Luyện nói tiếng Anh bằng Shadowing qua video: Why I Love Writing by Hand (And Hate Computers)

I've been trying to write a book lately and I've been using my laptop to do it, but I've run into a bit of a problem.

The words just don't seem to be flowing, and I'm just struggling more than I really ever have.

So I decided that I was going to try something different, something new, or really something kind of old.

I am going to write the first draft of this book, and maybe the second draft or the third draft, by hand, using a pencil and a notebook.

Our laptops or our computers, they are our defaults.

They are the things that we choose when we're not even thinking.

And I think if we want to be intentional about how we live, including how we write, but also how we read or how we study or how we spend our recreation time,

any of that, we can't just let technology be a default.

One of my favorite living writers is Wendell Berry.

He's a poet, he's an essayist, and a novelist.

He's also a farmer who lives in Kentucky.

I highly recommend this volume, The World Ending Fire.

It's a collection of his essays.

I think every essay in this is quite good.

The essay I want to talk about is from the late 80s, and it's called Why I Am Not Going to Buy a Computer.

In it, Berry explains why he continues to write all of his essays, his novels, his poetry, using a simple pencil and paper.

And Berry is clearly my inspiration in what I'm doing right now.

Barry argues that simply put, there aren't that many advantages to a computer and using a pencil

or a pen and paper has been good enough for the greatest novelist, the greatest essayist, the greatest poets who have ever lived.

The essay is very short and I highly recommend that you read it, but if you wanted the summary of it, well you could look to the end of it where Barry gives nine rules for choosing whether

or not you're going to adopt a new piece of technology.

He writes that the new tool should be cheaper than the one it replaces.

It should be at least as small in scale as the one it replaces.

It should do work that is clearly and demonstrably better than the one it replaces.

It should use less energy than the one it replaces.

If possible, it should use some form of solar energy as of that of the body.

It should be repairable by a person of ordinary intelligence, provided that he or she has the necessary tools.

It should be purchasable and repairable as near to home as possible.

It should come from a small privately owned shop or store that will take it back for maintenance and repair.

It should not replace or disrupt anything good that already exists.

And this includes family and community relations.

If we were following Wendell Berry's rules, we would all throw away our computers right away.

And it would be unrealistic to say that that's what we ought to do.

So even if it's maybe a little too late for us to decide whether or not we're going to buy computers,

we could be thinking about how we choose to incorporate those pieces of technology into our lives.

So let's look at that last rule, that a new piece of technology should not disrupt something that already exists that is good.

It's not just that a pencil and paper are perfectly fine for writing.

What I realized, I think, is that actually trying to write on your computer is disruptive, and it's disruptive of the actual act of writing.

And there's a couple of ways we can explain that.

One is I actually think

that I am capable of typing faster than I'm capable of writing

and it seems that the ability at

which I can write on a page is pretty much the exact pace

that I need if I want to write half decent prose.

If I'm typing it just comes out way too fast.

Also when you're on a laptop you have this kind of tendency to want to edit as you go

because you can just go back and delete something.

You can copy and paste.

You can look at spell check or check your grammar

and yet I found that when I want to write well like when I was writing my dissertation, I really had to put a gap between what I was doing in the writing phase,

where I just needed to get my ideas out on the page, and what I was doing in the editing phase.

And I needed to actually put time in between there.

And I admit that some of my preference for writing by hand might be driven by a kind of romanticism.

I like the image of sitting at the coffee shop, sipping on your coffee, writing slowly, thinking about the world.

But I do think that there are these practical benefits.

I think it can actually help you with your writing since I switched over to writing by hand I found

that the words are just kind of pouring out of me in a way

that they weren't

when I was trying to type the book it's just much easier for me to produce

and to get those ideas out

when I was typing my book on my laptop I was just floundering

but there's another connection and for that I think we should talk a little bit about the poet Rilke.

Rilke wrote these famous letters called letters to a young poet it's a collection of letters.

He wrote 10 letters to a younger poet, often giving him advice about art and also about spirituality.

And one of the key takeaways in Rilke's letters is that a poet or a writer, or just I would say a thoughtful intellectual person, needs a kind of solitude.

Rilke writes it like this, what is necessary after all is only this solitude, vast inner solitude, to walk inside yourself and meet no one for hours.

That is what you must be able to attain.

Now, that is a discipline.

It's something we actually have to cultivate.

We have to learn to be okay with solitude and we have to learn to be comfortable there.

But we also need to set up our exterior conditions so that we're able to enter into that place of solitude.

You have to be incredibly disciplined to not be distracted by all the things that your laptop offers.

You could always check your email.

You could always check your analytics if you're like me.

You could always check YouTube.

And there are ways around that, and you can block sites and things like that.

I figured that actually the easiest thing to do was to just cut it off at its source, and it was to stop using the laptop for my writing anyways.

Now, none of this actually should stop with writing.

The more I think about it, the more I realize that I should just put the laptop away, put the phone away too, as much as I can.

I've actually now designated a place in my apartment where I will keep my laptop

and phone during the day so that if I don't need it, I'm not around it.

And that way I can focus on the things that really matter to me.

Now I can kind of hear this criticism.

I can hear people saying, well, you're going to have to use a computer anyways if you're writing a book.

eventually you're going to have to type it up

and you're going to have to edit it

and you're going to have to send it to an agent or a publishing house or something.

You can't just send them a notebook.

And you're absolutely right.

My position is not that we should just get rid of computers completely.

I think we already are in a little too deep.

