Pratique du Shadowing: What does a parent owe their child? | The Gray Area - Apprendre l'anglais à l'oral avec la vidéo
Création de la leçon...
1
Hey, it's Sean.
2
Today we're bringing you an episode from another podcast we love, Vox's Unexplainable.
3
It's a show about all the mysteries we haven't solved yet and all the questions we are still struggling to answer.
4
In this episode, host Noam Hassenfeld and Vox reporter Seagal Samuel debate the ethics of genetic screening.
5
As technology increasingly gives us the power to shape and influence future lives, Noam and Seagal wrestle with the question,
6
what exactly does a parent owe a child?
7
It's a very gray area question and one I think will only become more
8
and more urgent as we lunge into this very strange, very uncertain future.
9
Anyway, it's a great episode.
10
I hope you dig it and I'll see you on the next one.
11
I am someone who is a little bit obsessed with always trying to do the right thing.
12
That's Vox reporter Seagal Samuel.
13
Not just like the good thing, but the most good thing.
14
And I just found in the past few years that that was really making me kind of pretty unhappy.
15
Like it was torturing me somewhat.
16
Because often it's just impossible to optimize moral life, and it's exhausting and misery-inducing to try.
17
Seagal needed a way out.
18
So she decided to start an advice column, something she thought could help her with her own ethical dilemmas.
19
Seagal's column is called Your Mileage May Vary.
20
And it's pretty untraditional for an advice column, because it's oriented around this particular philosophical idea called value pluralism.
21
The premise there is that each of us contains multiple values, multiple things we hold dear.
22
And awkwardly, those values are often in tension with each other.
23
It's not like one of them is dumb and one of them is the right one.
24
You might have conflicting values in a situation like honesty versus loyalty or, you know, honesty versus kindness.
25
Those are all good values, but what do you do when they conflict?
26
I wanted to talk to Seagal because her column kind of feels like a kindred spirit to Unexplainable.
27
She's way more interested in how to think about a question than she is about figuring out the exact answer.
28
She tackles huge questions, and she brings in wisdom from everywhere.
29
Ancient Greece, early Islam, Enlightenment philosophy, bloggers.
30
But for this episode, I wanted to focus on a particularly fascinating question about having kids.
31
So this is the question from a reader.
32
My partner and I did IVF recently, and luckily we ended up with several embryos.
33
One of those will be implanted in me, so I hopefully get pregnant.
34
But which one?
35
My fertility clinic is encouraging me to do PGTA testing, which would screen for things like Down syndrome,
36
and would also let me see the sex of each embryo so I could potentially choose whichever I want.
37
And to be honest, I really want a girl.
38
I'm also hearing about these new companies that can test embryos for all kinds of things, like how smart the kid might be,
39
how tall they'll get, whether they'll have a lower chance of getting breast cancer, diabetes, mental illness.
40
I don't know how to feel about any of this.
41
On the one hand, it feels weirdly eugenics-y to do so much tinkering with embryos,
42
and I can't help feeling a little pressured into over-medicalizing everything with these expensive tests.
43
But then again, if I could do something to make my baby healthier and happier, don't I kind of have to do everything in my power?
44
What does a parent owe their child?
45
What does a parent owe their child?
46
Yeah.
47
It's such a weighty question.
48
What did you first think when you read this?
49
I mean, to be honest, my first thought was like, oh man, that sentence, like, don't I have to do everything in my power?
50
Yeah.
51
Really, that's the moral optimization thing that I've struggled with for years.
52
Like, don't I have to do the best thing, not just a good thing?
53
It's my child we're talking about.
54
Don't I need to do the best I possibly can for them?
55
So I really right away, like, felt for this person.
56
On the one hand, feeling pressured and feeling like, oh, I don't want to over-medicalize everything.
57
but on the other hand, like, maybe I'm supposed to be over-medicalizing this, like, it's my child's future.
58
But the tacit thing that I hear behind this question is guilt and shame.
59
I think new parents, and especially, like, expectant mothers, are, like, subjected to a lot of social scrutiny and shaming.
60
So I think the context here that's unspoken in this question is, like, your kid isn't even out in the world yet, but already you're a bad parent somehow.
61
How exactly do these screenings lower risk?
62
Do they do sort of a profile of various embryos and then you kind of get to pick your favorite?
63
Yes.
64
Basically, what these companies will do is, let's say you've done IVF and you've managed to get, I don't know, 10 embryos.
