Shadowing Practice: Kenyon College: John Green Commencement Address - Learn English Speaking with Video
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Please join me in welcoming Kenyon College's 188th commencement speaker, John Green.
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Thank you so much.
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President Decatur, faculty, staff, parents, friends, and members of Kenyon's class of 2018,
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2016, congratulations to all of you.
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17 years ago, I was supposed to be graduating from Kenyon.
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It ended up taking me an extra semester.
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But I was in the audience that day with my friends and classmates.
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I remember nothing about the commencement address, except that it lasted for 10,000 years.
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Like empires rose and fell, and still the speaker droned on cicada-like in his monotony.
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So I come to you today with but one solemn promise.
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One way or another, this will be over in 14 minutes.
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I want to spend one of those minutes, if you don't mind, in silence.
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This is a trick I learned from the children's television host, Mr. Rogers.
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If you don't mind, I'd like us all, not just the students, but all of us, to close our eyes and think for one minute,
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just a minute, about the people who loved us up into this moment.
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Family and friends, teachers and kind strangers.
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I'll keep the time.
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Thank you.
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Those people, they're so proud of you right now.
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My thoughts turned inevitably back to my years at Kenyon and to my professors, especially Don Rogan, who died this school year.
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Mr. Rogan was a brilliant teacher, but I've forgotten much of what I learned in his classes about phenomenology and gospel redaction.
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What I remember most is that he loved me, and that he took me seriously.
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He and his wife Sally welcomed me into their home, fed me, laughed with me, cried with me.
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And for many years, I wondered why he loved me.
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Like I wasn't a particularly good or committed student.
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I showed no particular promise.
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And then when he died, I saw the grief-stricken Facebook posts pour in from his old students, and I realized he had loved us all.
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Love is not like mass or energy.
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It is not conserved.
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And in the next 17 years, you will forget a lot.
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But you will not forget the kindness
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and generosity of those on this hilltop who were kinder and more generous than they needed to be.
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So when I was a student here, there was widespread agreement among my peers
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that the so-called real world of proper adulthood was basically a disease you caught and then eventually died from.
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Like, adulthood, with its mortgages and spreadsheets and lawn maintenance,
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seemed to be a thing to be dreaded and resisted until finally it overtook you, like a zombie plague.
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And then, like, once you acquired adulthood, you would start saying things like brand awareness in a fractured media landscape.
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And we need a president who knows how to get things done.
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To be an adult meant engaging in totally unironic conversations about the weather.
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I remember once when I was at Kenyon, my grandmother called me to tell me that she was watching the Weather Channel
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and that it looked like it was raining in Ohio.
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I explained to her that I was reading Ulysses.
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That I wasn't even in Gambier, but in Dublin, Ireland in 1904.
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And that history was a nightmare from which Daedalus was trying to awake.
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And that nothing, literally nothing, mattered less than the current weather.
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And then after a moment she asked, Well, is it raining or isn't it?
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To be an adult was to be a river rock blasted
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by an endless torrent of mundane terrors from resume formatting to electricity bills
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that would inevitably smooth all my hard edges until I looked and felt just like everything else.
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Now this is the part of the commencement address where I'm supposed to tell you
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that in fact adulthood isn't so bad and blah blah blah but no, no, it is so bad.
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If anything, it is worse than I could have imagined.
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I mean, have you ever been to a homeowners association meeting?
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Like each of you in the class of 2016 is a wondrous
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and precious and rare life in a vast and almost entirely dead universe.
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devoting two hours of your bright
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but brief flicker of consciousness to a debate over whether the
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maximum allowable length of grass in your neighborhood's front lawns should be four inches or six.
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But it's true, you will debate grass length or something equally stultifying.
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You will learn, almost against your will, the difference between whole and term life insurance.
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You will test drive a minivan and find yourself surprised by the quality of its handling.
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And along the way, along the way you'll find yourself wondering, why am I doing this?
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Why am I doing any of this?
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And this is, in my experience, where your Kenyan education will come in very handy because whether you've studied economics or anthropology,
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for the last four, or if you're like me, five years, you've been investigating what constitutes a fulfilling, successful human life.
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And I'd argue that actually is adulthood.
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Like maybe adulthood isn't something you've spent your time at Kenyon preparing for.
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Instead, maybe you've been doing it, albeit not on the minivan scale.
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You're probably familiar with the old line that a liberal arts education teaches people how to think.
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But I think it mostly teaches you how to listen.
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In your classes and in your readings, you've been listening.
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You've listened to your professors and to your peers,
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but also to Toni Morrison and Jane Austen and John Milton as you all together examine the big questions of our species.
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What do we owe ourselves and what do we owe others?
