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CONVERSATION LESSON

RAISED BY WOLVES

Dan: Okay. How are you doing Aaron?

Aaron: I’m doing fine! How about you man?

Dan: You ready to talk about feral children?

Aaron: Feral children. Yeah, why not? Let’s talk a little bit about Marcos, his name was, right?

Dan: You know I don’t want to bring this up but some people have called you a little bit feral.

Aaron: Oh really? And who would that be?

Dan: Well, I don’t want to name names but sometimes your manners can be a little questionable.

Aaron: Okay. Well, yeah. Maybe. I don’t know.

Dan: Anyhow, yeah. Marcos Pantoja, a very famous recent case of someone who could be described as a feral child.

Aaron: Yeah, meaning that he grew up totally outside of civilization without any education. He was basically living in the wilds.

Dan: Right, without any of what we normally think as human culture, without language, without any contact with society at all. His case is interesting because he was left alone in the wild at the age of six. By that time, you have developed quite a bit of language.

Aaron: Sure, and all the conditioning, the cultural conditioning that goes with the environment that you grew up in.

Dan: Right. But he seemed to have devolved to the point where 12 years later he could barely speak a word. Actually, feral children is something that came up quite a bit in my graduate degree program on language acquisition.

Aaron: Oh, really?

Dan: Because there’s been quite a bit of research about children who have grown up either in the wild or just been completely neglected and locked up by some evil parents and not spoken to so they didn’t develop language. Then afterwards, some people say it’s a little unethical that some language researchers have kind of pounced on those cases and thought, “Oh, this is a great chance for a research.”

Aaron: Yeah, I’m sure because it’s very rare. It can give them a lot of insight into how language is acquired and what happens when you go for long, extended periods of time without any exposure to, interaction with other people.

Dan: But I mean the unethical aspect that has come up, there’s one famous case. I think it was a girl called Genie. She didn’t grow in the wild but she had some horrible upbringing where she had no human contact. She was just kind of locked in an attic or something and not spoken to. By the time they found her, I think she was a teenager and she didn’t know how to speak at all. These researchers kind of pounced on it and I can’t remember when it was. Maybe in the ‘50s.

Aaron: I thought it was quite a while.

Dan: Yeah, but these researchers pounced, and they’re, “Oh, this is a great chance to see how a human can try to—whether they can develop language at a later period of time after the critical period when children learn native languages very easily. So I think that woman, Genie, is actually still alive. I’m not sure what country, maybe in America There’s a lot of controversy about her case.

It’s interesting story. There’s a documentary about it that you should watch. I think I have it at home.

Aaron: Oh yeah. Okay send it to me. I’ll check it out.

Dan: But anyhow, that’s one kind of what you could describe as a feral child but another kind would be like Marcos, someone who grew up in the wild. There’s a controversy with Marcos’s story, too. A lot of people think he’s a phony.

Aaron: Because of how far-fetched his story sounds, is that why?

Dan: Yeah, they just don’t believe that a child would be able to survive on his own with just the help of animals, or they don’t believe animals would come to the rescue of a child.

Aaron: Well, actually when I first heard of the story, I thought it was far-fetched, too. It just seemed so unbelievable, especially that point in the story where Marcos walks into the cave and he sees the wolf pups there who were probably very playful and their mother comes in and eventually gives him some food. I just thought that was pretty far-fetched because if I were a mother cub and I came in and saw some strange, foreign creature playing with my babies, yeah, I might react quite violently to that, right?

Dan: You’re ruining the story, Aaron.

Aaron: I’m ruining the story?

Dan: I mean this is… The next time you’re now going to tell me you don’t believe in Tarzan! What about Tarzan? Was he not? What about the Jungle Book? The Jungle Book, that’s true, right?

Aaron: Yeah, right. But here’s the thing about it, though. I don’t think he was raised by wolves, was he? He interacted with them on a regular basis, and they accepted him as one of their own, but I don’t think he actually lived with them and travelled in their pack and actually hunted for food with them, right?

Dan: Yeah, that part of the story isn’t so clear. But like I was saying it’s all throughout legends in history, these stories of people being raised by, mostly myths like Romulus and Remus were raised by dogs. That’s the Roman myth.

Aaron: And of course the Jungle Book.

Dan: Yeah, and I mean Disney wouldn’t lie, right?

Aaron: Of course not.

