Shadowing Practice: Venezuela's "Islands In The Sky", Explained. - Learn English Speaking with Video

Elige un modo de práctica

Cada modo abre una sala de práctica a pantalla completa.

220 oraciones

Si las oraciones son demasiado cortas o largas, haz clic en Editar para ajustarlas.

This is Angel Falls, and it is the tallest waterfall on Earth.

It drops a staggering 979 meters in a single uninterrupted plunge off the edge of a mountain in southern Venezuela.

The waterfall so far that much of it turns into a mist even before it reaches the ground.

But none of this is probably news to you,

because most people have heard of Angel Falls.

But most people don't know what mountain it falls from,

or why that mountain exists,

or what's on top of it,

or what the people who have inhabited this landscape for thousands of years believe about it.

Today that is about to change.

This mountain, or rather plateau,

is called the Ayan Tepui.

It is one of roughly 115 formations scattered across the Guiana highlands of Venezuela, Guyana, and Brazil.

And in my opinion, this is one of the most fascinating parts of the planet.

These formations are known as the Tipui.

They are flat-top mountains rising up to a thousand meters above the landscape.

And each one of these almost acts like an island in the sky.

Each one carrying on its summit an ecosystem that has been isolated for a long time.

And all of this makes this region,

the Guyana Highlands, one of the great geographical stories on the planet.

But what are the Tupui and how were they formed?

Well, the Tupui are the remnants of what you all just called the Guiana Shield,

one of the oldest exposed rock formations on the surface of this planet.

The ancient layers of rock

that makes up the Tupui plateaus was laid down as sediment

on the floor of an ancient sea roughly 1.7 billion years ago ago.

To put that into perspective,

it is estimated that complex animal life didn't begin until 530 million years ago.

The rock on the Te Pui was already ancient before the first fish appeared in the ocean.

And for the vast majority of that time,

these formations were not mountains at all,

they were part of a vast flat plateau.

So what happened between that time to the present day?

How did the Tipui go from one massive plateau to hundreds of individual plateaus?

What happened was differential erosion.

Keep in mind that the rock of the Tipui is extraordinarily hard,

primarily made up of quartzite.

The softer rock around it eroded away.

Rivers, rainfall, and time wore down everything that was less resistant.

And slowly, over an almost incomprehensible span of time,

the plateau was dismembered, away on all sides,

leaving behind the most resistant sections as isolated,

flat-topped mountains rising above the eroded lowlands.

So the Tapui you see here are what's left.

They are not mountains that were built up,

they are a plateau that was carved away.

They are just what remained.

And as the lowlands eroded away from them, the summits became isolated.

Not immediately, but slowly.

The cliff faces of the tallest Tipui are sheer vertical rock walls hundreds of meters tall.

They're smooth and overhanging in places,

offering almost no route for organisms to travel between the summit and the jungle below.

The summits became, in biological terms, islands.

And on islands, whether surrounded by water or air in this case,

evolution does its most creative work.

Now the summits of the Tipui have been isolated for millions of years,

long enough for evolution to produce species found nowhere else on Earth.

The Te Pui region has one of the highest rates of plant endemism anywhere in the world,

meaning a remarkably high proportion of its species exist on these summits and nowhere else.

Some individual Te Pui have endemic species found on that single formation and no other.

Now an important distinction we need to make is

that the soils on the Te Pui summits are among the most nutrient-poor on the planet.

The ancient rock weathers into sand that retains almost no minerals.

Water pools in shallow depressions,

which are acidic and dark.

Normal tropical vegetation cannot survive here.

What has evolved instead is a suite of highly specialized plants.

Most are slow growing and compact,

many of which have actually developed to be carnivorous due to nutrient scarcity.

Sundews, pitcher plants, and bladder warts.

These are organisms that catch and digest insects to obtain the nitrogen and phosphorus that soil cannot provide here.

If you are ever so lucky to walk across the Tipui summit,

which by the way is definitely on my bucket list,

you might think you're walking on another planet.

The vegetation is low and strange.

The rock is black with cyanobacteria and stained rust red with iron.

There's pools of dark water that sit in shallow depressions.

The clouds move here through eye level,

reducing visibility to mere meters.

And as these clouds part,

they reveal a view of hundreds of kilometers of jungle spread below like a green ocean.

It truly is one of the most beautiful landscapes on Earth.

Now this region is concentrated in what's known as the Guyana Highlands,

and this is one of the most sparsely populated and isolated regions in South America.

