跟讀練習: What’s Ruining Our Ruins? - 通過影片學習英語口語

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The United Nations has designated roughly 1,000 culturally important world heritage sites around the world.

But at many of them, something has quietly been going wrong.

Paintings are flaking away, wood is rotting, even stone is slowly dissolving into powder.

If you're wondering what's so powerful that it could take down some of our oldest and most protected sites, well, this destruction isn't the product of war or natural disasters or other huge events.

It's the work of microbes.

Here's how some mini-microbes are ruining our ruins.

First up, we're going to the Maijishan Grottoes,

a series of roughly 200 caves carved into the side of a sheer sandstone mountain in the Gansu province of northwest China.

You have to be feeling brave to cross these soaring walkways that lead inside, but once you've entered Agrano,

you can find sculptures and wall paintings from as far back as the 300s.

But despite standing through 1700 years, the site is in trouble.

In 2018, experts reported that microbial plaques had started growing on the art.

As far as we know, it's not like microbes hate art or something.

They do this to make a home for themselves or to get nutrients.

In fact, while a painting might seem like a weird place for life to grow, if you're a microbe, paintings can be full of tasty bits.

There's the paint itself, which might contain things like plant oils, egg yolk, or animal glue.

But there may also be layers of organic materials like straw or other plant fibers beneath as well,

which the ancient painters would have slathered on the wall to give themselves a smooth surface to work on.

That is a balanced meal for a microbe.

As for what kind of microbes, there's a wide variety of bacteria and algae.

Both of those organisms can do art damaging things like poop out acids or form gooey biofilms that can trap water.

You can also get molds and other fungi growing on those ruins, which spread their root-like hyphae underneath the surface looking for nutrients.

All these little fellas can physically separate the layers of a painting, causing bits to flake or fall off.

They can also cause changes in color, either by degrading existing pigments or by adding their own colors into the mix.

Green algae can turn things, well, green.

Certain bacteria can do green as well, plus yellow, brown, or black.

One kind of bacteria can even create a lovely salmon pink.

But in the case of Maijishan, there were mainly white and black splotches appearing on the walls.

When scientists analyzed the splotches, they found that a common decomposing fungus was the dominant microbe in the black biofilms.

Meanwhile, Cladosporium, a super common indoor mold, and an unclassified species of fungus were dominant in white biofilms.

As for what caused the outbreak, they don't know for sure, but it probably had to do with cave critters.

The decomposing fungus is associated with arthropods, like bugs, and fungi can also grow on animal dung or after flooding.

So animals getting into these caves to shelter from heavy rains might be contributing.

In fact, previous work on the splotches also pointed fingers at excess humidity as a possible cause

and suggested it could be from more human visitors or even shifts in the weather thanks to climate change.

We know this is possible.

The Lescaux Caves in southwestern France contain wall paintings from as far back as 22,000 years ago.

But after their rediscovery in the 1940s, lots of people began visiting, and the carbon dioxide, heat, and water vapor from their breath caused microbes to grow.

The authorities eventually closed the caves to the public, and for 40-ish years tried using biocides, including antibiotics, to get rid of those microbes.

And it worked on some of the microbes.

But that opened up space for a new fungus to move in, which left a whole new set of white stains behind.

Similar things happened when people tried to disinfect the frescoes of St. Paul in Ephesus.

So biocides don't always work as well as we hope.

Another option is manual removal, like using soft brushes, a vacuum, and a little bit of elbow grease,

which they tried in the Maijishan grottos, along with biocide treatments.

Those measures seem to have worked well, even though this is probably going to be an ongoing project.

But paintings aren't the only type of heritage under pressure for microbes.

We've also had some problems with wood.

But before we go there, it's time for a quick ad.

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In the desert of New Mexico, you can find Chaco Canyon.

It's another UNESCO World Heritage Site, occupied by the ancestral Puebloan people for about 300 years, starting around the mid-800s.

While they were there, they built impressive great houses and other infrastructure out of stone and wood.

And so far, it's stood the test of time, but not entirely unscathed.

For example, in the mid-aughts, expert examined some of the wooden beams that made up the buildings and found a significant amount of damage.

Some was from weathering and other physical processes, but some was from microbes.

Now, wood, especially wood in harsh, dry environments like the New Mexico desert, can be pretty resistant to microbes like bacteria.

Wood is tough and durable because plant cells are surrounded by cell walls, and woody plants in particular pack them especially full of tough,

hard-to-break-down molecules like cellulose and lignin.

But wood is vulnerable to fungi because they have ways to get into and even get food from these compounds.

One of the main troublemakers is a group of fungi that includes brown rot fungi.

