跟读练习: Kenyon College: John Green Commencement Address - 通过视频学习英语口语
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Please join me in welcoming Kenyon College's 188th commencement speaker, John Green.
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Thank you so much.
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President Decatur, faculty, staff, parents, friends, and members of Kenyon's class of 2018,
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2016, congratulations to all of you.
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17 years ago, I was supposed to be graduating from Kenyon.
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It ended up taking me an extra semester.
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But I was in the audience that day with my friends and classmates.
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I remember nothing about the commencement address, except that it lasted for 10,000 years.
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Like empires rose and fell, and still the speaker droned on cicada-like in his monotony.
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So I come to you today with but one solemn promise.
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One way or another, this will be over in 14 minutes.
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I want to spend one of those minutes, if you don't mind, in silence.
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This is a trick I learned from the children's television host, Mr. Rogers.
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If you don't mind, I'd like us all, not just the students, but all of us, to close our eyes and think for one minute,
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just a minute, about the people who loved us up into this moment.
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Family and friends, teachers and kind strangers.
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I'll keep the time.
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Thank you.
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Those people, they're so proud of you right now.
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My thoughts turned inevitably back to my years at Kenyon and to my professors, especially Don Rogan, who died this school year.
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Mr. Rogan was a brilliant teacher, but I've forgotten much of what I learned in his classes about phenomenology and gospel redaction.
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What I remember most is that he loved me, and that he took me seriously.
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He and his wife Sally welcomed me into their home, fed me, laughed with me, cried with me.
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And for many years, I wondered why he loved me.
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Like I wasn't a particularly good or committed student.
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I showed no particular promise.
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And then when he died, I saw the grief-stricken Facebook posts pour in from his old students, and I realized he had loved us all.
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Love is not like mass or energy.
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It is not conserved.
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And in the next 17 years, you will forget a lot.
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But you will not forget the kindness
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and generosity of those on this hilltop who were kinder and more generous than they needed to be.
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So when I was a student here, there was widespread agreement among my peers
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that the so-called real world of proper adulthood was basically a disease you caught and then eventually died from.
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Like, adulthood, with its mortgages and spreadsheets and lawn maintenance,
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seemed to be a thing to be dreaded and resisted until finally it overtook you, like a zombie plague.
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And then, like, once you acquired adulthood, you would start saying things like brand awareness in a fractured media landscape.
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And we need a president who knows how to get things done.
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To be an adult meant engaging in totally unironic conversations about the weather.
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I remember once when I was at Kenyon, my grandmother called me to tell me that she was watching the Weather Channel
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and that it looked like it was raining in Ohio.
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I explained to her that I was reading Ulysses.
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That I wasn't even in Gambier, but in Dublin, Ireland in 1904.
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And that history was a nightmare from which Daedalus was trying to awake.
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And that nothing, literally nothing, mattered less than the current weather.
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And then after a moment she asked, Well, is it raining or isn't it?
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To be an adult was to be a river rock blasted
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by an endless torrent of mundane terrors from resume formatting to electricity bills
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that would inevitably smooth all my hard edges until I looked and felt just like everything else.
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Now this is the part of the commencement address where I'm supposed to tell you
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that in fact adulthood isn't so bad and blah blah blah but no, no, it is so bad.
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If anything, it is worse than I could have imagined.
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I mean, have you ever been to a homeowners association meeting?
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Like each of you in the class of 2016 is a wondrous
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and precious and rare life in a vast and almost entirely dead universe.
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devoting two hours of your bright
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but brief flicker of consciousness to a debate over whether the
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maximum allowable length of grass in your neighborhood's front lawns should be four inches or six.
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But it's true, you will debate grass length or something equally stultifying.
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You will learn, almost against your will, the difference between whole and term life insurance.
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You will test drive a minivan and find yourself surprised by the quality of its handling.
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And along the way, along the way you'll find yourself wondering, why am I doing this?
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Why am I doing any of this?
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And this is, in my experience, where your Kenyan education will come in very handy because whether you've studied economics or anthropology,
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for the last four, or if you're like me, five years, you've been investigating what constitutes a fulfilling, successful human life.
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And I'd argue that actually is adulthood.