Dan: But Marcos’s story, a lot of people just thought it was too far-fetched. Maybe now that you bring it up, a mother wolf not getting violent, feeling that protective instinct… Once last summer, I was home in Virginia and I saw there’s always deers that come into my town recently. I saw this deer in my backyard, a bunch of deer, and I thought how close can I get before the deer would run away? You know, just… (inaudible). So I started moving very, very slowly and getting closer and closer and closer, and this deer wasn’t running away! Wow, this is really weird. And then the deer started stomping its foot at me, like it was going to charge me and it wasn’t a buck. I thought, “Wow, that’s really crazy!” Then I looked behind the deer and I saw that it was a mother and then the baby deer was behind it so her protective instinct kicked in. And this is a deer, it doesn’t have teeth.

Aaron: Like a wolf would.

Dan: But the point about Marcos is the people say that he never changed the story. Of course, people who make up stories, they’d often change it, detailed change in it. Supposedly, his never wavered.

Aaron: Right. One of the things that struck me as being really interesting about the story is the theme it brings up of love and how the love that people have for animals and the love that animals have for people, is it the same kind of love or is it actually something different, is there really something different going on? Have you ever loved an animal?

Dan: Sure. I’ve grown up with dogs and cats.

Aaron: Yeah, me too. Did you feel that those animals loved you?

Dan: Yeah. I don’t think it was the same as a human kind of love but I felt like they felt affection and they felt a connection beyond just wanting to get food from me.

Aaron: Yeah, right. Well I felt the same thing. With those animals you can feel, but I wonder if it’s the same for all mammals, let’s say.

Dan: Right. Wolves, those are part of the canine, the dog family, so I can kind of see that, making a connection with. But some of the other animals that he was able, at least, to imitate and he felt that he could communicate, he would do an animal call and then they would reply. I think he mentioned birds or eagles. I can’t really imagine having a connection with a bird.

Aaron: Oh no, I can. I can totally…

Dan: Really?

Aaron: Yeah. Have you ever had a pet bird?

Dan: Yeah, but birds, they’re kind of like modern dinosaurs.

Aaron: No!

Dan: They’re like lizards, flying lizards.

Aaron: I lived once with a cockatiel, you know those big white birds, and definitely had a connection with that bird.

Dan: Really?

Aaron: Oh yeah, totally I had a connection. There’s a lot of communication going on. I sometimes walk through the woods even here in the mountains around Kyoto and I’ll whistle at birds. They listen and they whistle back. You can communicate with birds. It’s a little different with mammals maybe.

Dan: They’re mammals, right?

Aaron: No, birds aren’t mammals.

Dan: Yeah, go back to school.

Aaron: You need to go back and learn that one. Mammals have hair and they produce milk.

Dan: Feathers, right?

Aaron: Yeah.

Dan: All right, that doesn’t work.

Aaron: We’ve heard stories, all kinds of stories about dolphins in the ocean helping people who need help, who are drowning or stranded at sea or protecting them from sharks and things like that. I think it’s just the word ‘love’ has so many different meanings in different context that maybe in some cases, maybe it’s not love. Maybe it is affection or maybe it’s respect or something along those lines.

Dan: But even among humans, is this the emotional content the same depth or the same quality between people?

Aaron: Yeah, totally. And this whole idea of animals only being “affectionate” to humans just for selfish means in terms of getting food or getting access to necessary resources, humans do that to each other. I mean, how different are we from animals or not?

Dan: I think that’s what some of the skeptics say that an animal’s bond or an animal’s relationship is superficial but surely humans have superficial relationships, too. There’s a wide range.

Aaron: Yeah, totally. And the idea of humans treating animals objectively or as objects, and manipulating them and controlling them and eating them. Where do we cross the line between love and killing an animal or raising it to be killed and eating it? You could have a pet cow, you could have a pet pig or a pet fish, yet we regularly farm those animals and kill them and eat them and where’s the love there? It’s really interesting.

Here’s a question for you. This is another part of the story that really struck me as being really interesting. Here’s this guy, Marcos, he was a kid and he lives in the wild for 12 years without any human contact and suddenly he is thrust back into civilization. You’ve experienced through your travels, culture shock. I have, too, living abroad. Imagine the degree of shock, the trauma that boy, that young man must have gone through being back in civilization. It must have been totally overwhelming and it’s amazing that he has actually made it through that without becoming mentally ill.

