跟讀練習: Did Ancient Humans Really Live Longer Than Modern Humans? - 通過影片學習英語口語
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169 句
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Imagine traveling 20,000 years into the past.
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You expect people to die young.
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30 years old, maybe 40, certainly not 70.
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But then, archaeologists uncover the skeleton of someone who lived into old age.
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Wrinkled joints, worn teeth, bones that spent decades carrying a human body.
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This wasn't a teenager.
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This wasn't someone who died during their first hunt.
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This was an old person.
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A surprisingly old person.
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Which raises an unexpected question.
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Did ancient humans actually live longer than we do today?
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At first glance, the answer seems obvious.
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Of course not.
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Modern medicine exists.
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Hospitals.
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Vaccines.
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Antibiotics.
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Emergency surgery.
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Surely people living in caves couldn't compete with that.
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And yet, the story isn't nearly that simple.
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Because one number has confused people for decades.
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Life expectancy.
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You've probably heard that prehistoric humans only lived around 30 years, sometimes even less.
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That sounds shocking.
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Imagine celebrating your 30th birthday as one of the oldest people in your tribe.
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But here's the surprising part.
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That number doesn't mean what most people think it means.
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Imagine 100 babies are born.
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Half of them tragically die before reaching the age of 5.
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The other half live to be 70.
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What is the average?
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lower than 70, even though many individuals still became elderly.
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That's exactly what happened throughout much of human history.
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Life expectancy at birth was extremely low.
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Not because every adult died young, but because childhood was incredibly dangerous.
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For ancient humans, simply surviving the first years of life was one of life's greatest challenges.
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Imagine being born without hospitals, without incubators, without vaccines, without antibiotics without clean drinking water.
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A simple infection could become deadly.
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A fever, a cut, diarrhea.
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Diseases that modern medicine treats in days could end a life.
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Many children never reached adulthood, which dramatically lowered the average.
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Now imagine another child.
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This one survives.
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They reach 10 years old, then 15, then 20.
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Something remarkable happens.
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Their chances of living much longer suddenly increase.
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Not because life became easy, but because they had already survived the most dangerous years.
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In many prehistoric societies, reaching adulthood was an extraordinary achievement.
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Once there, some individuals lived into their 60s, 70s, perhaps even beyond.
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Archaeologists have discovered ancient skeletons showing advanced age, worn joints, missing teeth, healed broken bones,
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evidence that someone had lived for decades.
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Some required care from other members of their group.
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Imagine breaking your leg 20,000 years ago.
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You cannot hunt.
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You cannot gather food.
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You cannot travel.
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Alone, you probably die.
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Yet archaeologists have found skeletons with severe injuries that healed completely.
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Broken femurs, crushed arms, damaged hips.
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These people survived for years afterward.
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How?
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Someone helped them.
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Someone carried food.
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Someone protected them.
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Someone waited.
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That single discovery tells us something extraordinary.
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Ancient humans didn't simply survive because they were strong.
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They survived because they cooperated.
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Now imagine a prehistoric camp at sunset.
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Children laugh around the fire.
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Hunters return carrying meat.
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Others prepare plants collected throughout the day.
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And sitting beside the flames, an old woman.
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Her hair has turned gray.
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Her movements are slower.
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She no longer joins every hunt.
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Yet everyone listens when she speaks.
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She remembers where water can still be found during dry seasons.
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She knows which berries are poisonous.
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She remembers dangerous valleys, animal migrations, weather patterns, knowledge that took decades to collect.
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This leads to one of the most fascinating ideas in anthropology, the grandmother hypothesis.
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Scientists believe older adults may have played a crucial role in human evolution.
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Imagine a young mother caring for two small children.
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Finding enough food becomes difficult.
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Now imagine her own mother helps gather edible plants, watches the children, shares knowledge.
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The grandchildren survive more often.
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Generation after generation, families with helpful grandparents became more successful.
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Older people weren't simply surviving, they were increasing the survival of everyone around them.
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Age became an advantage, not a burden.
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Few animals experience anything similar.
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Many species reproduce, grow older, then gradually disappear from the population.
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Humans are different.
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Long after having children, many people continue contributing to their families.
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Perhaps that's one reason humans became so successful.
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Knowledge lasted longer than muscles.