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Like maybe adulthood isn't something you've spent your time at Kenyon preparing for.
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Instead, maybe you've been doing it, albeit not on the minivan scale.
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You're probably familiar with the old line that a liberal arts education teaches people how to think.
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But I think it mostly teaches you how to listen.
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In your classes and in your readings, you've been listening.
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You've listened to your professors and to your peers,
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but also to Toni Morrison and Jane Austen and John Milton as you all together examine the big questions of our species.
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What do we owe ourselves and what do we owe others?
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What is the nature of the universe and what is our role in it?
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How best might we alleviate the suffering within and without?
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You learned about these questions at Kenyon, but you won't leave them here.
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And while making your voice heard on those questions is vital, you've also learned here that your voice gets stronger the more you listen.
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and not just listening to loud voices, but also to those that are hard to hear because they've been systemically silenced.
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I hope that listening will help inoculate you from the seductive lies of our time.
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The lie that strength and toughness are always assets, that selfishness is not just necessary,
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but desirable, that the whole world benefits most when you act in your own narrow self-interest.
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That seductive lie is appealing because it allows us to go on doing what we would have been doing anyway
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because it imagines a world in which I am what I feel myself to be, the exact center of the universe.
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But living for oneself, even very successfully,
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will do absolutely nothing to fill the gasping void inside of you of you.
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In my experience, that void gets filled not through strength but through weakness.
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You must be weak before the world because love and listening weaken you.
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They make you vulnerable.
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They break you open.
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And it is only when you are weak that you can truly see
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and acknowledge and forgive and love the weakness in others.
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Weakness allows you to see other humans not as enemies to defeat, but as collaborators and co-creators.
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In the end, we're making humanness up together as we go along.
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At the homeowners association meeting, where the miserable adults are debating grass length, what they're actually doing is hashing out what kind of neighborhood they want to share.
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When you're deciding between whole and term life insurance, you're actually thinking of a world without you and how you might be helpful to those you leave behind,
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and how lucky you will be to leave people behind, to have been woven so deeply into the interconnected web of the human story.
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All of it, actually, from electricity bills to the job where your coworkers call themselves teammates, even though this isn't football, for God's sakes.
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All of these so-called horrors of adulthood...
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I lost my place.
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There we go.
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All of these so-called horrors of adulthood emerge from living in
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a world where you are inextricably connected to other people to whom you must learn to listen.
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And that turns out to be great news.
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And if you can remember that those conversations about grass length
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and the weather are actually conversations about how we're going to get through and how we're going to get through together, they become not just bearable,
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but almost kind of transcendent.
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One more way that listening will be of use to you.
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Over the next few days, you're going to straggle out of this strange and wonderful place and enter a world where you will be,
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at least for a little while, manifestly weak.
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If you're lucky enough to have a job, it will likely involve fetching coffee for ungrateful bosses, or entering data, or writing press releases that no one reads.
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Some people will probably treat you as less than fully human, imagining you not to be the complex and multitudinous person you are,
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but instead as an easily replaceable cog in the clockworks of their organization.
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And all of that will be easier if you can see yourself not as the protagonist of your own heroic journey,
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but instead as a collaborator in a massive, sprawling human epic.
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I don't remember anything said at my commencement address, but I do remember Wendy McLeod's speech the day before.
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Professor McLeod, I apologize in advance for butchering your quote and for not swearing when you swore, but she said something like, you're about to be a nobody,
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and that's important because when you become a no- and that's important because when you become a somebody, if you can remember what it was like to be a nobody,
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you won't be a jerk.
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This is.. the parents are clapping.
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Looking back, I think that's about the second best piece of advice I've ever received behind only
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that given me by Professor Rogan, who once told me, and this I can quote directly, You're a good kid, but you need to learn when to stop talking.
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So I will shut up momentarily.
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And anyway, I can offer you no real advice on how to live a successful adult life, but I don't need to.
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The people you thought of during that minute of silence, they are who you want to be when you grow up.
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They have been strong for you, but also weak for you.
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They listened to you.
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They were irrationally, impossibly kind to you.
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It's not just that you wouldn't be here without them.
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You wouldn't be without them.