Another thing that is interesting about it is he said that one of the things that bothered him the most was the busyness of modern life, the busyness that just drove him nuts. How busy people were like little ants on a cookie and they just can’t stop moving. I think that’s a really interesting observation. Do you feel that we’re too busy as a species or as a society?

Dan: Too busy. Certainly I think that that’s the modern human condition and that’s why there’s all this interest recently, well not recently, in the last 20 or 30 years in meditation and yoga and all these kind of things are trying to counter our busyness, the stress that we feel for modern life. But that part of it even us going between cultures, we’ll feel shock. It reminded me of… You’ve seen The Shawshank Redemption, right?

Aaron: Yeah, that’s a great movie! I recommend that if you haven’t seen that you should totally watch that.

Dan: Well, I’ve seen it.

Aaron: No, I’m talking to anyone who hasn’t seen that movie should check it out. It’s a good movie.

Dan: You remember the part where there’s an older guy in prison and he gets out and he just can’t deal with society and he ends us killing himself because it’s just too different for him? That’s a fictional movie but there have been cases where people get out of prison and they kill themselves or they go back to crime to get back in because they can’t deal with the shock, the culture shock. And in prison, there is a society there. You are relating to humans and this is a guy who didn’t have any contact with humans. So really it’s amazing that he has been able to survive and become accustomed to human culture.

Aaron: He’s still alive, right?

Dan: Yeah.

Aaron: I would love to talk to someone like that that had such a different conditioning experience at such a young age. I wonder, and this is another interesting question, I wonder how that affects his world view now as an older man having lived in society for what, maybe 40 years? How old is he now, do you think?

Dan: I’m not sure. I saw some picture of him and he looked like he was probably in his late 40s.

Aaron: But apparently, he lives in some community somewhere. Do you remember where it is? I can’t remember. But apparently, people like him. He’s a very likeable guy. So it sounds like he has been able to successfully adjust to life in a completely different environment.

Dan: Yeah, what an amazing transition.

Aaron: Oh, incredible! To overcome that kind of experience especially in your formative years. It’s one thing as an adult, but in your formative years to be able to adapt to such an extreme change in culture and lifestyle says a lot about the ability of the human being to adapt and to endure. That’s incredible. Totally incredible.

Dan: So Raised by Wolves, I know you’re disputing whether he was actually raised by wolves. I say he is. It just makes for a better story.

Aaron: It makes for a better story. I just wonder if he was actually raised by them.

Dan: He was raised. He had a mother and a father. He had cousins, brothers, sisters… Aaron: When I imagine the story, I imagine him sort of living on his own in harmony with not only wolves, but also other animals. The part in the story where he sees the boars, the wild boards digging for tubers and he can go and kind of scare them off, and that’s how he can find food. So maybe everyday he’s in harmony with the animals.

Dan: But that part of the story, he’s throwing a rock at the…

Aaron: Well, I know but I’m talking about maybe later on he finds a nicer way… That wasn’t so nice, was it?

Dan: So raised by wolves, if you could choose any animal to raise you, what would it be?

Aaron: That’s a good question. Wolves would be a pretty good one because I get along with dogs quite well. I like dogs and they’re related to dogs. Maybe, gorillas? I mean I wouldn’t want to be in a fight with a gorilla…

Dan: But you know if you’re a gorilla, you’re with a gorilla pack, you’re definitely not going to be the alpha.

Aaron: Oh no, no! I mean I would be quite submissive.

Dan: A wolf could definitely kill you but your intelligence could maybe make you the alpha, leader of the wolf pack.

Aaron: I think gorillas are highly intelligent beings and I think if they accepted you into their group, I think that would be a good way to be raised in the wild. So maybe gorillas, maybe chimpanzees, wolves. It’s hard to imagine being raised by bears. It’s hard for me to imagine that. And I wonder what other animals are capable of raising a human child.

Dan: Lions, perhaps?

Aaron: Maybe. I’m not a cat person. I don’t know if they would eat you or not.

Dan: Well, one thing that you want to make sure of that you go with an animal that is not prey. You don’t want to be raised by giraffes.

Aaron: Oh, right!

Dan: Because in trouble they’re going to run off and you’re going to be stuck and the lions are going to be eating you. You want to be hanging with lions or wolves or gorillas. Hanging with the big dogs.

Aaron: Yeah like carnivores, man. Carnivores. So let’s hope that doesn’t happen to any of us or our loved ones.

Dan: Yeah.

Aaron: Yeah. It’s a little safer to be growing up in society.