Shadowing Practice: Cambridge IELTS 17 Test 4 Reading passage 1 - Learn English Speaking with Video

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Bats to the Rescue How Madagascar's bats are helping to save the rainforest.
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There are few places in the world where relations between agriculture and conservation are more strained.
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Madagascar's forests are being converted to agricultural land at a rate of 1% every year.
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Much of this destruction is fueled by the cultivation of the country's main staple crop, rice.
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And a key reason for this destruction is
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that insect pests are destroying vast quantities of what is grown by local subsistence farmers, leading them to clear forests to create new paddy fields.
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The result is devastating habitat and biodiversity loss on the island, but not all species are suffering.
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In fact, some of the island's insectivorous bats are currently thriving, and this has important implications for farmers and conservationists alike.
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Enter University of Cambridge zoologist Ricardo Rocha.
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He's passionate about conservation and bats.
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More specifically, he's interested in how bats are responding to human activity and deforestation in particular.
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Rocha's new study shows
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that several species of bats are giving Madagascar's rice farmers a vital pest control service by feasting on plagues of insects.
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And this, he believes, can ease the financial pressure on farmers to turn forest into fields.
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Bats comprise roughly one-fifth of all mammal species in Madagascar and 36 recorded bat species are native to the island,
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making it one of the most important regions for conservation of this animal group anywhere in the world.
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Co-leading an international team of scientists, Rocha found
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that several species of indigenous bats are taking advantage of habitat modification to hunt insects swarming above the country's rice fields.
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They include the Malagasy mouse-eared bat, Major's long-fingered bat, the Malagasy white-bellied free-tailed bat, and Peters' wrinkle-lipped bat.
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These winter species are providing a valuable free service to Madagascar as biological pest suppressors, says Rocha.
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We found that six species of bat are preying on rice pests, including the paddy-swarming caterpillar and grass webworm.
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The damage which these insects cause puts the island's farmers under huge financial pressure, and that encourages deforestation.
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The study, now published in the journal Agriculture, Ecosystems, and Environment, set out to investigate the feeding activity of insectivorous bats in
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the farmland bordering the Rana Mofana National Park in the southeast of the country.
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Rocha and his team used state-of-the-art ultrasonic recorders to record over a thousand bat-feeding buzzes, echolocation sequences used by bats to target their prey,
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at 54 sites, in order to identify the favorite feeding spots of the bats.
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They next used DNA barcoding techniques to analyze droppings collected from bats at the different sites.
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The recordings revealed that bat activity over rice fields was much higher than it was in continuous forest, seven times higher over rice fields which were on flat ground,
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and 16 times higher over fields on the sides of hills, leaving no doubt that the animals are preferentially foraging in these man-made ecosystems.
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The researchers suggest that the bats favor these fields
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because lack of water and nutrient runoff make these crops more susceptible to insect pest infestations.
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DNA analysis showed that all six species of bat had fed on economically important insect pests.
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While the findings indicated that rice farming benefits most from the bats, the scientists also found indications that the bats were consuming pests of other crops,
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including the black twig borer, which infests coffee plants, the sugarcane cicada, the macadamia nut borer, and the sober tabby,
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a pest of citrus fruits.
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The effectiveness of bats as pest controllers has already been proven in the USA and Catalonia, said co-author James Kemp from the University of Lisbon.
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But our study is the first to show this happening in Madagascar, where the stakes for both farmers and conservationists are so high,
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local people may have a further reason to be grateful to their bats.
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While the animal is often associated with spreading disease, Rocha and his team found evidence that Malagasy bats feed not just on crop pests,
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but also on mosquitoes, carriers of malaria, Rift Valley fever virus and elephantiasis, as well as blackflies, which spread river blindness.
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Rocha points out that the relationship is complicated.
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When food is scarce, bats become a crucial source of protein for local people.
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Even the children will hunt them.
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And as well as roosting in trees, the bats sometimes roost in buildings, but are not welcomed there because they make them unclean.
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At the same time, however, they are associated with sacred caves and their ancestors, so they can be viewed as beings between worlds,
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which makes them very significant in the culture of the people.
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And one potential problem is that while these bats are benefiting from farming, at the same time deforestation is reducing the places where they can roost,
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which could have long-term effects on their numbers.
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Rocha says, With the right help, we hope that farmers can promote this mutually beneficial relationship by installing bat houses.
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Rocha and his colleagues believe that maximizing bat populations can help to boost crop yields and promote sustainable livelihoods.
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The team is now calling for further research to quantify this contribution.
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I'm very optimistic, says Rocha.
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If we give nature a hand, we can speed up the process of regeneration.
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson

