シャドーイング練習: How China Built a Dam So Big It Slowed Down Planet Earth - 動画で英語スピーキングを学ぶ

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One morning, NASA scientists were sipping their coffee when they spotted something bizarre on their screens.

The entire Earth had slowed down.

Was it aliens or an asteroid?

Nope.

The culprit was engineers in China.

They built such a wild dam across the unruly Yangtze River,

piling so much water in one spot that our planet tilted and slowed down like someone carrying a heavy grocery bag.

How did engineers mess with Earth's settings?

Let's rewind to the beginning.

Long before concrete or electricity existed, this story began with Asia's longest waterway, the mighty Yangtze River.

Stretching 6 ,300 kilometers from freezing

Tibetan glaciers down to the sea, its fertile banks fed Chinese dynasties for millennia.

Yet, this generous lifeline had a nasty temper.

Every summer, monsoon rains transformed the river into a runaway monster that swallowed farms and wiped whole towns off the map.

4 ,000 years ago, legendary rulers like

Yu the Great spent their entire lives digging dirt channels just to calm the river down.

Yet, the Yangtze always struck back harder.

In 1931 alone, relentless storms pushed the river over its banks, drowning an area the size of England.

Millions lost their homes overnight, proving that mud levees and sandbags were no match for nature's fury.

Back in 1919, revolutionary leader

Sun Yat -sen stared at a narrow stretch of steep canyons called the Three Gorges and pitched an audacious idea,

plug that rocky bottleneck with a dam to stop floods and generate electricity.

Decades later in the 1950s, Mao Zedong swam across the Yangtze himself and wrote poems about stone walls holding back clouds,

yet wars and poverty kept the dream on paper.

Engineers also had terrifying reasons to think twice before blocking

China's biggest river.

In 1975, a super typhoon slammed central

China and burst a smaller Bangqiao Dam, sending a wall of water through villages and claiming over 100 ,000 lives.

Critics warned that building a far larger reservoir on the main Yangtze could become an unthinkable trap if war,

earthquakes, or bad math ever cracked it open.

For 40 noisy years, geologists, ecologists, and politicians argued over blueprints while testing every cliff along the canyon.

Finally, in 1992, China's parliament put the Three Gorges project to a vote,

sparking a rare rebellion where nearly one -third of all delegates refused to say yes.

Even with tempers flaring, the government approved the plan.

And in 1994, 40 ,000 workers marched then to reshape geography.

Right out of the gate, builders faced a comical physics headache.

How do you pour wet concrete into the middle of a roaring river without watching it wash straight into the ocean.

Since nobody could politely ask the Yangtze to take a weekend break, crews blasted an open bypass channel along one shore,

forcing the river to detour around the main construction zone.

Next came an around -the -clock battle of brute force.

Until November 1997, fleets of dump trucks hurled house -sized granite boulders into the churning water,

pinching the river shut between two temporary stone walls called cofferdams.

Giant pumps then sucked the trapped lagoon completely dry allowing engineers

and muddy boots to walk across an ancient riverbed

that hadn't seen sunlight in millions of years on

that bare granite floor rose an absolute beast of engineering a solid gravity dam stretching 2 .3 kilometers wide

and standing 185 meters tall instead of curving like a thin arch braced against canyon cliffs

this wall relies on sheer stubborn weight to stand its ground packing 28 million cubic meters of concrete

and enough structural steel to build 63 Eiffel Towers.

Stacking that much wet cement created a sneaky chemical trap.

As concrete hardens, internal reactions heated up like an oven to 50 degrees Celsius.

Left alone, the core would take decades to cool and shatter like a hot glass dunked in cold water.

So engineers blasted crushed rock with icy air before mixing, then threaded miles of cold water pipe straight through the wall like an industrial fridge.

Of course, China didn't spend over $30 billion just to build an oversized garden fence.

The real magic hides deep inside the dam's hollow halls.

Workers lowered 32 enormous Francis turbines into place, each weighing hundreds of tons and wide enough to swallow a city bus.

When plunging river water slams into those curved steel blades, raw gravity turns directly into clean electricity.

