ENGLISH PODCAST: SECRET MEMORY TRICKS, SHADOWING, AND THE KEY TO FLUENCY

- In this English lesson,

you're gonna learn all about shadowing and memorization.

And this is gonna be a fun episode,

because I'm gonna talk about how

I memorized a shuffled deck of cards,

how I used to do this all the time as a little party trick.

We're gonna talk about shadowing,

and the history of shadowing,

because I received a comment about this recently,

and it was a really interesting comment

that I just wanted to explore further.

And then we're going to talk about if shadowing works,

and why we can't just rely on memorization completely,

especially rote memorization

when it comes to languages and learning English.

But before we get into all of that,

my name is Jack from tofluency.com.

Welcome to you.

If you're new here, subscribe to the podcast,

because you'll get an episode every Thursday.

And also, share this episode with a friend.

And one last thing, go to the description

for some of the links and resources for this lesson,

along with a link to get my book,

The 5-Step Plan for English Fluency.

Let's start with a comment on a video I made

a few years ago now, where I talked about shadowing,

and somebody got in contact with me

just to leave this comment.

It's really interesting.

It says the shadowing technique,

no way belongs to Professor Alexander,

I think it's called Arguelles.

I'm sorry, with all my respect to him.

Let me explain.

This method has been used by the so-called Hafiz,

who have memorized the Quran for at least 1,500 years.

They may have borrowed this technique

from other previous cultures as well.

When I was about 10 years old,

I also used the same exact method for a short time

to memorize some parts of the Quran verses.

And in 1991, when I was 18,

I decided to use this method in my language learning.

He goes on to say,

in the process of learning all 14 languages I have learned,

I have used this method.

We need to know the truth, and respect real knowledge,

because it is our lifelong heritage, best regards.

And this comment reminded me

of a book I read a long time ago,

called Moonwalking with Einstein.

And in the book,

the author goes into the history of memorization,

and there are few parts of the book that I remember.

One of them is talking about memory palaces,

which we'll get into later.

And the other one was about how history

has been passed down orally through generations.

And this is another topic I'm interested in,

ancient history, and even the lost civilizations.

For example, Atlantis,

and how the story of the deluge, the flood,

has been passed down in different ancient cultures,

orally through poems and storytelling

before writing was invented.

So this is interesting to me,

that that's one thing that stood out,

and it links to the comment

that was left on my YouTube channel,

because we're talking about

how to memorize something before writing,

and in the past,

it said that people just used to memorize things

by passing it down orally.

And stories really help with that too,

because we tend to remember stories

better than just facts on their own.

Now before we go into shadowing,

I do want to talk about my party trick,

which is being able to memorize a pack of cards.

When somebody just shuffles a pack of cards,

I can remember them in the order exactly.

So if you don't know what a pack of cards is,

it's the 52 cards.

I know there are different variations throughout the world,

but I'm talking about the ones

that are mainly used in the UK and parts of Europe,

the U.S., et cetera,

where you have Jack of Hearts, the Queen of Spades,

aces, et cetera.

And I'm gonna leave a link to this website

where it talks about just how big this number is

when it comes to the amount of possibilities you can have

with 52 cards.

And this is called 52 factorial,

and this is not a math lesson,

but I just want to read this one paragraph,

or two paragraphs that talk about

just how big this number is in terms of just randomly

being able to, the chances of randomly

being able to remember a pack of cards.

And it says that imagine that you set a timer,

and you count the number of seconds

from the 52 to 0, 52 factorial to zero,

using this big, big number.

And to visualize this, and to wrap your head around it,

which means to really understand it,

it says start by picking your favorite spot on the equator.

You're going to walk around the world along the equator,

but take a very leisurely pace

of one step every billion years.

Make sure to, oh, we don't need to read that bit.

After you complete your round the world trip,

so taking a step every billing years around the equator,

remove one drop of water from the Pacific Ocean.

Now do the same thing again.

Walk around the world at 1 billion years per step,

removing one drop of water from the Pacific Ocean

each time you circle the globe.

Continue until the ocean is empty.

When it is, take one sheet of paper,

and place it on the ground.

Now fill the ocean back up,

and start the entire process all over again,

adding a sheet of paper to the stack

each time you've emptied the ocean.

So hopefully you are following so far.

This is showing the seconds it takes to reach this number.

So you take a step every billion years around the equator,

take a drop out the ocean.

When you do that, take a sheet of paper,

and then fill the ocean up,

and then start the process again

until you've emptied the ocean.

And you do this until the stack of paper

reaches from the Earth to the sun, which is a very long way.