This B2 speaking lesson is built on the video “Cambridge IELTS 17 Test 4 Reading passage 1”. The speaker keeps coming back to these words: bat, pest, Rocha, species, farmers. This video has 53 sentences and 881 words to shadow. The speech runs for 5:18. The speaker talks at a natural 166 words per minute, close to everyday conversation. Only 71% 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:

WordPronunciationMeaning
pest noun/pɛst/Any destructive insect that attacks crops or livestock; an agricultural pest.
farmer noun/ˈfɑɹ.mɚ/A person who works the land and/or who keeps livestock; anyone engaged in agriculture on a farm.
insect noun/ˈɪn.sɛkt/An arthropod (in the Insecta class) characterized by six legs, up to four wings, and a chitinous exoskeleton.
crop noun/kɹɑp/A plant, grown for it, or its fruits or seeds, to be harvested as food, livestock fodder, or fuel or for any other economic purpose.
deforestation noun/dɪˌfɒɹɪsˈteɪʃən/The process of destroying a forest and replacing it with something else, especially with an agricultural system.
roost noun/ɹust/The place where a bird sleeps (usually its nest or a branch).
borer noun/ˈbɔːɹɚ/A tool used for drilling.
conservationist nounA person who maintains natural areas or protects threatened species.
insectivorous adjective/ˌɪnsɛkˈtɪv(ə)ɹəs/Feeding on insects.
swarm noun/swɔɹm/A large number of insects or other bugs (e.g. centipedes), especially when in motion or (for bees) migrating to a new colony.
paddy noun/ˈpædi/Rough or unhusked rice, either before it is milled or as a crop to be harvested.
ecosystem noun/ˈikoʊˌsɪstəm/A system formed by an ecological community and its environment that functions as a unit.
prey noun/pɹeɪ/That which is or may be seized by animals to be devoured.
habitat noun/ˈhæb.ɪ.tæt/Conditions suitable for an organism or population of organisms to live.
ancestor noun/ˈæn.sɛs.tɚ/One from whom a person is descended, whether on the father's or mother's side, at any distance of time; a progenitor; a forefather; a forebear.

Phrasal verbs you will hear

WordPronunciationMeaning
point out verbTo identify among a group of similar subjects, or in a scene where the subject might not be readily seen or noticed, with a gesture of the body.
speed up verb/spiːdˈʌp/To accelerate; to increase speed.

Pronunciation to watch

  • The “th” sounds: thrive /θɹajv/, southeast /sawˈθɪjst/
  • The “sh” and “zh” sounds: deforestation /dɪˌfɒɹɪsˈteɪʃən/, echolocation /ˌɛkoʊloʊˈkeɪʃən/, infestation /ˌɪnfɛsˈteɪ̯ʃən/, preferentially /ˈpɹɛf.ɜː(ɹ)ˌɛn.ʃə.li/, implication /ˌɪmpləˈkeɪʃən/
  • Long words — get the stress right: deforestation /dɪˌfɒɹɪsˈteɪʃən/, insectivorous /ˌɪnsɛkˈtɪv(ə)ɹəs/, ecosystem /ˈikoʊˌsɪstəm/, biodiversity /ˌbaɪoʊdəˈvɚsəti/, caterpillar /ˈkætɚˌpɪlɚ/

How to practise with this video

  1. Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
  2. Start at 0.75× speed, shadow it sentence by sentence, then go back to normal speed once it feels easy.
  3. Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like pest, farmer, insect.

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.

Shadowing technique: read the full step-by-step guide →