Shadowing Practice: The Most Complex Language in the World - Learn English Speaking with Video
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You are cells.
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Your muscles, organs, skin and hair.
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They are in your blood and in your bones.
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Cells are biological robots.
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They don't want anything.
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They don't feel anything.
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They are never sad or happy.
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They just are.
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Right here.
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Right now.
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They're as conscious as a stone or a chair or a neutron star.
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Cells just follow their programming that's been evolving and changing for billions of years, molded by natural selection.
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They are impossible machines and yet here they are driven entirely by the fundamental forces of the universe.
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The smallest unit of life right at the border where physics becomes biology.
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Sometimes to get a truer understanding of how amazing something is, you need to hold your breath and dive in really deep.
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So what are cells and how do they work?
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look around the room you're sitting in right now let's fill
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it top to bottom with trillions of grains of sand billions
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of grains of rice hundreds of thousands of grapes a few thousand apples
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and a dozen watermelons this is what the inside of your
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cells looks like in terms of numbers they're mostly filled up
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with water molecules the grains of sand water gives the cells insides the consistency of soft jelly
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and enables other things to move around easily.
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Almost all the other things, the rice and fruit, are proteins.
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Several billion in total, more than 10 ,000 different kinds, depending on the function of the cell.
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Your cells are basically protein robots, as is all life really.
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In fact, all solid, non -fat parts of your body are mostly made out of protein, even your bones.
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Proteins are dead things that make life happen.
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How does this work?
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The language of life.
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Cells need to do many very hard things to stay alive.
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Get food in and waste out, grow and build structures, escape danger or react to stimuli, make copies of themselves and so on.
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All of this is done by speaking the language of life.
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And the words of this language are proteins.
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This is how this language works in a nutshell.
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It all begins with amino acids, tiny organic molecules.
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They're the alphabet of the language of life.
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There are 21 different ones, like different letters.
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Amino acid A, amino acid B, C, and so on.
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If you put around 50 amino acids together, they form a protein, which in the language of life is a word.
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And if you put many of these protein words together, you get a sentence, called a biological pathway.
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Let's oversimplify a bit and say, for example, your cell needs to break down sugar with the language of life.
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It may take the amino acids for the letters B, R, E, A and K to form the protein word break.
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Then combine this word with other protein words to form a biological pathway sentence that means break down sugar.
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In reality, this language of life is so complex that it defies imagination.
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You need to know about 8 ,000 words to speak a human language really well.
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But in the language of life, there are an estimated 20 ,000.
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And while the average English word has five letters, human proteins have an average of 375 amino acids.
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The longest protein has more than 30 ,000.
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And cells need to execute thousands of steps at any moment.
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If they ever stop speaking the language of life, they die.
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Okay, but how do mindless cells speak a language this complex?
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Let's dive a little deeper.
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There are 21 amino acids that can be combined to form proteins.
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And proteins are made up of dozens to hundreds to thousands of amino acids.
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For the average protein length of a human cell of 375 amino acids,
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you get a stunning 6 .8 x 10 to the power of 495 possible proteins your cells can make a quadrillion googol,
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googol, googol, googol times more than there are atoms in the universe.
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Most of these possible proteins are useless.
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Just like with human language, most random letter combinations are just gibberish.
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So you need to know which words, which proteins, make up a language to speak it properly.
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And this is the job of your DNA, a long sequence of instructions.
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If you untangled a cell's DNA, it would be about 2 meters long.
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All of your body's DNA combined into one long string would reach to the sun and back over 20 times.
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Around 1 % of your DNA is made up of genes, which are basically protein dictionaries that contain all the words of the language of life your cells speak.
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But genes are also the building manuals for all the proteins your cells need to function.
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The rest of your DNA is probably not useless, but basically like a set of rules.
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It's like the book of grammar of the language of life.
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Which proteins need to be built at which time?
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How many of them do you need?
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Which protein words go together and why?
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Okay, letters, words, sentences, dictionary and grammar.
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But of course, this is all just a metaphor for something mind -numbingly complex.
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Let's dive a little deeper to catch a glimpse of reality.
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How dead proteins make life Now that we have some basic principles, we have a chance to understand how dead things make life together.
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And for that, we need a fundamental force of the universe, electromagnetism.
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The elementary particles that make up atoms which make up amino acids have different charges that attract or repel each other.
