跟读练习: First Amendment | Constitution 101 - 通过视频学习英语口语
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I'm Jeffrey Rosen and I'm here at the National Constitution Center in front of the First Amendment tablet.
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Let's talk about why the founders believed that Congress can make no law, abridging the freedom of speech,
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press, religion, assembly, and petition?
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Well, they had four reasons, which have been developed by the Supreme Court over the course of American history.
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First, freedom of conscience is an unalienable right because people have the right and the duty to think for themselves.
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Second, free speech makes our representatives accountable to we the people.
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Third, free speech is necessary for the discovery of truth and the rejection of falsehood.
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And fourth, free speech allows the public discussion necessary for democratic self -government.
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Remarkably, all four of these reasons are clearly and brilliantly expressed in two texts that we're going to talk about today.
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Thomas Jefferson's original draft of his Virginia Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom from 1777 and Justice Brandeis' opinion in Whitney v.
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California from 1927.
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Let's begin with Jefferson's bill, which he drafted after returning to Virginia from Philadelphia when he wrote the Declaration of Independence.
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Jefferson considered his religious freedom bill among the three most important
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accomplishments of his life important enough to be inscribed on his
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tombstone along with his having drafted the declaration of independence
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and founded the university of virginia under virginia's colonial religious code at the time all dissenters were required to support
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and attend the established anglican church presbyterians
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and baptists could be arrested for practicing their faith
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or preaching the gospel quakers and jews
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and other dissenters could be denied the freedom to marry or to have custody of their own children.
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Jefferson proposed not only to disestablish the Anglican Church and remove all criminal punishments for dissent,
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but also to prohibit all compelled support for religion of any kind.
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He concluded that because freedom of conscience is a fundamental right, government can regulate overt acts against peace and good order,
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but it lacks all power to intrude into the field of opinion.
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Let's review each of Jefferson's four reasons.
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First, freedom of conscience is an unalienable right, because people have the right and the duty to think for themselves.
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Jefferson said, well aware that the opinions and beliefs of men depend not on their own will,
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but follow involuntarily the evidence proposed to their minds.
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God hath created the mind free, and manifested his supreme will
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that free it shall remain by making it altogether insusceptible of
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restraint in other words jefferson argued freedom of conscience is by definition an unalienable right one
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that can't be alienated or surrendered to government
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because our opinions are the the involuntary result of the evidence contemplated by our reasoning minds.
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We can't give presidents or priests or teachers or fellow citizens the power to think for us, even if we wanted to,
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because we are endowed by our Creator with the capacity to reason, and therefore we can't help thinking for ourselves.
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Second, free speech makes our representatives accountable to we the people.
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In his religious freedom bill, Jefferson emphasized that it's crucial in a democracy
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for citizens to be able to criticize public officials because legislators and religious leaders being themselves fallible and uninspired,
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as Jefferson said, will always try to impose their own opinions and modes of thinking on others.
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Jefferson's prediction came to a head in the controversy over the Alien
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and Sedition Acts in 1798 when the Federalist Congress made it a crime to criticize the Federalist president,
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John Adams, but not the Republican vice president, Thomas Jefferson.
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Third, free speech is necessary for the discovery of truth and the rejection of falsehood.
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Jefferson concludes his religious freedom bill with words expressing his unshakable faith in the power of reason
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and reason deliberation to distinguish truth from error.
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And the words that he used are inscribed in marble on the Jefferson Memorial in Washington.
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Truth is great and will prevail if left to herself.
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She is the proper and sufficient antagonist to error and has nothing to fear from the conflict unless by human interposition,
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disarmed of her natural weapons, free argument and debate.
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Fourth, free speech allows the public discussion necessary for democratic self -government.
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Jefferson believed that in a democracy, all citizens have an equal right and responsibility to exercise their rights of conscience.
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As he put it in the Virginia Bill, proscribing any citizen as unworthy the public confidence by laying upon
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him an incapacity of being called to offices of trust and emolument, unless he professes or renounces this or that religious opinion,
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is depriving him injuriously of those privileges and advantages to which, in common with his fellow citizens, he has a natural right.
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In 1927, in the greatest free speech opinion of the 20th century,
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Justice Louis Brandeis distilled Jefferson's four reasons for protecting free speech into a few inspiring paragraphs.
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The case was called Whitney v.
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California, and here we see the first Jewish justice insisting on the right of Anita Whitney,
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a white woman, to make a speech defending anti -lynching laws, which were designed to protect the life and liberty of African Americans.
