跟讀練習: Why Jakarta is sinking - 通過影片學習英語口語

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This is Waladuna Mosque in Jakarta.

Its roof is in ruins.

Moss covers the walls.

And sea water flows through every corner of it.

The last time people prayed here was in 2001, back when it was above ground.

Today, it’s a warning sign.

It signals what could happen to Indonesia’s capital city if things don’t change soon.

Because, even though Jakarta faces the same sea rising levels as other coastal cities around the world, that’s not quite what we’re looking at here.

Jakarta is sinking. And it’s been sinking for decades.

These blue areas show just how much the city has sunk since the 1970s.

The darker the area gets, the more it's dropped.

Here's how much it's descended today.

Most of the sinking happens here, in the north coast, where Jakarta meets the Java Sea.

Here, the land is sinking by about 25 cm a year, destabilizing the area, damaging homes, and upending people’s lives, over and over again.

Many residents here are fishermen, who need to live by the coast to make a living, but, further inland, Jakarta’s more than 10 million residents are also at risk.

A huge portion of the city, and the homes of millions, could be underwater by 2050.

Jakarta sits on a swampy plain, on low coastal land.

It has 13 rivers that drain through it.

But the reason the city is sinking is actually that most people here don’t have enough water.

Most Jakartans lack access to clean, piped water.

Instead, they get their water by digging wells like this one.

The pumps go deep into the ground to extract the water stored in aquifers, underground layers of rock that hold groundwater.

The porous spaces of the rock are filled with it.

Multiply this by a few million, and you have a problem.

Think of the rock as a soaked sponge: the more water is extracted, the more it deflates, causing the soil to compact and collapse, and the ground above it to sink.

Pumps alone shouldn’t be able to do this.

While some layers of earth will never recover their water, aquifers are usually refilled naturally when it rains.

But in Jakarta, that’s becoming increasingly rare.

For decades, Jakarta has been developing at a fast pace, and is now covered in concrete.

So the rainfall that would usually fill up the aquifers isn’t being absorbed.

It’s gotten so bad that in coastal areas prone to flooding, like the fishing community Muara Baru, people have built makeshift bridges to move through their neighborhoods.

Combined with sea level rise, it's also made floods during high tide and rainy seasons much more dangerous.

Like in 2007, when Jakarta experienced one of the worst floods in its modern history.

A storm and high tide caused rivers and canals around the city to overflow, killing 80 people.

Maksim has already lost his home to the sinking, and now sleeps on his fishing boat.

And Nondho has had to rebuild his home several times.

Groundwater pumping is putting Jakarta’s survival at risk.

But to understand how it got into this situation to begin with, you have to go back centuries.

In the 1600s, when European powers were colonizing the world, the Dutch took over what was then the port town of Jayakarta.

They razed it to the ground, and in its place, built Batavia: a headquarters for their growing empire.

They began to rule over the Indonesian, Chinese, Indian, and Arab people who had lived there for centuries, and built their new city in the Dutch style, with narrow townhouses along a grid of canals.

The canals were used for trade, defense, and to make Batavia feel like a Dutch city.

But look at Batavia from above, and you can see the city grid served a darker purpose, too.

If you look closely, you'll notice that there aren’t many bridges between the two sides, or between the blocks.

This was by design. The Dutch were outnumbered.

So, in order to control the local population, they divided it.

It looked like this.

Pretty much every group was confined to their city quarter.

The Dutch ruled over the local population like this for over a century.

But that began to change in the mid-1700s.

Because the Dutch didn’t properly maintain the canals, they began to deteriorate, and sediment from earthquakes blocked the flow of water.

The water in the canals turned stagnant, and soon, deadly.

As disease spread through the canals, the wealthier Dutch moved south of Batavia, where they began to develop a new colonial administrative center.

But, despite the death and disease, the Dutch continued to leave the canals untreated.

Instead, they began to use piped water.

In the 1870s, they developed the first centralized water supply, with iron pipes to distribute water to homes.

The pipes provided clean drinking water and indoor bathrooms.

But the pipes were concentrated in these areas, where the Dutch had moved to.

The indigenous population was left in informal settlements, called "kampongs," far from the piped water.

And this created a new kind of division in the city.

Native residents had to rely on street vendors for water.

But most often, they were forced to get their water from the neglected canals.