65
Amazing.
66
Mazel tov.
67
Great.
68
They are going to create a profile for each of your embryos.
69
They're going to give you like a little chart and it's going to say like embryo 1, 2, 3, 4, blah, blah, blah.
70
And for each embryo, they're going to say, this one, 12% more risk of diabetes, but minus 13% risk of schizophrenia.
71
Increased IQ potentially on the horizon, but, ooh, higher risk of diabetes, right?
72
So they're going to give you that profile for each of the embryos.
73
And what do we know about the tests?
74
Like, how do they actually work?
75
Okay, so we should differentiate between a couple different kinds of tests, right?
76
Okay.
77
So the first test that this person mentions, PGTA, is a pretty simple test.
78
It's been around since the 90s.
79
It can screen for conditions like Down syndrome.
80
It can let you see the sex of each embryo.
81
It's pretty common.
82
The more new and controversial testing is called polygenic testing.
83
And that is something that tests for very complex conditions that are influenced by thousands of genes.
84
So we're talking about like depression, breast cancer, but also selecting for a taller kid or a kid with a higher IQ.
85
So it's a lot more complex.
86
And stuff like IQ and depression, are these based on genetic markers?
87
So there is, for depression, a strong genetic component.
88
IQ also has a strong genetic component.
89
There's a lot of unknowns.
90
A lot of what we have is sort of correlational evidence.
91
Causal is harder, particularly with something like intelligence.
92
A lot of people have overemphasized how much we know genetically about this.
93
And they've tried to say, like, if you know XYZ about the genes, you can pretty well predict the intelligence.
94
I think there's a lot of researchers now who will tell you, like, no, actually, we really don't know, like, the interplay with environments and other things.
95
So it's a lot more complicated of a story than some genetics-based companies might have you believe.
96
And how accurate are they?
97
So it depends what you're testing for.
98
So sometimes people want to know the risk of each embryo for diabetes, maybe a BRCA mutation that someone might end up getting breast cancer.
99
That, broadly speaking, is going to be more accurate than psychiatric conditions, which these polygenic tests tend to not perform as well on.
100
These are conditions that are influenced by multiple genes.
101
So it's not like you turn on this one gene, boom, we know it has X effect.
102
Right.
103
I also think it's very important to understand the statistical claims are a little tricky here.
104
So they can claim that if you choose a certain embryo, it'll have a 12% lower risk than others of developing type 2 diabetes.
105
You might hear that and you might think, oh my God, that's amazing.
106
The chance of my kid ever developing diabetes just went down by 12%.
107
Yeah.
108
But it's not like an on-off switch that's so just like black or white, you have it or you don't, right?
109
Things are often on a continuum.
110
So if you hear that, really what it means is like a kid that might have developed diabetes is likely now at the high end of pre-diabetes,
111
or they're going to develop diabetes, but just a few years later than they otherwise would have.
112
The same thing for breast cancer, right?
113
Yes, you'd rather the kid develop it later if they're going to develop it, but it's not like a bill of perfect health that the customer might be imagining when they hear these claims.
114
So they're kind of framing it in a sense of the kid won't get diabetes
115
or they'll be less likely to get it.
116
And what you're saying is that they just might spend less of their life with diabetes.
117
Yeah.
118
I think the statistical claims here are very confusing, even for experts, nevermind lay people.
119
So I think it's like really important to understand it doesn't mean the embryo is not going to get this thing, right?
120
It means conditions are on a continuum.
121
It's not like one day you wake up out of nothing.
122
Suddenly you have like full-blown diabetes.
123
There's pre-diabetic, right?
124
Like there's a whole continuum.
125
And it's also worth noting like mental health conditions are on a continuum, right?
126
You can have, let's say, depression.
127
It could be mild, moderate, severe.
128
So that's also something to think about.
129
Yeah.
130
It feels like diabetes or, you know, a BRCA mutation for breast cancer or some of these more concrete things,
131
they feel very different from an IQ score or depression or other psychiatric disorders,
132
which are both maybe more diffuse and maybe more socially, culturally related.
133
Yes.
134
I think that's such an important point.
135
No one is like sitting there pining, oh, I wish I had cancer.
136
It's like, no, it just, you don't want it.
137
It's bad.