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Imagine two hunters.
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One is 20 years old.
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Fast.
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Strong.
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Fearless.
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The other is 60.
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Slower.
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Weaker.
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every dangerous river crossing, every migration route, every season when food becomes scarce.
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Who makes fewer mistakes?
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Experience often defeats strength.
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Ancient humans understood this long before science did.
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The oldest members of the tribe became living libraries.
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Long before writing, long before books, long before the internet, human memory was civilization.
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Every generation depended on the one before it.
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Fire making, stone tools, tracking animals, finding medicine, avoiding poisonous plants.
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Everything passed from one mind into another.
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Now imagine losing every person over 50.
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Thousands of years of experience disappear overnight.
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The tribe becomes weaker.
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The next generation repeats old mistakes survival becomes harder.
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Older adults weren't simply surviving longer, they were protecting the future.
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But that still leaves an important question.
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If some ancient humans reached old age, why was average life expectancy still so low?
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The answer wasn't old age, it was everything that happened before old age.
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Childbirth, infections, starvation, predators, accidents, even something as simple as a broken tooth could become life-threatening.
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Today, a dentist removed the infection.
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20,000 years ago, that same infection could spread through the body.
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Imagine slicing your hand while making a stone tool.
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Today, you clean it, perhaps receive antibiotics.
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The wound heals.
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Back then, the smallest cut could become fatal.
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Not immediately, but days later, when bacteria quietly spread through the bloodstream.
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Ancient humans didn't fear only lions or wolves.
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Sometimes their greatest enemy was something they couldn't even see, and they had no idea bacteria existed.
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To them, disease often seemed mysterious, random, unpredictable.
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Yet despite all those dangers, some still lived remarkably long lives, which suggests something surprising.
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The human body has always been capable of reaching old age, even without modern medicine.
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The real challenge was surviving long enough to get there.
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And that changes everything, because suddenly, ancient humans don't seem like people who all died at 30.
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Instead, they become something far more familiar.
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People living dangerous lives, where childhood determined almost everything, and adulthood could last much longer than most people imagine.
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Life expectancy tells one story.
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Human potential tells another.
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For thousands of years, our ancestors possessed bodies remarkably similar to ours.
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The difference wasn't the human body.
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It was the world surrounding it.
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Imagine taking two identical children.
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One grows up 20,000 years ago.
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The other grows up today.
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They begin life with almost the same biology, the same heart, the same lungs, the same bones, the same brain.
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Yet one faces predators, disease, starvation, accidents.
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The other grows up with vaccines, clean water, doctors, emergency medicine.
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One life becomes a constant gamble.
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The other receives countless second chances.
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That's what changed human history, not evolution, opportunity.
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Perhaps that's the biggest misconception about ancient humans.
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They weren't fragile people living inside weak bodies.
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They were remarkably resilient people living inside an unforgiving world.
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A world where every winter mattered, every hunt mattered, every infection mattered,
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and every child who reached adulthood had already survived challenges most of us will never face.
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Which makes one discovery especially fascinating.
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Whenever archaeologists uncover someone who lived into their 60s or 70s, they aren't discovering an impossible exception.
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They're discovering what the human body was capable of all along, if it was simply given enough time.
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So, did ancient humans really live longer than modern humans?
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No. Modern humans enjoy the longest average lifespan our species has ever achieved.
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But the idea that every prehistoric person died around 30 is one of history's most misunderstood statistics.
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Many lives ended tragically early, Yet many others lasted for decades, long enough to become hunters,
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parents, grandparents, teachers, the keepers of knowledge, the people who guided entire tribes through countless winters.
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Perhaps that's the real lesson hidden behind ancient bones.
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The human body hasn't changed as much as we imagine.
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The world has.
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And thanks to everything humanity has learned, millions of people now receive the opportunity our ancestors spent thousands of generations fighting for.
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Not the opportunity to live forever, but simply the opportunity to grow old.
