跟读练习: The banana is under threat - 通过YouTube学习英语口语
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This banana is known as the Gros Michel, aka Big Mike.
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This banana is known as the Gros Michel, aka Big Mike.
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And it nearly went extinct.
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Hard to imagine because the myth that bananas are ubiquitous is so ingrained in our minds.
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I'm Chiquita Banana and I've come to say...
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Bananas in pajamas.
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Now let's go bananas!
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So Mauricio Catalan's comedian is composed of a single banana.
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It is the number one grown fruit in the world,
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the most consumed fruit, the most important fruit crop.
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It's the, I think, the weirdness of bananas that makes them so interesting.
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When Big Mike disappeared from the market,
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it was replaced with something very similar, the Cavendish banana.
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And you probably recognize it as the banana,
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since it's pretty much the only banana we see in the US.
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By the 1950s, Cavendish became the most commercially successful banana.
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Bananas are so good for you and so easy to digest.
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But a variant of the same disease that virtually wiped out Big Mike is coming for the Cavendish.
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And this time, there's no replacement.
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So what needs to happen to save our beloved banana?
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Bananas are fascinating fruits.
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They're part of the genus Musa and are full of potassium and an energy-dense food,
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making them a staple crop in much of Africa, Asia, and Latin America.
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They originally came from Asia,
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likely somewhere in Southeast Asia.
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The wild ones are full of of seeds.
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So a wild banana is going to be about the length of your thumb here.
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And these banana seeds are rock hard, tooth shattering.
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To get to the seedless bananas we have today,
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humans basically had to find sterile fruits.
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It was probably a mutation that did this.
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Some of these early farmers found a banana that was seedless and watched it propagate and said,
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hey, you know, we can cut this sucker off,
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this daughter plant, and take it somewhere else.
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And the daughter plant gives birth to another plant.
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And this can go on for thousands of years.
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This method of reproducing through propagations is also known as asexual cloning.
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But it also creates some problems because these fruits are essentially now clones
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and they're all exactly the same and they carry the same weaknesses.
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And this genetic cloning is really where the danger starts.
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Commercially farmed bananas, which are pretty much all of the bananas we consume, are monocrops.
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It's an industrial agriculture term that refers to single crop species grown on the same land again and again.
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It's driven by our demand for uniform, durable, and cheap fruit.
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The variety they picked was a banana called the Gros Michel.
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The Gros Michel is a great banana for commercial use because it's tough.
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It doesn't need to be packaged really that much.
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It ripens at a perfect rate.
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The result?
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Uniform bananas for consumers like us,
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but extremely fragile biological conditions for the plants and the farmers.
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You run a risk, which is that if one of your bananas gets sick,
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all of them are gonna get sick.
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And that was exactly what happened with Panama disease,
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or Tropical Race 1, in the early 1900s.
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The plantations begin to get very sick.
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Fungus invades the soil, making it impossible to grow the bananas.
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But instead of diversifying, industrial banana companies acquired more lands as the plantations became diseased.
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And all goes well until they finally run out of land.
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This is partially how the term banana republic came to be.
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It's an ugly history that involves US corporations like the United Fruit Company exploiting land and labor in Central America.
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These companies took over farms and governments to grow exports like bananas cheaply and at a massive scale.
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But no amount of land in Conquest could stop the spread of Panama disease.
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By the 1950s, TR1 had devastated the Gros Michel globally,
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virtually wiping it out of production.
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Luckily, the Gros Michel had a close cousin that was resistant to that strain of Panama disease,
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the Cabin dish.
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At the brink of extinction,
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at the brink of disaster,
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the banana industry saves itself,
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when in fact it is only delayed an inevitable fate that will come back to haunt it again.
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Speaking of delicious bananas, this video is presented by a delicious yogurt, Stonyfield Organic.
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For over 40 years, Stonyfield Organic has been a champion of truth in our food system.
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There is so much misinformation out there,
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which is why they believe in using the highest quality ingredients to ensure
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that what they put on the shelves is the best product for you and your family.
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The milk they use comes from all over the country,
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including Molly Brook Farms in Vermont.
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It's USDA organic certified, which means no growth hormones, no pesticides, no antibiotics.
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So the next time you're in your grocery run and you're thinking about bananas,
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make sure to also check out Stonyfield Organic Yogurt.
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It's also important to note that Stonyfield Organic did not dictate the content of this video,
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but their support did make this tasty reporting possible.
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And now back to bananas.
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By the 1990s, the Cavendish was facing a new strain of the Panama disease,
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Tropical Race 4 or TR4.
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The banana companies refuse to believe it and they just keep doing what they're doing.
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The disease started in Taiwan in the late 80s.
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From there, it spread to Africa, Australia and the Americas.
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By late 2025, TR4 is reported in Ecuador,
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the largest banana exporter in the world.
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This disease is really virulent.
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If I am wearing a sneaker with one bit of contaminated soil and I walk through a banana plantation,
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I'm gonna spread that disease.