138
You don't cancer but mental health conditions are a little trickier like i'm someone who has anxiety
139
and some obsessive tendencies sometimes that's incredibly annoying for my life
140
but in my experience i also feel like it's correlated with my creativity
141
because i feel like the same kind of thing in my brain
142
that leads me into like rabbit holes of worry also leads
143
me into rabbit holes of i've just just found out this cool scientific fact.
144
Now I want to go into the wee hours of the morning researching it and then write a children's book about it.
145
Yeah, I feel the same.
146
I mean, I have OCD and I hate it.
147
And then there are often times when it definitely feels like a superpower
148
that I can hyper-focus or I can hear details
149
or I can like obsess over something to a point that I can make it perfect.
150
And you can work on improving a mental health condition.
151
You can work on emphasizing the pros and de-emphasizing the negatives.
152
But if someone came to me and gave me a magic wand to just eliminate all of it, that seems harder.
153
That seems like a harder decision.
154
Yeah, same.
155
Like, if someone gave me the magic wand and told me I could eliminate my stuff, like, I would say no thanks.
156
I don't want to romanticize these conditions.
157
Like, you know, sometimes stuff can be really hard, but on balance, like, no, I wouldn't just be like, let's wave a magic wand and get rid of it.
158
So I don't think I would want to do that for a baby either.
159
Coming up in a minute, what should the parent do?
160
Yeah, I mean, that's where it gets really complicated and hard.
161
And this is where a lot of people are going to start fighting.
162
Support for the show comes from Mint Mobile.
163
Summer is great when you're a kid.
164
No homework, no school, just long days to spend doing whatever you want.
165
Well, that feeling doesn't need to go away when you grow up.
166
In fact, it gets better with spending power.
167
So if you're looking for ways to save this summer, then you can start by lowering your phone bill with Mint Mobile.
168
Right now, all of Mint's plans are $15 per month, including unlimited.
169
All their plans come with high-speed 5G data and unlimited talk and text.
170
You can even bring your current phone and your number.
171
To get your new wireless plan for just $15 a month, go to mintmobile.com slash grayarea.
172
That's mintmobile.com slash grayarea Cut your wireless bill to 15 bucks a month at mintmobile.com slash grayarea That's it.
173
There's no catch Upfront payment of $45 for three months,
174
90 for six months, or 180 for 12-month plan required $15 per month equivalent Taxes and fees extra,
175
initial plan term only Greater than 50 gigabytes may slow when network is busy
176
Includes up to 20 gigabyte hotspot Capable device required Availability, speed, and coverage varies.
177
See MintMobile.com.
178
So let's talk about the should part of this question.
179
Like, should this person select for the best possible baby?
180
I wonder if you can start with the argument for it.
181
Where would you start there?
182
Yeah, so I think the first thing is a scientific issue.
183
It has a bit of a funny name.
184
It's called pleiotropy.
185
It's basically a fancy way of saying that we know not that much about which genes cause what.
186
You might have a gene that's correlated with, let's say, depression.
187
but it might also be correlated with a bunch of other things.
188
So if everyone were to suddenly start selecting embryos to try to prevent their kids from getting depression, we don't actually know what would happen on a population level.
189
It's possible other traits might be impacted.
190
There does seem to be a general trend that, you know, decreasing the risk for like one disease also goes along with decreasing risk for other diseases.
191
But it still worries me somewhat but because there's a lot we don't know.
192
I also wonder how much this stuff costs.
193
Like, would this only be available to rich people?
194
So right now, polygenic testing is not cheap.
195
One company, for example, Orchid, it charges $2,500 per screened embryo.
196
So if you test 10 embryos, that's going to run you $25,000.
197
Right.
198
So in the short term, at least, that does raise the specter of entrenching some kind of caste system where you get this growing gap between rich
199
and poor people because the rich people get to have the babies that are smarter, stronger, healthier, and the poorer people don't.
200
And there might just be kind of pressure on people with less money to spend their life savings onto things like this.
201
Yeah, absolutely.
202
And that's actually my concern about the longer term, especially.
203
So technologies do tend to get cheaper as they mature.
204
So it is conceivable that in 10, 20 years, we'll have a way to do this kind of polygenic screening that is not 2,500 bucks a pop.
205
but that still raises what I would call the specter of implicit coercion.
206
So I actually get more worried about this when it becomes cheaper.
207
If it's cheap enough that, you know, Joe Schmo can do it, then you start to have this cross society trend of lots and lots and lots of people are doing it.