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The 21 different amino acids all have slightly different charges.
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Some are more negative, others more positive.
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When your cells build proteins, they put different amino acids together in chains, basically long strings.
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Now, because of the different charges of the amino acids used, these strings begin to fold in on themselves.
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This folding process is so complex that we still haven't completely understood how exactly it works.
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But in a nutshell, 1D strings become 3D structures.
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Proteins are basically 3D puzzle pieces with a very specific shape.
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In the world of proteins, shape is everything.
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Because its 3D shape determines which areas of a protein are charged in which way, and this determines how it can interact with other proteins.
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All of these differently charged puzzle pieces can snap together or repeat each other.
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When they snap together, their charge changes, which can make them change their shape, which then makes them a new protein, a new tool that can do new things.
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This is what makes proteins so incredibly powerful.
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You can do basically everything with them.
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They can snap together like Lego pieces to build complex structures.
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They can dismantle things.
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They can form complex micromachines that use energy to do work.
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And maybe most stunningly, they can convey information.
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Let's say there's a toxic chemical entering your cell.
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There may be a protein shaped to snap to that toxin.
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If the protein finds that toxin, it changes its shape.
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With that new shape, it can now snap into a different protein that changes its shape again.
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This new protein activates a micromachine
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that directly binds to your DNA to order the production of a special protein which acts as an antidote to the toxin.
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This cascade of interaction is the pathway we spoke about earlier, a sentence in the language of life.
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So, without a single active thought, proteins have fixed a problem and saved the cell's life.
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In reality, these pathways can have dozens to hundreds of steps.
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How life operates is so incredibly awe -inducing.
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Somehow, mind -numbingly complex interactions between dumb and dead proteins create a less dumb and less dead cell.
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Somewhere around here, life happens.
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But we still don't know what life is.
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How dumb things are smart together.
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We need another analogy, so let's talk about ants.
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Ants share a fundamental property with cells.
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They are really dumb.
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A single ant will just stumble around uselessly.
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But if you put a lot of ants together, they exchange information and do amazing things.
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Constructing complex structures, organizing themselves, caring for broods or attacking enemies.
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Although dumb individually, together they become something greater.
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This phenomenon occurs all over nature and is called emergence.
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It's the observation that entities have properties and abilities that their parts do not have.
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This is how everything in your body works.
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Your cells are bags of proteins guided by chemistry.
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But together, these proteins form a living being that can do a lot of really sophisticated things.
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Cells are mindless robots that are even dumber than ants.
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But many of them acting together form specialized tissue and organ systems, from muscles that make your heart beat to brain cells that make you think.
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if you look outside at the incredible dimension
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and scale of space a place where forever is a real
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thing it's almost impossible not to feel a bit small not special but
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if you look inside into what you really are you just
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discover almost indescribable complexity the beautiful language of life almost everything in the universe reveals hidden layers of complexity
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if you look closer and if you have the knowledge to understand it.
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To help you with that, we've created a series of lessons take your scientific knowledge to the next level.
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Made in collaboration with our friends at Brilliant .org, these lessons give you a deeper understanding of the topics from our most popular videos,
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from rabies and mammalian metabolism to climate science and black holes.
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Brilliant is an interactive learning tool that makes maths, science and computer science accessible with a hands -on approach.
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Because we know that to really learn something, you've got to do it.
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Think of each lesson as a one -on -one tutoring version of a Kurzgesagt video.
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Brilliant has thousands of other lessons to explore as well, from maths -based topics like algebra and probability to the concepts behind algorithms and artificial intelligence.
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If you liked the biology discussed in this video, Brilliant's course on computational biology teaches you many important key concepts.
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You'll learn about DNA instructions, RNA, and protein folding, then learn how those concepts are used to tackle modern challenges like genome sequencing
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and human health to get hands -on with kutzksark lessons
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and explore everything brilliant has to offer you can start your
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free 30 -day trial by signing up at brilliant .org nutshell
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there's even an extra perk for kutzksark viewers the first 200
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people to use the link get 20 off an annual membership
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once their trial ends we love seeing how the gears interlock
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with our search brilliant gives you the tools to understand how everything fits together.
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The story of the human cell continues with our human cell poster, a visually stunning deep dive into the intricate workings of the smallest unit of life.