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Whitney made her speech at a Communist Party meeting, and she was convicted under a California law
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that made it a crime to associate with organizations that advocated doctrines that might lead people to break the law. In 1926,
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Brandeis had read Jefferson's original draft of the Virginia bill for establishing religious freedom
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and in his Whitney opinion the following year Brandeis adopted
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and refined Jefferson's standard for ensuring
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that government could only punish overt acts of law -breaking
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and not the expression of dangerous opinions as Brandeis put it
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in Whitney fear of serious injury cannot alone justify suppression of free speech and assembly
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men feared witches
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and burnt women it is the function of speech to free
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men from the bondage of irrational fears to justify suppression of free speech there must be reasonable ground to fear
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that serious evil will result if free speech is practiced
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and there must be reasonable ground to believe that the danger apprehended is imminent.
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Brandeis's inspiring test for protecting free speech,
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namely government can only ban speech if it's intended to and likely to cause imminent and serious injury,
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was based on his Jeffersonian faith in the power of what he called free
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and fearless reasoning to expose falsehood through public discussion.
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As Brandeis put it, if there be time to expose through discussion the falsehoods and fallacies,
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to avert the evil by the processes of education.
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The remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence.
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Only an emergency can justify repression.
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Brandeis's test was finally adopted by the Supreme Court in 1969 in the Brandenburg case, and as a result, the U .S.
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Supreme Court and the United States of America now protect free speech more vigorously than any other country in the world.
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Brandeis went on in Whitney to summarize Jefferson's four reasons for why government can't make laws designed to restrict free speech,
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and in the process, Brandeis achieved a kind of constitutional poetry i'm now going to
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read brandeis's central passage listen closely for each of jefferson's four
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reasons here we go those who won our independence believed
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that the final end of the state was to make men free to develop their faculties
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and that in its government the deliberative forces should prevail over the arbitrary they valued liberty both as an end
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and as a means.
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They believed liberty to be the secret of happiness and courage to be the secret of liberty.
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That's a quotation from Pericles' funeral oration.
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They believed that freedom to think as you will
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and to speak as you think are means indispensable to the discovery and spread of political truth.
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That without free speech and assembly, discussion would be futile.
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That with them discussion affords ordinarily adequate protection against the dissemination of noxious doctrine,
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that the greatest threat to freedom is an inert people, that public discussion is a political duty, and that this should be a fundamental principle of the American government.
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Well, that's the most inspiring paragraph on free speech ever written.
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But as that paragraph shows,
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all four of Jefferson and Brandeis' reasons for protecting free speech are based in an overwhelming faith in reason itself.
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The First Amendment is based on that faith, that people will take time to develop their faculties of reason through education and public discussion.
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that public discussion will be a check on arbitrary and partisan demagogues rather than enabling them,
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that more speech will lead to the spread of more truth rather than more falsehood, and that people will, in fact,
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take time for discussion and deliberation rather than making impulsive decisions.
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All four of these founding faiths are being challenged in a polarized age of social media,
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which is based on a business model of enrage and engage.
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Twitter and Facebook and other platforms have accelerated public discourse to warp speed, creating virtual versions of the mob.
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Inflammatory posts based on passion travel farther and faster than arguments based on reason.
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And rather than encouraging deliberation,
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mass media can undermine it by creating filter bubbles and echo chambers in which citizens see only those opinions they already embrace.
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For these reasons, some are calling for America's free speech tradition to be reconsidered or amended.
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Here at the National Constitution Center, in front of the First Amendment tablet, we are proud to preserve,
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protect, and defend the faith in reason deliberation
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that is the foundation of the freedom of conscience protected by the first amendment
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which encompasses the five freedoms of speech press religion petition
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and assembly as america's leading platform for non -partisan constitutional education
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and debate we bring together americans of different perspectives to cultivate
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their faculties of reason only by listening to the best arguments
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on all sides of the constitutional questions at the center of american life can you exercise your right
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and duty to make up your own mind.
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Like Jefferson and Brandeis and Frederick Douglass and Ruth Bader Ginsburg and all of these great free speech heroes of American history,
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we are dedicated to what Jefferson called the illimitable freedom of the human mind.
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For here, as Jefferson said, we are not afraid to follow truth wherever it may lead,
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nor to tolerate any error so long as reason is left free to combat it.