208
And now if you don't do that for your kid, you kind of start to feel like you're putting them at a massive professional and educational disadvantage.
209
So that creates a risk of implicit coercion
210
which i do think is is worrisome yeah
211
and from the perspective of the child i don't know unless
212
your parent lies to you later on you know you're gonna
213
know like this kind of testing was done to arrive at the you
214
that you became yeah and you might feel some type of way about it
215
so for example you can find out the sex of the
216
baby the question asker in the column said to be honest i really want a girl
217
so i'm really tempted but like what
218
if you you really want a girl oh you select for the one
219
that says it's going to be a girl 10 years later 20 years later the kid says actually i'm trans
220
and i you know i don't identify as a girl
221
and then they're going to know unless you lie to them
222
that you went out of your way to choose a girl
223
and it was
224
so important to you to have a girl they have this
225
sense of my parents spent tens of thousands of dollars trying to achieve this consumer good
226
and they're they might feel like oh i extra feel like
227
a disappointment to you now yeah i mean kids have to deal with enough disappointing their parents all the time Right, right.
228
I worry, like, this is going to create a lot of therapy sessions on, like, topics we haven't had to deal with before.
229
Okay, and then I think kind of, like, hovering over this whole conversation is the idea of eugenics.
230
Yep.
231
Is there a concern about removing certain types of, like, just real— Human experience?
232
Yeah, removing human experience from the equation.
233
I think absolutely.
234
I think, you know, this is sort of, like, the— extension of a problem that already exists, you know, in terms of, let's say, conditions like Down syndrome,
235
which are screened for so commonly now.
236
And, you know, that's really ethically questionable because even
237
if we come to a place where we feel confident that for you as an individual, polygenic screening is going to lead to a better outcome for your individual kid,
238
we still have to look at on the population level, what does this mean for society?
239
If more and more people start using this technology.
240
You start to get questions about removing entire swaths of human experience from the world.
241
And I don't know, I think that when you have conditions that are very compatible with a happy life, that are just like, you know, okay, someone has anxiety, someone has this, someone has that.
242
There's pros and cons to it.
243
That is much more of an open question, I would say.
244
So clearly there are arguments against this.
245
At the same time, I don't want to make it seem like this is an obvious decision.
246
You clearly don't think this is an obvious decision.
247
What are the arguments in favor of selecting for babies?
248
I think the argument in favor pulls a lot from this intuition that probably a lot of us have, which is like, look, it's your kid.
249
Like, surely you want to do the best you can for your kid, right?
250
Like, of course you want them to have the best possible life they can possibly have.
251
And you have some philosophers like Julian Savalescu,
252
for example, who argue that parents have a moral obligation to create children with the best chance of the best life.
253
And you see this argument echoed in the founders of some of these polygenic testing companies.
254
So for example, Noor Siddiqui, who heads up the company Orchid, one of the polygenic testing companies,
255
she talks a lot about protecting your kids from various health conditions, talking about some kind of health problem down the line.
256
She'll say, what if you could have stopped it, but chose not to?
257
I do find myself compelled by some of this.
258
Yes.
259
As someone who's about to be a parent.
260
Yeah.
261
You know, I'm an Ashkenazi Jew.
262
When Ashkenazi Jews have kids with other Ashkenazi Jews, it's kind of like default to go get tested for Tay-Sachs,
263
which is this, you know, debilitating, fatal disease.
264
And it just makes me think that, okay, there is a universe where it feels very simple.
265
But how do you weigh the potential benefits of protecting your child,
266
of trying to give them the best life against the potential downsides of commodifying our relationship to our kids,
267
of causing an unknown reaction that we're not aware of?
268
I go back to Herbert Simon, who who is a Nobel laureate in economics
269
and in a way the granddaddy of a lot of our kind of maximizing, optimizing talk.
270
And he came up with this term that I absolutely love, which is satisficing.
271
That's a portmanteau of satisfying and sufficing.
272
And that is meant to describe opting for the good enough choice.
273
He said that, look, like many problems in life just contain way more variables
274
and way too much uncertainty for maximizing along any one axis to be a feasible or even desirable thing.
275
So often it just makes sense to go with an option that is good enough, you know, to satisfy.
276
And to me, satisficing in the context of like thinking about the genetic lottery for your child means,
277
yeah, let's prevent them from having debilitating things like Tay-Sachs, Because that doesn't feel good enough for your child.
