Shadowing Practice: J.K. Rowling Speaks at Harvard Commencement - Learn English Speaking with Video
Bir pratik modu seçin
Her mod tam ekran bir pratik odası açar.
186 cümleler
Cümleler çok kısa veya çok uzun ise, ayarlamak için Düzenle'ye tıklayın.
1
President Faust, members of the Harvard Corporation and the Board of overseers,
2
members of the faculty, proud parents, and above all, graduates.
3
The first thing I would like to say is thank you.
4
Not only has Harvard given me an extraordinary honor, but the weeks of fear
5
and nausea I have endured at the thought of giving this commencement address have made me lose weight.
6
A win-win situation.
7
Now all I have to do is take deep breaths,
8
squint at the red banners and convince myself that I am at the world's largest Gryffindor reunion.
9
Delivering a commencement address is a great responsibility, or so I thought, until I cast my mind back to my own graduation.
10
The commencement speaker that day was the distinguished British philosopher, Baroness Mary Warnock.
11
Reflecting on her speech has helped me enormously in writing this one, because it turns out that I can't remember a single word she said.
12
This liberating discovery enables me to proceed without any fear that I might inadvertently influence you to abandon promising careers in business,
13
the law or politics for the giddy delights of becoming a gay wizard.
14
You see, if all you remember in years to come is the gay wizard joke, I've come out ahead of Baroness Mary Warnock.
15
Achievable goals, the first step to self-improvement.
16
Actually, I have racked my mind and heart for what I ought to say to you today.
17
I have asked myself what I wish I had known at my own graduation,
18
and what important lessons I have learnt in the 21 years that have expired between that day and this.
19
I have come up with two answers.
20
On this wonderful day when we are gathered together to celebrate your academic success, I have decided to talk to you about the benefits of failure.
21
And as you stand on the threshold of what is sometimes called real life, I want to extol the crucial importance of imagination.
22
These may seem quixotic or paradoxical choices, but bear with me.
23
Looking back at the 21-year-old that I was at graduation is a slightly uncomfortable experience for the 42-year-old that she has become.
24
Half my lifetime ago, I was striking an uneasy balance between the ambition I had for myself
25
and what those closest to me expected of me.
26
I was convinced that the only thing I wanted to do, ever, was write novels.
27
However, my parents, both of whom came from impoverished backgrounds and neither of whom had been to college,
28
took the view that my overactive imagination was an amusing personal quirk that would never pay a mortgage or secure a pension.
29
I know the irony strikes with the force of a cartoon anvil now.
30
So they hoped that I would take a vocational degree.
31
I wanted to study English literature.
32
A compromise was reached that in retrospect satisfied nobody, and I went up to study modern languages.
33
Hardly had my parents' car round of the corner at the end of the road, then I ditched German and scuttled off down the classics corridor.
34
I cannot remember telling my parents
35
that I was studying classics they might well have found out for the first time on graduation day.
36
Of all the subjects on this planet, I think they would have been hard put to name one less useful than Greek mythology
37
when it came to securing the keys to an executive bathroom.
38
Now, I would like to make it clear in parenthesis that I do not blame my parents for their point of view.
39
There is an expiry date on blaming your parents for steering you in the wrong direction.
40
The moment you are old enough to take the wheel, responsibility lies with you.
41
What is more, I cannot criticize my parents for hoping that I would never experience poverty.
42
They had been poor themselves and I have since been poor
43
and I quite agree with them that it is not an ennobling experience.
44
Poverty entails fear and stress and sometimes depression.
45
It means a thousand petty humiliations and hardships.
46
Climbing out of poverty by your own efforts, that is something on which to pride yourself, but poverty itself is romanticized only by fools.
47
What I feared most for myself at your age was not poverty but failure.
48
At your age, in spite of a distinct lack of motivation at university where
49
I had spent far too long in the coffee bar writing stories and far too little time at lectures, I had a knack for passing examinations and
50
that for years had been the measure of success in my life and that of my peers.
51
Now I am not dull enough to suppose that that because you are young,
52
gifted, and well-educated, you have never known hardship or heartache.
53
Talent and intelligence never yet inoculated anyone against the caprice of the fates.
54
And I do not for a moment suppose that everyone here has enjoyed an existence of unruffled privilege and contentment.
55
However, the fact that you are graduating from Harvard suggests that you are not very well acquainted with failure.
