We choose to go to the Moon Advanced shadowing lesson
This is part of the speech President John F. Kennedy gave at Rice University in 1962 about going to the Moon, with the famous line "We choose to go to the moon". He uses questions, repeated phrases and a strong rhythm to persuade his listeners. It is a famous speech and good practice for advanced learners who want to speak clearly and with strong stress.
- Advanced
- Audio
- 2:34
- 19 sentences
Free, no account needed. The app plays one sentence and waits for you to say it.
The sentences
But why, some say, the moon?
Why choose this as our goal?
And they may well ask, why climb the highest mountain?
Why, 35 years ago, fly the Atlantic?
Why does Rice play Texas?
We choose to go to the moon.
We choose to go to the moon.
We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things.
Not because they are easy, but because they are hard.
Because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills.
Because that challenge is one that we're willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one we intend to win, and the others too.
It is for these reasons that I regard the decision last year to shift our efforts in space from low to high gear as among the most important decisions that will be made during my incumbency in the office of the presidency.
In the last 24 hours, we have seen facilities now being created for the greatest and most complex exploration in man's history.
We have felt the ground shake and the air shattered by the testing of a Saturn C-1 booster rocket, many times as powerful as the Atlas which launched John Glenn,
generating power equivalents to 10,000 automobiles with their accelerator on the floor.
We have seen the site where five F-1 rocket engines, each one as powerful as all engines of the Saturn combined would be clustered together to make the advanced Saturn missile,
assembled in a new building to be built at Cape Canaveral, as tall as a 48-story structure, as wide as a city block, and as long as two lengths of this field.
Within these last 19 months, at least 45 satellites have circled the Earth.
Some 40 of them were made in the United States of America, and they were far more sophisticated and supplied far more knowledge to the people of the world than those of the Soviet Union.
Words and phrases
- goal
- something you want to achieve
- challenge
- something difficult that tests your ability
- postpone
- move something to a later time
- in this decade
- within these ten years
- exploration
- travelling to a new place to learn about it
- booster rocket
- a rocket that gives the first big push into the sky
- satellites
- machines sent into space to go around the Earth
- sophisticated
- advanced and complex
How to practise this clip
Listen for how Kennedy stresses the repeated line "We choose to go to the moon" and the contrast in "Not because they are easy, but because they are hard".
- Listen for the rhythm: which words are strong and where the speaker breathes.
- Say each sentence at the speaker's speed, as one smooth phrase.
- Score your tries to see which words did not come through, then practise those sentences again.
Source
John F. Kennedy at Rice University, 1962 (JFK Library), public domain