Shadowing Oprah Winfrey

Summary

Oprah Winfrey’s Stanford commencement address organizes lessons from her life around feelings, failure and happiness. She describes education as a continuing process of learning from experience, including difficult detours. Stories about her early television career and her school in South Africa lead to advice about authenticity, responsibility and service. She asks graduates to measure success through meaningful work and trusted relationships as well as material achievement.

Key points, in order

1. Winfrey recalls trying to imitate Barbara Walters while working in news, then discovering that a talk show suited her abilities and desire to help people. She presents this change as a lesson in listening to her own sense of direction.
2. Setbacks become useful when she asks what they can teach her. Discussing an abuse allegation at her school, she describes arranging investigation and support and recognizing that she had focused too much on outward details.
3. Her final lesson connects happiness with contributing to something beyond oneself. She draws on Stanford’s founding story and her own use of television for service to encourage graduates to offer their professional skills for others’ benefit.

Five useful phrases to practise

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

1. 6:17 The world has so many lessons to teach you.
2. 12:53 I should try being myself.
3. 15:14 If it doesn't feel right, don't do it. That's the lesson.
4. 17:50 We all stumble. We all have setbacks.
5. 22:50 To move forward you have to give back.

Based on the video’s captions. Original video: Oprah Winfrey's 2008 Stanford Commencement Address · Stanford.

Everyday phrases from this video

• as soon as

• Level: B1
• Accent: American
• Length: 30 min · 347 lines to practise
• Speed: about 147 words a minute (an average pace)
• Words: about 4,360; the talk asks 11 questions
• Timing: Sada measures how far behind the speaker you are on every line

What to focus on in this talk

Practise a personal story and the lesson that follows it as a single passage.

What this talk trains

Oprah Winfrey speaks for about 30 minutes: roughly 4,360 words in 347 caption lines. The pace stays fairly even, about 138 words a minute in the first quarter and 137 in the last. Overall it is faster than 17 of the other 66 talks on Sada. Its sentences average 13.7 words, no longer than the middle of the library (14.3), and 13.2% of its words fall outside the 3,000 most common English words (library middle: 12.9%). It asks 11 questions, so there is plenty of question intonation to copy. Phrases that fast speech often shortens come up again and again: “going to” (15 times) and “have to” (13 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. 2:21 And Kirby says, "Sort of." I said, "Sort of? You sort of know me?"

   “sort of”: fast speech often shortens it to “sorta”. Listen for whether the speaker does here. A question: listen to where the voice rises or falls at the end, and copy it.

2. 7:49 And, trust me, I know that inner wisdom is more precious than wealth.

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

3. 20:50 And, as difficult as that experience has been, I got a lot of lessons.

   “a lot of”: fast speech often shortens it to “a lotta”. Listen for whether the speaker does here. Linking: say “difficult as”, “that experience”, “got a” without a break between the words.

4. 26:55 And I don't know, but everybody today seems to want to be famous.

   “want to”: fast speech often shortens it to “wanna” when a verb follows. Listen for whether the speaker does here. Linking: say “And I”, “but everybody” without a break between the words.

Words that keep coming up

Words outside the 3,000 most common English words that Oprah Winfrey 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.

• lesson ×24
• proud ×4
• anchor ×4
• teach ×4
• ourselves ×4
• greatest ×4
• letting ×3
• diploma ×3

How the pace changes through the talk

The fastest minute starts at 10:10 (about 201 words a minute): practise that minute once the rest feels easy. The slowest starts at 28:53 (about 39): 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. 0:07 This program is brought to you by Stanford University.
2. 0:10 Please visit us at stanford.edu.
3. 0:30 Well, thank you, President Hennessy, and to the trustees and the faculty,
4. 0:36 to all of the parents and grandparents,
5. 0:40 to you, the Stanford graduates.
6. 0:44 Thank you for letting me share this amazing day with you.

How to practise this talk

1. Warm up on the slowest minute (from 28:53) or on the opening lines above.
2. Then take the chosen lines above one at a time: a shortened phrase, a question, linked words, a line said in chunks.
3. On each line, press Record and say it after Oprah Winfrey (Repeat) or along with them (Shadow), then open Compare and go again until every word is green.
4. Save the fastest minute (from 10:10, about 201 words a minute) for last.
5. At one minute a day you finish the whole talk in about 30 days, and Sada shows your first try against your latest.

More talks to practise

• Oprah Winfrey — Harvard Commencement Address (2013) (B1–B2 · 133 words a minute · same speaker)
• Rita Pierson — Every Kid Needs a Champion (B1 · 147 words a minute · same level)
• Denzel Washington — Penn Commencement Address (2011) (B1 · 147 words a minute · same level)
• Angela Lee Duckworth — Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance (B1 · 148 words a minute · same accent)

Famous talks to shadow →