Shadowing Derek Sivers

Summary

Derek Sivers uses a series of cultural contrasts to show how easily familiar arrangements become invisible assumptions. His central example reverses the way an American visitor and a Japanese visitor understand addresses: one expects named streets, while the other expects numbered blocks. Neither can initially understand the other person’s question. Sivers then extends the comparison to house numbers, medical payments and musical counting. His conclusion is an invitation to remain curious about ideas that seem to contradict what we already know.

Key points, in order

1. In the imagined American exchange, streets carry names and blocks are simply the spaces between them. In the Japanese exchange, that relationship is reversed, exposing a convention each visitor had taken for granted.
2. The house numbers in Sivers’s example follow construction order rather than their position along a street. What first looks disorderly becomes understandable once the organizing rule is explained.
3. Sivers describes doctors paid for keeping patients healthy and musicians who hear the first beat as an ending. These examples support his broader point that a convincing perspective may have an equally meaningful opposite.

Five useful phrases to practise

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

1. 0:35 Streets have names; blocks are just the unnamed spaces in between streets."
2. 1:11 And you say then, "OK, then how do you know your home address?"
3. 1:27 The first house ever built on a block is house number one.
4. 1:42 and realize that the opposite of them may also be true.
5. 2:26 So, let's never forget, whether at TED, or anywhere else, that whatever brilliant ideas you have or hear, that the opposite may also be true.

Based on the video’s captions. Original video: Weird, or just different? | Derek Sivers · TED.

Everyday phrases from this video

• excuse me

• Level: B2–C1
• Accent: American
• Length: 3 min · 34 lines to practise
• Speed: about 205 words a minute (faster than most talks)
• Words: about 480; the talk asks 5 questions
• Timing: Sada measures how far behind the speaker you are on every line

What to focus on in this talk

Repeat one side of the street-name conversation at a time before combining both sides.

What this talk trains

Derek Sivers speaks for about 3 minutes: roughly 480 words in 34 caption lines. Overall it is faster than 64 of the other 66 talks on Sada. Its sentences average 12.9 words, no longer than the middle of the library (14.3), and 10.6% of its words fall outside the 3,000 most common English words (library middle: 12.9%). It asks 5 questions, so there is plenty of question intonation to copy.

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. 0:54 And you say, "OK, but what is the name of this street?"

   A question: listen to where the voice rises or falls at the end, and copy it. Several commas: say it in short chunks first, then as one line.

2. 1:27 The first house ever built on a block is house number one.

   Linking: say “built on”, “on a”, “block is” without a break between the words. One of the quicker lines: about 240 words a minute by the caption timing, against 205 for the whole talk.

3. 2:16 And this map is also accurate.

   Linking: say “map is”, “is also” without a break between the words.

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.

• opposite ×4
• anywhere ×3
• imagine ×2
• unnamed ×2
• realize ×2
• sick ×2
• phrase ×2

How the talk opens: press any line to practise it

1. 0:15 So, imagine you're standing on a street anywhere in America and a Japanese man comes up to you and says,
2. 0:22 "Excuse me, what is the name of this block?"
3. 0:24 And you say, "I'm sorry, well, this is Oak Street, that's Elm Street.
4. 0:28 This is 26th, that's 27th."
5. 0:30 He says, "OK, but what is the name of that block?"
6. 0:32 You say, "Well, blocks don't have names.

How to practise this talk

1. Start with the opening lines above.
2. Then take the chosen lines above one at a time: a question, a line said in chunks, linked words, a quick line.
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 3 days, and Sada shows your first try against your latest.

More talks to practise

• Derek Sivers — Why You Need to Fail (B2 · 189 words a minute · same speaker)
• Derek Sivers — Keep Your Goals to Yourself (B1–B2 · 185 words a minute · same speaker)
• Shawn Achor — The Happy Secret to Better Work (B2–C1 · 210 words a minute · same level)
• Elizabeth Gilbert — Success, Failure and the Drive to Keep Creating (B2–C1 · 210 words a minute · same level)

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