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What is the nature of the universe and what is our role in it?
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How best might we alleviate the suffering within and without?
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You learned about these questions at Kenyon, but you won't leave them here.
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And while making your voice heard on those questions is vital, you've also learned here that your voice gets stronger the more you listen.
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and not just listening to loud voices, but also to those that are hard to hear because they've been systemically silenced.
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I hope that listening will help inoculate you from the seductive lies of our time.
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The lie that strength and toughness are always assets, that selfishness is not just necessary,
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but desirable, that the whole world benefits most when you act in your own narrow self-interest.
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That seductive lie is appealing because it allows us to go on doing what we would have been doing anyway
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because it imagines a world in which I am what I feel myself to be, the exact center of the universe.
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But living for oneself, even very successfully,
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will do absolutely nothing to fill the gasping void inside of you of you.
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In my experience, that void gets filled not through strength but through weakness.
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You must be weak before the world because love and listening weaken you.
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They make you vulnerable.
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They break you open.
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And it is only when you are weak that you can truly see
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and acknowledge and forgive and love the weakness in others.
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Weakness allows you to see other humans not as enemies to defeat, but as collaborators and co-creators.
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In the end, we're making humanness up together as we go along.
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At the homeowners association meeting, where the miserable adults are debating grass length, what they're actually doing is hashing out what kind of neighborhood they want to share.
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When you're deciding between whole and term life insurance, you're actually thinking of a world without you and how you might be helpful to those you leave behind,
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and how lucky you will be to leave people behind, to have been woven so deeply into the interconnected web of the human story.
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All of it, actually, from electricity bills to the job where your coworkers call themselves teammates, even though this isn't football, for God's sakes.
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All of these so-called horrors of adulthood...
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I lost my place.
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There we go.
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All of these so-called horrors of adulthood emerge from living in
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a world where you are inextricably connected to other people to whom you must learn to listen.
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And that turns out to be great news.
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And if you can remember that those conversations about grass length
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and the weather are actually conversations about how we're going to get through and how we're going to get through together, they become not just bearable,
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but almost kind of transcendent.
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One more way that listening will be of use to you.
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Over the next few days, you're going to straggle out of this strange and wonderful place and enter a world where you will be,
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at least for a little while, manifestly weak.
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If you're lucky enough to have a job, it will likely involve fetching coffee for ungrateful bosses, or entering data, or writing press releases that no one reads.
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Some people will probably treat you as less than fully human, imagining you not to be the complex and multitudinous person you are,
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but instead as an easily replaceable cog in the clockworks of their organization.
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And all of that will be easier if you can see yourself not as the protagonist of your own heroic journey,
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but instead as a collaborator in a massive, sprawling human epic.
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I don't remember anything said at my commencement address, but I do remember Wendy McLeod's speech the day before.
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Professor McLeod, I apologize in advance for butchering your quote and for not swearing when you swore, but she said something like, you're about to be a nobody,
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and that's important because when you become a no- and that's important because when you become a somebody, if you can remember what it was like to be a nobody,
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you won't be a jerk.
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This is.. the parents are clapping.
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Looking back, I think that's about the second best piece of advice I've ever received behind only
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that given me by Professor Rogan, who once told me, and this I can quote directly, You're a good kid, but you need to learn when to stop talking.
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So I will shut up momentarily.
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And anyway, I can offer you no real advice on how to live a successful adult life, but I don't need to.
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The people you thought of during that minute of silence, they are who you want to be when you grow up.
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They have been strong for you, but also weak for you.
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They listened to you.
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They were irrationally, impossibly kind to you.
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It's not just that you wouldn't be here without them.
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You wouldn't be without them.
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If they're here today, I hope you'll take a second to thank them.
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And if they aren't, they may call later to ask you how it went.
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They may even ask what the weather was like.
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Tell them it was rainy, inexcusably cold for late May.
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and remember to ask if it is raining in their pocket of the world.
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Thank you.
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Woordenschat en spreektips bij deze les
Deze video bevat 136 zinnen en 1841 woorden om na te spreken. Het gesproken deel duurt 13:40. De spreker praat in een gelijkmatig tempo van ongeveer 135 woorden per minuut, prettig om te shadowen. 82% van de woorden hoort bij de 3.000 meest gebruikte Engelse woorden; de rest kun je beter vooraf bekijken.
