Name: 同传揭秘 为什么影子跟读 无法提升你的职场英语| Why You Should Stop Shadowing
Uploaded: 2025-01-08T23:56:12.000Z
Duration: 6 min 40 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Future simple

In this video, I'll tell you why shadowing doesn't work.

Present continuous

Many influencers are telling you that shadowing, or simultaneously repeating English content as you hear it, is the best way to improve listening and speaking.

They claim that's how interpreters practice.

As a professional interpreter, I'm here to tell you they are wrong.

I spent 13 years as a conference interpreter working with leaders like Warren Buffett and Ray Dalio, and for organizations like the UN Goldman Sachs.

Now, I coach busy professionals like you to improve their English communication skills and build confidence at work.

Before I dive in, let me clarify something important.

There are actually two different practices that people both call shadowing.

The first type of shadowing is the interpreter-style shadowing.

This is where you try to repeat everything simultaneously as you hear it, with minimum delay.

By the way, there's nothing wrong with the audio here.

What you are hearing right now is me shadowing myself.

They claim this is how interpreters practice and get good at listening and speaking.

This is what we are discussing today, and I will tell you why they are wrong.

The second type of shadowing is the listen and repeat practice.

When you listen to a sentence from an audio clip, and then you pause that audio clip, and then you repeat what you just heard, this is actually a very, very useful practice, and it's not what we are talking about today.

Now we're clear on what type of shadowing we are talking about.

Let me explain why shadowing is not the best way to improve your listening or speaking.

First of all, I need you to do something for me.

Think back to when you first learned to drive.

You probably feel very stressed out by just keeping the car straight.

Your hands are tense on the steering wheel, you're nervous about drifting too close to other cars, you're constantly making small adjustments just to stay centered.

Now imagine when you are struggling with that.

Your driving instructor, me, starts yelling at you.

Check your mirror, look at the traffic light, look at that car, make a U-turn right now.

You won't be able to do any of those tasks well, and now you cannot even stay in your lane anymore.

That's exactly what happens when you try shadowing English.

Most of you are still struggling a little bit with just listening comprehension.

When native speakers talk fast, your brain is already working overtime to try to understand and catch every word, even with 100% focus.

Fully understanding fast and complex English is very, very stressful.

Now with shadowing, you are forcing your overwhelmed brain to do Mission Impossible.

Now you not only have to understand and catch everything you hear, you also are trying to speak at the same time and monitor if you sound right, because you are also practicing speaking at the same time, right?

Coordinate your mouth with your ears and somehow keep up with the speed.

The end result is that you cannot do anything well.

I know some of you are thinking, but Carrie, interpreters use shadowing.

If that's what professional interpreter use for training, it must work.

I studied at one of the best interpreting programs in the world.

And I also talked to many of the top interpreters I worked with in the market.

Most of them, like me, do not shadow at all, because it doesn't work.

Or to be more precisely, it doesn't improve your listening or speaking.

Because to learn a skill or to make real progress, you need to focus.

The world's leading expert on performance, Anders Ericsson.

You probably have heard about him because he is the writer for Peak, very, very famous book.

He studied thousands of top performers to understand why they are different.

Why do these people make fast progress when other people make almost no progress?

In his study, he discovered something fascinating.

People who progress rapidly all share one key trait.

They practice with laser sharp focus on one skill at a time.

Meanwhile, people who don't make any progress, they try to improve multiple things simultaneously, spreading their attention to a thing.

Which is more powerful, a focused laser beam or a scattered flashlight?

Now I wanna show you exactly how this will play out in real life.

Let me tell you a story about one of my students.

Like many of you watching this video right now, she really believed in shadowing.

She did it for one hour every single day for six months straight.

But in her global team meetings, she still couldn't understand or speak up.

She was very frustrated and asked me why is she putting so much effort and is getting so little result?

When I explained why simultaneous shadowing doesn't work, everything clicked for her.

She decided to try separating her practice, focused listening sessions, and then dedicated speaking practice.

First, she told me she felt so much better during practice.

Instead of juggling multiple things at the same time, now she could actually concentrate on improving one skill at a time.

Because she could focus properly on listening practice, her meeting comprehension went up.

She could finally follow complex discussions without getting lost.

And because she practiced speaking separately with proper materials, her fluency improved dramatically when she spoke up.

The only thing that should matter to a professional like you is real progress, not how trendy your practice method is, not how many social media likes it gets, and definitely not the moment of pride when you show off your shadowing skills to your friends.

None of this will save you when it's time for you to actually perform at work.

Your boss doesn't care if you spend hours doing the most popular practice technique.

Your boss cares if you can lead the global meeting without missing a beat.

Your clients don't give a damn about your fancy shadowing skills.

They need you to solve their urgent problems as fast as possible.

And your colleagues, they don't give a shit about how many hours you've spent practicing shadowing.

They care if you can explain that complex technical issue in a way that saves them time.

So stop lying to yourself about your progress.

At the end of the day, the only thing that matters is can you actually perform at work.

If you are getting real results with shadowing, if your meeting engagement is getting better, if your presentations are getting better, if you are getting more clients, keep doing it.

But if you're like 99% of the people that I talk to who are frustrated with their progress, please stop shadowing.

If you want to learn the practices that actually work, check out this video.

In this video, I talked about the three highest impact practices that actually work.

These practices are not fancy or sexy as shadowing, but they will give you real results.

Subtitles ListPlay Video

同传揭秘为什么影子跟读无法提升你的职场英语| Why You Should Stop Shadowing

struggle

dedicated

trait

multiple

同传揭秘 为什么影子跟读 无法提升你的职场英语| Why You Should Stop Shadowing

struggle

dedicated

trait

multiple

同传揭秘为什么影子跟读无法提升你的职场英语| Why You Should Stop Shadowing