Shadowing Practice: Three Essential Skills For Today’s World - Learn English Speaking with Video

A lot of people are turned off by learning.

And if you don't find learning one of the most exciting things in the world, then the whole game, everything else will fall apart.

But it has to be something that excites you.

I've said to many people that live in a world where knowledge and skills are the most important thing.

That's the goal that you are after more than money you want to develop knowledge

and skills and so this person asks what would be the three

or so skills that are the most essential moving forward in the 21st century

and you know it's not like specific skills

that I'm going to talk about like coding or you know mastering AI

or going to some business strategy

because I think that's not really what the spirit of the

question is in general there are certain kind of personal skills

that you want to develop okay so number one

and this is something that i have in my book mastery you must see being social

and getting along with people and cooperating

and knowing how to work with people as a skill it's not something you were born with it's not something

that some people are good bad or bad at like anything it is a skill that you develop,

being social and knowing how to work with people and knowing how to be sensitive to their energy.

And in this skill, what it is, is you're able to pay attention to people

and see who they are as an individual and see what their particular needs are, what they're missing in life.

And you're able to supply that.

You're able to enter their spirit.

You don't offend them unnecessarily.

You know how to work with them right you know how to properly criticize them

if that's necessary because if you don't understand

that being social is a skill

if you don't develop it you could be the greatest at

whatever you could do you could be even the greatest athlete in the world

but you're going to be offending your teammates you're going to be offending the people that you work with

and all of your knowledge

and your other skills are going to be completely neutralized by how bad you are in dealing with people

and so when you look at social as a skill what

that means is you have to be spending time with people

you got to get out of your phone you got to

get out of your office you got to get out of

all of your virtuality you have to be around people you have to interact more that's the only way

that you will become social and if you find yourself you know alone a lot

and and have found that difficult you have to force yourself out there you have to force yourself to go to clubs, to go to bars, to hang out with people.

So developing social skills is incredibly important, but it's not the only thing, right?

So another skill that's extremely important, and probably the most important of all, is to develop a love of learning.

I know personally, when there's something that I don't know, there's something that I'm not good at,

that i then take an effort to like learn it to get better at it

and i'm not going to say specifics it could be some sports

or it could be playing a musical instrument or a game

that process of learning to me is so exciting it's like i know it

because when i was a child getting better at something is a really really exciting process

so i will give you an example years ago

when I was writing the war book I got myself a pool table

because I wanted something to take my mind off the war book

which is really heavy and it's like kind of driving me crazy

and I wanted something where I could just do kind of feel the strategy in the game itself

and just kind of get out of my head

and at first I was really bad at it

but slowly I got better and better I was practicing

and I was playing against myself you know which is pretty easy

and I would read books about it and I would practice certain shots.

And when I could make like a double bank shot and things like that or put spin on the ball, I was so excited, man.

This was really great, the feeling that you're improving at something.

A lot of people are turned off by learning.

And if you don't find learning one of the most exciting things in the world, then I think you're never going to develop.

The whole game, everything else will fall apart but it has to be something that excites you.

If you are somebody who's interested in literature and you try and learn algebra, that could be interesting.

You may enjoy the challenge, but you won't learn as much because you're not really that interested in it, right?

But if you learn like a foreign language, like French, where you can read the literature,

you're so motivated that you will learn and you will that natural love that you have will come out.

The other skill that you must develop, so just to reiterate, is being social, having a love of learning.

The third one is kind of related to the second one, but it is patience.

A lot of people nowadays are really, really impatient.

And the reason I think is, I mean, I'm very, I have a lot of impatience myself, so I can't preach about that.

But the reason why I think it's gotten worse is we're so used to the power of our phones,

of our computers that we think everything should be happening quickly and instantly.

If we have to wait five seconds to get a piece of information on the internet, we're going, oh my God, it's taking so long.

It takes so long to download.

Whereas 20, 30 years ago, you would have had to go to the library.

You would have to spend an hour to do it.

You learned how to develop patience to find things.

But people are so impatient because everything is so quick

and easy and powerful right now

so you want to be able to slow things down you want to have the ability to say

if it's going to take me an hour to learn this

if i have to spend time practicing something that's tedious i'm

okay with it i like the slowness i actually embrace the pain that's involved

so learning anything developing any skill involves pain when i first got

that pool table i was so bad at it was

so frustrating and it really made me kind of upset

because i like being really good at things right

but i played every day and i got better and better

and better and better

and then i remember one day i mentioned this before i was playing with 50 cent in his office

and i beat him three times in a row

and he's a pretty good pool player i felt wow man i've arrived

but then i had a humbling experience a few days later

when i went to this pool hall in Manhattan and I got creamed by this other guy.

So, you know, put, kind of put it in perspective, but I was getting better at it.

I had to be patient because at first I really sucked at it.

So developing patience is absolutely critical thing and related to that.

So all of these things are kind of related to that is the ability to be bored, right?

So sometimes boredom is a good thing.

