シャドーイング練習: The Coronavirus Explained & What You Should Do - 動画で英語スピーキングを学ぶ

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In December 2019, the Chinese authorities notified the world that a virus was spreading through their communities.
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In the following months, it spread to other countries, with cases doubling within days.
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This virus is the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome related coronavirus 2
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that causes the disease called COVID-19 and that everyone simply calls coronavirus.
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What actually happens when it infects a human and what should we all do?
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A virus is really just a hull around genetic material and a few proteins, arguably not even a living thing.
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It can only make more of itself by entering a living cell.
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Corona may spread via surfaces, but it's still uncertain how long it can survive on them.
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Its main way of spreading seems to be droplet infection, when people cough, or if you touch someone who's ill and then your face, say rubbing your eyes or nose.
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The virus starts its journey here and then hitches a ride as a stowaway deeper into the body.
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Its destinations are the intestines, the spleen or the lungs, where it can have the most dramatic effect.
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Even just a few coronaviruses can cause quite a dramatic situation.
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The lungs are lined with billions of epithelial cells.
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These are the border cells of your body, lining your organs and mucosa, waiting to be infected.
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Corona connects to a specific receptor on its victims' membranes to inject its genetic material.
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The cell, ignorant of what's happening, executes the new instructions, which are pretty simple, copy and reassemble.
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It fills up with more
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and more copies of the original virus until it reaches a critical point and receives one final order, self-destruct.
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The cell sort of melts away, releasing new Corona particles, ready to attack more cells.
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The number of infected cells grows exponentially.
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After about 10 days, millions of body cells are infected and billions of viruses swarm the lungs.
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The virus has not caused too much damage yet, but corona is now going to release a real beast on you, your own immune system.
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The immune system, while there to protect you, can actually be pretty dangerous to yourself and needs tight regulation.
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And as immune cells pour into the lungs to fight the virus, corona infects some of them and creates confusion.
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Cells have neither ears nor eyes, they communicate mostly via tiny information proteins called cytokines.
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Nearly every important immune reaction is controlled by them.
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Corona causes infected immune cells to overreact and yell bloody murder.
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In a sense, it puts the immune system into a fighting frenzy and sends way more soldiers than it should, wasting its resources and causing damage.
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Two kinds of cells in particular wreak havoc.
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First, neutrophiles, which are great at killing stuff, including ourselves.
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As they arrive in their thousands, they start pumping out enzymes that destroy as many friends as enemies.
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The other important type of cells that go into a frenzy are killer T cells, which usually order infected cells to commit controlled suicide.
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Confused as they are, they start ordering healthy cells to kill themselves too.
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The more and more immune cells arrive, the more damage they do and the more healthy lung tissue they kill.
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This might get so bad that it can cause permanent irreversible damage that leads to lifelong disabilities.
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In most cases the immune system slowly regains control.
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It kills the infected cells, intercepts the viruses trying to infect new ones and cleans up the battlefield.
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Recovery begins.
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The majority of people infected by corona will get through it with relatively mild symptoms.
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But many cases become severe or even critical.
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We don't know the percentage because not all cases have been identified, but it's safe to say that there is a lot more than with the flu.
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In more severe cases, millions of epithelial cells have died and with them the lungs protective lining is gone.
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That means that the alveoli, tiny air sacs via which breathing occurs, can be infected by bacteria that aren't usually a big problem.
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Patients get pneumonia, respiration becomes hard or even fails, and patients need ventilators to survive.
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The immune system has fought at full capacity for weeks and made millions of antiviral weapons.
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And as thousands of bacteria rapidly multiply, it is overwhelmed.
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They enter the blood and overrun the body.
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If this happens, death is very likely.
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The coronavirus is often compared to the flu, but actually it's much more dangerous.
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While the exact death rate is hard to pin down during an ongoing pandemic, we know for sure that it's much more contagious and spreads faster than the flu.
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There are two futures for a pandemic like corona, fast and slow.
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Which future we will see depends on how we all react to it in the early days of the outbreak.
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A fast pandemic will be horrible and cost many lives.
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A slow pandemic will not be remembered by the history books.
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The worst case scenario for a fast pandemic begins with a very rapid rate of infection
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because there are no countermeasures in place to slow it down.
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Why is this so bad?
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In a fast pandemic, many people get sick at the same time.
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If the numbers get too large, healthcare systems become unable to handle it.
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There aren't enough resources like medical staff or equipment like ventilators left to help everybody.
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People will die untreated.
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And as more healthcare workers get sick themselves, the capacity of healthcare systems falls even further.
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If this becomes the case, then horrible decisions will have to be made about who gets to live and who doesn't.
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The number of deaths rises significantly in such a scenario.
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To avoid this, the world, that means all of us, needs to do what it can to turn this into a slow pandemic.
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A pandemic is slowed down by the right responses, especially in the early phase,
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so that everyone who gets sick can get treatment and there's no crunch point with overwhelmed hospitals.
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Since we don't have a vaccine for corona, we have to socially engineer our behavior to act like a social vaccine.
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This simply means two things.
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Not getting infected and not infecting others.
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Although it sounds trivial, the very best thing you can do is to wash your hands.
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Soap is actually a powerful tool.
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The coronavirus is encased in what is basically a layer of fat.
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Soap breaks that fat apart and leaves it unable to infect you.
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It also makes your hands slippery and with the mechanical motions of washing, viruses are ripped away.
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To do it properly, wash your hands as
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if you've just cut up some jalapenos and want to put in your contacts next.
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The next thing is social distancing, which is not a nice experience, but a nice thing to do.
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This means no hugging, no handshakes.
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If you can stay at home, stay at home to protect those who need to be out for society to function, from doctors to cashiers or police officers.
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You depend on all of them.
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They all depend on you to not get sick.
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On a larger level, there are quarantines, which can mean different things from travel restrictions or actual orders to stay at home.
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Quarantines are not great to experience and certainly not popular, but they buy us and especially the researchers working on medication and vaccination crucial time.
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So if you are put under quarantine, you should understand why and respect it.
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None of this is fun, but looking at the big picture, it is a really small price to pay.
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The question of how pandemics end depends on how they start.
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If they start fast with a steep slope, they end badly.
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If they start slow with a not-so-steep slope, they end okay-ish.
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And in this day and age, it really is in all of our hands.
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Literally and figuratively.
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A huge thanks to the experts who helped us on short notice with this video, especially Our World in Data,
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the online publication for research and data on the world's largest problems and how to make progress solving them.
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Check out their site.
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It also includes a constantly updated page on the Corona pandemic.