These little guys specialize in decaying the cellulose in plant cells, leaving the colorful lignin behind.

This turns the wood soft, but leaves the wood's brown color behind.

And that's where they got their name.

White rot fungi, meanwhile, turn wood white, since they decay everything, including lignin.

Some even specialize in lignin.

Another major kind of fungal wood decay is soft rot.

This looks really similar to brown rot.

In fact, it's so similar

that you generally need to look at samples under a microscope to tell soft rot and brown rot apart, even though the organisms behind the rot are pretty different.

And experts have found some brown rot and a lot of soft rot setting in at Chaco.

Some parts of the wood were so degraded they could be crushed into a fine powder with even slight pressure.

Part of the problem may have come from fissures in the wood, which can catch moisture and nutrient-rich particles from the environment, the perfect conditions for microbes to move in.

In this case, instead of biocides, we've been reburying parts of the site since the 1980s.

The idea is that digging them up likely exposed them to the moisture the fungi needed to thrive, so reburying them should hopefully remove that moisture and stop further growth.

As an added layer of protection, conservationists also installed things like moisture monitors alongside the buried material,

as well as waterproof fabric sheets or drains and pipes that can funnel surface water away from stuff buried further down.

Free burial is pretty low-tech, practical, and compared to trying to replace the wooden beams or other materials again and again, a good deal money-wise.

We like to imagine technology solving all our problems, but sometimes the best option for archaeologists is to leave things alone and preserve them for the future.

We can get the technology to fix it later.

Although eventually everything breaks down, whether it's paint or wood or even stone itself, as our last location shows.

In 2018, scientists took samples from a bunch of sites in Egypt, from tombs and obelisks to mosques and even the pyramids at Giza.

These sites are ancient and have withstood the test of time, but over the years, people have noted damage at some of them,

including black stains and pitting in the rocks themselves.

Scientists have found two species of a common mold, along with Cladosporium, one of the fungi found at Mygishan.

And we're not just seeing it in Egypt.

Another desert site, Megiddo, was surveyed in 2023.

This World Heritage site was swabbed from the visitor entrance to its major archeological sites.

Experts didn't report damage, but did detect acid producing microbes.

As for what a microbe would even want with stone, just like wood or paintings, it can give them a home and even food.

They might even damage the stone itself by doing things like dissolving minerals from the rocks, which unfortunately for UNESCO can be especially damaging in rocks like limestone.

Plus they can cause damage through things like those watery biofilms and root-like hyphae.

And And in some cases, they can even poop out salts, which can be destructive both chemically and physically, if it starts to build up in cracks and force them apart.

Case in point, the Egyptian group applied cladosporium fungi to some fresh stone and found it discolored and weakened.

It had even dissolved some of the stone after just two months.

100

To treat those issues, they tried a bunch of different biocides on their stone blocks and found some that worked,

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including synthetic topical antiseptics, as well as natural options like clove oil.

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But we don't want to go indiscriminately killing all life at these UNESCO sites, because in some cases, microbes might actually protect them.

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At Angkor Wat in Cambodia, for example, scientists found that lichens might help protect the stone buildings there from water damage.

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They were effectively shielding the site from the weather, and may also have been pushing out other microbes that could have damaged the site.

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Now, lichens are actually a mix of microscopic bacteria and algae living inside a kind of fungal web, and some of them are microscopic so they might tow the line of microorganism,

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but for the purposes of this video, we are counting them.

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But if you're not team microbe when it comes to lichens, there are still other protective guys under the microscope.

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Some scientists are even experimenting with the idea of purposefully applying certain harmless bacteria

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or amoebas to different archeological sites as a preventative or even restorative treatment.

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In plaques and other microbial communities, including ones from places like murals or ruins, there are protective microbes that may crowd out,

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chemically suppress or directly prey upon the ones that cause damage.

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There are even microbe-targeting viruses we might be able to use.

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One group experimented with using sulfate-eating bacteria to remove unsightly black sulfate-rich gypsum deposits from the base of a famous marble sculpture,

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Michelangelo's Rondonini Pieta.

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The bacteria were mixed into a gel that could be slathered onto the sculpture.

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A day later, scientists came back, washed it off, and found that the deposits were gone.

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So along with all of the publications coming out that highlight microbes' destructive ways, people are experimenting with plenty of them that could help in preservation.

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We often talk about these sites as if they're kind of frozen in time, but in fact, they're constantly changing ecosystems.

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Microbial research helps us understand those changes so we can preserve the sites for generations to come.

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Sometimes if you want a better view of the future, you need to get out a microscope.