The infrastructure here is minimal at best,

and the terrain, well, of course, it's formidable.

Venezuela contains the greatest concentration and the most dramatic individual tepuy.

The state of Bolívar in southern Venezuela is home to the Canaima National Park,

a UNESCO World Heritage Site covering nearly 30,000 square kilometers.

Within Canaima sit some of the most famous tepuy,

Ollantepuy, from which Angel Falls descends,

Mount Roraima, the highest and arguably the most iconic,

in the cluster formation of the Grand Savanna,

where dozens of Te Pui rise from a high altitude grassland that itself sits above 1000 meters.

It really feels like a magical landscape,

and a place that inspired many stories such as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's 1912 classic novel,

The Lost World.

But of all the Tepui,

Mount Roraima is the one that most fired western imagination.

100

It sits at the tri-point of where Venezuela, Guyana, and Brazil meet.

101

It rises approximately 2,810 meters above sea level,

102

with cliff faces on each side dropping 400 meters.

103

Mount Roraima is perhaps the Tepui most closely associated with Conan Doyle's The Lost World,

104

the story of a plateau in South America where prehistoric creatures had survived,

105

isolated evolutionary changes by their cliffs.

106

Conan Doyle had never visited Roraima,

107

but he had read accounts of the first European ascents in 1884.

108

Their descriptions of the summit,

109

the bizarre plants and strange rock formations,

110

the sense of absolute separation from the world below,

111

were enough to inspire the author.

112

The novel was fiction, but the biological realities of life on Roraima's summit might be just as strange,

113

Because the summit holds species found nowhere else on earth,

114

including the strange Rorima bush toad.

115

A small, dark amphibian that has lived on this summit for so long,

116

isolated from its nearest relatives below,

117

that it has become its own distinct species.

118

And interestingly, it's evolved a unique defense mechanism.

119

When threatened by predators, the toad curls into a ball and rolls away.

120

Then there is the Ooyan Te Pui.

121

The name literally means Devil Mountain in the Paman language.

122

It is one of the largest Tepui,

123

covering roughly 700 square kilometers on the summit plateau.

124

It is deeply dissected by canyons and gorges,

125

and it receives some of the highest rainfall of any Tepui.

126

Angel Falls drops from a notch on the northern rim of the Aoyan Tepui into the Churung River gorge below.

127

The full height of the fall is 979 meters,

128

of which the uninterrupted initial drop is 807 meters.

129

For comparison, the Eiffel Tower is only 330 meters tall.

130

The Empire State is 443 meters.

131

Angel Falls drops more than twice the height of the Empire State Building.

132

But why is it called Angel Falls?

133

It's actually named after an American pilot called Jimmy Angel.

134

He was the first westerner to document Angel Falls.

135

His flights in the region actually helped explore,

136

map, and evaluate the Tipuis and the Grand Sabana region.

137

Biologically, the Tipuis can be best described as the Galapagos of the sky.

138

The Galapagos Islands are famous for producing distinct species through isolation.

139

The Tipuis have also been doing the same thing.

140

But here, the isolation is not oceanic, but altitude.

141

The cliffs replace the sea,

142

but the evolutionary mechanism is pretty much the same.

143

The region of the Guiana Highlands is extremely biodiverse,

144

and much of that diversity is concentrated in its endemism.

145

According to recent studies of the Te Pui,

146

it is believed that this region harbors nearly 1300 endemic species of plants alone.

147

But have humans ever lived in this strange and unique environment?

148

The short answer is yes.

149

The Pomon people, an indigenous group of perhaps 30,000 to 40,000 people living across the Grande Sabana and adjacent areas of Venezuela,

150

Guyana, and Brazil, have lived in the shadow of the Tepui for at least several thousand years,

151

and possibly much longer.

152

Their language, their cosmology, their entire understanding of the world is structured around the mountains that dominate their landscape.

153

For them, the Tepui are holy places,

154

sacred guardians of the savannah.

155

According to their beliefs, the Tipui are home to the Mawari,

156

ancient ancestral spirits that are sometimes considered dangerous.

157

Now the summits of most Tipui were not regularly visited by the Pumon.

158

The difficulty of the ascent and the spiritual weight of those mountains combined to make them places of respect rather than habitation.

159

The first ascent of a Tipui was the 1884 expedition by British explorer Im Third.

160

But even before all of that,

161

European awareness of the Tipui region dates back to the late 16th century,

162

when Walter Raleigh led an expedition up the Orinoco River in search of the famous El Dorado,

163

that mythical city of gold that European explorers believed lay somewhere in the interior of South America.

