Shadowing Jill Bolte Taylor

Summary

Neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor recounts experiencing a hemorrhage in the left side of her brain and observing the loss of abilities she had studied professionally. Her account moves from unusual sensations and difficulty moving to the struggle to recognize numbers, use a telephone and obtain help. Alongside that medical emergency, she describes periods of profound inner quiet and connection. She interprets those experiences through a contrast between the brain's hemispheres and reflects on how they changed her view of life.

Key points, in order

1. Taylor explains that her brother's schizophrenia motivated her research into the brain and severe mental illness. Her own stroke abruptly made her both a scientist and the person undergoing a frightening change in function.
2. She describes pain, altered perception, loss of balance and eventually paralysis of her right arm. Moments of clarity alternated with experiences in which her usual internal speech and sense of bodily boundaries disappeared.
3. Finding a telephone number and dialing it required painstaking visual matching. A colleague recognized that she needed help even though she could neither produce nor understand ordinary speech successfully.
4. She describes surgery to remove a clot and an eight-year recovery. The concluding message is her personal interpretation of the peace she experienced and her wish that greater inner peace could influence how people treat one another.

Five useful phrases to practise

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

1. 0:44 So I dedicated my career to research into the severe mental illnesses.
2. 2:05 On the morning of the hemorrhage, I could not walk, talk, read, write or recall any of my life.
3. 9:56 And I felt this sense of peacefulness.
4. 13:18 So he recognizes that I need help and he gets me help.
5. 16:35 It took me eight years to completely recover.

Based on the video’s captions. Original video: My stroke of insight | Jill Bolte Taylor | TED · TED.

Everyday phrases from this video

• as soon as
• excuse me
• all of a sudden

• Level: B1–B2
• Accent: American
• Length: 20 min · 214 lines to practise
• Speed: about 149 words a minute (an average pace)
• Words: about 2,690; the talk asks 12 questions

What to focus on in this talk

Separate the medical terms from the everyday actions in her account before practising a passage.

What this talk trains

Jill Bolte Taylor speaks for about 20 minutes: roughly 2,690 words in 214 caption lines. The pace eases off as the talk goes on, from about 142 words a minute in the first quarter to 121 in the last. Overall it is faster than 22 of the other 66 talks on Sada. Its sentences average 14.8 words, longer than the middle of the library (14.3), and 14.9% of its words fall outside the 3,000 most common English words (library middle: 12.9%). It asks 12 questions, so there is plenty of question intonation to copy. Phrases that fast speech often shortens come up again and again: “got to” (10 times) and “out of” (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. 0:49 And I moved from my home state of Indiana to Boston,

   Linking: say “And I”, “of Indiana” without a break between the words. One of the quicker lines: about 184 words a minute by the caption timing, against 149 for the whole talk.

2. 7:59 I heard a little voice saying, "OK. You muscles, you've got to contract.

   “got to”: fast speech often shortens it to “gotta” when a verb follows. Listen for whether the speaker does here. Several commas: say it in short chunks first, then as one line.

3. 10:28 and I'm thinking, "I've got to get to work. Can I drive?"

   “got to”: fast speech often shortens it to “gotta” when a verb follows. Listen for whether the speaker does here. A question: listen to where the voice rises or falls at the end, and copy it.

4. 16:22 Two and a half weeks after the hemorrhage, the surgeons went in,

   Linking: say “and a”, “weeks after”, “went in” 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 Jill Bolte Taylor 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.

• hemisphere ×25
• consciousness ×6
• stroke ×6
• alive ×5
• enormous ×4
• pixels ×4
• diagnosed ×3
• disorder ×3

How the pace changes through the talk

The fastest minute starts at 11:03 (about 214 words a minute): practise that minute once the rest feels easy. The slowest starts at 14:50 (about 104): 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 I grew up to study the brain because I have a brother who has been diagnosed with a brain disorder, schizophrenia.
2. 0:19 And as a sister and later, as a scientist,
3. 0:23 I wanted to understand, why is it that I can take my dreams,
4. 0:27 I can connect them to my reality, and I can make my dreams come true?
5. 0:32 What is it about my brother's brain and his schizophrenia
6. 0:36 that he cannot connect his dreams to a common and shared reality,

How to practise this talk

1. Warm up on the slowest minute (from 14:50) or on the opening lines above.
2. Then take the chosen lines above one at a time: linked words, a quick line, a shortened phrase, a line said in chunks, a question.
3. On each line, press Record and say it after Jill Bolte Taylor (Repeat) or along with them (Shadow), then open Compare and go again until every word is green.
4. Save the fastest minute (from 11:03, about 214 words a minute) for last.
5. At one minute a day you finish the whole talk in about 20 days, and Sada shows your first try against your latest.

More talks to practise

• Robert Waldinger — The Secret to a Happy Life — Lessons from 8 Decades of Research (B1–B2 · 148 words a minute · same level)
• Kelly McGonigal — How to Make Stress Your Friend (B1–B2 · 143 words a minute · same level)
• Dan Pink — The Puzzle of Motivation (B2 · 149 words a minute · same accent)
• Adam Grant — How to Stop Languishing and Start Finding Flow (B2–C1 · 149 words a minute · same accent)

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