56
You might be driven by a fear of failure quite as much as a desire for success.
57
Indeed, your conception of failure might not be too far removed from the average person's idea of success.
58
So high have you already flown.
59
Ultimately, we all have to decide for ourselves what constitutes failure.
60
but the world is quite eager to give you a set of criteria if you let it.
61
So I think it fair to say that by any conventional measure, a mere seven years after my graduation day,
62
I had failed on an epic scale.
63
An exceptionally short-lived marriage had imploded, and I was jobless, a lone parent,
64
and as poor as it is possible to be in modern Britain without being homeless.
65
The fears that my parents had had for me, and that I had had for myself, had both come to pass.
66
And by every usual standard, I was the biggest failure I knew.
67
Now I'm not going to stand here and tell you that failure is fun.
68
That period of my life was a dark one.
69
And I had no idea
70
that there was going to be what the press has since represented as a kind of fairytale resolution.
71
I had no idea then how far the tunnel extended, and for a long time any light at the end of it was a hope rather than a reality.
72
So why do I talk about the benefits of failure?
73
Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential.
74
I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was,
75
and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me.
76
Had I really succeeded at anything else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one arena where I believed I truly belonged.
77
I was set free because my greatest fear had been realised, and I was still alive, and I still had a daughter whom I adored,
78
and I had an old typewriter and a big idea.
79
And so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.
80
You might never fail on the scale I did, but some failure in life is inevitable.
81
It is impossible to live without failing at something unless you live
82
so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all, in which case you fail by default.
83
Failure gave me an inner security that I had never attained by passing examinations.
84
Failure taught me things about myself that I could have learned no other way.
85
I discovered that I had a strong will and more discipline than I had suspected.
86
I also found out that I had friends whose value was truly above the price of rubies.
87
The knowledge that you who have emerged wiser and stronger from setbacks means that you are, ever after, secure in your ability to survive.
88
You will never truly know yourself or the strength of your relationships until both have been tested by adversity.
89
Such knowledge is a true gift for all that it is painfully won
90
and it has been worth more than any qualification I ever earned.
91
So given a time turner,
92
I would tell my 21-year-old self that personal happiness lies in knowing that life is not a checklist of acquisition or achievement.
93
Your qualifications, your CV, are not your life, though you will meet many people of my age and older who confuse the two.
94
Life is difficult and complicated and beyond anyone's total control,
95
and the humility to know that will enable you to survive its vicissitudes.
96
Now you might think that I chose my second theme, the importance of imagination, because of the part it played in rebuilding my life, but that is not wholly so.
97
Though I personally will defend the value of bedtime stories to my last gasp, I have learnt to value imagination in a much broader sense.
98
Imagination is not only the uniquely human capacity to envision that which is not,
99
and therefore the fount of all invention and innovation.
100
In its arguably most transformative and revelatory capacity,
101
it is the power that enables us to empathise with humans whose experiences we have never shared.
102
One of the greatest formative experiences of my life preceded Harry Potter, though it informed much of what I subsequently wrote in those books.
103
This revelation came in the form of one of my earliest day jobs.
104
Though I was sloping off to write stories during my lunch hours,
105
I paid the rent in my early 20s by working at the African Research Department of Amnesty International's headquarters in London.
106
There in my little office, I read hastily scribbled letters smuggled out of totalitarian regimes
107
by men and women who were risking imprisonment to inform the outside world of what was happening to them.
108
I saw photographs of those who had disappeared without trace, sent to Amnesty by their desperate families and friends.
109
I read the testimony of torture victims and saw pictures of their injuries.
110
I opened handwritten, eyewitness accounts of summary trials and executions of kidnappings and rapes.
111
Many of my co-workers were ex-political prisoners,
112
people who had been displaced from their homes or fled into exile because they had the temerity to speak against their governments.
113
Visitors to our offices included those who had come to give information
114
or to try and find out what had happened to those they had left behind.
115
I shall never forget the African torture victim, a young man no older than I was at the time,
116
who had become mentally ill after all he had endured in his homeland.
117
He trembled uncontrollably as he spoke into a video camera about the brutality inflicted upon him.
118
He was a foot taller than I was and seemed as fragile as a child.
119
I was given the job of escorting him back to the underground station afterwards and this man, whose life had been shattered by cruelty,
120
took my hand with exquisite courtesy and wished me future happiness.
