Listening · Academic Talk
How Vaccines Work
Listening · Academic Talk
Listening Test
Today's lecture: medicine
This task is designed to measure your ability to understand a short academic lecture on a topic taught in a university class.
In this exercise, you'll listen to a short academic talk and then answer multiple-choice questions about what you heard.
- Each question is worth 1 point. There are 4 questions about this talk.
- The talk plays only once — listen carefully.
- After the talk, you'll have 30 seconds per question. The exercise auto-advances when the timer hits zero.
- You can replay the audio and review the transcript only on the result screen.
How Vaccines Work
Listen to the talk and answer the questions
Listen to a talk in a medicine class
Show transcript
Today's topic is how vaccines protect us, and the idea is surprisingly elegant. Your immune system learns by experience; once it has defeated a particular germ, it remembers how, and the next encounter is far quicker. The problem is that learning the first time can mean getting seriously ill. A vaccine offers a shortcut. It shows the immune system a harmless preview of a germ, perhaps a weakened or inactive version, or just a piece of it. The body responds as if to a real threat, building defences and, crucially, a memory, but without the danger of the actual disease. Later, if the real germ appears, the immune system recognizes it instantly and stops it before it takes hold. On a larger scale, when most of a community is vaccinated, the germ struggles to spread at all, which protects even those who cannot be vaccinated.
Question 1
How does the immune system normally learn to fight a germ?
Show answer
Answer: By experience, after defeating it once
Question 2
What does a vaccine show the immune system?
Show answer
Answer: A harmless preview of a germ
Question 3
What does the body build in response to a vaccine?
Show answer
Answer: Defences and a memory
Question 4
What happens when most of a community is vaccinated?
Show answer
Answer: The germ struggles to spread
Practice against the clock and track your progress
Create a free account for all 20 sets in every task, timed practice with scoring, a progress dashboard and a full TOEFL mock test.