A Chinese podcast · Same story, 4 levels
Photo: Curtis Hilbun · CC BY 3.0
多莉·帕顿去世了。她最看重的不是那几千首歌，是每个月寄到孩子门口的一本书。
Dolly Parton Died at 80. The Thing She Was Proudest Of Was a Free Book in the Mail, Because Her Father Never Learned to Read.
About this story
Dolly Parton Died at 80. The Thing She Was Proudest Of Was a Free Book in the Mail, Because Her Father Never Learned to Read. HSK 5-6 Chinese listening practice.
This is an HSK 5-6 Chinese listening episode that runs about 2 minutes. The full Mandarin script is shown with tap-for-pinyin and a line-by-line English translation, so you can listen and read at once — comprehensible input in the sense of Stephen Krashen's i+1 theory. It teaches 6 key vocabulary words such as 聪明、名字、份 and walks through 3 grammar patterns, each explained in English with examples. The same news story is retold at 4 difficulty levels — use the level selector above to find the version that is challenging but still understandable for you.
Read at your level
原文Read the complete story in Chinese. Reveal pinyin and English only when you need them.
English transcript reference
Last Tuesday, Dolly Parton died in Nashville, aged eighty, of cancer.
She sang for more than sixty years and wrote thousands of songs — one of which the entire world can hum a line of.
But she said, over and over in her lifetime, that the thing she valued most was something else.
In 1995, in Sevier County where she was born, she began mailing one book a month to every child.
From the first day of life to the fifth birthday: sixty books in all, every one free, with no question asked about family income.
The post office brings it to the door, with the child's own name printed on the cover.
For a three-year-old, that may be the first object in his life with his name on it.
The starting point of all this was her father.
Her father was a man from the Tennessee mountains. As a boy he never had the chance to go to school, and he could not read his whole life.
She said one line that has been quoted ever since: my father is the smartest man I know.
The smartest man, and he could not read a single sheet of paper his whole life.
So what she went on to do was make sure other people's children would not have to walk the road he had walked.
One county, in time, became five countries.
To date, more than three hundred million books have been sent.
In America, of children under five, one in every six is receiving them.
Her father lived to seventy-nine.
Before that, he heard with his own ears children calling her, to her face, "the book lady".
She said he was over the moon about it, and felt that a part of it belonged to him.
A man who could not read, watching his own daughter be called "the book lady" by an entire county of children.
Now she is gone, and the program put out a statement whose content was one thing only: the books keep going.
Next month, still one, still free, still delivered to the door.
What a person leaves behind is usually records, or awards, or a theme park.
What she left behind is an action that happens again, from scratch, every month.
Think about it:
After a person is gone, what still turns up at a stranger's door every month?
Listen again
Try it without the transcript and notice what sounds clearer.
What vocabulary does this episode teach?
词汇我爸爸是我认识的最聪明的人 — the line that has been quoted ever since.
封面上印着孩子自己的名字 — the child’s own name printed on the cover.
发了一份声明 (issued a statement) and 有他的一份 (a share of it is his).
她最看重的 — the thing she valued most. 看重 is literally "to see as heavy".
一个不识字的人 — a man who could not read.
这个项目发了一份声明 — the program issued a statement.
* beyond level超纲词
What grammar patterns appear in this episode?
语法被反复引用的……
A passive relative clause used as a modifier: "a much-quoted line".
她说过一句被反复引用的话。 — She said a line that has been quoted over and over.
不必再……
"Need not ... any more" — more formal than 不用.
不必再走他走过的那条路。 — They need not walk the road he walked again.
通常是 A，是 B，是 C
Listing the expected answers before overturning them. The rhythm sets up the contrast.
一个人留下的东西，通常是唱片，是奖，是一座主题公园。 — What a person leaves behind is usually records, awards, a theme park.
Proper Nouns
专有名词Sources
来源Free account
Keep learning from this story
Create a free account to keep saved words and your preferred level together.
- Keep words with their story context
- Remember your preferred level
- Build your vocabulary over time