Shadowing Practice: Introduction to Economics Part 1 - Professor Ryan - Learn English Speaking with Video
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Alright folks, welcome to a semester in economics.
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And what we're going to do in this very first lesson is we are going to define economics
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and try to get an understanding of what it is exactly, this subject that we're learning.
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So you should have a notebook in front of you
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or some paper so that you can take notes and I recommend
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that you write down everything
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that I write down up here on the board in your notes
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so that you can study and add a few extra notes of things
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that I say or maybe some things that will trigger memories while you're learning this stuff, okay?
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So what is economics?
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Well I have my own definition, there's probably several definitions out there, I'm sure there are plenty of textbooks that have definitions of economics.
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Well there's one in particular that I like to work from and I'm going to give you that definition right now.
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And after I give you that definition, so we're going to say economics.
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What is economics?
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All right.
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After I give you my definition, I'm going to break down the definition into four main pieces
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so that you can have a better understanding of how we're going to focus on learning this semester.
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Okay.
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So here's my definition of economics.
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To me, economics is the scientific study of how individuals,
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that's like people, right?
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Individual people.
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Organizations.
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Organizations.
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So that's like businesses or maybe government organizations or not -for -profit organizations.
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You know, groups of people who come together to either make a profit or achieve some kind of goal.
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Or, let's say, or societies.
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Now, a society is like an entire country or an entire city or an entire state.
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Okay, change that to a societies
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or societies deal with the problem of scarcity.
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Scarcity.
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Okay, that's S -C -A -R -C -I -T -Y.
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Scarcity.
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That word right there, scarcity, that is the main word in economics.
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That is the most important word in economics.
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If I were to give you a much simpler definition of economics, I would just simply say it is the study of scarcity.
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And I'm going to talk about scarcity in just a few minutes.
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So there are four main elements of this definition.
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The first thing I want to tell you is that economics itself is scientific.
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that it focuses on individuals, organizations, and societies.
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So that's its own one category.
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Economics has to do with how these groups or individuals, how they deal with.
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Now, the idea of dealing with is the idea of making a decision.
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When you want to deal with something, when you get a flat tire, you have to deal with that flat tire.
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And what that means is to make decisions about how to handle that flat tire.
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So dealing with is the idea of decision making.
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Having to make a decision.
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A decision about what?
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Well, a decision about the fact that you are facing the problem of scarcity.
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You as an individual are facing the problem of scarcity.
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Or an organization is facing the problem of scarcity or an entire society, a country, or a state,
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or a city, is facing the problem of scarcity.
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And like I said, I'm going to define scarcity in just a little bit.
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Okay, so here are the four things we're going to focus on.
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Is economics as scientific, economics as focusing on individuals, organizations, and societies, economics as dealing with decision making,
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and economics as handling the problem of scarcity.
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So in order to do that, what I want you to do right now is I want you to, on your notes, in your paper, I'm going to break up the board into four quadrants,
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like this, four quadrants.
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And I think you should also break up your notes into four quadrants.
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And we're going to put each one of these subjects in each one of these quadrants.
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So economics is scientific.
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So we're going to talk about what that means.
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Economics is concerned with individuals and organizations.
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or firms, and societies, whole, large groups of individuals.
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That economics focuses on dealing with, deal with, what does it mean to deal with something?
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Okay?
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And then lastly, we have the problem of scarcity.
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The problem of scarcity.
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Okay?
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So we're going to take these one at a time in the order that they are in the definition.
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So economics is scientific.
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Alright, so economics is a science.
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There are scientific journals animals devoted to economics.
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There are people, researchers, people who get paid lots of money, well they probably don't get paid as much as they want to get paid,
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but nonetheless, there are people who get paid money just to do research on economics, research on the problem of scarcity,
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research on individuals, organizations, and societies and how they deal with the problem of scarcity.
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And because economics is scientific, there are certain things that go along with all science.
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And two of those things that we're going to focus on, we're not going to do all of science, but the two main things I want you to understand is that in science,
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when we approach a subject in science,
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we have to make assumptions and we have to draw conclusions.
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We make assumptions and we draw conclusions.
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Now I want to clarify something here, and that is this class is a principles of economics class.
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This is not some masters or PhD level class where we're going to dig very deep into the research of economics.
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What you're supposed to be learning in this class are the basic, foundational, fundamental principles of economics.
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And that's what I'm going to focus on.
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So here's what I'm going to do.
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When we talk about these assumptions and conclusions, especially the assumptions, I want you to understand that the assumptions
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that we're going to use in this economics class might not be the kinds of assumptions
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that would be used in a much higher level economics class.
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So if you decide that you're going to someday get a masters or a PhD in economics, you might find out something,
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you might learn something in that economics class and think back to this class and say, wow, Professor Ryan was wrong.
