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Shadowing Derek Sivers

How to Start a Movement — A three-minute commentary on one short video of a dancing crowd: simple words and one clear idea. Original video on YouTube: Derek Sivers — How to Start a Movement.

Derek Sivers — How to Start a MovementStart from the beginning
  • Level: B1
  • Accent: American
  • Length: 6 min · 35 lines to practise
  • Speed: about 182 words a minute (faster than most talks)
  • Words: about 470
  • Timing: Sada measures how far behind the speaker you are on every line

What to focus on in this talk

One simple idea told over a short video. “A leader needs the guts to stand out and be ridiculed” is a good line for stress on the key words (LEAD-er, GUTS, STAND OUT, RID-i-culed), and “it’s about them, plural” shows how a short pause adds weight.

What this talk trains

Derek Sivers speaks for about 6 minutes: roughly 470 words in 35 caption lines. Overall it is faster than 54 of the other 66 talks on Sada. Its sentences average 13.4 words, no longer than the middle of the library (14.3), and 14.7% of its words fall outside the 3,000 most common English words (library middle: 12.9%).

Lines from across the talk, and what each one trains

Three lines from across 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. 0:55 The first follower is what transforms a lone nut into a leader.

    Linking: say “follower is”, “transforms a”, “nut into” without a break between the words.

  2. 2:00 So first, if you are the type, like the shirtless dancing guy that is standing alone,

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

  3. 2:16 The biggest lesson, if you noticed -- did you catch it? -- is that leadership is over-glorified.

    “did you”: fast speech often shortens it to “didja”. Listen for whether the speaker does here.

Words that keep coming up

Words outside the 3,000 most common English words that Derek Sivers 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 talk opens: press any line to practise it

  1. 0:16 Ladies and gentlemen, at TED we talk a lot about leadership and how to make a movement.
  2. 0:20 So let's watch a movement happen, start to finish, in under three minutes and dissect some lessons from it.
  3. 0:26 First, of course you know, a leader needs the guts to stand out and be ridiculed.
  4. 0:32 What he's doing is so easy to follow.
  5. 0:34 Here's his first follower with a crucial role; he's going to show everyone else how to follow.
  6. 0:39 Now, notice that the leader embraces him as an equal.

How to practise this talk

  1. Start with the opening lines above.
  2. Then take the chosen lines above one at a time: linked words, a line said in chunks, a shortened phrase.
  3. On each line, press Record and say it after Derek Sivers (Repeat) or along with them (Shadow), then open Compare and go again until every word is green.
  4. At one minute a day you finish the whole talk in about 6 days, and Sada shows your first try against your latest.

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