278
But maybe we don't need to try to make them the tall, blue-eyed Adonis.
279
That doesn't feel like satisficing anymore.
280
So what did you tell the person who wrote in?
281
I told them, look, I'm not going to tell you, you shouldn't do this kind of screening ever.
282
I think it depends on the situation.
283
It depends what you're screening for, what's your story.
284
But what I would say is do not let yourself be bullied or shamed by others, especially if they have a profit incentive to push you to do a certain test, right?
285
I think that when someone who runs a company says, what if you could have stopped it, but you chose not to?
286
Give us money.
287
Yeah, that's preying on your worst fears and insecurities as a prospective parent.
288
And it's kind of holding parents hostage to a moral logic that pretends to be giving them more autonomy,
289
but actually it's robbing you of autonomy because it's saying you must do this kind of testing on your child.
290
And I just want prospective parents to feel like, look, you are nobody's hostage.
291
You can look at the many different relevant factors in your family's life, weigh all of them in the balance, and then make the choice that works good enough for your family.
292
What did people think about the advice you gave?
293
Did you hear from any readers?
294
So there are a lot of people in my Twitter orbit who are very like into polygenic testing.
295
So they have argued with me a bunch.
296
But I also got a really touching email from a mother of a child with Down syndrome.
297
And she said, look, like I made the choice years ago to go ahead and have this child.
298
A lot of other people are just not going forward with pregnancies
299
when they found out the kid will have down syndrome i went ahead
300
and had this kid and like i'm
301
so happy i love my kid we have a great life like yeah not everything is peaches
302
and roses all the time but i think it's totally compatible with a happy life
303
and i see that in my child's life
304
and in my life as a parent and
305
so thank you for pointing out that these conditions
306
that we've societally come to think are like oh just screen out
307
and nix them from the get-go thank you for being willing to consider That actually, a lot of conditions are like in this zone where, yeah, there's some hard stuff about it,
308
but there can also be some beautiful stuff about it.
309
Yeah.
310
Maybe we don't need to be
311
so quick to get rid of all possible swaths of human experience that look a little bit different.
312
I mean, it just makes me think of trying to have a goal of humility when you want to say,
313
let's give my child the best chance at the best life.
314
Yeah.
315
maybe being humble about what we think of as the best life.
316
Yeah.
317
And if we're overconfident in what we think of as best, I don't know, life surprises you in a lot of ways.
318
I think that's really, really true.
319
I think we are deeply confused as a species about what is the good.
320
The whole history of philosophy is one long lesson in, we don't know what the good is, and we're deeply confused about it.
321
So I don't want to necessarily presume to know for my kid what's going to be the most beautiful kind of life.
322
who also wrote the music.
323
He is out for now because in the time since we taped this episode, he has become a parent.
324
Congrats to Noam and the whole family.
325
This episode was edited by Joanna Salataroff with help from Meredith Hotnot.
326
Mixing and sound design from Christian Ayala.
327
Fact-checking from Melissa Hirsch.
328
Julia Longoria and Jorge Just are our editorial directors.
329
Amy Padula gives great advice.
330
I'm Sally Helm, and I jump in to record the credits when necessary.
331
Bird Pinkerton was confused.
332
Can't you just get any guitar?
333
Platy shook her head.
334
You think it's easy to be a platypus playing a guitar?
335
You think I can just buy a platypus guitar at Guitar Center?
336
If you are ever going to put this guitar back together, you'll need to find the man who made it.
337
Thanks to Brian Resnick for co-creating the show with Bird and Noam.
338
And if any of you out there have thoughts about the show, send us an email.
339
We are at unexplainable at Vox.com.
340
You can also leave us a review or a rating wherever you listen, which really helps us out.
341
And if you are into supporting the show and all of Vox in general, join our membership program.
342
You can go to Vox.com slash members to sign up.
343
Unexplainable is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network, and we'll see you next time.
344
Thanks for watching.
345
Each week we'll be in your audio and video feeds with great interviews and a philosophy-minded look at tech, culture, politics, and much more.
346
Episodes of The Gray Area drop on Mondays and Fridays on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
347
As always, we want to know what you thought of the episode, so drop us a line at thegrayareaatvox.com.
348
And if you enjoy our reporting and want to hear more from Vox journalists,
349
then consider becoming a member of the Vox community on Patreon at patreon.com slash Vox.
📺 Même chaîne
B21
Why is everything getting so expensive?