121
And as long as I live, I shall remember walking along an empty corridor
122
and suddenly hearing from behind a closed door a scream of pain and horror such as I have never heard since.
123
The door opened and the researcher poked out her head
124
and told me to run and make a hot drink for the young man sitting with her.
125
She had just had to give him the news that in retaliation for his outspokenness against his country's regime,
126
his mother had been seized and executed.
127
Every day of my working week in my early 20s, I was reminded how incredibly fortunate I was to live in
128
a country with a democratically elected government where legal representation and a public trial were the rights of everyone.
129
Every day, I saw more evidence about the evils humankind would inflict on their fellow humans to gain or maintain power.
130
I began to have nightmares, literal nightmares, about some of the things I saw, heard and read.
131
And yet, I also learned more about human goodness at Amnesty International than I had ever known before.
132
Amnesty mobilises thousands of people who have never been tortured
133
or imprisoned for their beliefs to act on behalf of those who have.
134
The power of human empathy leading to collective action saves lives and frees prisoners.
135
Ordinary people whose personal well-being
136
and security are assured join together in huge numbers to save people they do not know and will never meet.
137
My small participation in that process was one of the most humbling and inspiring experiences of my life.
138
Unlike any other creature on this planet, human beings can learn and understand without having experienced.
139
They can think themselves into other people's places.
140
Of course, this is a power like my brand of fictional magic that is morally neutral.
141
One might use such an ability to manipulate or control just as much as to understand or sympathise.
142
And many prefer not to exercise their imaginations at all.
143
They choose to remain comfortably within the bounds of their own experience, never troubling to wonder how it would feel to have been born other than they are.
144
They can refuse to hear screams or peer inside cages.
145
They can close their minds and hearts to any suffering that does not touch them personally.
146
They can refuse to know.
147
I might be tempted to envy people who can live that way, except that I do not think they have any fewer nightmares than I do.
148
Choosing to live in narrow spaces leads to a form of mental agoraphobia, and that brings its own terrors.
149
I think the willfully unimaginative see more monsters.
150
They are often more afraid.
151
What is more, those who choose not to empathise enable real monsters, for without ever committing an act of outright evil ourselves,
152
we collude with it through our own apathy.
153
One of the many things I learned at the end of that classics corridor, down which I ventured at the age of 18, in search of something I could not then define,
154
was this, written by the Greek author Plutarch.
155
What we achieve inwardly will change outer reality.
156
That is an astonishing statement and yet proven a thousand times every day of our lives.
157
It expresses in part our inescapable connection with the outside world, the fact that we touch other people's lives simply by existing.
158
But how much more are you, Harvard graduates of 2008, likely to touch other people's lives?
159
Your intelligence, your capacity for hard work, the education you have earned and received,
160
give you unique status and unique responsibilities.
161
Even your nationality sets you apart.
162
The great majority of you belong to the world's only remaining superpower.
163
The way you vote, the way you live, the way you protest, the pressure you bring to bear on your government has an impact way beyond your borders.
164
That is your privilege and your burden.
165
If you choose to use your status and influence to raise your voice on behalf of those who have no voice,
166
voice, if you choose to identify not only with the powerful but with the powerless,
167
if you retain the ability to imagine yourself into the lives of those who do not have your advantages,
168
then it will not only be your proud families who celebrate your existence, but thousands and millions of people whose reality you have helped change.
169
We do not need magic to transform our world.
170
We carry all the power we need inside ourselves already.
171
we have the power to imagine better.
172
I'm nearly finished.
173
I have one last hope for you, which is something that I already had at 21.
174
The friends with whom I sat on graduation day have been my friends for life.
175
They are my children's godparents, the people to whom I've been able to turn in times of real trouble.
176
People who have been kind enough not to sue me when I took their names for Death Eaters.
177
At our graduation, we were bound by enormous affection, by our shared experience of a time that could never come again,
178
and of course, by the knowledge that we held certain photographic evidence
179
that would be exceptionally valuable if any of us ran for Prime Minister.
180
So today, I wish you nothing better than similar friendships.
181
And tomorrow, I hope that even if you remember not a single word of mine, you remember those of Seneca, another of those old Romans I met
182
when I fled down the Classics corridor in retreat from career ladders in search of ancient wisdom.
183
As is a tale, so is life.
184
Not how long it is, but how good it is, is what matters.
185
I wish you all very good lives.
186
Thank you very much.
