A Chinese podcast · Same story, 4 levels
四十年拿不下来的靶点被拿下了。胰腺癌病人多活半年，代价是一个月三万九千八百美元。
Pancreatic Cancer Drug Offers Six More Months
About this story
Pancreatic Cancer Drug Offers Six More Months. HSK 2 Chinese listening practice.
This is an HSK 2 Chinese listening episode that runs about 3 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 药、身体、难 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.
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原文Read the complete story in Chinese. Reveal pinyin and English only when you need them.
English transcript reference
Last week, the FDA in America approved a new drug.
The drug is called daraxonrasib.
It is for patients with pancreatic cancer.
Pancreatic cancer is one of the hardest cancers to treat.
Why is it so hard?
Because most cancer drugs do not work on it.
In the past, how long could someone with this illness live?
Half of them did not reach seven months.
Seven months is not even a year.
Now there is daraxonrasib.
With this drug, half of them can live thirteen months.
Seven months becomes thirteen months.
Half a year more.
That half year is what the drug gives.
How does it do it?
Inside the body there is a protein.
In some people, that protein has gone wrong.
A protein that has gone wrong makes cancer cells keep growing.
In pancreatic cancer, out of a hundred patients, more than ninety have this same broken protein.
Scientists have known this for a very long time.
But for many years, they could not make a drug for it.
This broken protein is too small and too smooth. A drug cannot get hold of it.
So people used to say this protein was one you could not make a drug for.
Now someone has — daraxonrasib.
This new drug is a small tablet.
You do not have to go to hospital for an injection.
You take it at home, one tablet a day.
It has its bad side too.
People who take it often get a rash on the skin.
Out of a hundred people, eighty-six get one.
Eighty-six people is a lot.
But patients say daraxonrasib is better than chemotherapy.
Why?
Because chemotherapy is so hard to bear that many people cannot take it and stop treatment.
People on this drug are in less pain, and very few of them stop.
They can be at home, they can walk, they can see their families.
Up to here, it is all good news.
Here is the bad part.
This drug is expensive.
One month costs thirty-nine thousand eight hundred dollars.
One month.
Not one year — one month.
And a year?
A lot of people do not have that kind of money.
The drug has been made, but many people cannot afford to take it.
Think about it:
A drug can let a person live half a year longer, but many people cannot afford it.
Does that count as good news?
Listen again
Try it without the transcript and notice what sounds clearer.
What vocabulary does this episode teach?
词汇这种药叫 daraxonrasib — this drug is called daraxonrasib.
在人的身体里，有一种蛋白 — inside the body there is a protein.
最难治的癌症之一 — one of the hardest cancers to treat.
会让癌细胞一直长 — it makes the cancer cells keep growing.
Literally "egg white" — the everyday word became the scientific one.
比化疗好 — better than chemotherapy. Short for 化学治疗.
* beyond level超纲词
What grammar patterns appear in this episode?
语法让 + object + verb
Makes something do something — the causative.
坏了的蛋白，会让癌细胞一直长。 — The broken protein makes cancer cells keep growing.
太……了
Too much of something, with a consequence implied.
因为化疗太难受了 — because chemotherapy is too hard to bear.
……不住
Cannot hold or grasp. The 住 complement means "firmly".
药抓不住它。 — The drug cannot get hold of it.
Proper nouns
专有名词Sources
来源Free account
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