Shadowing Practice: Cambridge Ielts 16 Reading test 3 Passage 2 - Learn English Speaking with Video
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Passage 2.
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Climate change reveals ancient artifacts in Norway's glaciers.
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A well above the treeline in Norway's highest mountains, ancient fields of ice are shrinking as Earth's climate warms.
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As the ice has vanished, it has been giving up the treasures it has preserved in cold storage for the last 6,000 years,
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items such as ancient arrows and skis from Viking Age traders.
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And those artifacts have provided archaeologists with some surprising insights into how ancient Norwegians made their livings.
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The organic materials like textiles and hides are relatively rare finds at archaeological sites.
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This is because unless they're protected from the microorganisms that cause decay, they tend not to last long.
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Extreme cold is one reliable way to keep artifacts relatively fresh for a few thousand years,
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but once thawed out, these materials experience degradation relatively swiftly.
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With climate change shrinking ice cover around the world, glacial archaeologists need to race the clock to find newly revealed artifacts,
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preserve them, and study them.
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If something fragile dries and is windblown it might very soon be lost to science,
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or an arrow might be exposed and then covered again by the next snow and remain well preserved.
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The unpredictability means that glacial archaeologists have to be systematic in their approach to fieldwork.
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See over a nine-year period, a team of archaeologists, which included Lars Piro of Oplund County Council,
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Norway, and James Barrett of the MacDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, surveyed patches of ice in Oplund,
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an area of south-central Norway that is home to some of the country's highest mountains.
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Reindeer once congregated on these icy patches in the later summer months to escape biting insects, and from the late Stone Age, hunters followed.
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In addition, trade routes threaded through the mountain passes of Oplund, linking settlements in Norway to the rest of Europe.
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The slow but steady movement of glaciers tends to destroy anything at their bases,
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so the team focused on stationary patches of ice, mostly above 1,400 meters.
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That ice is found amid fields of frost-weathered boulders, fallen rocks, and exposed bedrock that for nine months of the year is buried beneath snow.
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Fieldwork is hard work, hiking with all our equipment, often camping on permafrost, but very rewarding.
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You're rescuing the archaeology, bringing the melting ice to wider attention,
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discovering a unique environmental history and really connecting with the natural environment, says Barrett.
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Viking Age, a period of European history from around 700C to around 1050C when Scandinavian Vikings migrated throughout Europe,
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by means of trade and warfare the Stone Age, a period in early history that began about 3.4 million years ago.
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D. At the edges of the contracting ice patches, archaeologists found more than 2,000 artifacts,
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which formed a material record that ran from 4,000 BC to the beginnings of of the Renaissance in the 14th century.
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Many of the artifacts are associated with hunting.
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Hunters would have easily misplaced arrows and they often discarded broken bows rather than take them all the way home.
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Other items could have been used by hunters traversing the high mountain passes of Oplund, or purpose items like tools, skis, and horse tack.
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E. Barrett's team radiocarbon dated 153 of the artifacts
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and compared those dates to the timing of major environmental changes in the region such as periods of cooling
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or warming and major social and economic shifts such as the growth of farming settlements
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and the spread of international trade networks leading up to the viking age they found
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that some periods had produced lots of artifacts which indicates
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that people had been pretty active in the mountains during those times
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but there were few or no signs of activity during other periods.
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F. What was surprising, according to Barrett, was the timing of these periods.
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Oplund's mountains present daunting terrain and in periods of extreme cold,
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glaciers could block the higher mountain passes and make travel in the upper reaches of the mountains extremely difficult.
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Archaeologists assumed people would stick to lower elevations during a time like the late antique Little Ice Age,
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a short period of deeper than usual cold from about 536 to 600 CE.
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But it turned out that hunters kept regularly venturing into the mountains even when the climate turned cold,
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based on the amount of stuff they had apparently dropped there.
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Remarkably, though, the finds from the ice may have continued through this period,
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perhaps suggesting that the importance of mountain hunting increased to supplement failing agricultural harvests in times of low temperatures, says Barrett.
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A colder turn in the Scandinavian climate would likely have meant widespread crop failures, so more people would have depended on hunting to make up for those losses.
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Gee, many of the artifacts Barrett's team recovered date from the beginning of the Viking age, the 700s through to the 900s CE.
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Trade networks connecting Scandinavia with Europe, and the Middle East were expanding around this time.
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Although we usually think of ships when we think of Scandinavian expansion, these recent discoveries show that plenty of goods traveled on overland routes,
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like the mountain passes of Oplund.
