Shadowing-Übung: Why British cities make no sense - Englisch Sprechen Lernen mit Video
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How would you define a city?
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It's what you do on a cherry.
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How would you define a city?
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An inhabited place of greater size, population or importance than a town or village.
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That's better, but wrong.
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Welcome to Map -ow!
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Welcome to Mapmen.
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We're the men.
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And here's the map.
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In the majority of the world, where it's not Britain, the definition of city is reasonably reasonable.
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In Japan, a city is any settlement with more than 50 ,000 people.
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In the USA, a city is anywhere with its own incorporated government.
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But Britain, as per usual, has its own special way of doing things.
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Here is a map of all 76 places in the UK that are officially classed as cities.
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The usual ones you heard of are there, Liverpool, Manchester, Bradford, Leeds and so on.
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But among them are some surprising and seemingly unworthy cities.
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Ely, with just 20 ,000 people, Ripon with just 16 ,000 people, and St David's with less than 1 ,500 people, barely enough for a flash mob.
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And oppositely, there are some very notable places that are mysteriously not on this map.
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Where's Reading? Or Northampton? Or Bournemouth?
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The most surprising omission from this list is none other than London.
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Britain's capital city is technically not a city.
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Although confusingly, Greater London contains within it the City of Westminster and the tiny, confusingly named City of London, which is not the same as London.
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So what's going on?
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If British cityness is clearly nothing to do with size, then what is the criteria?
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What makes a British city a city?
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I think I know this one.
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I think you don't.
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It's something to do with cheese.
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Let's deal with some common misconceptions.
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Cathedral Contrary to popular wrongness, city status in the UK has nothing to do with having a cathedral.
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There are 12 cities without a cathedral of any kind.
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And 32 non -cities with a cathedral of any kind.
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Yay.
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University Another common assumption is that you can't spell university without city.
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But, just as with cathedrals, there are multiple examples proving that this is not the case, including 17 UK cities that do not have universities.
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Can you name three?
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Hard Knocks Cooper Jones.
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And Rippon, Wakefield and St. Asaph.
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Correct, and for a bonus, can you also name three non -cities that do have universities?
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Northampton, Reading and Ipswich.
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And that's our bonus word of the day!
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And it's where you'll be spending an all -expenses -paid weekend trip to Ipswich with your mother, brought to you by the town of Ipswich.
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Meh.
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In an admittedly nowhere near as common as the other two
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but we're going to deal with it anyway misconception Just
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because you're at mayor doesn't mean the thing you're at mayor
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of is a city For two examples Ramji Chauhan is the old -timey ceremonial red -robed
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and gold -chain Lord Mayor of Harrow
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Which is a dull suburban borough not a city
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and Oliver Coppard is the democratically elected Metro Mayor of South Yorkshire A massive political region comprising mostly countryside
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which is even more not a city The term mayor in Britain is almost as confusing useless
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and vague as city itself So then, what is the answer?
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What decides whether a place makes the official British list of cities?
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The surprisingly simple answer is...
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The King!
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In a tradition going back to the 10th century, city status in Britain is granted by personal command of the sovereign and conferred by letters patent.
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Do you know what that means?
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I do.. not.
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The long version is this, and the short version is Every city on the official list has been put there by the monarch.
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It's as simple as that.
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On the list, city.
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Not on the list, not a city.
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So why then do so many people think it's about cathedrals?
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Because it used to be.
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In the olden days, all settlements by today's standards were rather small.
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With Britain's population being overwhelmingly rural, cities weren't considered important if they were big, but if they were powerful.
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Back then, power came from the church.
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Big cathedrals such as Wells, Ely and St Albans, which oversaw large chunks of the surrounding countryside, made the settlements they were in important settlements.
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And so the then monarch awarded these places city status, which they retain to this day.
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But what about all those cities with city status that don't have cathedrals?
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When did the monarch start awarding city status to them and why?
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In the 19th century and because...
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The arrival of the Industrial Revolution caused some towns to turn into manufacturing powerhouses and go through smoky growth spurts.
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By the 1850s the little town of Birmingham was now bursting with factory workers
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and had outgrown the nearby cities of Lichfield and Leicester.
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The citizens insisted that the Synod slanted system that saw sensible cities for several consecutive centuries suddenly seemed silly.
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Well done.
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And demanded that their town be given the city status it deserved.
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So, the Prime Minister, Lord Salisbury, decided the time had come to change the cathede rules.
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Oh, excellent, that's really good.
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Thank you, thank you.
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Tom, Tom, one of your five.
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And reinvented the meaning of city.
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Incidentally, that's the same Lord Salisbury who, at the same time, reinvented the meaning of the word county.
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In 1889, Birmingham's size and industrial importance was officially acknowledged
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when it became the first place without an Anglican cathedral to gain city status.