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But unlike what happened with Gros Michel in the 1950s,
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there is no banana cousin to replace the Cabin dish with.
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So we're in the situation now where this disease is really starting to have a dramatic influence.
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And all of the major producers around the world are now recognizing at long last things have to change.
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Now, it's not like other bananas don't exist.
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There are actually over a thousand species of bananas.
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With specialty farms and supermarkets,
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you can even find some of these other varieties.
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There's certainly been a move to try to move consumer preferences from Cavendish to something else.
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Consumers didn't like it.
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Didn't taste like Cavendish that preference is such an incredible driver.
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And to try to get consumers to change from a Cavendish banana to something else is going to be a big ask.
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So Professor Dale turned to science.
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My group started to genetically modify bananas.
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So we know there is resistance to the Panama disease tropical waste fall.
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It actually occurs in one of those wild bananas we were talking about,
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the ones with seeds we pulled one gene out of that banana and transferred it to Cavendish.
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But as you can imagine,
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consumers have a lot of skepticism around genetically modified foods.
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At this time, in March,
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2026, Professor Dale's lab-grown Cavendish bananas are not yet available in stores.
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We've now had approval to grow,
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commercially grow that banana in Australia,
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but nowhere else in the world has yet.
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Genetically modified crops are highly regulated.
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So Europe at the moment is very reticent on taking any genetically modified foods.
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And the other thing, of course, is consumer perception.
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While his modified banana will likely never make it into the European market,
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Professor Dale has other solutions like gene editing.
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In many countries, this is no longer considered genetic modification.
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There are many, many other crops that are being gene edited and some of them are already on the market.
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So, to save our beloved banana,
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either Western consumers will have to give up on the myth of there being only one type of banana,
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or regulators are going to have to accept genetically engineered Cavendish.
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I think we're going to have to have an open mind
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about how we're going to produce our crops under what are becoming increasingly extreme conditions.
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Though truthfully, science can only do so much.
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The answers for preserving our beloved banana and the future of many of our fruits lies in maintaining a diverse ecosystem.
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How do we fix the problem?
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And the answer is destroy the monoculture.
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We need to get all those bananas that are so good to the United States,
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to Europe, to the Western world,
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because that's the only way to sort of protect the banana and to protect people who grow bananas.
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What I would love to see would be when you walk into a supermarket,
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that still the bananas are right there front and center,
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but there are 10 different ones.
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Cavendish over here and maybe Ladyfinger and bananas would go from the world's favorite fruit to even more favorite.
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Alright so we got all of these bananas for this shoot
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and we want to do a blind taste test to see
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if we can actually identify which one is Cavendish and also see
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if we like one of these bananas better shout out to the Thai
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and Filipino markets for actually having such a diverse array of bananas
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and we're gonna put the results of the blind taste test up on Vox's Patreon.
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If you're not yet a member go on over to patreon.com slash Vox.
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It's so important to support independent journalism.
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You know, your membership allows us to continue making videos like this,
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allow us to have fun,
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be creative, but also really dig into the investigative reporting.
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And if it doesn't make sense for you financially today to support Vox,
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you can still sign up for free,
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stay up to date with our reporting.
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And now let's get this taste test started.
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Ben, ready eventually?
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Thank you.
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背景与背景信息
在这段视频中，讲述者谈论了一种名为“大麦克”（Gros Michel）的香蕉，它几乎面临灭绝的危险。尽管我们常常认为香蕉是普遍存在的，但实际上，由于商业种植和单一作物种植的方式，香蕉的种类变得非常有限。讲述者通过幽默的叙述，将香蕉的历史和现状生动地呈现出来，让人意识到保护香蕉多样性的重要性。
日常交流的五个常用短语
- Bananas in pajamas - 一种有趣的说法，可以用于轻松的交流。
- Let’s go bananas - 表达兴奋和欢乐的心情。
- Cavendish banana - 了解这种香蕉有助于辨识目前市场上的主要香蕉品种。
- Asexual cloning - 在讨论生物学或农业时，知晓此概念有助于理解植物的繁殖方式。
- Monocrops - 针对农业种植的术语，了解这个概念能帮助我们讨论种植的多样性。
逐步影子跟读指南
想要提高英语发音和流利度，影子跟读（shadow speak）是一种高效的学习方法。以下是针对这段视频的逐步指南：
- 观看视频：先完整观看视频，了解讲述内容和语调。
- 分段练习：将视频分成几部分，逐段回放，跟着讲述者进行影子跟读。
- 注重发音：集中注意力在一些关键短语上，例如“Cavendish banana”和“Let’s go bananas”，反复练习这些短语。
- 模仿语调：尝试模仿讲述者的语调和节奏，这样可以提高自己的英语口语能力。
- 重复练习：每天抽出一些时间，例如在午餐时或通勤时，进行英语口语练习，通过影子跟读来巩固记忆。
通过这种方法，学习者不仅能够提高英语发音，还能在日常生活中自信地使用英语，同时也可以通过看YouTube学英语，增强语言能力。
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。