Can you trust ancestry DNA kits?

6 Minute English

BBC

Language Learning, Education

4.6 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 5 December 2024

⏱️ 7 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Are DNA ancestry tests a reliable way to trace your ancestry? Neil and Beth discuss this and teach you some new vocabulary. (Image: Getty)

Find a full transcript and worksheet for this episode to help you with your English at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/learningenglish/english/features/6-minute-english_2024/ep-241205

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Transcript

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0:00.0	6 Minute English from BBC LearningEnglish.com.
0:07.3	Hello, this is 6 Minute English from BBC Learning English.
0:11.3	I'm Neil.
0:11.9	And I'm Beth.
0:13.4	Nowadays, it's popular to find out more about your family history
0:17.5	by tracing your family tree, a diagram that shows all the members of a family
0:22.7	over a long period of time. What do you know about your family history, Beth?
0:28.3	Well, my mum actually did our family tree. She found a lot of our ancestors had emigrated to
0:35.2	the United States. But yeah, I don't know much more than that.
0:39.7	What about you?
0:40.5	Well, I'm lucky to have an unusual surname.
0:44.7	So it's quite easy to trace my ancestors.
0:48.5	And somebody in my family has gone back to 1700 and found somebody with my name.
0:55.1	Wow, that's amazing.
0:56.5	Well, the internet has made it easier to find the historical records needed to research your ancestry,
1:02.5	the origins of your family.
1:04.8	But what if you want to find out about a time before historical records began?
1:09.7	Luckily, some companies now offer to trace your ancestry
1:12.9	using DNA. DNA is the cellular information that's passed down from parents to children,
1:19.9	telling the body how to create life. Listener Chris from the UK recently took a DNA ancestry test.
1:30.4	When the test returned some unexpected results,
1:36.8	Chris called BBC Radio 4 programme sliced bread, wondering how accurate they really were. Not so long ago, I sent off a home DNA testing kit and the results that came back were broadly in line with expectations,
	...

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