シャドーイング練習: What Is Life? Is Death Real? - 動画で英語スピーキングを学ぶ

レッスンを作成中...
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Life is fundamentally different from dead stuff, or is it?
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Physicist Erwin Schrödinger defined life this way.
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Living things avoid decay into disorder and equilibrium.
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What does this mean?
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Let's pretend that your download folder is the universe.
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It started orderly and got more and more chaotic over time.
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By investing energy, you can create order and clean it up.
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This is what living things do.
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But what is life?
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Every living thing on this planet is made of cells.
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Basically, a cell is a protein -based robot too small to feel or experience anything.
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It has the properties we just assigned to life.
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It has a wall that separates it from the surroundings creating order.
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It regulates itself and maintains a constant state.
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It eats stuff to stay alive, it grows and develops, it reacts to the environment, and it's subject to evolution,
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and it makes more of itself.
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But of all the stuff that makes up a cell, no part is alive.
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Stuff reacts chemically with other stuff, forming reactions that start other reactions, which start other reactions.
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In a single cell, every second, several million chemical reactions take place, forming a complex orchestra.
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A cell can build several thousand types of protein, some very simple, some complex micromachines.
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Imagine driving a car at 100 km an hour
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while constantly rebuilding every single part of it with stuff you collect from the street.
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That is what cells do.
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But no part of the cell is alive, everything is dead matter moved by the laws of the universe.
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So is life the aggregate of all these reaction processes that are taking place?
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Eventually, every living thing will die.
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The goal of the whole process is to prevent this by producing new entities.
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And by this, we mean DNA.
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Life is, in a way, just a lot of stuff that carries genetic information around.
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Every living thing is subject to evolution, and the DNA that develops the best living thing around it will stay in the game.
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So, is DNA life then?
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If you take DNA out of its hull, it certainly is a very complex molecule, but it can't do anything by itself.
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This is where viruses make everything more complicated.
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They are basically strings of RNA or DNA in a small hull and need cells to do something.
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We're not sure if they count as living or dead.
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And still, there are 225 million cubic meters of viruses on Earth.
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They don't seem to care what we think of them.
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There are even viruses that invade dead cells and reanimate them so they can be a host for them, which blurs the line even more. Or mitochondria.
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They are the power plants of most complex cells and were previously free -living bacteria that entered a partnership with bigger cells.
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They still have their own DNA and can multiply on their own, but they are not alive anymore they are dead
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so they traded their own life for the survival of their DNA
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which means living things can evolve into dead things as long as it's beneficial to their genetic code
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so maybe life is information that manages to ensure its continued existence
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but what about AI artificial intelligence by our most common definitions we are very close to creating artificial life in computers
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It's just a question of time before the technology we build gets there.
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And this is not science fiction either.
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There are a lot of smart people actively working on this.
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You could already argue that computer viruses are alive.
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Hmm, okay, so what is life then?
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Things?
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Processes?
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DNA?
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Information?
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This got confusing very fast.
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One thing is for sure, the idea that life is fundamentally different from non -living things
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because they contain some non -physical element or are governed by different principles than inanimate objects turns out to be wrong.
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Before Charles Darwin, humans drew a line between themselves and the rest of living things.
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There was something magical about us that made us special.
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Once we had to accept we are, like every living being, a product of evolution, we drew a different line.
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But the more we learn about what computers can do and how life works, the closer we get to creating the first machine that fits our description of life,
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the more our image of ourselves is in danger again.
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And this will happen sooner or later.
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and here's another question for you
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if everything in the universe is made of the same stuff does this mean everything in the universe is dead
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or that everything in the universe is alive
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that it's just a question of complexity does this mean we can never die
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because we were never alive in the first place is life
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and death an irrelevant question
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and we haven't noticed it yet is it possible we are
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much more part of the universe around us than we thought
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don't look at us we We don't have any answers for you, just questions for you to think about.
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After all, it's thinking about questions like this that makes us feel alive and gives us some comfort.

このレッスンの語彙とスピーキングのポイント

この動画には、シャドーイング用の文が72文、単語が861語あります。 音声の長さは5:32です。 話す速さは1分あたり約156語で、日常会話に近い自然なペースです。 単語の86%は英語の頻出3,000語に含まれます。残りは練習の前に確認しておきましょう。

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
virus 名詞/ˈvaɪ.ɹəs/ウイルス, ウィルス
genetic 形容詞/d͡ʒəˈnɛt.ɪk/遺伝的
artificial 形容詞/ˌɑː.tɪˈfɪʃ.əl/人工の
partnership 名詞/ˈpɑɹtnɚʃɪp/パートナーシップ, 協力関係
complicated 形容詞/ˈkɑm.plɪˌkeɪ.tɪd/複雑な
argue 動詞/ˈɑɹ.ɡju/議論する, 論ずる
element 名詞/ˈɛləmənt/要素, エレメント
fiction 名詞/ˈfɪkʃən/フィクション, 小説
comfort 名詞/ˈkʌm.fət/快適さ
string 名詞/stɹɪŋ/紐
collect 動詞/ˈkɑlɪkt/集める, 収集する
survival 名詞/sɚˈvaɪ.vəl/生存, サバイバル
principle 名詞/ˈpɹɪn.sɪ.pəl/原理, 原則
invest 動詞/ɪnˈvɛst/投入する
disorder 名詞/dɪsˈɔɹdɚ/混乱

注意したい発音

話し手はdon't, can't, haven'tなど、短縮形や弱形を6回使っています。聞こえたとおりの短い形で発音しましょう。

  • 「sh」と「zh」の音: evolution /ˌiːvəˈluːʃ(ə)n/, artificial /ˌɑː.tɪˈfɪʃ.əl/, partnership /ˈpɑɹtnɚʃɪp/, fiction /ˈfɪkʃən/, beneficial /ˌbɛn.ɪˈfɪʃ.əl/
  • 長い単語(アクセントの位置に注意): evolution /ˌiːvəˈluːʃ(ə)n/, artificial /ˌɑː.tɪˈfɪʃ.əl/, complicated /ˈkɑm.plɪˌkeɪ.tɪd/, entity /ˈɛn.tə.ti/ [-tʰi], beneficial /ˌbɛn.ɪˈfɪʃ.əl/

この動画での練習方法

  1. 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。
  2. 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。
  3. 自分の声を録音して元の音声と比べます。virus, genetic, artificial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。

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