Daily ConversationWorking Adults
B21
Sen. Murphy vs. Trump's corruption | Today, Explained
Daily ConversationWorking Adults
B21
White, pink, and brown noise, explained #shorts
Daily ConversationWorking Adults
B26
Five things you need to know for the 2026 midterms | America, Actually
Daily ConversationWorking Adults
B24
Why are weddings so damn expensive?
Daily ConversationWorking Adults
B21
Are headphones destroying our hearing?
Daily ConversationWorking Adults
B21
How to be less neurotic | The Gray Area
Daily ConversationUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
B22
We’re already using AI more than we realize
Daily ConversationWorking Adults
B21
The Ticketmaster monopoly is over, now what?
Daily ConversationWorking Adults
B22
The biggest peach myth in America
Daily ConversationWorking Adults
B28
How to solve problems like a designer
Daily ConversationWorking Adults
B22
The origin of the '80s aesthetic
Daily ConversationWorking Adults
B217
Why “Buy one, get one free” isn’t a great deal
Daily ConversationWorking Adults
B22
How F1 drivers survive their own cars
Daily ConversationWorking Adults
B210
Why 350°F is the magic number for baking
Daily ConversationWorking Adults
B26
How did pink become a girly color?
Daily ConversationWorking Adults
B22
The real reason Boeing's new plane crashed twice
Daily ConversationWorking Adults
B21
Food waste is the world's dumbest problem
Business EnglishDaily ConversationUniversity Students
B21
Why AI art struggles with hands
Daily ConversationWorking Adults
B22
How the rich avoid paying taxes
Business EnglishDaily ConversationUniversity Students
✨ Vidéo recommandée
C13
241 phrases
The strange reason nobody views their own retaliation as evil | Paul Bloom
IELTS PrepTOEFL PrepUniversity Students
C19
84 phrases
“But you did it first!”: A defense of the whataboutism
British AccentIELTS PrepTOEFL PrepUniversity Students
C114
107 phrases
Sheldocracy Is the Only Ethical Solution | Young Sheldon
American AccentIELTS PrepTOEFL PrepCambridge Exam Prep
C11
150 phrases
Why We Can't Save Those We Love
Daily ConversationUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
C14
53 phrases
Gabor Maté – Authenticity vs. Attachment
Daily ConversationUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
C11
212 phrases
Self-Help: What Went Wrong?
Daily ConversationUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
C11
166 phrases
Gen Z's Morality Crisis
Daily ConversationUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
C11
141 phrases
Mark Manson: Self-control is a complete illusion
Daily ConversationUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
B280 phrases
Nick Viall, Natalie Joy on Parenting, Social Media, More
Daily ConversationUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
C12
814 phrases
What It Means To Be A Good Man Today With Tom Junod
Daily ConversationUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
C11
388 phrases
A Matter of Meaning: What Other People Teach You About Your Communication
Daily ConversationUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
Vocabulaire et conseils d’expression pour cette leçon
Cette leçon d’expression orale de niveau C1 s’appuie sur la vidéo « What does a parent owe their child? ». Cette vidéo contient 349 phrases et 4448 mots à répéter en shadowing. La partie parlée dure 26:09. Le locuteur parle à un rythme naturel d’environ 170 mots par minute, proche d’une conversation courante. 82 % des mots font partie des 3 000 mots les plus courants en anglais ; le reste mérite d’être vu avant de commencer.
Vocabulaire clé de cette vidéo
Les 15 mots les plus avancés de la vidéo, avec leur prononciation et leur sens :
| Mot | Prononciation | Sens |
|---|---|---|
| embryo nom | /ˈɛmbɹi.oʊ/ | embryon |
| polygenic adjectif | polygénique | |
| continuum nom | /kənˈtɪnjuəm/ | continuum |
| correlate verbe | /ˈkɔɹəleɪt/ | corréler |
| wand nom | /wɑnd/ | baguette |
| coercion nom | /koʊˈɝʒən/ | coercition |
| debilitate verbe | /dəˈbɪləteɪt/ | débiliter |
| eugenics nom | /juːˈd͡ʒɛnɪks/ | eugénisme |
| implicit adjectif | /ɪmˈplɪsɪt/ | implicite, tacite |
| platypus nom | /ˈplætɪˌpʊs/ | ornithorynque |
| specter nom | /ˈspɛktɚ/ | spectre |
| swath nom | /swɑθ/ | andain |
| maximize verbe | /ˈmæksəmaɪz/ | maximiser |
| mutation nom | /mjuˈteɪʃən/ | mutation |
| emphasize verbe | /ˈɛm.fə.saɪz/ | souligner, accentuer |
Les verbes à particule que vous entendrez
| Mot | Prononciation | Sens |
|---|---|---|
| find out verbe | découvrir, savoir | |
| go ahead verbe | /ˌɡoʊ əˈhɛd/ | vas-y, allez-y |
| come up with verbe | inventer, imaginer | |
| end up verbe | se terminer, se finir | |
| figure out verbe | cerner | |
| go away verbe | partir, s'en aller | |
| go down verbe | descendre | |
| grow up verbe | grandir |
Des phrases à répéter
Des phrases courtes et complètes de la vidéo, à réutiliser dans la conversation de tous les jours :
- What did you first think when you read this?