164

Raleigh's 1595 account, the discovery of the large,

165

rich, and beautiful empire of Guyana,

166

described flat-topped mountains in the interior with a vividness that suggested he or his sources had seen them.

167

But El Dorado was never found,

168

at least not in the form the Europeans imagined,

169

but the search for it drove European penetration of the Guiana Highlands for nearly two centuries,

170

and it brought the Tepui into Western consciousness,

171

however distorted, long before any scientist actually set foot on a summit.

172

From that moment, the Tepui became objects of fascination,

173

expedition, and scientific inquiry that has continued with varying intensity ever since.

174

But in a way there is still so much to learn about the Teppui because of the 115 Teppui formations identified,

175

many of which have still not been studied in a systematic way.

176

Many have never even been visited by biologists at all.

177

Each new expedition to a previously unstudied summit returns with new species to science,

178

whether that be plants, insects, or amphibians.

179

In an era where it feels as though the entire surface of the earth has been catalogued,

180

the Te Pui represent a genuine frontier for exploration.

181

Now there is another piece of the puzzle that I haven't mentioned yet,

182

and that is the cave systems within the Te Pui.

183

Now this is another major frontier in terms of exploration,

184

because erosion has carved extensive cave networks into the sandstone.

185

Some of the largest quartzite caves in the world are found here,

186

including the the famous Cueva del Fantasma,

187

a huge cave that's only recently been found.

188

The name stands for Cave of the Ghost in Spanish,

189

and it's so vast that almost two helicopters can comfortably fly in and land.

190

There's actually already been new species of poison dart frogs found in this cave.

191

What else can be found in these caves?

192

Are there other species of amphibians?

193

And what microorganisms inhabit this perpetual darkness?

194

So we started this video by talking about Angel Falls,

195

the tallest waterfall in the world.

196

The kind that appears on Instagram posts,

197

on screensavers and travel posters.

198

But behind that waterfall is a billion year old geological history.

199

It's located on a mountain and an ecosystem that has been evolving in isolation for a long time.

200

And around the mountain are people who have known it,

201

named it and built their understanding of the world around it for thousands of years.

202

And even inside the mountain are caves that have never been explored.

203

The Te Pui of this region really are one of the most fascinating geological and geographical stories on the planet.

204

Over the years, biologists have studied this ecosystem,

205

but there is a lot we still don't know,

206

and we are still learning,

207

still finding new species every time we visit.

208

Hence proving that despite modern day science,

209

there is still so much we do not know about this beautiful planet.

210

And as always, if you like content like this and you like learning more about the planet and its cities,

211

its landscapes, and its countries,

212

don't forget to hit that subscribe button.

213

There's a lot more awesome content on the way, so stay tuned.

214

And if there's any specific topic,

215

a place, a city, a region,

216

a country, a landform that you want me to cover on this channel,

217

let me know in the comments below.

218

I genuinely love reading the comments and the ideas that people have.

219

And as always, I will catch you in the next one.

220

Peace.

Descargar app

Todo lo que necesitas para hablar con fluidez

Pronunciación con IAEvalúa cada oración

Práctica de IPADomina cada sonido

VocabularioConstruye tu banco de palabras

Juego de vocabularioAprende mientras juegas

Escanea el QR

Download on theApp Store Get it onGoogle Play

✨ Recomendar Video

100 oraciones

Vocabulario y notas de pronunciación para esta lección

Esta lección de conversación de nivel C1 se basa en el vídeo “Venezuela's "Islands In The Sky", Explained”. Las palabras que más se repiten: summit, mountain, Tipui, meters, species. Este vídeo tiene 220 frases y 2232 palabras para practicar shadowing. La parte hablada dura 14:56. El hablante mantiene un ritmo constante de unas 149 palabras por minuto, cómodo para el shadowing. Solo el 76 % de las palabras está entre las 3.000 más comunes del inglés, por lo que el vocabulario es exigente.

