Практика Shadowing: Exercise Makes You Smarter - This Is Why (animated) - Изучайте разговорный английский с YouTube
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Back when I was in still in school there was this stereotype going around.
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Back when I was in still in school there was this stereotype going around.
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Kids who were nerdy and never did any kind of sports were considered the most intelligent and bright.
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The jocks who were sporty and fit, were often branded as simple-minded and empty-headed.
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So by following this stereotype you had two groups: Smart and weak.
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Dumb and fit.
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However in the recent years, there's a new stereotype that's gained popularity: A smart jock.
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An individual who is both intellectually gifted and is physically fit.
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Did they win the genetic lottery or is it possible that exercise could make you smarter?
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First we need to take a look back in the past before we can draw any conclusions.
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Not that long ago, there was this prevailing theory that we had a fixed amount of brain cells.
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You were either born smart, with a big brain, or you weren't.
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And once we became adults our brains were supposed to stop creating new neurons, and we could only lose neurons as we got older.
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Saying the brain could grow and form new brain cells, got you ridiculed and made fun of by the scientific community.
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However in the mid 90s some scientists were looking for a way to prevent Alzheimer's disease.
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For those that don't know, Alzheimer's is the most common cause of dementia, a general term for memory loss and other cognitive abilities.
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It's identified by a loss of neurons in certain brain regions.
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To put it simply, the disease shrinks your brain.
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Over the 4 year period, the scientists found 3 factors or 3 lifestyle changes, that actually helped prevent the cognitive decline in Alzheimer's disease.
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The first factor was continuous learning and education.
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Things like reading books and learning more about the world around us, fall in this category.
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The second was self efficacy and mindset.
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Basically an individual’s belief in their innate ability to do things well and achieve their goals.
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But third and last, was physical exercise.
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The first two factors weren't so surprising, but the third one was.
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How could exercise be the most potent lifestyle change you could make to keep your brain going?
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As far as we knew, exercise didn't act on the brain.
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One of the scientists of the group, Carl Cotman, went back to his lab and decided to study what's going on.
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So he got a bunch of mice and had them run on a running wheel from 7 to 14 days.
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But it wasn't all fun and games for the mice, as their brains were eventually dissected.
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He looked at their brains and the cortex, which is the top part of the brain, was thicker.
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And there was one particular area called the hippocampus which was bigger, when compared to the mice that didn't run on the wheel.
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The brain's cortex is where our long term memories are stored.
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And the hippocampus is like a center for learning and short term memory.
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So Carl found the answer he was looking for.
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Exercise was making our brains grow new cells and neurons.
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This is why it was preventing brain's deterioration and cognitive decline.
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Carl's findings paved a way for a whole new research field in science, by showing the world that the brain is astonishingly flexible, able to be retrained and reprogrammed.
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Like a muscle, it responds to use, adapting to new demands and conditions.
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It also withers without use.
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So it's either "use it, or lose it".
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However that doesn't quite explain why exercise is making our brains grow new neurons.
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Most people would consider "using your brain" as doing something creative or logical, like writing a book or solving a puzzle.
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But that's not really what the brain's main function is.
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The only reason why humans have such big brains is for one purpose, and that purpose only.
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And the reason is to perform adaptable complex movements.
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Simply put, we have a brain made to move.
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As pointed out by a neurophysiologist Rodolfo LLinas, only a mobile creature needs a brain.
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To illustrate this, he used an example of a tiny jellyfish like animal, called a sea squirt.
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Born with a simple spinal cord and a three hundred neuron brain, the sea squirt moves around in the ocean until it finds a coral rock, where it will spend the rest of its life.
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However once safely attached, the sea squirt simply digest its own brain for extra energy.
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For most of it's life, it looks much more like a plant than an animal, and since it's not moving anymore, it has no more use for a brain.
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When we bring the word "exercise" to mind, we might think of someone trying get it in shape or becoming buff.
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However today we know that exercise has a much bigger effect on our brain, than on our body.
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Physical activity activates most of your brain regions simultaneously, because like we just said, we need a brain to move.