- Don't I need to do the best I possibly can for them?
- Where would you start there?
- What did people think about the advice you gave?
- Can't you just get any guitar?
La grammaire de cette vidéo
Les structures que le locuteur utilise le plus, avec les mots exacts de la vidéo :
| Structure | Dans la vidéo |
|---|---|
| Present perfect have/has + participe passé — une action passée qui compte encore maintenant | haven't solved · I've struggled · you've done |
| Voix passive be + participe passé — l’accent est mis sur ce qui arrive, pas sur qui le fait | is called · will be implanted · are influenced |
| Propositions relatives who / which + proposition — une précision sur une personne ou une chose | someone who is · someone who has · have, which is |
Prononciation à surveiller
Le locuteur utilise 88 contractions et formes réduites, comme don't, I'm, they're. Prononcez-les sous leur forme courte, telles que vous les entendez.
- Les sons « th »: swath /swɑθ/, ethical /ˈɛθɪkəl/
- Les sons « sh » et « zh »: coercion /koʊˈɝʒən/, mutation /mjuˈteɪʃən/, socially /ˈsoʊʃəli/, equation /ɪˈkweɪ.ʒən/, obligation /ˌɑ.blɪˈɡeɪ.ʃn̩/
- Mots longs — placez bien l’accent: unexplainable /ˌʌn.ɛksˈpleɪ.nə.bl̩/, debilitate /dəˈbɪləteɪt/, medicalize /ˈmɛdɪkəlaɪz/, autonomy /ɔˈtɑ.nə.mi/, psychiatric /ˌsaɪ.kiˈæt.ɹɪk/
Les sons difficiles pour les francophones :
- /h/ — il se souffle, il n’est pas muet: hostage /ˈhɑs.tɪd͡ʒ/, unhappy /ʌnˈhæpi/, horizon /həˈɹaɪ.zən/
- /tʃ/ et /dʒ/ — à ne pas adoucir en « ch » et « j »: eugenics /juːˈd͡ʒɛnɪks/, hostage /ˈhɑs.tɪd͡ʒ/, questionable /ˈkwɛst͡ʃənəbl̩/, genetics /dʒəˈnɛt.ɪks/, researcher /ˈɹiˌsɝ.t͡ʃɚ/
- /r/ anglais — langue recourbée, sans frotter la gorge: embryo /ˈɛmbɹi.oʊ/, correlate /ˈkɔɹəleɪt/, psychiatric /ˌsaɪ.kiˈæt.ɹɪk/, prospective /pɹəˈspɛktɪv/, rabbit /ˈɹæbɪt/
Comment s’entraîner avec cette vidéo
- Écoutez la vidéo en entier une fois sans parler et notez les mots que vous ne connaissez pas.
- Commencez à la vitesse 0,75×, répétez phrase par phrase, puis revenez à la vitesse normale quand cela devient facile.
- Enregistrez-vous et comparez avec l’original, en faisant attention à des mots comme embryo, polygenic, continuum.
Qu'est-ce que la technique du Shadowing ?
Le Shadowing est une technique d'apprentissage des langues fondée sur la science, développée à l'origine pour la formation des interprètes professionnels. Le principe est simple mais puissant : vous écoutez de l'anglais natif et le répétez immédiatement à voix haute — comme une ombre suivant le locuteur avec un décalage de 1 à 2 secondes. Les recherches montrent une amélioration significative de la précision de la prononciation, de l'intonation, du rythme, des liaisons, de la compréhension orale et de la fluidité.