Sada العربية Start practising

Updated

Written and checked by The Sada Team · How we check

Shadowing Dan Gilbert

The Psychology of Your Future Self — Gilbert examines how people predict changes in their future preferences and personalities. Comparisons between past, present and future make the talk useful for practising time references. Original video on YouTube: Dan Gilbert — The Psychology of Your Future Self.

Dan Gilbert — The Psychology of Your Future SelfStart from the beginning
  • Level: B2
  • Accent: American
  • Length: 7 min · 91 lines to practise
  • Speed: about 176 words a minute (faster than most talks)
  • Words: about 1,150; the talk asks 8 questions
  • Timing: Sada measures how far behind the speaker you are on every line

What to focus on in this talk

Track whether each example looks back at a change or predicts a future one.

What this talk trains

Dan Gilbert speaks for about 7 minutes: roughly 1,150 words in 91 caption lines. The pace eases off as the talk goes on, from about 180 words a minute in the first quarter to 148 in the last. Overall it is faster than 49 of the other 66 talks on Sada. Its sentences average 17.6 words, longer than the middle of the library (14.3), and 11.3% of its words fall outside the 3,000 most common English words (library middle: 12.9%). It asks 8 questions, so there is plenty of question intonation to copy. Phrases that fast speech often shortens come up again and again: “kind of” (4 times) and “going to” (3 times).

Lines from across the talk, and what each one trains

One line from each quarter of the talk. Press a line to open it in Sada, ready to record. “Linking” marks words that run together: a word ending in a consonant sound joins the vowel that starts the next one.

  1. 1:16 Is it teenage years? Is it middle age?

    A question: listen to where the voice rises or falls at the end, and copy it. Linking: say “Is it”, “Is it” without a break between the words.

  2. 3:19 Again, we asked people how much they expected to change over the next 10 years,

    Several commas: say it in short chunks first, then as one line. A number (10): practise saying it at the speaker’s speed.

  3. 4:09 And what we find, well, you've seen it twice now, and here it is again:

    Linking: say “seen it”, “it is”, “is again” without a break between the words. Several commas: say it in short chunks first, then as one line.

  4. 6:12 It's as if, for most of us, the present is a magic time.

    Linking: say “It's as”, “as if”, “most of” without a break between the words. Several commas: say it in short chunks first, then as one line.

Words that keep coming up

Words outside the 3,000 most common English words that Dan Gilbert uses more than once. The number is how often each is said. Look up any you don’t know, then press it to practise the line where it first comes up.

How the pace changes through the talk

Part of the talkWords a minute
First quarter180
Second quarter186
Third quarter190
Last quarter148

The fastest minute starts at 1:35 (about 204 words a minute): practise that minute once the rest feels easy. The slowest starts at 5:49 (about 143): a good minute to warm up with.

Measured from the caption timing, so the numbers are close, not exact.

How the talk opens: press any line to practise it

  1. 0:12 At every stage of our lives we make decisions that will profoundly influence the lives of the people we're going to become,
  2. 0:20 and then when we become those people, we're not always thrilled with the decisions we made.
  3. 0:24 So young people pay good money to get tattoos removed that teenagers paid good money to get.
  4. 0:30 Middle-aged people rushed to divorce people who young adults rushed to marry.
  5. 0:35 Older adults work hard to lose what middle-aged adults worked hard to gain.
  6. 0:41 On and on and on.

How to practise this talk

  1. Warm up on the slowest minute (from 5:49) or on the opening lines above.
  2. Then take the chosen lines above one at a time: a question, linked words, a line said in chunks, a number.
  3. On each line, press Record and say it after Dan Gilbert (Repeat) or along with them (Shadow), then open Compare and go again until every word is green.
  4. Save the fastest minute (from 1:35, about 204 words a minute) for last.
  5. At one minute a day you finish the whole talk in about 7 days, and Sada shows your first try against your latest.

More talks to practise

Famous talks to shadow →

Start practising

Start practising