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本课的词汇与口语要点
这节 C1 级别的口语课以视频“First Amendment”为素材。 视频中反复出现的词有：speech, freedom, jefferson, Brandeis, discussion。 这段视频共有 123 个句子、1737 个单词可供跟读。 讲话部分时长为 12:44。 说话人语速平稳，每分钟约 136 个词，很适合跟读。 只有 80% 的单词属于英语最常用的 3,000 词，词汇难度较高。
视频中的重点词汇
视频中最难的 15 个单词，附发音和释义：
| 单词 | 发音 | 释义 |
|---|---|---|
| conscience 名词 | /ˈkɑn.ʃəns/ | 良心, 天良 |
| inspire 动词 | /ɪnˈspaɪə(ɹ)/ | 授意, 鼓舞 |
| paragraph 名词 | /ˈpæɹəɡɹæf/ | 段, 段落 |
| dissenter 名词 | 反對者 /反对者, 異議分子 /异议分子 | |
| inscribe 动词 | /ɪnˈskɹaɪb/ | 刻, 铭刻 |
| criticize 动词 | /ˈkɹɪtɪsaɪz/ | 批評 /批评 |
| imminent 形容词 | /ˈɪmɪnənt/ | 即將來臨 /即将来临 |
| arbitrary 形容词 | /ˈɑː.bɪ.tɹə.ɹi/ | 任意, 随机决定 |
| rejection 名词 | /ɹɪˈd͡ʒɛkʃən/ | 拒絕 /拒绝 |
| accountable 形容词 | /əˈkaʊntəbl̩/ | 有責任的 /有责任的, 有解說義務的 /有解说义务的 |
| expose 动词 | /ɪkˈspoʊz/ | 揭露, 暴露 |
| doctrine 名词 | /ˈdɑk.tɹɪn/ | 教條 /教条, 教義 /教义 |
| alienate 动词 | /ˈeɪ.li.ə.neɪt/ | 疏遠 /疏远 |
| antagonist 名词 | /ænˈtæɡənɪst/ | 對手 /对手, 敵手 /敌手 |
| apprehend 动词 | /ˌæpɹɪˈhɛnd/ | 理解, 了解 |
视频中出现的短语动词
| 单词 | 发音 | 释义 |
|---|---|---|
| make up 动词 | /ˌmeɪk ˈʌp/ | 組成 /组成 |
视频中的语法
说话人最常用的结构，并附上视频中的原话：
| 结构 | 视频中的用法 |
|---|---|
| 被动语态 be + 过去分词 — 强调发生了什么，而不是谁做的 | have been developed · be inscribed · were required |
| 定语从句 who / which + 从句 — 补充说明人或事物 | reasons, which have · laws, which were · those who won |
| 现在完成时 have/has + 过去分词 — 过去发生但与现在仍有关联的事 | have been developed · have accelerated |
需要注意的发音
说话人用了 8 次缩略和弱读形式，例如 can't, I'm, we're。请按听到的简短形式来说。
- “th” 音: unworthy /ʌnˈwɝði/, altogether /ɔl.tuˈɡɛð.ɚ/
- “sh” 和 “zh” 音: conscience /ˈkɑn.ʃəns/, deliberation /dɪˌlɪbəˈɹeɪʃən/, suppression /səˈpɹɛʃən/, rejection /ɹɪˈd͡ʒɛkʃən/, disestablish /dɪsɪˈstæblɪʃ/
- 长单词——注意重音位置: deliberation /dɪˌlɪbəˈɹeɪʃən/, unalienable /ʌnˈeɪljənəbəl/, arbitrary /ˈɑː.bɪ.tɹə.ɹi/, alienate /ˈeɪ.li.ə.neɪt/, antagonist /ænˈtæɡənɪst/
中文母语者容易读错的音：
- /v/ — 不要读成 /w/，上齿轻触下唇: overt /oʊˈvɚt/, prevail /pɹɪˈveɪl/, cultivate /ˈkʌltɪveɪt/, deprive /dɪˈpɹaɪv/, impulsive /ɪmˈpʌlsɪv/
- 词尾辅音 — 要读清楚，后面不要加元音: conscience /ˈkɑn.ʃəns/, falsehood /ˈfɒlsˌhʊd/, paragraph /ˈpæɹəɡɹæf/, inscribe /ɪnˈskɹaɪb/, overt /oʊˈvɚt/
- /r/ 和 /l/ 的区别: deliberation /dɪˌlɪbəˈɹeɪʃən/, prevail /pɹɪˈveɪl/, involuntarily /ɪnˌvɑlənˈtɛɹɪli/, involuntary /ɪnˈvɑ.lənˌtɛɹ.i/, ordinarily /ɔɹdɪˈnɛɹɪli/
如何用这段视频练习
- 先完整听一遍视频，不要开口，记下不认识的单词。
- 用正常速度逐句跟读，每句重复到你的节奏与说话人一致为止。
- 录下自己的声音并与原声对比，特别注意 conscience, inspire, paragraph 这类单词。
什么是跟读法？
跟读法 (Shadowing) 是一种有科学依据的语言学习技巧，最初开发用于专业口译员的培训，并由多语言者Alexander Arguelles博士普及。这个方法简单而强大：您在听英语母语原声的同时立即大声重复——就像是一个延迟1-2秒紧跟说话者的影子。与被动听力或语法练习不同，跟读法强迫您的大脑和口腔肌肉同时处理并模仿真实的讲话模式。研究表明它能显着提高发音准确性，语调，节奏，连读，听力理解和口语流利度——使其成为雅思口语备考和真实英语交流最有效的方法之一。