It took decades before pipes were finally built in these communities.

And when they were, it would only be a few public standpipes.

This continued through 1949.

After an armed conflict, the Dutch finally recognized Indonesia’s independence, and left.

The legacy they left behind was a sprawling city, built on marshland, and segregated by water access, that, now, Jakartans had to deal with.

Over the next decades, Jakarta’s population skyrocketed.

More people required more housing, more stores, and more streets.

And the city expanded fast.

But its water infrastructure still doesn’t serve the majority of the city.

This chart shows how much of Jakarta’s population has piped water.

It was 12 percent in the 50s, and is still under 50 percent today.

Many of the people without access to piped water have no other choice but to keep pumping groundwater to survive.

And the city continues to sink.

The situation has gotten so bad, the Indonesian government has talked about moving the capital, from Jakarta, to the neighboring island of Borneo.

But that won’t help the millions of people living in Jakarta.

To save the city, in 2014, the government announced a project, in collaboration with a Dutch architecture firm, to build and reinforce 120 km of seawalls, to stop the water from flooding the land as it sinks.

But so far, only these 10 kilometers have been reinforced.

Like this one in Muara Baru.

The problem is that, just like the rest of Jakarta, the seawall is sinking.

The project also includes an ambitious $40 billion plan to build a 38 km wall, shaped like a massive bird, to protect the coast from flooding.

But this project could take up to 30 years to complete.

And by then, Jakarta could have lost most of its coastal land.

Jakarta will continues to sink until groundwater stops being pumped.

And groundwater will continue to be pumped until the government provides an alternative.

This has been done before. In the 1950s, Tokyo managed to stop severe sinking by providing piped water.

Taipei, Shanghai, Bangkok, are other cities in the region that have managed to stop their cities from sinking.

But time is running out.

Jakarta has been free of Dutch rule for a little over 70 years now.

But the way the Dutch built their city, carved it up, and restricted its water, plagues it to this day.

Jakarta is sinking into the sea.

And, until its government figures out how to provide clean, piped water for its citizens, that will continue to be its reality.

For as long as it’s still here.

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關於本課

在本堂課中，學習者將練習與雅加達（Jakarta）下沉相關的英語表達。通過本影片的聽力練習，學習者不僅能夠提高詞彙量，還能瞭解雅加達獨特的地理與社會背景。此外，本課將有助於改善口語能力和聽力理解，特別是針對那些準備雅思口語考試的學習者，能夠更有效地使用shadow speech和shadowspeak技巧。

關鍵詞彙與短語

下沉 (sinking) - 形容某物在水平面以下逐漸下移的狀態。
海平面上升 (sea level rise) - 全球氣候變化導致海水上升的現象。
水文 (aquifers) - 地下儲存水的岩層，常用於供水。
淹水 (flood) - 水侵入某個地方，通常是指因暴雨或海平面上升而導致的。
臨時橋梁 (makeshift bridges) - 為應對突發情況而臨時搭建的橋，用於便利交通。
城市化 (urbanization) - 人口向城市集中並引起的社會經濟變化。
環境影響 (environmental impact) - 對自然環境造成的後果。
居民 (residents) - 在特定地區生活的人。

練習技巧

進行shadow speak練習時，傾聽影片的語速和語調至關重要。首先，可以反覆聽影片中的段落，模仿講解者的發音和情感表達。由於影片中涉及到對雅加達現狀的描述，注意在模仿時要傳達出對這座城市現狀的感情，例如憂慮和緊迫感。

此外，對於那些準備雅思口語練習的學習者，建議將一些短語和詞彙反覆朗讀，以增強記憶和流利度。使用shadowspeaks技巧時，儘量在家居環境中模擬真實對話場景，不僅能增強語言表達能力，還能提高應對陌生話題的自信心。堅持每天進行20分鐘的shadowing訓練，將極大提高您的英語口語能力！

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
現在完成進行時 have/has been + -ing — 以前開始、現在仍在繼續的動作	it's been sinking · has been developing
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 sunk · have built · has already lost
被動語態 be + 過去分詞 — 強調發生了什麼，而不是誰做的	are filled · is extracted · are usually refilled

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: Why Jakarta is sinking - 通過影片學習英語口語

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關於本課

關鍵詞彙與短語

練習技巧

影片中的語法

什麼是跟讀法？