Now, it says look at your timer.

You'll see that most of the digits haven't changed.

So do it all over again a thousand times more.

Okay, and once you do it a thousand times more,

you're just about a third of the way done.

Now, in order to memorize this stack of cards

in the correct order, you can't just randomly guess.

You can't just try to remember,

but instead, you create something called a memory palace.

A memory palace.

And then you assign the cards to different types of things,

so that you can put the actions within your memory palace.

Now that might not make much sense, okay?

But this is how people

have memorized certain things over time,

how people have used these memorization techniques

in order to really remember things.

Now I want to relate this to learning English,

but before I do,

I do recommend the book, Moonwalking with Einstein,

and I'll leave a link to the book in the description,

and I'll also leave a link to The Memory Palace.

So you can just get more information on this

if you find it interesting,

but this all relates back to learning English,

because we think about memory when it comes to language.

How many words can we remember?

What sentences can we remember?

What verbs, how to conjugate verbs,

the verb tables, et cetera.

And in order to really memorize something,

we might need to use these techniques,

but also in the book, it talks about the forgetting curve,

and how if we see something,

and then we see it again the next day,

and then four days, eight days, 16, et cetera,

then we will commit this to our long-term memory.

And when it comes to language as well,

because it has meaning,

because there's always some type of context.

We can't just memorize verb tables,

because we need to use grammar as well.

We need to be able to form the right sentence structure.

We need to be able to say the sounds correctly,

and use the right intonation.

So memorizing single vocabulary, and memorizing verb tables,

and memorizing grammar rules can help in certain ways,

but it doesn't lead to that flow of a language.

And the flow of the language comes when,

and somebody commented on this,

saying it's just a perfect way to describe it,

is when it just feels right.

When you use a sentence at the right time

using the correct grammar,

and you don't think about rules,

you don't think about the words you have memorized

over the years.

Instead, it just flows, it just feels right.

For example, if you ask somebody, how are you?

How are you, with that intonation.

You're not thinking about the sentence structure,

and the grammar rules,

and conjugating the verb to be.

Instead, it just comes out.

It's a phrase, you know it, it feels right in that moment.

And I'm sure you can think of other phrases that you use,

where it just feels right for you too,

where you just say something, and it's just there.

It's correct, it feels good to say it.

And you know it's right, because you get that feeling,

and I've made many lessons on this,

and I've talked about this a lot in the past,

and I'll leave a link to the main lesson on YouTube,

where I go through this in depth,

and how you can really use the memorization techniques,

where you get the right amount of repetition

in order to remember something, and how to use sentences.

But I do want to talk about shadowing now,

because part of that came up with shadowing,

and how the person on YouTube

talked about how you can use the shadowing technique

to remember things as well.

And it got me thinking a little bit more about shadowing,

and I want to talk about

what I think's really important

when it comes to this technique.

But if you don't know what it is,

it's when you listen to audio, English phrases, for example,

or a speech, and you repeat the speech,

or you copy what the speaker is saying,

but instead of pausing it,

you just continue listening and repeating.

And it's a skill in a way,

because you have to be able to listen to what's coming next

while also repeating to what you have heard.

So if you've ever done it before,

you'll know there is a skill involved here,

and it's not a super easy task to do.

It's one of the more difficult speaking techniques

that you can use.

And the idea behind it

is that you are repeating after an English speaker,

you are practicing your speaking.

You are practicing your listening,

and you are committing these patterns to long-term memory.

So by repeating lots of sentences,

and sentences, and sentences,

you are feeling and internalizing the grammar

that you come across, which means that you encounter.

So when you encounter sentences

using specific grammar structures,

then you are internalizing them,

especially if you get enough repetition.

So this is the shadowing technique,

and this has been used in language learning

from my research since the 50s, probably a lot longer.

But in terms of the modern age,

people have been talking about it since the 50s.

It has been really pushed by some polyglots as well,

people who learn various languages,

and know various languages,

and including the person who commented

on the original video.

And I think it can be a useful tool

when it comes to language learning.

Now in the past, I've talked about this technique,

but more in brief, it's episode 19,

if you're on Spotify, or Apple iTunes,

again, I'll link to this in the description,

so you can have easy access to it,

especially if you're on YouTube.

Hi to you if you're on YouTube.

I want to talk about it more for the rest of this episode.

So again, what you do is you listen to audio,

and then you repeat the audio,

but you don't pause the audio.

Instead, you just keep listening, repeating.

So while you're saying something,

you have to be listening

to the next thing that's coming along.