Uygulamayı İndir
Akıcı konuşmak için ihtiyacınız olan her şey
AI TelaffuzHer cümleyi puanla
IPA AlıştırmasıHer sesi ustalaştır
Kelime BilgisiKelime bankanızı oluşturun
Kelime OyunuOynarken öğrenin
FOR YOU
Video Öner
C1355
18 cümleler
JK Rowling Motivation | JK Rowling Harvard Commencement Speech | 1 Minute Motivation
Business EnglishUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
C12
227 cümleler
Bill Gates Harvard Commencement Address 2007
Business EnglishDaily ConversationUniversity Students
C12
136 cümleler
Kenyon College: John Green Commencement Address
Business EnglishDaily ConversationUniversity Students
C13
84 cümleler
Jonny Kim | Harvard Alumni Day 2026
Business EnglishUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
B2862
11 cümleler
Legally Blonde - Elle's Graduation speech
Business EnglishDaily ConversationUniversity Students
![Harvard Professor reveals the Science of Happiness in 15 minutes | Arthur Brooks [ARC 2025]](https://img.youtube.com/vi/w8a0T5XLrXc/mqdefault.jpg)
C12
258 cümleler
Harvard Professor reveals the Science of Happiness in 15 minutes | Arthur Brooks [ARC 2025]
Business EnglishUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
C16
64 cümleler
The life hacks Taylor Swift shared during her NYU graduation speech I FusionBuff Chronicles
Business EnglishUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
C14
91 cümleler
J.K. Rowling's Ultimate Advice For Every 20 Year Old | One of the Best Motivational Speeches Ever
Business EnglishUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
C14
243 cümleler
Shashi Tharoor: Choose Purpose Over Convenience
Business EnglishUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
C14
57 cümleler
rory's graduation speech
Business EnglishDaily ConversationUniversity Students
B2304 cümleler
Learn English with PODCASTS — How Emma Watson Became Hermione
Business EnglishDaily ConversationHigh School Students
C151
293 cümleler
ENGLISH SPEECH | PRIYANKA CHOPRA: Be Fearless (English Subtitles)
Business EnglishInterview EnglishUniversity Students
Bu dersin kelimeleri ve konuşma notları
Bu C1 seviyesindeki konuşma dersi “J.K. Rowling Speaks at Harvard Commencement” videosuna dayanıyor. Bu videoda gölgeleme çalışması için 186 cümle ve 2831 kelime var. Konuşma bölümü 20:28 sürüyor. Konuşmacı dakikada yaklaşık 138 kelimelik dengeli bir hızla konuşuyor; gölgeleme için rahat bir tempo. Kelimelerin yalnızca %80’i İngilizcede en sık kullanılan 3.000 kelime arasında, bu yüzden kelime dağarcığı zorlayıcı.
Bu videodaki önemli kelimeler
Videodaki en ileri düzey 15 kelime, telaffuzu ve anlamıyla:
| Kelime | Telaffuz | Anlam |
|---|---|---|
| graduation isim | /ˌɡɹæd͡ʒuˈeɪʃən/ | mezuniyet |
| corridor isim | /ˈkɒɹɪdɔː/ | koridor, dehliz |
| flee fiil | /ˈfliː/ | kaçmak |
| wizard isim | /ˈwɪzɚd/ | büyücü, sihirbaz |
| criterion isim | /kɹaɪˈtɪɹ.i.ən/ | ölçüt, kriter |
| steer fiil | /stɪɹ/ | yönetmek |
| cruelty isim | /ˈkɹu(.ə)lti/ | zulüm |
| seize fiil | /ˈsiːz/ | kapmak |
| exile isim | /ˈɛɡˌzaɪl/ | sürgün, ihraç |
| envy isim | /ˈɛnvi/ | kıskançlık, haset |
| irony isim | /ˈaɪ.ɚ.ni/ | tezat, ironi |
| fragile sıfat | /ˈfɹæd͡ʒəl/ | kırılgan, narin |
| distinguish fiil | /dɪˈstɪŋ.ɡwɪʃ/ | ayırt etmek, ayırmak |
| imprisonment isim | /ɪmˈpɹɪzn̩.mənt/ | hapsetme |
| arguably zarf | /ˈɑɹɡjuəbli/ | tartışmalı şekilde, tartışmasız |
Duyacağınız deyimsel fiiller
| Kelime | Telaffuz | Anlam |
|---|---|---|
| find out fiil | anlamak, ortaya çıkarmak | |
| come out fiil | /ˌkʌm ˈaʊt/ | çıkmak |
Bu videodaki dil bilgisi
Konuşmacının en çok kullandığı yapılar, videodaki sözcüklerin aynısıyla:
| Yapı | Videoda |
|---|---|
| Present perfect have/has + fiilin üçüncü hâli — geçmişte olan ama şimdi de önemli olan bir eylem | have endured · has helped · I've come |
| Edilgen yapı be + fiilin üçüncü hâli — kimin yaptığı değil, ne olduğu önemli | are gathered · is sometimes called · was reached |
| İlgi cümlecikleri who / which + cümle — bir kişi ya da şey hakkında ek bilgi | that which is · women who were · those who had |
Dikkat edilecek telaffuzlar
Konuşmacı I'm, I've, can't gibi kısaltılmış biçimleri 5 kez kullanıyor. Bunları duyduğunuz gibi kısa söyleyin.
