Shadowing David Foster Wallace

Summary

David Foster Wallace uses a commencement address to examine the everyday value of learning how to think. His opening story about fish unaware of water introduces realities so familiar that people stop noticing them. He argues that education can help us choose what to attend to and how to interpret experience. The challenge appears most clearly in ordinary frustration, where automatic self-centred assumptions can make other people seem like obstacles.

Key points, in order

1. A story about two men interpreting a rescue differently raises questions about certainty and belief. Wallace asks listeners to notice how firmly they trust their own interpretations and how little they may know about alternatives.
2. An extended supermarket and traffic example shows an exhausted person treating every delay as a personal injustice. Considering other shoppers’ possible burdens does not establish what their lives are, but makes room for another perspective.
3. He describes money, appearance, power and intellect as possible objects of unconscious devotion that can continually demand more. The important decision is recognizing what shapes attention and measures value.
4. The freedom he emphasizes requires awareness, discipline and repeated care for others in unremarkable moments. His final return to water asks graduates to keep noticing what is real and close at hand throughout adult life.

Five useful phrases to practise

Choose a caption line to open Repeat mode. Listen, then say it after the speaker.

1. 0:51 The point of the fish story is merely that the most obvious, important realities are often the ones that are hardest to see and talk about.
2. 5:20 To have just a little critical awareness about myself and my certainties.
3. 15:52 Because it's hard. It takes will and effort.
4. 17:37 You get to consciously decide what has meaning and what doesn't.
5. 20:23 The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline,

Based on the video’s captions. Original video: This is Water · le néant.

Everyday phrases from this video

• after all
• at home
• end up

• Level: B2
• Accent: American
• Length: 22 min · 230 lines to practise
• Speed: about 172 words a minute (faster than most talks)
• Words: about 3,740; the talk asks 3 questions
• Timing: Sada measures how far behind the speaker you are on every line

What to focus on in this talk

Break the shopping example into smaller passages while keeping each sentence’s main idea in view.

What this talk trains

David Foster Wallace speaks for about 22 minutes: roughly 3,740 words in 230 caption lines. The pace eases off as the talk goes on, from about 179 words a minute in the first quarter to 157 in the last. Overall it is faster than 45 of the other 66 talks on Sada. Its sentences average 21.7 words, longer than the middle of the library (14.3), and 16.1% of its words fall outside the 3,000 most common English words (library middle: 12.9%). It asks 3 questions, so there is plenty of question intonation to copy. Phrases that fast speech often shortens come up again and again: “have to” (10 times) and “kind of” (5 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. 3:33 It's easy to run this story through a kind of standard liberal arts analysis:

   “kind of”: fast speech often shortens it to “kinda”. Listen for whether the speaker does here. Linking: say “It's easy”, “kind of”, “liberal arts” without a break between the words.

2. 10:43 And the store is hideously, fluorescently, lit and infused with soul-killing muzak or corporate pop

   Linking: say “lit and”, “and infused”, “muzak or” without a break between the words. Several commas: say it in short chunks first, then as one line.

3. 12:30 Because the traffic jams and crowded aisles and long checkout lines give me time to think.

   “give me”: fast speech often shortens it to “gimme”. Listen for whether the speaker does here. Linking: say “jams and”, “crowded aisles”, “aisles and” without a break between the words.

4. 19:25 They're the kind of worship you just gradually slip into, day after day,

   “kind of”: fast speech often shortens it to “kinda”. Listen for whether the speaker does here. Linking: say “kind of”, “slip into” without a break between the words.

Words that keep coming up

Words outside the 3,000 most common English words that David Foster Wallace 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.

• worship ×12
• liberal ×8
• totally ×7
• supposed ×6
• cliché ×6
• atheist ×5
• belief ×5
• crowded ×5

How the pace changes through the talk

The fastest minute starts at 10:05 (about 224 words a minute): practise that minute once the rest feels easy. The slowest starts at 8:33 (about 140): 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. 0:08 There are these two young fish swimming along
2. 0:11 and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says: "Morning, boys. How's the water?"
3. 0:18 And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes: "What the hell is water?"
4. 0:28 This is a standard requirement of US commencement speeches: the deployment of didactic little parable-ish stories.
5. 0:35 The story thing turns out to be one of the better, less bullshitty conventions of the genre,
6. 0:40 but if you're worried that I plan to present myself here as the wise, older fish explaining what water is to you younger fish, please don't be.

How to practise this talk

1. Warm up on the slowest minute (from 8:33) or on the opening lines above.
2. Then take the chosen lines above one at a time: a shortened phrase, linked words, a line said in chunks.
3. On each line, press Record and say it after David Foster Wallace (Repeat) or along with them (Shadow), then open Compare and go again until every word is green.
4. Save the fastest minute (from 10:05, about 224 words a minute) for last.
5. At one minute a day you finish the whole talk in about 22 days, and Sada shows your first try against your latest.

More talks to practise

• Simon Sinek — How Great Leaders Inspire Action (B2 · 171 words a minute · same level)
• William McRaven — Make Your Bed — Speech Excerpt (B2 · 169 words a minute · same level)
• Adam Grant — What Frogs in Hot Water Can Teach Us About Thinking Again (B2–C1 · 173 words a minute · same accent)
• Celeste Headlee — 10 Ways to Have a Better Conversation (B1 · 174 words a minute · same accent)

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