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本課的詞彙與口語要點
這段影片共有 169 個句子、1359 個單詞可供跟讀。 講話部分時長為 10:54。 說話人語速平穩，每分鐘約 125 個詞，很適合跟讀。 只有 80% 的單詞屬於英語最常用的 3,000 詞，詞彙難度較高。
影片中的重點詞彙
影片中 15 個值得學習的單詞，附發音和釋義：
| 單詞 | 發音 | 釋義 |
|---|---|---|
| infection 名詞 | /ɪnˈfɛkʃən/ | 傳染 /傳染 |
| bone 名詞 | /boʊn/ | гўдў, гўдўзы |
| adulthood 名詞 | 成年 | |
| hunter 名詞 | /ˈhʌntɚ/ | 獵犬 /獵犬 |
| heal 動詞 | /ˈhiːl/ | 醫治 /醫治 |
| vaccine 名詞 | /vækˈsin/ | 疫苗 |
| skeleton 名詞 | /ˈskɛlətən/ | 骨骼, 骸骨 |
| antibiotic 名詞 | /ˌæn.taɪ.baɪˈɑ.tɪk/ | 抗生素, 抗菌素 |
| discovery 名詞 | /dɪˈskʌv.ɹi/ | 發現 /發現 |
| evolution 名詞 | /ˌiːvəˈluːʃ(ə)n/ | 演變 /演變, 變遷 /變遷 |
| discover 動詞 | /dɪˈskʌvə/ | 發現 /發現, 發覺 /發覺 |
| collect 動詞 | /ˈkɑlɪkt/ | 庋藏, 收藏 |
| survival 名詞 | /sɚˈvaɪ.vəl/ | 生存 |
| extraordinary 形容詞 | /ɪksˈtɹɔːrdɪn(ə)ɹi/ | 非凡, 了不起 |
| migration 名詞 | /maɪˈɡɹeɪʃ(ə)n/ | 徙動 /徙動, 遷移 /遷移 |
影片中出現的短語動詞
| 單詞 | 釋義 |
|---|---|
| grow up 動詞 | 長大 /長大 |
需要注意的發音
說話人用了 18 次縮略和弱讀形式，例如 wasn't, weren't, couldn't。請按聽到的簡短形式來說。
- “th” 音: gather /ˈɡæðɚ/, grandmother /ˈɡɹæn(d)ˌmʌðɚ/, tooth /tuθ/, threaten /ˈθɹɛt.n̩/, hypothesis /haɪˈpɒθɪsɪs/
- “sh” 和 “zh” 音: infection /ɪnˈfɛkʃən/, evolution /ˌiːvəˈluːʃ(ə)n/, migration /maɪˈɡɹeɪʃ(ə)n/, starvation /stɑɹˈveɪʃən/, shock /ʃɔk/
- 長單詞——注意重音位置: remarkably /ɹɪˈmɑɹkəbli/, antibiotic /ˌæn.taɪ.baɪˈɑ.tɪk/, evolution /ˌiːvəˈluːʃ(ə)n/, extraordinary /ɪksˈtɹɔːrdɪn(ə)ɹi/, incredibly /ɪŋˈkɹɛdɪbli/
如何用這段影片練習
- 先完整聽一遍影片，不要開口，記下不認識的單詞。
- 用正常速度逐句跟讀，每句重複到你的節奏與說話人一致為止。
- 錄下自己的聲音並與原聲對比，特別注意 infection, bone, adulthood 這類單詞。
影片中的語法
說話人最常用的結構，並附上影片中的原話：
| 結構 | 影片中的用法 |
|---|---|
| 現在完成時 have/has + 過去分詞 — 過去發生但與現在仍有關聯的事 | has confused · You've probably heard · have discovered |
| 定語從句 who / which + 從句 — 補充說明人或事物 | someone who lived · someone who died · people who all |
| 被動語態 be + 過去分詞 — 強調發生了什麼，而不是誰做的 | are born · being born · be found |
什麼是跟讀法？
跟讀法 (Shadowing) 是一種有科學依據的語言學習技巧，最初開發用於專業口譯員的培訓，並由多語言者Alexander Arguelles博士普及。這個方法簡單而強大：您在聽英語母語原聲的同時立即大聲重複——就像是一個延遲1-2秒緊跟說話者的影子。與被動聽力或語法練習不同，跟讀法強迫您的大腦和口腔肌肉同時處理並模模擬實的講話模式。研究表明它能顯著提高發音準確性，語調，節奏，連讀，聽力理解和口語流利度——使其成為雅思口語備考和真實英語交流最有效的方法之一。