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If they're here today, I hope you'll take a second to thank them.
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And if they aren't, they may call later to ask you how it went.
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They may even ask what the weather was like.
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Tell them it was rainy, inexcusably cold for late May.
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and remember to ask if it is raining in their pocket of the world.
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Thank you.
✨ 推荐视频
本课的词汇与口语要点
这段视频共有 136 个句子、1841 个单词可供跟读。 讲话部分时长为 13:40。 说话人语速平稳,每分钟约 135 个词,很适合跟读。 82% 的单词属于英语最常用的 3,000 词,其余的词建议在练习前先学一下。
视频中的重点词汇
视频中 15 个值得学习的单词,附发音和释义:
| 单词 | 发音 | 释义 |
|---|---|---|
| adulthood 名词 | 成年 | |
| grass 名词 | /ɡɹɑːs/ | цо, 草 |
| silence 名词 | /ˈsaɪ̯ləns/ | 沉默 |
| weakness 名词 | /ˈwik.nɪs/ | 虛弱 /虚弱, 軟弱 /软弱 |
| horror 名词 | /ˈhɒɹ.ə/ | 恐懼 /恐惧 恐怖, 驚悚 /惊悚 |
| peer 名词 | /pɪɹ/ | 同輩 /同辈, 同齡人 /同龄人 |
| lawn 名词 | /lɔːn/ | 草地, 草坪 |
| inevitably 副词 | /ɪˈnɛvɪtəbli/ | 必將 /必将, 必然 |
| vast 形容词 | /væst/ | 浩大 |
| pocket 名词 | /ˈpɑ.kɪt/ | 口袋, 荷包 |
| trick 名词 | /ˈtɹɪk/ | 詭計 /诡计, 騙術 /骗术 |
| format 名词 | /ˈfɔːɹ.mæt/ | 格式, 開本 /开本 |
| argue 动词 | /ˈɑɹ.ɡju/ | 辯論 /辩论, 爭辯 /争辩 |
| awareness 名词 | /əˈwɛɹ.nəs/ | 意識 /意识, 覺悟 /觉悟 |
| deeply 副词 | /ˈdi(ː)pli/ | 深, 深深 |
视频中出现的短语动词
| 单词 | 发音 | 释义 |
|---|---|---|
| get through 动词 | /ɡɛt ˈθɹu/ | 度過 /度过 |
| end up 动词 | 到达 | |
| grow up 动词 | 長大 /长大 | |
| leave behind 动词 | 遺棄 /遗弃 | |
| look back 动词 | 回顧 /回顾 | |
| shut up | /ʃʌt ʌp/ | 閉嘴 /闭嘴, 住口 |
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 |
|---|---|
| 现在完成进行时 have/has been + -ing — 以前开始、现在仍在继续的动作 | you've been investigating · you've been doing · you've been listening |
| 条件句 if + 从句,will/would + 动词 — 条件及其结果 | If you don't mind, I'd like · If they're here today, I hope you'll take |
| 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 | I've forgotten · you've studied · you've spent |
| 被动语态 be + 过去分词 — 强调发生了什么,而不是谁做的 | is not conserved · be dreaded |
需要注意的发音
说话人用了 45 次缩略和弱读形式,例如 you're, you've, don't。请按听到的简短形式来说。
- “th” 音: smooth /smuːð/, grandmother /ˈɡɹæn(d)ˌmʌðɚ/, anthropology /ˌænθɹəˈpɑləd͡ʒi/
- “sh” 和 “zh” 音: congratulations /kənˌɡɹæt͡ʃəˈleɪʃ(ə)nz/, consciousness /ˈkɑnʃəsnəs/, hash /ˈhæʃ/, irrationally /ɪəˈɹæ.ʃə.nə.li/, redaction /ɹəˈdækʃən/
- 长单词——注意重音位置: electricity /ɪˌlɛkˈtɹɪsɪti/, inevitably /ɪˈnɛvɪtəbli/, successfully /səkˈsɛs.fə.li/, economics /ˌiːkəˈnɒmɪks/, congratulations /kənˌɡɹæt͡ʃəˈleɪʃ(ə)nz/
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 adulthood, grass, silence 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。






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