このクリップのスピーキング目標

このビデオは、科学的な内容を明確に説明するためのフルーエンシーを鍛えるのに最適です。ウイルスの感染過程や免疫系の働きなど、専門的な用語を使いながらも自然な流れで話す能力を養います。IELTS スピーキング対策にも役立つ、論理的な語り口の練習にぴったりです。

フレーズバンク

  • "spread through their communities"(地域に広がる)
  • "hitches a ride as a stowaway"(密航者のように乗り込む)
  • "executes the new instructions"(新しい命令を実行する)
  • "regains control"(制御を取り戻す)
  • "cost many lives"(多くの生命を奪う)

これらのフレーズは、日常会話だけでなく、説明的なスピーチでも頻繁に使える実用的な表現です。英語シャドーイングの際には、リズムとアクセントを注意深く模倣してください。

弱みを直そう!

このビデオの課題は、長い文のリズムと専門用語の発音です。"cytokines"(サイトカイン)や"epithelial cells"(上皮細胞)などの単語は発音が難しいですが、繰り返しシャドーイングすることで慣れます。また、"The virus has not caused too much damage yet, but corona is now going to release a real beast on you, your own immune system."のような長文は、息継ぎのタイミングを覚えるのに最適です。shadowspeaksやshadow speakの練習方法を使って、ゆっくりと正確に発音し、自然な流れを身につけましょう。

少しずつ練習して、自信をつけていきましょう。あなたの英語スピーキング力は必ず上達します!

この動画の文法

話し手がよく使っている文型を、動画の実際の表現とともに紹介します。

文型動画での表現
受動態 be + 過去分詞 — 誰がするかより、何が起きるかに焦点を当てるare lined · be infected · are infected
関係詞節 who / which + 節 — 人や物について情報を加えるinstructions, which are · neutrophiles, which are · everyone who gets
現在完了形 have/has + 過去分詞 — 過去の出来事が今も関係しているhas not caused · have been identified · has fought

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 →