Spinning together at peak flow, those 32 generators crank out 22 ,500 megawatts,

matching the muscle of 22 nuclear power plants running side by side.

Ultra -high voltage cables carry that surge over 1 ,000 kilometers east to keep neon -lit megacities like

Shanghai humming day and night, sparing the sky tens of millions of tons of smoky coal exhaust every single year.

Blocking China's busiest shipping lane, however, created an awkward traffic jam.

How do 10 ,000 ton cargo freighters climb over a concrete wall as tall as a 50 -story skyscraper?

Engineers answered by blasting a double five -level lock system straight out of solid granite mountainsides.

Ships sail into chamber after chamber as towering steel gates swing shut, and rising water floats them upstairs over the dam.

Climbing all five water steps takes roughly four hours which felt painfully slow for passenger ferries and urgent deliveries

so in 2016 engineers unveiled something straight out of an animated sci -fi movie

the world's largest ship elevator vessels weighing up to 3 000 tons float into a water -filled steel basin

and thick cables hoist boat crew and water 113 meters vertically in 40 minutes

While ships rode elevators up front, closing the floodgates quietly drowned an entire world upstream.

As water climbed to 175 meters above sea level, a narrow canyon morphed into a 600 -kilometer artificial lake.

Slowly disappearing beneath the murky green surface were 13 full -size cities, 140 towns, 1 ,300 villages,

fertile orange groves, and cliffside temples carved 2 ,000 years ago.

Before the waves rolled in, nearly 1 .4 million citizens had to pack their lives into cardboard boxes, watch demolition crews flatten their childhood neighborhoods,

and move into brand new concrete towns higher up the hills.

Meanwhile, cleanup teams raced furiously to empty more than 1 ,600 old factories, mines, and landfills sitting on the valley floor,

before rising water turned the reservoir into chemical soup.

When the reservoir finally topped out, 39 billion tons of water sat suspended high above sea level,

bringing us right back to those spilled coffees at NASA.

By lifting so much weight away from Earth's core, China triggered the exact physics of a spinning figure skater opening their arms.

Our planet's rotation slowed, lengthening every day by 0 .06 microseconds and nudging

Earth's axis 2 centimeters.

Down beneath China's feet, parking 39 billion tons of liquid over ancient rock fractures came with serious side effects.

Thousands of small tremors rattled nearby fault lines, while soggy canyon cliffs began sliding into the water.

At the same time, the wall traps millions of tons of fertile mud each year, starving downstream wetlands and pushing rare Yangtze wildlife,

like the smiling finless porpoise dangerously close to vanishing.

A few years ago, internet rumors exploded when a warped satellite picture went viral,

making the straight dam look bent like a soft noodle ready to snap.

Space agencies quickly explained it was just a glitchy photo -stitching error from a passing satellite, not bending concrete.

Months later in 2020, record monsoon floods slammed the reservoir at 75 million liters per second, and the wall held firm.

Today, wild climate swings test this giant from both extremes, forcing operators to hold back angry summer floods one year,

then ration precious water during blistering droughts the next.

Over a century after it started as a daydream on a map, the Three Gorges Dam stands as humanity's boldest gamble with Mother Nature.

A structure big enough to power megacities, swallow ancient history, and literally slow down planet Earth.

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このレッスンの語彙とスピーキングのポイント

このスピーキングレッスンは、動画「How China Built a Dam So Big It Slowed Down Planet Earth」を教材にしています。繰り返し出てくる語は次のとおりです：river, wall, Yangtze, dam, ton。この動画には、シャドーイング用の文が94文、単語が1271語あります。音声の長さは8:16です。話す速さは1分あたり約154語で、日常会話に近い自然なペースです。英語の頻出3,000語に含まれる単語は64%だけなので、語彙は難しめです。