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Like all the sciency things in our shop, it's designed with love and produced with care by us here at Kurzgesagt.
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This C1 speaking lesson is built on the video “The Most Complex Language in the World”. The speaker keeps coming back to these words: protein, cell, language, amino, acid. This video has 146 sentences and 1814 words to shadow. The speech runs for 11:40. The speaker talks at a natural 156 words per minute, close to everyday conversation. Only 80% 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 |
|---|---|---|
| amino noun | /əˈminoʊ/ | The amine functional group. |
| pathway noun | /ˈpæθˌweɪ/ | A footpath or other path or track. |
| ant noun | /ænt/ | Any of various insects in the family Formicidae in the order Hymenoptera, typically living in large colonies composed almost entirely of flightless females. |
| nutshell noun | /ˈnʌt.ʃɛl/ | The shell that surrounds the kernel of a nut. |
| toxin noun | /ˈtɑksɪn/ | A toxic substance, specifically a poison produced by the biological processes of organisms. |
| fold verb | /ˈfəʊld/ | To bend (any thin material, such as paper) over so that it comes in contact with itself. |
| micromachine noun | Any machine or similar device having a dimension of the order of a micrometre; used especially of integrated circuits | |
| mindless adjective | /maɪnd.ləs/ | Showing a lack of forethought or sense. |
| numbingly adverb | In a way or to an extent that numbs | |
| stun verb | /stʌn/ | To incapacitate; especially by inducing disorientation or unconsciousness. |
| molecule noun | /ˈmɑ.lɪ.kjul/ | The smallest particle of a specific element or compound that retains the chemical properties of that element or compound; two or more atoms held together by… |
| atom noun | /ˈætəm/ | The smallest possible amount of matter which still retains its identity as a chemical element, now known to consist of a nucleus surrounded by electrons. |
| puzzle noun | /ˈpʌzəl/ | The state of feeling confused or mystified because one cannot understand a complicated matter, a problem, etc.; bewilderment, confusion; (countable) often in… |
| dictionary noun | /ˈdɪk.ʃəˌnɛ.ɹi/ | A reference work listing words or names from one or more languages, usually ordered alphabetically, explaining each word's meanings or senses, oftentimes also… |
| complexity noun | /kəmˈplɛk.sɪ.ti/ | The state of being complex; intricacy; entanglement. |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| make up verb | /ˌmeɪk ˈʌp/ | To constitute, to compose. |
| break down verb | To stop functioning. | |
| fill up verb | To make (something) completely full. | |
| fit together verb | To put the appropriate parts of (something) into a whole; to combine pieces that go together to create a finished object. | |
| get off verb | To move from being on top of (something) to not being on top of it. | |
| go together verb | To be in a relationship. | |
| look around verb | To inspect a building or area. | |
| make out of verb | To construct from; to create (something) using (a material or substance). |
Sentences worth repeating
Short, complete lines from the video that you can reuse in everyday conversation:
- Let's dive a little deeper.
- How many of them do you need?
- Let's say there's a toxic chemical entering your cell.
- We need another analogy, so let's talk about ants.
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 | are driven · is done · can be combined |
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | have fixed · we've created |
| Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing | genes, which are · changes, which can |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 11 contractions and reduced forms, such as don't, they're, haven't. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “th” sounds: pathway /ˈpæθˌweɪ/, algorithm /ˈælɡəɹɪðm̩/
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: nutshell /ˈnʌt.ʃɛl/, dictionary /ˈdɪk.ʃəˌnɛ.ɹi/, gibberish /ˈd͡ʒɪ.bə.ɹɪʃ/, specialize /ˈspɛʃəˌlaɪz/, computational /ˌkɑmpjʊˈteɪʃənəl/
- Long words — get the stress right: dictionary /ˈdɪk.ʃəˌnɛ.ɹi/, complexity /kəmˈplɛk.sɪ.ti/, electromagnetism /ɪˌlɛk.tɹəʊˈmæɡ.nəˌtɪzm̩/, indescribable /ɪndɪˈskɹaɪbəbl̩/, computational /ˌkɑmpjʊˈteɪʃənəl/
How to practise with this video
- Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
- Start at 0.75× speed, shadow it sentence by sentence, then go back to normal speed once it feels easy.
- Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like amino, pathway, ant.
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.