B2 · 5 minutes · Science

Thomas Edison: Inventor and Busy Team Leader

Thomas Edison invented many things that changed daily life, from recorded sound to electric light. A VOA Learning English report.

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What you’ll practise

Hear superlatives and reported speech in a biography.

Words to know

invention: Something new that someone has made.
phonograph: An early machine that played recorded sound.
motion picture: A film or movie.

Words at this lesson’s level (B2)

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

The other words of this lesson are at B2 or below.

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

Text and audio from “Thomas Edison: Inventor and Busy Team Leader”, Science & Technology, VOA Learning English, published 2025-02-17. Jill Robbins adapted it for Learning English. Public domain.

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

Levels are suggestions. Found a mistake? Tell us through the Contact page.