この動画の重要語彙

動画に出てくる覚えておきたい単語15語を、発音と意味つきで紹介します。

単語	発音	意味
concrete 形容詞	/ˌkɑnˈkɹit/	実際の, 具体的
ton 名詞	/tʌn/	トン
trap 名詞	/tɹæp/	罠
meter 名詞	/ˈmitəɹ/	メーター, 計量器
canyon 名詞	/ˈkænjən/	峡谷
reservoir 名詞	/ˈɹɛz.ə(ɹ).vwɑɹ/	貯水池
stretch 動詞	/stɹɛt͡ʃ/	伸ばす
flood 名詞	/flʌd/	洪水, 大水
climb 動詞	/ˈklaɪ̯m/	登る
cliff 名詞	/klɪf/	崖
granite 名詞	/ˈɡɹæn.ɪt/	花崗岩
fertile 形容詞	/ˈfɝːtəl/	肥沃な
chamber 名詞	/ˈt͡ʃeɪ̯mbɚ/	寝室, 部屋
gate 名詞	/ˈɡeɪ̯t/	門, 大門
narrow 形容詞	/ˈnæɹəʊ/	狭い

動画に出てくる句動詞

単語	意味
slow down 動詞	遅らせる

注意したい発音

「th」の音: beneath /bɪˈniːθ/, thin /ˈθɪn/, thick /θɪk/, mathematics /mæθ(.ə)ˈmæt.ɪks/
「sh」と「zh」の音: shore /ʃɔɹ/, artificial /ˌɑː.tɪˈfɪʃ.əl/, structural /ˈstɹʌk(t͡)ʃəɹəl/, crush /kɹʌʃ/, revolutionary /ˌɹɛvəˈluʃənɛɹi/
長い単語（アクセントの位置に注意）: electricity /ɪˌlɛkˈtɹɪsɪti/, temporary /ˈtɛmp(əˌɹ)ɛɹi/, operator /ˈɑpəˌɹeɪtɚ/, artificial /ˌɑː.tɪˈfɪʃ.əl/, legendary /ˈlɛd͡ʒ.ənˌdɛɹ.i/

日本語話者が苦手な音：

/r/ と /l/ の区別 — /l/ は舌先を歯茎につけ、/r/ はどこにもつけない: electricity /ɪˌlɛkˈtɹɪsɪti/, roughly /ˈɹʌf.li/, rely /ɹɪˈlaɪ/, legendary /ˈlɛd͡ʒ.ənˌdɛɹ.i/, ultra /ˈʌltɹə/
/v/ — /b/ にならないように、上の歯を下唇に当てる: reservoir /ˈɹɛz.ə(ɹ).vwɑɹ/, gravity /ˈɡɹævɪti/, poverty /ˈpɑːvɚti/, vessel /ˈvɛsəl/, overnight /əʊvə(ɹ)ˈnaɪt/
/f/ — 「フ」ではなく、上の歯と下唇で出す: flood /flʌd/, cliff /klɪf/, fertile /ˈfɝːtəl/, physics /ˈfɪz.ɪks/, roughly /ˈɹʌf.li/

この動画での練習方法

まず声を出さずに動画を最後まで聞き、知らない単語をメモします。
まず0.75倍速で一文ずつシャドーイングし、慣れてきたら通常の速度に戻します。
自分の声を録音して元の音声と比べます。concrete, ton, trapなどの単語に特に注意しましょう。

シャドーイングとは？英語上達に効果的な理由

シャドーイング（Shadowing）は、もともとプロの通訳者養成プログラムで開発された言語学習法で、多言語習得者として知られるDr. Alexander Arguelles によって広く普及されました。方法はシンプルですが非常に効果的：ネイティブスピーカーの英語を聞きながら、1〜2秒の遅延で声に出してすぐに繰り返す——まるで「影（shadow）」のように話者を追いかけます。文法ドリルや受動的なリスニングと異なり、シャドーイングは脳と口の筋肉が同時にリアルタイムで英語を処理・再現することを強制します。研究により、発音精度、抑揚、リズム、連音、リスニング力、そして会話の流暢さが大幅に向上することが確認されています。IELTSスピーキング対策や自然な英語コミュニケーションを目指す方に特におすすめです。

シャドーイングのやり方: ステップ別の完全ガイドを読む →

シャドーイング練習: How China Built a Dam So Big It Slowed Down Planet Earth - 動画で英語スピーキングを学ぶ

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