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Confusingly, Birmingham's church turned into a cathedral later in 1905, but for an explanation of how that works, ask a priest.
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Father, what's the difference between a church and a cathedral?
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Errr.. something to do with bishops?
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Birmingham was quickly followed by cathedral -free Sheffield, Bradford, Hull, Nottingham, and a slow trickle of other godless heathen towns that had recently become large, joining throughout the 20th century.
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The list was gradually starting to make more and more sense.
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Until 1994, when a completely good run of sensible cityings was ruined by the tiny Welsh village of St. David's for no good reason.
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Apparently the Queen just liked it.
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The thing that makes this otherwise logical list illogical is these pesky small cities that ruin it for the proper big ones.
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So can a place lose its city status if it doesn't deserve it anymore?
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to be stranded on a desert island with were The Ketchup Song by Las Ketchup four times
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and The Ketchup Song Christmas Remix.
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Literally any luxury item you can think of.
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Why do you want to take Surfshark VPN?
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There's no internet on the desert island.
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Jimothy Twig, you've been a weird guest.
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Right, take him away.
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Where am I going?
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Desert Island.
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But I thought the island on Desert Island Discs was only a hypothetical island.
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This isn't Desert Island Discs.
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Hey, get off me!
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Oh, I said it!
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Ah!
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Surfshark VPN.
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Literally all you need to survive.
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In 1998, Little Rochester and Kent, which had been a city since 1211, merged its local council with its neighbours to form the modern unitary authority of Medway.
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What they didn't realize was doing this effectively removed Rochester from the official list of British cities.
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The new council of Medway could have retained city status simply by filling in a bit of paperwork, but they forgot, making poor Rochester the only place in the UK ever to lose its city status.
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Luckily, the Rochesterians didn't have to wait very long for a chance to put things right.
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The year 2000 was the roundest date in the calendar in living memory, even for trees.
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The government celebrated this milestone with a big blancmange, a bicycle wheel, and the announcement of a bidding round for city status.
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Three new cities were to join the list, and for the first time ever, any town with ambitions to become a city could apply to be one, and size did not matter.
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The criteria they were looking for were notable features, historic features, royal features, and a forward -looking attitude.
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And so, lots of towns submitted bids, each having to provide a 25 -page pamphlet and lots of photos explaining why they were worthy.
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A hot favourite to win was Reading, the largest town in England with a fast -growing tech sector.
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It boldly ticked all these boxes.
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And the winners of Millenium City Status 2000 are Inverness, Brighton & Hove and Wolverhampton.
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Oh, what the...
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The national bidding for city status frenzy was so much fun, the government decided to make it a semi -regular thing, every time the Queen had a party.
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Newport, Newry, Preston, Sterling and Lisbon.
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Lisbon?
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Lisburn.
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Oh, Lisburn.
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Chelmsford, Perth, and St. Asif.
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St. Asif?
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Wales run out of big towns.
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Bangor, Colchester, Doncaster, Dunthirman, Milton Keynes, Rexham, and South Island.
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And that brings us to today's grand total of 76 cities.
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8 in Scotland, 7 in Wales, 6 in Northern Ireland, and 55 in England.
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The question we need to ask, other than why did the Queen hate Reading so much, is why bother bidding?
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Submitting a bid is an expensive business, with tens of thousands of pounds being spent on Printer Inc alone.
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So what are the advantages of being a city instead of a town?
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Extra government funding?
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No. Extra local powers?
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No. Extra promotion for tourism?
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No. Who was that?
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Sorry, typo.
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The clue is in the name, city status.
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That's a very good word for it because that's literally all it is.
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And that's why every town that bids has a different justification for why their bid was bother -worthy.
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Preston said gaining city status in 2002 put them on the map, even though our research has shown that Preston was already on most maps.
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Perth claimed that in the decade since becoming a city in 2012, its economy grew 12 % which would be impressive
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if it weren't for nearby Dundee also growing by about 12
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% Towns don't even need to win to benefit from bidding
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The parish council of Marazion in Cornwall submitted a no -hoper
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underdog bid without their bosses in Cornwall ever knowing about it They were quickly disqualified, but not before the subsequent publicity resulted in a mini -boost
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in tourism The people who seem to get the most tangible benefit from the bidding process are the government themselves
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Awarding city status to an unsung town is a way to appear to show support for it
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and get some positive PR without having to commit any time or money.
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But is this okay?
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Is it right that the government of the day gets to mess with the dictionary definition of a geographical word?
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Is it perhaps time we dropped this nonsense of a system and replaced it with something more meaningful?
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Naaah.
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The government has 8 ,007 more important things to worry about than what the meaning of city is.