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Conditioning the heart and building muscle are essentially side effects.
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But the most profound effect exercise has on our brain, is that it improves our learning ability.
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We mentioned earlier that the mice that ran on the running wheel had a bigger hippocampus, which is the brain's center for memory and learning.
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The reason it was bigger is because when we exercise, we raise our levels of BDNF.
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BDNF or brain derived neurotrophic factor is a powerful protein that stimulates the production of new brain cells and strengthens existing ones.
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It's found in the hippocampus, cortex, and basal forebrain.
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All these brain areas are vital to learning, memory, and higher thinking.
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BDNF can be compared to a plant fertilizer.
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Plants need water, sun and soil to grow.
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However most soil doesn't provide the essential nutrients required for optimal plant growth.
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This is why plant fertilizer is added.
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Just like a plant fertilizer supports plant growth, BDNF acts as a brain fertilizer.
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BDNF nourishes brain cells and makes them grow new synapses.
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A study in 2013 showed that just 20 to 40 minutes of exercise increased BDNF in the blood by 32%.
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This ties closely to the German study, where they found that people learn vocabulary words 20% faster, after physical activities.
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And the rate of learning is directly correlated with the levels of BDNF.
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To put it simply, the higher our levels of BDNF are, the easier it is to learn new things.
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And if you've been paying any attention right now, you know what gives a significant boost of BDNF.
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Which brings out a more interesting question; is there a correlation between fitness and academics?
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Only a few researchers have tackled this question.
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However a study from Virginia Tech showed that cutting gym class and devoting more time to math, science and reading, did not improve test scores. as many assume it would.
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Cutting away exercise and spending more time behind the books could actually decrease your test results.
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Over the past few years the California Department of Education has consistently shown that students with higher fitness scores also have higher test scores.
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In 2001 study, kids who were fit, scored twice as well on academic tests as those who were unfit.
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Body mass index and aerobic fitness were the most significant contributors.
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This means that if you want to get better grades, you might want to start by lacing up your running shoes, before hitting the books.
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There's a school in Naperville Illinois that took full advantage of this.
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Over the 20 year period, they evolved their PE program to one of the best in the world.
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The program was started in response to research which linked exercise to increased brain function.
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As a result, they have turned 19,000 students in Naperville District 203, into one of the fittest in the nation.
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Only 3% of them were overweight, without a single obese child.
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This was at a time when 33% of America's kids were overweight, with this number increasing to 37% over the past years, and still no sign of stopping.
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What's more interesting is that the Naperville program has also turned those students into some of the smartest in the nation.
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In 1999 Naperville's students took an international test called TIMSS, which evaluates knowledge of math and science of different countries.
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Almost every year the Asian countries score the highest, while United States is usually in the mid teens, but Napperville is an exception.
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The students took the test as a country, to see how they would perform, and they finished sixth in math and first in science.
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Sixth and first in the world, as a school.
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Wow. Not only that, but 97 percent of the 8th graders took the test, so it's not only the top students who were picked for it.
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How did they do it?
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As I mentioned they were the fittest school in the nation.
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The key word here is fit.
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Fit doesn't mean you're skinny.
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The benefits of exercise don't kick in with your shape and size, but it has a lot to do with what you're doing.
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It's much better to be overweight, but active daily, than being skinny and inactive.
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Like I said, building muscle or losing weight are essentially side effects that will come over time.
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When students from Naperville go for a mile run, they are more prepared to learn in their other classes.
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Thanks to exercise, their focus and mood are improved and they feel more motivated and less tense in school.
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That's why their early morning PE program is called "Learning Readiness" class.
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Physical activity primes the brain for learning and if we look at it from an evolutionary standpoint, it makes perfect sense why.
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Often we forget that humans evolved as hunter gatherers.
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It's only in the last few centuries that our lives have become more sedentary.
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However, evolution doesn't work that fast, and today we still have the same brains as our ancestors.
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As little as 10,000 years ago we were still hunting and gathering, and we moved anywhere from 10 to 14 miles every single day.