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本課的詞彙與口語要點

這節 B2 級別的口語課以影片“What’s Ruining Our Ruins?”為素材。影片中反覆出現的詞有：microbe, site, wood, fungi, rot。這段影片共有 120 個句子、1965 個單詞可供跟讀。講話部分時長為 11:19。說話人語速自然，每分鐘約 174 個詞，接近日常對話。只有 77% 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

影片中最難的 15 個單詞，附發音和釋義：

單詞	發音	釋義
microbe 名詞	/ˈmaɪkɹoʊb/	微生物
bacterium 名詞	/bækˈtɪəɹ.ɪəm/	細菌 /細菌
lignin 名詞	/ˈlɪɡ.nɪn/	木質素 /木質素
fungus 名詞	/ˈfʌŋ.ɡəs/	菌類 /菌類, 真菌
moisture 名詞	/ˈmɔɪs.t͡ʃɚ/	濕氣 /溼氣
alga 名詞	/ˈæl.ɡə/	水藻, 藻類 /藻類
dissolve 動詞	/dɪˈzɑlv/	解散
lichen 名詞	/ˈlaɪ.kən/	地衣
microscope 名詞	/ˈmaɪ.kɹəˌskoʊp/	顯微鏡 /顯微鏡
nutrient 名詞	/ˈnuː.tɹi.ənt/	養分 /養分, 營養素 /營養素
sculpture 名詞	/ˈskʌlpt͡ʃɚ/	雕塑, 雕像
cellulose 名詞	/ˈsɛljəloʊs/	纖維素 /纖維素
decompose 動詞	/ˌdiːkəmˈpəʊz/	分解
sulfate 名詞	/ˈsʌlfeɪt/	硫酸鹽 /硫酸鹽
organism 名詞	/ˈɔɹ.ɡəˌnɪz.əm/	生物, 有機體 /有機體

影片中出現的短語動詞

單詞	發音	釋義
break down 動詞		壞了 /壞了, 出故障
come back 動詞		回來 /回來, 返回
come out 動詞	/ˌkʌm ˈaʊt/	出, 出來 /出來
make up 動詞	/ˌmeɪk ˈʌp/	組成 /組成

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 designated · you've entered · We've also had
被動語態 be + 過去分詞 — 強調發生了什麼，而不是誰做的	is associated · are surrounded · could be crushed
定語從句 who / which + 從句 — 補充說明人或事物	wood, which can · salts, which can

需要注意的發音

說話人用了 16 次縮略和弱讀形式，例如 don't, you're, they're。請按聽到的簡短形式來說。

“th” 音: slather /ˈslæðə(ɹ)/, arthropod /ˈɑːθɹəpɒd/, thrive /θɹajv/, synthetic /sɪnˈθɛtɪk/, underneath /ˌʌndɚˈniθ/
“sh” 和 “zh” 音: specialize /ˈspɛʃəˌlaɪz/, sheer /ʃɪɚ/, preservation /ˌpɹɛz.əˈveɪ.ʃən/, harsh /ˈhɑɹʃ/, crush /kɹʌʃ/
長單詞——注意重音位置: microbial /maɪˈkɹəʊ.bi.əl/, microscopic /ˌmaɪ.kɹəˈskɑ.pɪk/, organism /ˈɔɹ.ɡəˌnɪz.əm/, curiosity /ˌkjʊɹ.iˈɑ.sə.ti/, ancestral /ænˈsɛs.təɹ.əl/

中文母語者容易讀錯的音：

/v/ — 不要讀成 /w/，上齒輕觸下唇: dissolve /dɪˈzɑlv/, destructive /dɪˈstɹʌktɪv/, visitor /ˈvɪzɪtɚ/, protective /pɹəˈtɛk.tɪv/, preserve /pɹəˈzɝv/
詞尾子音 — 要讀清楚，後面不要加母音: microbe /ˈmaɪkɹoʊb/, biocide /ˈbaɪoʊsaɪd/, fungus /ˈfʌŋ.ɡəs/, dissolve /dɪˈzɑlv/, splotch /splɑt͡ʃ/
/r/ 和 /l/ 的區別: microbial /maɪˈkɹəʊ.bi.əl/, slather /ˈslæðə(ɹ)/, ancestral /ænˈsɛs.təɹ.əl/, archaeologist /ˌɑɹ.kiˈɑ.lə.d͡ʒɪst/, durable /ˈdʊɹəbəl/

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。
先用 0.75 倍速逐句跟讀，熟練之後再回到正常速度。
錄下自己的聲音並與原聲對比，特別注意 microbe, bacterium, lignin 這類單詞。

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。

影子跟讀法: 閱讀完整分步指南 →

跟讀練習: What’s Ruining Our Ruins? - 通過影片學習英語口語

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