A Chinese podcast · Same story, 4 levels
陪审员选她当陪审长，理由是「你上过法学院」：可她只是在《律政俏佳人》里演过律师，连大学都没念完
A Jury Made Her Their Foreman Because "You Went to Law School" — She Had Only Played a Lawyer in Legally Blonde, and Never Finished College
About this story
Reese Witherspoon told The Graham Norton Show that about seven years after Legally Blonde she did two weeks of jury duty in Beverly Hills on a dog-bite case, and her fellow jurors elected her foreman because they thought she had gone to law school. She told them she had not, and had not finished college. Chinese listening practice at four levels. HSK 1 Chinese listening practice.
This is an HSK 1 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 12 key vocabulary words such as 学、想、前面 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
Today we are talking about a woman.
This woman makes films.
In a film, she becomes someone else.
Today she is this person, tomorrow she is that one.
A lot of people watch her films.
More than twenty years ago, she made one film.
In that film, she was someone studying law.
What is law?
Law is what a country says.
This you may do, that you may not do.
That is law.
In the film she studied law, and she was very good at it.
Later, in the film, she spoke up for other people.
A great many people saw that film.
Everybody loved it.
But it was a film.
The people in a film are not real.
Her studying law was not real either.
She herself has never studied law.
She says: I did not even finish college.
All right, here is what happened next.
Seven years after the film.
One day, the country called her to a certain place.
In that place, people say what happened.
One person says: he is in the wrong.
One person says: I did nothing wrong.
The people in the middle have to watch and listen.
There are many people in the middle.
She was one of them.
What do the people in the middle have to do?
They have to say: is this person in the wrong or not?
They were there for two weeks.
On the first day, the people in the middle had to choose one of them.
That one would speak at the front.
They all looked around and said: you do it.
The one they meant was her.
She did not understand at all.
She said: why me?
They said: because you studied law.
She said: I have not studied law.
She said: really, I have not.
She said: I studied it in a film.
The people in the middle did not know that.
They had seen her film.
They thought: she knows the law.
But she does not.
She said something about it later.
She said: I did it once, in a film.
She said: and they really put me at the front.
She said: that was when I understood something.
She said: a lot of people do not know what the law is.
Here is what I want to say.
You see someone do a thing.
You watch it many times.
And then you think: he can do this thing.
But what you saw was a film.
Think about it:
Have you ever thought this way too?
You see a person somewhere.
And you think: he knows how.
How do you know he knows how?
Listen again
Try it without the transcript and notice what sounds clearer.
What vocabulary does this episode teach?
词汇HSK 1. Repeated throughout — what she did in the film, and what she never did in life.
HSK 1. 他们想：她会法律 — the mistaken thought the whole episode is about.
HSK 1. 这个人要在前面说话 — how the episode describes a jury foreman with floor words.
HSK 2. Used four times, mostly to say what people did not know.
HSK 1. 你看见一个人做一件事 — seeing is exactly what got mistaken for knowing.
在电影里，她做别的人 — how the episode explains what an actor does.
HSK 3. The thing that was mistaken for a qualification.
Defined in the episode itself: 法律是国家的话。这个可以做，那个不可以做。
中间的人要选一个人 — the moment the whole story turns on.
我真的没有学过 — she says it twice, and it changes nothing.
我大学都没有上完 — her own strongest denial.
她很不明白 — her reaction, and the listener's.
* beyond level超纲词
What grammar patterns appear in this episode?
语法……，不是真的
Is not real. Chinese states this flatly with 不是 plus 真的, and the episode uses it to separate a film from the world.
电影里的人，不是真的。
她学法律，也不是真的。
为什么是我？
Why me? Chinese uses 是 to focus on the person picked out, where English relies on stress alone.
她说：为什么是我？
你就想：……
And then you think: … The colon carries direct thought in Chinese exactly as it carries direct speech, which is how this episode quotes people's reasoning.
你就想：他会做这个事。
他们想：她会法律。
Proper Nouns
专有名词Sources
来源- 'Legally Blonde' star Reese Witherspoon was chosen as jury foreman after jurors thought she went to law school
- Reese Witherspoon Chosen as Jury Foreman After Jurors Thought She Went to Law School Because of Legally Blonde
- Reese Witherspoon says jurors once chose her as foreman because they thought she had gone to law school
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