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Once those have been sorted, yes, we might look at redefining the definition.
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And even then, we probably shouldn't.
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After all, a vague, archaic, mostly harmless tradition fraught with pomp and ceremony
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and mawkish self -aggrandizing with a bit of royalty thrown in is about the most British thing imaginable, and would never happen in a boring, sensible country like Germany.
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Regular rounds of royal city status -ing look set to be with us for many jubilees to come.
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So, if you want your town to become a city, just sit tight and wait, and rest assured that at this rate, every corner of the country will become a city by the year 3000.
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And the winner is...
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Newport Faculty Services of Year 1!
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Except Reading.
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Erste Eindrücke: Warum dieses Video tolles Sprechmaterial ist
Dieses Video eignet sich hervorragend fürs Englischlernen, weil es eine Mischung aus informellem Dialog und klarer Erklärung bietet. Die Sprecher verwenden alltägliche Phrasen ("as per usual", "barely enough for a flash mob") und sorgen durch Humor für eine hohe Aufmerksamkeitsspanne – ideal, um natürliche Sprachmuster zu internalisieren. Zudem behandelt es ein ungewöhnliches Thema, was das Lernen spannender macht. Perfekt für Englisch Shadowing, da die Sätze nicht zu lang sind und die Aussprache klar ist.
Analyse: Warum die Sätze natürlich klingen
- "But Britain, as per usual, has its own special way of doing things." Die Einfügung von "as per usual" macht die Aussage lebendig und zeigt, wie Redewendungen den Text entspannen. In gesprochenem Englisch werden solche Phrasen oft verwendet, um Ironie oder Vertrautheit auszudrücken.
- "St David's with less than 1,500 people, barely enough for a flash mob." "Barely enough for a flash mob" ist eine humorvolle, bildhafte Beschreibung. Solche Vergleiche machen die Sprache einprägsamer und zeigen, wie man komplexe Informationen auf unterhaltsame Weise vermittelt.
- "Yay." Ein kurzes, emotionales Interjektion. In gesprochenem Englisch werden solche Wörter ständig verwendet, um Reaktionen zu signalisieren – ein Detail, das viele Lerner übersehen, aber für natürliche Aussprache entscheidend ist.
Übungsroutine: So verbessern Sie Ihre Englische Aussprache mit Shadowing
Verwenden Sie die Shadowing - Technik, um Ihre Sprechfertigkeiten zu stärken: 1. Hören Sie einen kurzen Abschnitt des Videos (5–10 Sekunden) an. 2. Wiederholen Sie ihn sofort nach, versuchen Sie, Tonhöhe, Rhythmus und Aussprache genau zu kopieren. 3. Nehmen Sie sich auf und vergleichen Sie es mit dem Original. Wiederholen Sie dies täglich für 10–15 Minuten – dies hilft, natürliche Sprachmuster zu lernen und Ihre shadowspeaks - Fähigkeiten zu verbessern. Nutzen Sie eine shadowing site, um Ihre Aufnahmen zu speichern und Fortschritte zu verfolgen. Mit dieser Routine werden Sie schnell merken, dass Ihre Aussprache flüssiger und natürlicher klingt.
Grammatik in diesem Video
Die Strukturen, die der Sprecher am häufigsten verwendet, mit den genauen Worten aus dem Video:
| Struktur | Im Video |
|---|---|
| Passiv be + Partizip Perfekt – wichtig ist, was geschieht, nicht wer es tut | are officially classed · is granted · has been put |
| Present Perfect have/has + Partizip Perfekt – eine vergangene Handlung, die jetzt noch wichtig ist | has been put · you've been · has shown |
| Relativsätze who / which + Satz – eine Zusatzinformation über eine Person oder Sache | London, which is · people who seem |
Was ist die Shadowing-Technik?
Shadowing ist eine wissenschaftlich fundierte Sprachlerntechnik, die ursprünglich für die professionelle Dolmetscherausbildung entwickelt und durch den Polyglotten Dr. Alexander Arguelles populär gemacht wurde. Die Methode ist einfach aber wirkungsvoll: Du hörst englisches Audio von Muttersprachlern und wiederholst es sofort laut — wie ein Schatten, der dem Sprecher mit nur 1–2 Sekunden Verzögerung folgt. Anders als passives Hören oder Grammatikübungen zwingt Shadowing dein Gehirn und deine Mundmuskulatur, gleichzeitig echte Sprachmuster zu verarbeiten und zu reproduzieren. Studien zeigen, dass es Aussprachegenauigkeit, Intonation, Rhythmus, verbundene Sprache, Hörverständnis und Sprechflüssigkeit signifikant verbessert — was es zu einer der effektivsten Methoden für die IELTS Speaking-Vorbereitung und reale englische Kommunikation macht.