We have computers and we should use them as best we can.

When I've written my first draft, my second draft, when I feel comfortable with the finished product, I'll type up the whole thing.

That will actually probably be a useful process for me because it'll give me a final chance to edit it.

I'll be able to see it in a different context, see it on the screen, typed out in something that isn't just my own handwriting.

Maybe you could make an argument that ultimately it is more efficient to just learn, to be disciplined, and to type.

But I would suggest that instead we should look at solutions to problems that just involve opting out of the problem itself.

So if your laptop is distracting you and it's making it difficult to write, you can just put it away and you can find another way to write.

Thank you.

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Từ vựng và ghi chú luyện nói cho bài học này

Video này có 99 câu và 1503 từ để luyện shadowing. Phần lời nói dài 7:08. Người nói nói nhanh, khoảng 211 từ mỗi phút, nên sẽ có nhiều chỗ nối âm và nuốt âm. 83% số từ nằm trong 3.000 từ tiếng Anh thông dụng nhất; phần còn lại nên xem trước khi luyện.

Từ vựng quan trọng trong video

15 từ đáng học trong video, kèm phiên âm và nghĩa:

Từ	Phiên âm	Nghĩa
laptop danh từ	/ˈlæp.tɑp/	máy tính xách tay, láp-tóp
poet danh từ	/ˈpoʊ.ət/	thi sĩ, nhà thơ
essay danh từ	/ˈɛs.eɪ/	tiểu luận
edit động từ	/ˈɛdɪt/	biên tập, chỉnh sửa
pencil danh từ	/ˈpɛnsəl/	bút chì, viết chì
discipline danh từ	/ˈdɪsəplɪn/	kỉ luật
default danh từ	/dɪˈfɔlt/	mặc định
notebook danh từ	/ˈnoʊtˌbʊk/	tập, vở
novelist danh từ	/ˈnɑvəlɪst/	tiểu thuyết gia
disrupt động từ	/dɪsˈɹʌpt/	làm phiền, ngán đường
argue động từ	/ˈɑɹ.ɡju/	tranh luận
repair động từ	/ˈɹiːpɛɚ/	chửa, sửa chữa
poetry danh từ	/ˈpoʊ.ə.tɹi/	thơ ca, thi ca
incredibly trạng từ	/ɪŋˈkɹɛdɪbli/	khó tin nổi
spell danh từ	/spɛl/	thần chú

Cụm động từ bạn sẽ nghe

Từ	Nghĩa
go back động từ	trở lại
throw away động từ	vất, vứt

Phát âm cần chú ý

Người nói dùng 32 dạng rút gọn, ví dụ you're, I'm, I've. Hãy nói theo dạng ngắn đúng như bạn nghe.

Âm “sh” và “zh”: efficient /ɪˈfɪʃənt/, inspiration /ˌɪn.spɪˈɹeɪ.ʃən/, relation /ɹɪˈleɪʃ(ə)n/, publish /ˈpʌblɪʃ/, recreation /ɹiːkɹiˈeɪʃən/
Từ dài — đặt trọng âm cho đúng: ordinary /ˈɔɹdɪnɛɹi/, inspiration /ˌɪn.spɪˈɹeɪ.ʃən/, incredibly /ɪŋˈkɹɛdɪbli/, intellectual /ˌɪntəˈlɛkt͡ʃʊəl/, recreation /ɹiːkɹiˈeɪʃən/

Cách luyện với video này

Nghe hết video một lần, chưa cần nói, và ghi lại những từ bạn chưa biết.
Bắt đầu ở tốc độ 0,75×, nói đuổi từng câu, rồi quay lại tốc độ bình thường khi đã quen.
Ghi âm giọng mình rồi so với bản gốc, chú ý các từ như laptop, poet, essay.

Ngữ pháp trong video

Những cấu trúc người nói dùng nhiều nhất, kèm đúng cụm từ trong video:

Cấu trúc	Trong video
Thì hiện tại hoàn thành have/has + quá khứ phân từ — việc đã xảy ra nhưng còn liên quan đến hiện tại	I've run · has been · I've actually now designated
Câu bị động be + quá khứ phân từ — nhấn vào việc xảy ra, không phải người làm	might be driven · be distracted · be disciplined

Phương Pháp Shadowing Là Gì?

Shadowing là kỹ thuật học ngôn ngữ có cơ sở khoa học, ban đầu được phát triển cho chương trình đào tạo phiên dịch viên chuyên nghiệp và được phổ biến rộng rãi bởi nhà đa ngôn ngữ học Dr. Alexander Arguelles. Nguyên lý cốt lõi đơn giản nhưng cực kỳ hiệu quả: bạn nghe tiếng Anh của người bản xứ và lặp lại to ngay lập tức — như một "cái bóng" (shadow) đuổi theo người nói với độ trễ chỉ 1–2 giây. Khác với luyện ngữ pháp hay học từ vựng bị động, Shadowing buộc não bộ và cơ miệng phải đồng thời xử lý và tái tạo ngôn ngữ thực tế. Các nghiên cứu khoa học xác nhận phương pháp này cải thiện đáng kể phát âm, ngữ điệu, nhịp điệu, nối âm, kỹ năng nghe và độ lưu loát khi nói — đặc biệt hiệu quả cho người luyện IELTS Speaking và muốn giao tiếp tiếng Anh tự nhiên như người bản ngữ.

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Cụm động từ bạn sẽ nghe

Phát âm cần chú ý

Cách luyện với video này

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Phương Pháp Shadowing Là Gì?