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And growing Norwegian towns, along with export markets, would have created a booming demand for hives to fight off the cold,
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as well as antlers to make useful things like cones.
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Business must have been good for hunters.
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H Norway's mountains are probably still hiding a lot of history, and prehistory, in remote ice patches.
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When Barrett's team looked at the dates for their sample of 153 artifacts,
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they noticed a with almost no artifacts from about 3800 to 2200 BCE.
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In fact, archaeological finds from that period are rare all over Norway.
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The researchers say that could be because many of those artifacts have already disintegrated or are still frozen in the ice.
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That means archaeologists could be extracting some of those artifacts from retreating ice in years to come.
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Passage 3.
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This C1 speaking lesson is built on the video “Cambridge Ielts 16 Reading test 3 Passage 2”. The speaker keeps coming back to these words: artifacts, ice, mountain, period, archaeologists. This video has 64 sentences and 975 words to shadow. The speech runs for 6:55. The speaker talks at a steady 141 words per minute, a comfortable pace for shadowing. Only 74% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English, so the vocabulary is demanding.
Key vocabulary in this video
The 15 most advanced words in the video, with pronunciation and meaning:
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| artifact noun | /ˈɑɹtɪfækt/ | An object made or shaped by human hand or labor. |
| archaeologist noun | /ˌɑɹ.kiˈɑ.lə.d͡ʒɪst/ | Someone who studies or practises archaeology. |
| glacier noun | /ˈɡleɪ.ʃɚ/ | A large body of ice which flows under its own mass, usually downhill. |
| archaeological adjective | Relating to the science or research of archaeology. | |
| fieldwork noun | /ˈfiːldwɜːk/ | Work done out in the fields as opposed to that done elsewhere on the farm (e.g., barn, house, outbuildings, office). |
| glacial adjective | /ˈɡleɪ.sɪəl/ | Of, or relating to glaciers. |
| expose verb | /ɪkˈspoʊz/ | To reveal; to uncover; to make visible; to bring to light. |
| antler noun | /ˈænt.lɚ/ | A deciduous branching and bony structure on the head of deer (Cervidae), normally in pairs, grown and shed each year. |
| bedrock noun | /ˈbɛdˌɹɑk/ | The solid rock found at some depth below the ground surface. |
| congregate verb | /ˈkɒŋɡɹəɡeɪt/ | To collect into an assembly or assemblage; to bring into one place, or into a united body. |
| daunting adjective | /ˈdɔntɪŋ/ | Discouraging; inspiring fear. |
| discard verb | /dɪsˈkɑɹd/ | To throw away, to reject. |
| disintegrate verb | /dɪsˈɪntɪɡɹeɪt/ | To undo the integrity of; to break into parts. |
| microorganism noun | /ˌmaɪ.kɹoʊˈɔɹ.ɡəˌnɪz.m̩/ | An organism that is too small to be seen by the unaided eye; especially, a single-celled organism, such as a bacterium. |
| migrate verb | /maɪˈɡɹeɪt/ | To relocate periodically from one region to another, usually according to the seasons. |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Meaning |
|---|---|
| fight off verb | To succeed in defeating a challenge, or an attack. |
| give up verb | To surrender (someone or something); to inform on (someone). |
| lead up to verb | To set in motion; to act as a causal or preparatory event or sequence of events. |
| see over verb | To inspect something fully. |
| turn out verb | To end up; to result. |
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | be lost · might be exposed · is found |
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | has vanished · have provided · have meant |
Pronunciation to watch
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: glacier /ˈɡleɪ.ʃɚ/, vanish /ˈvænɪʃ/, degradation /ˌdɛɡɹəˈdeɪʃən/, stationary /ˈsteɪʃəˌnɛɹi/, elevation /ˌɛlɪˈveɪʃn̩/
- Long words — get the stress right: archaeologist /ˌɑɹ.kiˈɑ.lə.d͡ʒɪst/, disintegrate /dɪsˈɪntɪɡɹeɪt/, microorganism /ˌmaɪ.kɹoʊˈɔɹ.ɡəˌnɪz.m̩/, archaeology /ˌɑɹ.kiˈɑ.lə.d͡ʒi/, degradation /ˌdɛɡɹəˈdeɪʃən/
How to practise with this video
- Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
- Shadow it sentence by sentence at normal speed, repeating each one until your rhythm matches the speaker.
- Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like artifact, archaeologist, glacier.
What is the Shadowing Technique?
Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.