And just thinking about it,

it could also help your attention levels

when it comes to comprehension,

when you're speaking and thinking at the same time,

this could maybe help that too.

But the key is to find audio that is relevant to you,

so you have strong context,

because part of language learning

is knowing how to use words and phrases

in the right type of context.

So for example, if it's a Ted Talk,

you've got the context of a Ted Talk.

If it's a podcast conversation,

you've got the context of that as well.

So know, the important thing to know is

choose audio that makes sense to you.

It's not too difficult to understand,

especially when it comes to shadowing,

and it's also slow enough, so that you can repeat it,

because if it's too fast,

and your pronunciation skills aren't that high,

or you need to work on them a bit more,

then it can be difficult to do.

And this is why I think using this

in a combination with the, what I call the LRRC method,

where you pause the audio,

and you listen to yourself, and you make corrections,

and you learn the sounds of English.

I think these two techniques together are really good.

The key also is to make sure that you're not just mumbling,

that you're saying the words and the sounds of English

in the correct way, in the best way that you can.

And a good way to do that

is to record yourself while you're doing this,

so you can listen to yourself repeat what is said.

And that way, you can just know if the audio is too hard,

if it's a good exercise or not.

We don't want to be mumbling too much when we're doing this,

we want to try and do it as clearly as possible.

And again, with shadowing, you're not pausing,

so it is more difficult to do.

And then I also think it's important

to repeat the same audio,

because that way, you're going to get the repetition of it.

You're gonna get the practice,

you're going to improve the second time around too.

So the repetition of the phrases

is really gonna help you with that.

In fact, you can think about doing something similar,

where what you do is you take a speech, for example,

or some type of dialogue,

and you use the technique where you listen,

repeat, record, compare, where you get to the stage,

where you can say the words and phrases correctly.

Then you use the same audio,

and then you do the shadowing technique

where you're just following along, and saying it out loud.

And then if you do this enough,

what you can do is commit it to memory.

So you can just say the speech

without listening to the audio.

And I think that last part,

it just ties it all together,

which means it brings us

to what we were talking about before

in terms of memorization, and being able to remember things.

And the key to this as well

is knowing that when you memorize sentences,

it's not just about the sentences that you're memorizing,

but it's being able to use chunks of that sentence,

or parts of that sentence, and in a way, create your own.

So if, for example, you hear the phrase.

I always use this example,

but I'm excited about going to the party.

It's a simple phrase in a way,

but people make mistakes in terms of the verb pattern,

and the prepositions here.

So I'm excited about going to the party.

If you learn this, then you'll be able to modify it,

and say, he was excited about going to the party,

or he was excited about going to the party,

or they will be excited about seeing you later.

And the more sentences you do,

the more patterns that you see,

the more you'll be able to just say things instantly,

fluently, and accurately.

And this shadowing technique can really help you with that,

because what you're doing is your repeating sentences.

You're not really thinking about the grammar.

Instead, you're just internalizing it.

You're absorbing all this grammar,

and the more that you absorb,

and the more that you internalize,

the more you will be able to use it freely,

and in a way that makes sense.

And I just want to end on the Google effect,

which while I was researching for this episode,

I thought this was just a useful thing to add in,

something that's quite interesting.

And this is reading from Wikipedia.

The Google effect, also called digital amnesia,

is the tendency to forget information

that can be found readily online

by using internet search engines.

Okay, so it says,

according to the first study about the Google effect,

people are less likely to remember certain details

they believe will be accessible online.

So, for example, if someone says,

what's the weather like tomorrow?

Or what's the weather going to be like tomorrow?

Then you can say, oh, it's gonna be 65 and sunny,

but because you have this readily accessible,

you're less likely to remember it.

And I think that's just an interesting point to end on,

where when it comes to memory and remembering things,

technology is changing the way that we remember things.

So it's an interesting note to finish on.

And I just want to say again,

thank you so much for listening to this podcast.

I hope you have found it useful.

Give the shadowing technique a try.

Use it in that method that I think is,

is a great technique to use,

where you take a speech, or a conversation, or a dialogue,

or any audio in English that might be want two minutes long,

or five minutes long.

First, you repeat the sentences,

so you can say them just like the speaker,

and you record yourself doing this,

and modify the way you say it.

Then use the shadowing technique

to get that practice and the fluency from it,

and then try to memorize the whole speech.

And I'm sure when you get to that stage,

the language that is used in that speech

will become more familiar to you,

and you'll be able to use it in a more flexible way.

Okay, so again, if you're new here,

subscribe to the podcast,

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Okay, thank you so much for being here,

and I'll speak to you soon.

Bye for now.