- “th” sesleri: empathize /ˈɛmpəˌθaɪz/, threshold /ˈθɹɛʃ(h)oʊld/
- “sh” ve “zh” sesleri: graduation /ˌɡɹæd͡ʒuˈeɪʃən/, exceptionally /ɪkˈsɛp(t)ʃənəli/, qualification /ˌkwɑlɪfɪˈkeɪʃən/, fictional /ˈfɪkʃənəl/, distinguish /dɪˈstɪŋ.ɡwɪʃ/
- Uzun kelimeler — vurguyu doğru yere koyun: graduation /ˌɡɹæd͡ʒuˈeɪʃən/, exceptionally /ɪkˈsɛp(t)ʃənəli/, qualification /ˌkwɑlɪfɪˈkeɪʃən/, criterion /kɹaɪˈtɪɹ.i.ən/, revelation /ˌɹɛv.əˈleɪ.ʃən/
Türkçe konuşanların zorlandığı sesler:
- /w/ — dudaklar yuvarlak, /v/ değil: qualification /ˌkwɑlɪfɪˈkeɪʃən/, wizard /ˈwɪzɚd/, distinguish /dɪˈstɪŋ.ɡwɪʃ/
- Kelime başındaki ünsüz kümesi — araya ünlü eklemeyin: graduation /ˌɡɹæd͡ʒuˈeɪʃən/, flee /ˈfliː/, qualification /ˌkwɑlɪfɪˈkeɪʃən/, criterion /kɹaɪˈtɪɹ.i.ən/, steer /stɪɹ/
- /æ/ — “e”den daha açık: graduation /ˌɡɹæd͡ʒuˈeɪʃən/, fragile /ˈfɹæd͡ʒəl/, ambition /æmˈbɪʃ.ən/, homeland /ˈhoʊmˌlænd/, satisfy /ˈsætɪsfaɪ/
Bu videoyla nasıl çalışılır
- Videonun tamamını konuşmadan bir kez dinleyin ve bilmediğiniz kelimeleri not edin.
- Normal hızda cümle cümle tekrar edin; ritminiz konuşmacıyla aynı olana kadar her cümleyi yineleyin.
- Kendinizi kaydedin ve orijinaliyle karşılaştırın; graduation, corridor, flee gibi kelimelere özellikle dikkat edin.
Gölgeleme Tekniği Nedir?
Gölgeleme, başlangıçta profesyonel tercüman eğitimi için geliştirilen ve çok dilli Dr. Alexander Arguelles tarafından popüler hale getirilen, bilim destekli bir dil öğrenme tekniğidir. Yöntem basit ama güçlüdür: ana dili İngilizce olan bir sesi dinler ve hemen yüksek sesle tekrar edersiniz — konuşmacıyı 1-2 saniye gecikmeyle takip eden bir gölge gibi. Pasif dinleme veya dilbilgisi alıştırmalarının aksine, gölgeleme beyninizi ve ağız kaslarınızı gerçek konuşma kalıplarını eşzamanlı olarak işlemeye ve yeniden üretmeye zorlar. Araştırmalar, telaffuz doğruluğu, tonlama, ritim, bağlı konuşma, dinleme anlama ve konuşma akıcılığını önemli ölçüde geliştirdiğini göstermektedir — bu da onu IELTS Konuşma hazırlığı ve gerçek dünya İngilizce iletişimi için en etkili yöntemlerden biri yapar.