Pratica di Shadowing: Why can’t prices just stay the same? - Impara a parlare inglese con i video
Creazione lezione...
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Inflation is causing stress.
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Bad news about prices in the grocery store.
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Historically high inflation.
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In 2022, much of the world experienced a period of uncommonly high inflation, with the US, UK and Eurozone all peaking at around 10%,
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meaning that prices on average were a full 10% higher than one year before.
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Though that's probably not a surprise to anyone watching this.
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It's thankfully now closer to the normal range, if still a bit high.
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But infuriatingly, since this chart just shows a rate of change, that doesn't mean that prices are down, just that they've stopped climbing as fast.
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And that really sucks.
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Consumers are stressed, businesses are suffering and governments are scrambling.
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But at the same time, if you were to, I don't know, find yourself reading and watching a ton of inflation related content, you'll also keep hearing this.
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A little inflation is a good thing.
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A little inflation is a good thing.
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A little inflation now would be a good thing.
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Everybody wants a little inflation.
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Why?
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If rising prices hurt seemingly everyone, why can't they just stay the same?
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Why can't inflation be zero?
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The first reason inflation can't stay at zero is because governments and their central banks don't want it to.
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Lots of countries actively pursue what is called an inflation target.
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In the US right now, it's about 2%.
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That's the number that's used by most central banks across the world.
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But the truth of it is, that's a pretty arbitrary number.
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The goal is what economists consider a virtuous cycle.
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Here's what that looks like.
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In times when prices are generally rising, people tend to expect them to rise further.
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And that actually encourages people to spend money now on big, durable purchases like cars or appliances, in order to avoid having to pay more for the same thing later.
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And the stuff we need to buy no matter what, goods like food or clothing, gets more expensive too, which requires us to spend more.
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Either way, companies make more money.
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Which means more people have jobs and more of their own money to spend.
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And that means more demand and therefore higher prices.
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So the cycle continues.
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But this bit of the cycle is crucial to its virtue.
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It's okay if prices rise so long as wages rise too.
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still be able to afford the same goods if your wages keep pace with inflation.
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Emphasis on the if.
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In the U.S., for two years, wage growth lagged behind inflation.
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That trend has reversed starting in mid-2023.
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Wages, especially at the bottom, have kept up with inflation.
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In fact, in many cases, surpassed inflation.
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And that is a good thing.
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That also we have to remember, wages in this country are rock bottom and have been for way, way too long, right?
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So wage growth rising, good?
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Are wages high enough?
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No.
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And a disruption at any point in this loop can lead
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to the kind of high inflation we've experienced over the past few years,
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when supply chain interruptions created product shortages and some companies artificially drove up prices to increase their profits, which along with some other causes,
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effectively turned this virtuous cycle into a vicious one.
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With Digital Credit Union, you'll get a world of financial possibilities, starting with their award-winning primary savings account and a zero-fee checking account
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that could help you get your paycheck up to two days early.
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Like all credit unions, DCU is a not-for-profit, which says its primary focus is to serve their members, unlike banks, which primarily serve their shareholders.
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From community give-back initiatives to innovative products and services, their mission adheres to these three principles.
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People come first, do the right thing, and make a difference.
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DCU does not influence the editorial process of our videos, but they do help make videos like this possible.
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The government does have tools to combat rising inflation.
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They usually shift things here by raising interest rates, which makes all borrowing, including credit cards and bank loans, more expensive.
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When the cost of borrowing goes up, it becomes more expensive to make investments, to hire people, and that eventually slows the economy down.
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what the U.S.
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Federal Reserve did in 2022, which did help bring inflation closer to that 2% target,
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while placing an even higher financial strain on families who may need to borrow just to make ends meet.
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When the Fed uses interest rates to bring down inflation, what they're doing is tamping down that demand, right?
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They're telling people, you can't have a job.
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Like, let's put you out of work so that demand slows, that, you know, price growth slows.
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The Fed raises interest rates to slow down spending across the economy, partly by signaling to markets that they're taking the problem seriously, which creates an expectation that inflation will fall.
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But we also have to talk about what happens when prices fall instead of rise.
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That's called deflation.
