Experts Answer Big Questions About AI And The Future

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C1 English listening practice · American English · Curated for advanced learners

💡 Did you know?

What does “drudgery” mean in English?

drudgery
the exhausting, repetitive side of work
boring, repetitive work that must be done but feels draining

You might say “boring” — but drudgery goes further. It means work that is not just uninteresting but also tiring and hard to escape. It has no plural and no “a” before it. It fits home tasks, office routines, or any job where the same unwanted work repeats day after day. The word works in news articles, at work, and in normal conversation.

In this clip, an expert says AI will make “a lot of the drudgery of practicing law way easier” — meaning the slow, repetitive paperwork side of a lawyer’s job, not the smart, strategic thinking. That contrast shows the core meaning: drudgery is the part of work nobody wants but someone still has to do. A few more examples: - “Grading the same test fifty times is pure drudgery.” - “The drudgery of doing laundry never ends.” - “He loved writing but found the drudgery of editing exhausting.” It fits both everyday talk and more serious writing without sounding strange in either.

From WIRED on YouTube.Watch original

Vocabulary frequency

How common is the vocabulary in this C1 English listening practice listening practice?

90.8%
of words are in the top 2,000 most common English words
Based on this reel’s transcript, most of the vocabulary is high-frequency, everyday English.

General English frequency

83.5%
Top 1,000
90.8%
Top 2,000
97.3%
Top 5,000

Spoken English frequency

90.9%
Top 1,000
95.9%
Top 2,000
100%
Top 5,000
👄 Conversational vocabulary
This reel’s words appear more often in subtitle-based spoken-English data than in general usage, so it may feel closer to everyday conversation.

Words above this video’s level

Quick glosses for vocabulary that goes beyond this video’s C1 level.

invisible
Rare / outside top 5,000Common in speech
Unable to be seen; out of sight; not visible.
biologists
Rare / outside top 5,000
scientists studying living organisms
biotech
Rare / outside top 5,000
biotechnology (science using living organisms)
insulin
Rare / outside top 5,000
hormone regulating blood sugar
neuroplasticity
Rare / outside top 5,000
brain's ability to change

Source: wordfreq 3.1.1 (general) · SUBTLEX-US 2012 (spoken). Buckets approximate; exact ranks not stored.

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