B2 · 5 minutes · Short stories

Doctor Heidegger’s Experiment

An old doctor invites four old friends to test a special water that may make them young again. A story by Nathaniel Hawthorne, adapted for learners.

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What you’ll practise

Understand formal narration with passive and inverted sentences.

Words to know

experiment: A test to find out what happens.
unfortunate: Unlucky.
vase: A container for flowers.

Words at this lesson’s level (B2)

At B2, you probably know about 97% of the words in this lesson.

Show 1 word that may be new

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These words are in the recording, so they also help with the answers.

Word levels from the CEFR-J Wordlist 1.5 (Yukio Tono, Tokyo University of Foreign Studies); words not in it count as above B2. Your level is the one you chose in the level guide, otherwise the lesson’s.

Source

“Doctor Heidegger’s Experiment” by Nathaniel Hawthorne, adapted for VOA Learning English American Stories. Public domain.

View the source · Licence terms

Five sentences selected from the opening and cut into clips. Explanations and vocabulary are original.

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