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And falling prices honestly sounds pretty good.
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But they can also introduce another kind of cycle.
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A deflationary spiral.
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When prices fall, consumers may hold off on making big purchases, hoping for even lower prices in the future.
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And the stuff we need costs less.
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So we just spend less in general.
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If people are spending less, companies make less.
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They start to cut costs.
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And ultimately they lay off employees.
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Unemployed people spend less, and even the people who are employed might choose to save more to stave off financial loss.
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So prices go down even further as demand goes down.
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So ultimately all of that adds up to slower economic growth as a whole.
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Which is really hard to fix because governments don't have the same ability to respond to deflation as they do to inflation.
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Look at this chart again.
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The last time inflation dipped below 2% in spring of 2020, the US brought interest rates all the way down to 0.05%.
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And after bottoming out for a bit, that seemed to work.
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Inflation inched back up.
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But if inflation hadn't come back up, the government would have had limited options.
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Their rates were already getting almost out zero.
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And then things could get dicey.
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Historically, periods of true deflation are pretty rare.
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But when they do happen, it seems that fixing them requires a pretty serious shock to the economy.
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The Great Depression was in part a deflationary spiral, solved only by the outbreak of World War II when the government supercharged spending and employment.
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And Japan is finally emerging from decades of chronic deflation.
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But that's thanks, in no small part, to the high inflation that most of the world battled over the last few years.
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You don't want to rely on those kinds of things.
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If inflation goes below zero, it is hard to fix.
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The cost of deflation is really high and that's something that we want to avoid.
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This is where inflation targets come in.
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Let's look at this chart again.
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These lines are pretty shaky because there are a lot of really complicated factors that affect inflation.
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The macro economy is made up of the decisions of millions of people, of millions of businesses.
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The way those decisions interact, I mean, try thinking about how to map everything out and it's just, it's mind blowing, right?
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Inflation will always fluctuate, even if it's just a little.
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And this is the last big reason why they don't want inflation to be 0%.
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If inflation sits here, that basic shakiness is constantly at risk of dropping down into the deflation zone, triggering the bad cycle.
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And the way to prevent that is to have it sit just a little bit higher. So...
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A little inflation is usually a good thing.
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Yeah.
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That's annoying.
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Vocabolario e note di pronuncia per questa lezione
Questa lezione di conversazione di livello B2 si basa sul video “Why can’t prices just stay the same?”. Le parole che ritornano più spesso: inflation, price, wage, deflation, cycle. Questo video contiene 107 frasi e 1296 parole da ripetere con lo shadowing. Il parlato dura 7:23. Chi parla ha un ritmo naturale di circa 176 parole al minuto, vicino a una conversazione quotidiana. Il 84% delle parole rientra nelle 3.000 più comuni dell’inglese; conviene studiare le altre prima di iniziare.
Vocaboli chiave di questo video
Le 15 parole più avanzate del video, con pronuncia e significato:
| Parola | Pronuncia | Significato |
|---|---|---|
| inflation sostantivo | /ɪnˈfleɪ.ʃən/ | inflazione |
| deflation sostantivo | /dɪˈfleɪʃən/ | deflazione |
| virtuous aggettivo | /ˈvɝt͡ʃuəs/ | virtuoso |
| spiral sostantivo | /ˈspaɪɹəl/ | spirale |
| historically avverbio | /hɪˈstɔɹɪkli/ | storicamente |
| artificially avverbio | artificialmente | |
| interruption sostantivo | /ˌɪntəˈɹʌpʃən/ | interruzione |
| macroeconomics sostantivo | /ˌmæk.ɹoʊˌiː.kəˈnɒ.mɪks/ | macroeconomia |
| supercharge verbo | sovralimentare | |
| surpass verbo | /sɚˈpæs/ | sorpassare |
| adhere verbo | /ædˈhɪə/ | aderire |
| shareholder sostantivo | /ˈʃɛəˌhəʊl.də(ɹ)/ | azionista |
| lag verbo | /læɡ/ | rimanere indietro |
| durable aggettivo | /ˈdʊɹəbəl/ | durabile |
| disruption sostantivo | /dɪsˈɹʌpʃən/ | disruzione, rottura |
I phrasal verb che sentirai
| Parola | Significato |
|---|---|
| give back verbo | rendere |
| go up verbo | salire |
| keep up with verbo | tenere dietro a |
| lay off verbo | licenziare |
| slow down verbo | rallentare, decelerare |
Frasi da ripetere
Frasi brevi e complete del video che puoi riutilizzare nella conversazione di tutti i giorni:
- Why can't inflation be zero?