Sometimes being frustrated in what you're doing is okay

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because it forces you to be patient and to slow things down as well.

101

One other thing I would say is, and I had an interview about this, is the ability, the skill,

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it is a skill of managing your anxiety.

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So when you're starting something out, when you're trying to build a business, when you're trying to write a book, when you're trying to create a movie,

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you're going to feel a lot of anxiety because it's not there.

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It's going to take a lot of work.

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You're looking, for me, years of work to produce it.

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And it makes you kind of anxious and it makes you, as I said before, impatient.

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But being able to deal with your anxiety

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and being able to handle it and manage it

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and not get in a hurry to get to the goals that you want is very important.

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Those elements of dealing with boredom, dealing with anxiety, and impatience are all interrelated.

112

They're the ability to slow things down, to deal with the micro aspects of any kind of learning process.

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Those are skills that I think are absolutely essential for going forward in the 21st century

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because what you want the end game of all this is

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because you love learning because you've been patient and you've developed skills

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and you're good with people you will reach a point where you have mastered a couple of things right

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so it's not like you want to go through life

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and just master one thing you want to master two at

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least two kind of real skills in the world for me it was writing

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and research and there were a few others

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but being able to combine writing

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and research as I had was what led to the 48 laws of power

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so you reach a point where you develop two

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or three really basic skills and then when you're 30

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or in that vicinity be able to combine them

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and to create something a new kind of business a new kind of enterprise and because we live in an age

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where there's so much information available and so many skills you can learn even online.

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Developing that, I absolutely guarantee that something brilliant will happen for you.

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But if you don't have the patience and the love of learning, then none of this will ever matter.

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So those are the skills I think that are essential.

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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson

This video has 130 sentences and 1725 words to shadow. The speech runs for 9:35. The speaker talks fast, about 180 words per minute, so expect linked and reduced sounds. 89% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English, so the vocabulary is easy to follow.

Key vocabulary in this video

15 words from the video worth learning, with pronunciation and meaning:

Word	Pronunciation	Meaning
skill noun	/skɪl/	A capacity to do something well; a technique, an ability, usually acquired or learned, as opposed to abilities that are regarded as innate.
anxiety noun	/æŋˈzaɪ.əti/	An unpleasant state of mental uneasiness, nervousness, apprehension and obsession or concern about some uncertain event.
patience noun	/ˈpeɪ̯.ʃəns/	The quality of being patient.
offend verb	/əˈfɛnd/	To hurt the feelings of; to displease; to make angry; to insult.
impatient adjective	/ɪmˈpeɪʃənt/	Restless, short of temper, and intolerant of delays.
combine verb	/kəmˈbaɪn/	To bring (two or more things or activities) together; to unite.
element noun	/ˈɛləmənt/	One of the simplest or essential parts or principles of which anything consists, or upon which the constitution or fundamental powers of anything are based.
sensitive adjective	/ˈsɛn.sɪt.ɪv/	Having the faculty of sensation; pertaining to the senses.
guarantee noun	/ˌɡæɹ.ənˈtiː/	Anything that assures a certain outcome.
suck verb	/sʌk/	To use the mouth and lips to pull in (a liquid, especially milk from the breast).
aspect noun	/ˈæspɛkt/	Any specific feature, part, or element of something.
whereas	/(h)wɛɹˈæz/	In contrast; whilst on the contrary; although.
arrive verb	/əˈɹaɪv/	To reach; to get to a certain place.
enterprise noun	/ˈɛntəˌpɹaɪz/	A company, business, organization, or other purposeful endeavor.
incredibly adverb	/ɪŋˈkɹɛdɪbli/	In an incredible manner; not to be believed.

Phrasal verbs you will hear

Word	Pronunciation	Meaning
get out of verb		To leave, exit or escape from; to become free of.
fall apart verb		To disintegrate, to break into pieces.
turn off verb		To power down, to switch off, to put out of operation, to deactivate (an appliance, light, mechanism, functionality etc.).
come out verb	/ˌkʌm ˈaʊt/	To be discovered; to be revealed.
go through verb		To travel from one end of something to the other.

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	I've said · have found · i've arrived
Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it	are turned · were born · being frustrated

Pronunciation to watch

The speaker uses 40 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: patience /ˈpeɪ̯.ʃəns/, impatient /ɪmˈpeɪʃənt/, anxious /ˈæŋkʃəs/, impatience /ɪmˈpeɪʃəns/
Long words — get the stress right: anxiety /æŋˈzaɪ.əti/, incredibly /ɪŋˈkɹɛdɪbli/, vicinity /vəˈsɪnəti/, cooperate /kəʊˈɒp.ə.ɹeɪt/, interrelated /ˌɪntəɹɪˈleɪtɪd/

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 skill, anxiety, patience.

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 →

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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson

Key vocabulary in this video

Phrasal verbs you will hear

Grammar in this video

Pronunciation to watch

How to practise with this video

What is the Shadowing Technique?