Belangrijke woorden in deze video
15 woorden uit de video die het leren waard zijn, met uitspraak en betekenis:
| Woord | Uitspraak | Betekenis |
|---|---|---|
| adulthood zelfstandig naamwoord | volwassenheid | |
| grass zelfstandig naamwoord | /ɡɹɑːs/ | gras |
| silence zelfstandig naamwoord | /ˈsaɪ̯ləns/ | stilte |
| weakness zelfstandig naamwoord | /ˈwik.nɪs/ | zwakte |
| horror zelfstandig naamwoord | /ˈhɒɹ.ə/ | gruwel |
| peer zelfstandig naamwoord | /pɪɹ/ | gelijke |
| void bijvoeglijk naamwoord | /vɔɪd/ | leeg, leegte |
| lawn zelfstandig naamwoord | /lɔːn/ | gazon, grasperk |
| inevitably bijwoord | /ɪˈnɛvɪtəbli/ | onvermijdelijk |
| vast bijvoeglijk naamwoord | /væst/ | enorm |
| pocket zelfstandig naamwoord | /ˈpɑ.kɪt/ | zak |
| format zelfstandig naamwoord | /ˈfɔːɹ.mæt/ | lay-out, formaat |
| argue werkwoord | /ˈɑɹ.ɡju/ | redetwisten |
| successfully bijwoord | /səkˈsɛs.fə.li/ | met succes |
| awareness zelfstandig naamwoord | /əˈwɛɹ.nəs/ | besef, bewustzijn |
Phrasal verbs die je zult horen
| Woord | Uitspraak | Betekenis |
|---|---|---|
| end up werkwoord | belanden, terechtkomen | |
| grow up werkwoord | opgroeien | |
| leave behind werkwoord | achterlaten | |
| look back werkwoord | achterom kijken, terugkijken | |
| shut up | /ʃʌt ʌp/ | hou je kop, kop dicht |
Grammatica in deze video
De structuren die de spreker het meest gebruikt, met de exacte woorden uit de video:
| Structuur | In de video |
|---|---|
| Present perfect continuous have/has been + -ing — iets dat eerder begon en nog bezig is | you've been investigating · you've been doing · you've been listening |
| Voorwaardelijke zinnen if + zin, will/would + werkwoord — een voorwaarde en het gevolg | If you don't mind, I'd like · If they're here today, I hope you'll take |
| Present perfect have/has + voltooid deelwoord — iets uit het verleden dat nu nog telt | I've forgotten · you've studied · you've spent |
| Lijdende vorm be + voltooid deelwoord — het gaat om wat er gebeurt, niet om wie het doet | is not conserved · be dreaded |
Uitspraak om op te letten
De spreker gebruikt 45 samentrekkingen en verkorte vormen, zoals you're, you've, don't. Spreek ze kort uit, zoals je ze hoort.
- De “th”-klanken: smooth /smuːð/, grandmother /ˈɡɹæn(d)ˌmʌðɚ/, anthropology /ˌænθɹəˈpɑləd͡ʒi/
- De klanken “sh” en “zh”: congratulations /kənˌɡɹæt͡ʃəˈleɪʃ(ə)nz/, consciousness /ˈkɑnʃəsnəs/, hash /ˈhæʃ/, irrationally /ɪəˈɹæ.ʃə.nə.li/, redaction /ɹəˈdækʃən/
- Lange woorden — let op de klemtoon: electricity /ɪˌlɛkˈtɹɪsɪti/, inevitably /ɪˈnɛvɪtəbli/, successfully /səkˈsɛs.fə.li/, economics /ˌiːkəˈnɒmɪks/, congratulations /kənˌɡɹæt͡ʃəˈleɪʃ(ə)nz/
Zo oefen je met deze video
- Luister de hele video één keer zonder te spreken en noteer de woorden die je niet kent.
- Spreek zin voor zin na op normale snelheid en herhaal elke zin tot je ritme gelijk is aan dat van de spreker.
- Neem jezelf op en vergelijk met het origineel; let daarbij op woorden als adulthood, grass, silence.
Wat is de Shadowing-techniek?
Shadowing is een wetenschappelijk onderbouwde taalleermethode die oorspronkelijk is ontwikkeld voor professionele tolkentraining en gepopulariseerd door polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. De methode is eenvoudig maar krachtig: je luistert naar native Engelse audio en herhaalt het onmiddellijk hardop — als een schaduw die de spreker volgt met slechts 1–2 seconden vertraging. In tegenstelling tot passief luisteren of grammaticadrills, dwingt shadowing je hersenen en mondspieren om echte spraakpatronen tegelijkertijd te verwerken en te reproduceren. Onderzoek toont aan dat het de uitspraaknauwkeurigheid, intonatie, ritme, verbonden spraak, luisterbegrip en spreekvaardigheid aanzienlijk verbetert — waardoor het een van de meest effectieve methoden is voor IELTS Speaking-voorbereiding en echte Engelse communicatie.