- They're telling people, you can't have a job.
- Let's look at this chart again.
La grammatica di questo video
Le strutture che chi parla usa di più, con le parole esatte del video:
| Struttura | Nel video |
|---|---|
| Present perfect have/has + participio passato — un’azione passata che conta ancora adesso | they've stopped · has reversed · have kept |
| Forma passiva be + participio passato — conta ciò che accade, non chi lo fa | are stressed · is called · are employed |
| Frasi relative who / which + frase — un’informazione in più su una persona o una cosa | rates, which makes · people who are |
Pronuncia a cui fare attenzione
Chi parla usa 18 contrazioni e forme ridotte, come don't, can't, they're. Pronunciale nella forma breve, così come le senti.
- I suoni “sh” e “zh”: inflation /ɪnˈfleɪ.ʃən/, deflation /dɪˈfleɪʃən/, deflationary /dəˈfleɪ.ʃənˌɛɹ.i/, interruption /ˌɪntəˈɹʌpʃən/, shareholder /ˈʃɛəˌhəʊl.də(ɹ)/
- Parole lunghe — attenzione all’accento: deflationary /dəˈfleɪ.ʃənˌɛɹ.i/, historically /hɪˈstɔɹɪkli/, interruption /ˌɪntəˈɹʌpʃən/, macroeconomics /ˌmæk.ɹoʊˌiː.kəˈnɒ.mɪks/, arbitrary /ˈɑː.bɪ.tɹə.ɹi/
I suoni difficili per chi parla italiano:
- /h/ — va soffiata, non è muta: historically /hɪˈstɔɹɪkli/, adhere /ædˈhɪə/, shareholder /ˈʃɛəˌhəʊl.də(ɹ)/
- Consonante finale — senza aggiungere una vocale dopo: virtuous /ˈvɝt͡ʃuəs/, appliance /əˈplaɪ.əns/, fluctuate /ˈflʌkt͡ʃu.eɪt/, macroeconomics /ˌmæk.ɹoʊˌiː.kəˈnɒ.mɪks/, paycheck /ˈpeɪ.t͡ʃɛk/
- /æ/ — più aperta della “e”: macroeconomics /ˌmæk.ɹoʊˌiː.kəˈnɒ.mɪks/, scramble /ˈskɹæmbl̩/, surpass /sɚˈpæs/, adhere /ædˈhɪə/, lag /læɡ/
Come esercitarsi con questo video
- Ascolta tutto il video una volta senza parlare e annota le parole che non conosci.
- Inizia a velocità 0,75×, fai shadowing frase per frase e torna alla velocità normale quando diventa facile.
- Registrati e confronta con l’originale, facendo attenzione a parole come inflation, deflation, virtuous.
Cos'è la tecnica dello Shadowing?
Shadowing è una tecnica di apprendimento delle lingue supportata da studi scientifici, originariamente sviluppata per la formazione dei traduttori professionisti e resa popolare dal poliglotta Dr. Alexander Arguelles. Il metodo è semplice ma potente: ascolti un audio in inglese di madrelingua e lo ripeti immediatamente ad alta voce — come un'ombra che segue il parlante con un ritardo di solo 1–2 secondi. A differenza dell'ascolto passivo o degli esercizi di grammatica, lo shadowing costringe il tuo cervello e i muscoli della bocca a elaborare e riprodurre simultaneamente i modelli di discorso reale. La ricerca dimostra che migliora significativamente la precisione della pronuncia, l'intonazione, il ritmo, il discorso connesso, la comprensione dell'ascolto e la fluidità del parlato — rendendolo uno dei metodi più efficaci per la preparazione alla prova di speaking dell'IELTS e per la comunicazione reale in inglese.