Vocabulario clave de este vídeo

Las 15 palabras más avanzadas del vídeo, con su pronunciación y significado:

Palabra	Pronunciación	Significado
meter sustantivo	/ˈmitəɹ/	medidor, contador
plateau sustantivo	/plæˈtoʊ/	meseta, altiplano
isolate verbo	/ˈaɪ.sə.leɪt/	aislar
waterfall sustantivo	/ˈwɔːtəfɔːl/	catarata, cascada
expedition sustantivo	/ɛkspəˈdɪʃən/	expedición
amphibian sustantivo	/æmˈfɪbɪən/	anfibio
ascent sustantivo	/əˈsɛnt/	ascenso
erode verbo	/ɪˈɹəʊd/	erosionar
ecosystem sustantivo	/ˈikoʊˌsɪstəm/	ecosistema
evolve verbo	/ɪˈvɑlv/	desarrollar
isolation sustantivo	/ˌaɪsəˈleɪʃən/	aislamiento, soledad
biologist sustantivo	/baɪˈɒləd͡ʒɪst/	biólogo, bióloga
carve verbo	/kɑɹv/	trinchar
endemic adjetivo	/ɛnˈdɛm.ɪk/	endémico
fascinate verbo	/ˈfæsɪneɪt/	fascinar

Phrasal verbs que vas a escuchar

Palabra	Pronunciación	Significado
lay down verbo		soltar
make up verbo	/ˌmeɪk ˈʌp/	reponer, suplir
wear down verbo		desgastar

Gramática en este vídeo

Las estructuras que más usa el hablante, con las palabras exactas del vídeo:

Estructura	En el vídeo
Present perfect continuous have/has been + -ing — una acción que empezó antes y continúa	have also been doing · has been evolving
Present perfect have/has + participio pasado — una acción pasada que sigue importando ahora	have heard · have inhabited · has been isolated
Voz pasiva be + participio pasado — importa lo que ocurre, no quién lo hace	is called · are known · has been isolated
Oraciones de relativo who / which + oración — información extra sobre una persona o cosa	people who have

Pronunciación a tener en cuenta

El hablante usa 7 contracciones y formas reducidas, como don't, didn't, haven't. Dilas en su forma corta, tal como las oyes.

Los sonidos de “sh” y “zh”: expedition /ɛkspəˈdɪʃən/, isolation /ˌaɪsəˈleɪʃən/, erosion /ɪˈɹəʊʒən/, vegetation /ˌvɛd͡ʒəˈteɪʃən/, evolutionary /ˌiː.vəˈluː.ʃən.ɛɹ.i/
Palabras largas — cuida el acento: expedition /ɛkspəˈdɪʃən/, ecosystem /ˈikoʊˌsɪstəm/, isolation /ˌaɪsəˈleɪʃən/, biologist /baɪˈɒləd͡ʒɪst/, organism /ˈɔɹ.ɡəˌnɪz.əm/

Cómo practicar con este vídeo

Escucha el vídeo entero una vez sin hablar y anota las palabras que no conoces.
Haz shadowing frase por frase a velocidad normal, repitiendo cada una hasta que tu ritmo coincida con el del hablante.
Grábate y compara con el original, prestando atención a palabras como meter, plateau, isolate.

¿Qué es la Técnica de Shadowing?

Shadowing es una técnica de aprendizaje de idiomas respaldada por la ciencia, desarrollada originalmente para la formación de intérpretes profesionales y popularizada por el políglota Dr. Alexander Arguelles. El método es simple pero poderoso: escuchas audio en inglés nativo y lo repites en voz alta de inmediato, como una sombra que sigue al hablante con solo 1-2 segundos de retraso. A diferencia de la escucha pasiva o los ejercicios de gramática, el shadowing obliga a tu cerebro y músculos de la boca a procesar y reproducir simultáneamente patrones de habla reales. Las investigaciones muestran que mejora significativamente la precisión de la pronunciación, la entonación, el ritmo, el habla conectada, la comprensión auditiva y la fluidez al hablar, convirtiéndola en una de las metodologías más efectivas para la preparación del IELTS Speaking y la comunicación en inglés en el mundo real.

Técnica de shadowing: lee la guía completa paso a paso →

Shadowing Practice: Venezuela's "Islands In The Sky", Explained. - Learn English Speaking with Video

Elige un modo de práctica

Descargar app

The Biggest Eruptions That Changed Earth Forever

Vol 3 - test 6 - section 4

Spooky Encounter in the Amazon Jungle (S5) | The Proof Is Out There

Nature Is Speaking: Lee Pace is Mountain | Conservation International (CI)

Why is this one spot not warming?

Can trees save the planet? | DW Documentary

How To Terraform Venus (Quickly)

[Song ngữ - TED Ed] Sóng thần hình thành như thế nào?

Believers, is this a prophecy unfolding?

Brian Cox - The Most Mysterious Facts About The Universe

Our Greatest Delusion

Why Are 96,000,000 Black Balls on This Reservoir?