotion as well as the information.
107
The final bit of context has to do with where you're physically speaking.
108
Location matters.
109
Just the other day, I read in the newspaper that the Girl Scout in the state of California this year who sold the most cookies during the Girl Scout's annual cookie drive set up shop in front of a medical marijuana dispensary.
110
She sold more cookies than anybody.
111
Location matters.
112
Think about the way the room is set up.
113
Think about the environment: Is it live? Is it virtual?
114
Those change the way that you communicate.
115
We need to think about location.
116
So, our approach is important.
117
Our audience is important.
118
The context in which we find ourselves is important and so too is the way we structure our messages.
119
It is much easier for humans to understand information when it is structured.
120
In fact, we remember information up to 40% better when it's structured.
121
What do I mean by this?
122
Some of you listening are too young to remember, but those of us of my age, when we wanted to call somebody on the phone, we actually had to remember a phone number.
123
My kids today, they look at a picture, push a button, and the other person starts talking on the phone.
124
We had it much harder.
125
We had to remember 10 digits.
126
Ten digits are hard to remember, so what did we do?
127
We put them in a structure: three-three-and four.
128
That's how we remembered.
129
That's what I mean by a structure.
130
The information is put in a way that it makes it easy not only for you as a speaker but also for the audience to remember.
131
Now, I have lots of favorite structures.
132
You see some of the structures up here behind me.
133
The first structure is a chronological structure: past-present-future.
134
Here's how things used to be.
135
Here's how they are today.
136
Here's where they're going in the future.
137
A chronological structure can really help you navigate your audience from one place to the next.
138
Quite frankly, structure sets expectations.
139
You can't be lost if you have a map.
140
Your structure provides a map, and the chronological structure is incredibly helpful for that.
141
The next structure happens to be the problem-solution-benefit structure.
142
This is one of the most persuasive structures out there.
143
You start by explaining what the issue is, you talk about how to solve it and then the benefits to the people.
144
Finally, my favorite structure, the one that I use the most - I call this "the MacGyver of all structures"; this can get you through any situation - is the what, so-what, now-what structure.
145
You start by telling people what the issue is.
146
You tell them why it's important in that so-what step.
147
And then you tell them what's next, what's coming.
148
It's like a Swiss Army knife.
149
You can use it in situations if you're teaching.
150
You can use it if you are trying to motivate people.
151
And you can use it even if you're introducing somebody.
152
Change the "what" to a "who," and you've got your introduction.
153
Structure helps keep your audience together and in line.
154
When I was an undergraduate, I was a tour guide.
155
It was the highest-paying job on campus.
156
And boy, did I need money.
157
I trained for 12 weeks to be a tour guide.
158
I learned lots of interesting - some would say useless - facts about my university, things they drilled into our heads besides how to walk backwards, which to this day I still can do in a straight line.
159
The most important thing they taught us - they said, "Above all else, to be a great tour guide at this institution is to never lose your audience.
160
You are a bad tour guide if your tour group gets lost." The same is true when you're speaking.
161
Structure keeps people together.
162
We need structure.
163
So, we see here that these tools, the tools that help us get our audience engaged and involved and help us convey our message are the same tools that helped my students learn to love speaking and learn to do it well.
164
It's about the approach you take, the audience, the context, and the structure.
165
Now, I'm always looking for examples of this to help people understand.
166
And the other day, I was eating breakfast, and I looked across the table at my soy milk, and I said, "You know what? This is a great example." Think about it: Silk soy milk.
167
Silk soy milk is targeted to a very specific audience: people who are interested in eating healthy or people who are lactose intolerant.
168
The name is a combination of the words "soy" and "milk" - "Silk." It speaks to the audience's desire to have something rich, something expensive, something yummy.
169
It's at a time, in a context, in an environment.
170
If you notice where you buy Silk soy milk, it's next to other milk.
171
That's not where it was originally.
172
It used to be in the health food aisle.
173
Now it's next to milk.
174
They marketed it and boxed it the way milk is.
175
The structure of the name is very compelling.
176
Let's face it, they could have called it "Moy," and nobody would've bought it, right?
177
So, if you get the message right and you communicate it effectively, you can make a big difference.
178
So, I want for you what I wish for all of my students: bold communication that's confident and compelling.
179
And I want for your message to echo long after you leave the room.
180
And these are skills that are at your disposal.
181
It just takes practice and a little bit of a positive approach.
182
Thank you.
Download App
AI scoring for every sentence you speak
TRENDING
Popular
4.9/5 on App Store & Google Play
Shadowing English
On Mobile
Learn English anytime, anywhere with the Shadowing English app. Improve your communication skills today!
Track your learning progress
AI grading and error correction
Rich video library
Context & Background
In the enlightening TEDx talk "Think Fast. Talk Smart," communication professor Matt Abrahams addresses a common fear: public speaking. Through engaging anecdotes, including humorous insights about his marriage, he emphasizes the need to shift our perspective on communication from a threat to an opportunity. His insights can be especially beneficial for English learners looking to enhance their communication skills. Understanding that effective communication is not just about expressing oneself, but about connecting with the audience is vital in any context, especially in public speaking scenarios like those encountered in the IELTS speaking practice.
Top 5 Phrases for Daily Communication
- “What do you think about this?” - An excellent way to engage your audience and invite their thoughts, fostering a two-way conversation.
- “How does this impact you?” - A phrasing that encourages others to reflect on the relevance of the topic to their own lives.
- “Let’s look at this differently.” - A phrase that promotes openness and encourages innovative thinking in discussions.
- “What does my audience need to hear?” - A reminder to prioritize your audience's understanding over your own intentions.
- “I appreciate your perspective.” - Acknowledging the input of others helps build rapport and enrich conversations.
Step-by-step Shadowing Guide
Mastering the art of communication through the shadowing technique can significantly elevate your speaking skills. Here’s a step-by-step guide to practicing with Matt Abrahams' talk:
- Choose Your Segment: Select a clip or a pivotal moment from the video that resonates with you. Focus particularly on sections where he engages with the audience.
- Listen Actively: Before attempting to repeat, listen to the clip several times. Pay attention to tone, rhythm, and pronunciation. This step is critical in developing your ear for English nuances.
- Shadow the Speaker: Using the shadowspeaks technique, begin to mimic Abrahams' speech. Speak along with him, matching his pace and intonation. This mimicking aids in fluency and confidence.
- Record Yourself: After shadowing, record your voice. Compare it to the original speaker to identify areas for improvement, focusing on clarity and expression.
- Engage with the Material: Reflect on the content. Consider how you would apply the phrases and techniques in your daily communication or IELTS speaking practice.
By integrating these techniques, you can enhance your verbal skills while learning English with YouTube in a fun and interactive way, making it easier to think fast and talk smart in any situation.
What is the Shadowing Technique?
Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.
☕ Buy us a coffee
ShadowingEnglish remains 100% free thanks to your support. Server and AI costs are high — your coffee keeps us going! 🙏