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We were foraging for food, constantly moving from place to place, looking for a new shelter.
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If you weren't fit enough to run, climb or swim, you were removed from the gene pool.
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As far as our brains are concerned, physical activity counts as a novel experience.
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Whenever we were moving, it meant something important was happening.
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We had to escape from a predator or remember the path we took so we didn't get lost.
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However when we were resting, it meant nothing important was going on.
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We still have this ancient mechanism, so as far as our brains are concerned, if we're not moving, there's no reason to learn or remember anything.
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So what kind of physical activity should you do to reap the most benefits?
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The answer is high intensity aerobic exercise.
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Going to the gym and lifting weights every 10 minutes, like many powerlifters do, doesn't seem to have such a powerful impact, as high intensity exercise does.
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Powerlifting still benefits the brain, don't get me wrong.
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However if you want to get the most out of it, you need to get your heart rate to at least 80% of its maximum beats per minute.
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Some of the best activities are running or cycling.
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But it's even better if the activity involves some complex motor movements, and it's not just putting one foot after the other.
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Good examples are tennis and dancing.
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Optimal daily dose of exercise seems to be 20 to 40 minutes in the morning.
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For some people the benefits last for the whole day, but for the majority they seem to last for about 2-4 hours.
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This is why it might be a better idea to break it down in to smaller segments.
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So let's say you do 20 minutes of your core exercise in the morning and then exercise 2 times for 5 minutes throughout the day.
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This way you can extend the benefits.
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If you haven't been active for a while, it's better to slowly build up to those times.
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30 minutes is just a recommendation and not a requirement.
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Even just walking for 30 minutes could have a powerful effect.
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It's up to you to find your optimal dose, depending on your schedule and personal needs.
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So to answer the question, can exercise make you smarter?
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Going for a run sadly won't turn you into a genius.
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But it will prime your state of mind and at the cellular level, improve the brain's potential to log and process information.
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You will be able to learn things faster and more efficiently.
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However it's up to you to put yourself in a situation where you're actually learning something.
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If you go exercise and then right after go sit on a couch while watching TV series, you're not learning anything of value.
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But if you put your mind to it and try learning something new, whether it's a new skill or just studying for the test, you will find that it's much easier to do so.
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By knowing more about the world around you and how things work, you could say that, yes, you've become smarter.
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We all have the ability to boost our brainpower and all we need to do is lace up our running shoes.
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Thanks for watching.
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I hope this video made you better than yesterday.
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Об этом уроке
В этом уроке вы узнаете о влиянии физической активности на развитие мозга и повышение интеллектуальных способностей. Мы рассмотрим, как упражнения способствуют не только физическому, но и умственному росту, а также выделим ключевые аспекты, о которых говорят в видео. Математики и ученые давно спорят о том, может ли физическая активность улучшить когнитивные функции, и мы разберем это на примере установки ученых, которые нашли связь между движением и ростом нейронов в мозге.
Ключевая лексика и фразы
- Упражнения - physical exercise
- Интеллектуальные способности - intellectual abilities
- Когнитивное снижение - cognitive decline
- Нейроны - neurons
- Гиппокамп - hippocampus
- Долговременная память - long-term memory
- Адаптивные движения - adaptable movements
- Когнитивное развитие - cognitive development
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Shadowing — это научно обоснованная техника изучения языка, изначально разработанная для подготовки профессиональных переводчиков и популяризированная полиглотом доктором Александром Аргуэльесом. Метод прост, но эффективен: вы слушаете аудио на английском от носителей языка и немедленно повторяете вслух — как тень, следующая за говорящим с задержкой в 1–2 секунды. В отличие от пассивного прослушивания или грамматических упражнений, Shadowing заставляет мозг и мышцы рта одновременно обрабатывать и воспроизводить реальные речевые паттерны. Исследования показывают, что это значительно улучшает точность произношения, интонацию, ритм, связную речь, понимание на слух и беглость речи — что делает его одним из самых эффективных методов для подготовки к IELTS Speaking и реального общения на английском.
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