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What you have to understand is that the assumptions
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that we're going to make are important when you're at the beginning stages of learning economics.
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So I'm warning you that some of the things that we're going to learn throughout this semester, some of the things that I'm going to teach you, are really only foundational principles.
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But when you get to higher levels of economics,
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oftentimes we relax or eliminate those foundational concepts and augment them into something much more detailed or much larger or much grander.
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So I'm warning you in advance.
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This is a principles class.
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You are learning the basics of economics, okay?
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Alright, so, one of the basic assumptions, well, I'm going to give you two basic assumptions in economics.
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The first one is called the Ceteris, that's C -E -T -E -R -I -S, Paribus.
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That's P -A -R -I -B -U -S.
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That's the Ceteris Paribus Assumption.
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I'm going to put quote marks around it.
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What does ceteris paribus mean?
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Ceteris paribus basically means to examine one variable by not changing any of the other variables.
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You are holding everything else constant so that you can isolate the effects of a single variable on some other phenomenon.
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Okay, so Ceteris Paribus says that we're isolating all other variables so that we can examine one variable that's changing,
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because here's what's going to happen in this class is I'm going to say something like, hey, when things are cheaper,
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people buy more of it.
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And then you're going to say, well, not always.
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Sometimes when things are cheaper, people don't want them at all.
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And I'm going to say, you know what?
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You're right.
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Sometimes things are so cheap that people don't want them at all.
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But I'm using the ceteris paribus assumption.
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We're going to assume that it's the kind of product that everybody wants.
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And so now, if it's a product that everybody wants and the price goes down, people are going to buy more of it because they do want it.
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We're going to assume that it is something that people want.
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So for example, if the price of garbage goes down, people may say, no, I don't want any more garbage.
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I'm trying to get rid of my garbage.
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Well, yes, I agree with you.
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But if we're talking about something normal, like a cheeseburger, or french fries, or a car, then we can assume,
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ceteris paribus, that when the price goes down, that people will buy more of it, okay?
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So that's our first assumption in economics, is the ceteris paribus assumption.
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The second assumption, what is the second assumption?
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Oh, the second assumption is rationality, rationality, okay?
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Now, this is a really, really, we got to be very flexible with this rationality assumption,
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assumption, but we're still going to use this rationality assumption in this principles class.
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Here's what the rationality assumption says.
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The rationality assumption says that people in general are rational decision makers.
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Meaning, if you give them a choice of whether they can have $20 or $30,
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that they will choose $30 every single time.
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And you might say to yourself, oh, there must be some kind of catch.
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No, I'm telling you, there's no catch.
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Your choices are $20 or $30.
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Which one do you want?
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Everything else is the same.
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And then, obviously, the rational person is going to say, well, I'd rather have more money than less money, so I'm going to take $30.
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Yes, exactly.
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We're going to assume that you are a rational person, that I am a rational person, that I want more good stuff,
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and I want less bad stuff in my life.
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That is rationality, okay?
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So that's the second assumption.
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And because economics is scientific, we have to start somewhere, and where we're going to start is that we're only going to look at one variable at a time,
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and then also we're going to assume that people are making rational decisions,
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that they're not insane, that they are not out to get worse things for themselves, and less better things.
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No, that doesn't make any sense.
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We're going to assume that the people, that the individuals, the organizations, and societies that we're dealing with are rational.
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Okay?
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All right, now let's move on to conclusions.
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Oftentimes what we do in economics is after we learn something new or after we understand something,
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we then draw a conclusion, right?
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And here's how it goes.
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For example, let's say that people are spending more of their money on one kind of cereal.
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People are spending more money on Lucky Charms than they are spending on Cheerios.
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And so we might draw a conclusion.
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Well, if people are buying more Lucky Charms than Cheerios and Ceteris Paribus, they both have the same price,
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then people must like here I'm going to draw a conclusion now.
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Well, I'm now going to conclude that people prefer Lucky Charms over Cheerios.
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Now that may not be true in reality, but in my example that is a conclusion.
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And often times when we draw conclusions in economics there are two kinds of conclusions that we can draw.
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We can draw or we can come to conclusions that are what we call positive conclusions or normative conclusions.
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And what we're going to try and focus on in this class is we're going to primarily focus on positive conclusions, not normative conclusions.
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positive means let's see here what is what is and normative conclusions are what should
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be what should be we are going to avoid the what
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should be conclusions now you're going to want to make some
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normative conclusions as you go through this class you're going to say oh because of that, that means that's terrible, then this is what we should do.
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So for example, you might say, oh, we might find out economically that there are people in this world who can't have health care.
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They can't get help when they're sick.
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And you may think to yourself, oh my goodness.
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Now, the fact that we conclude that there are people who don't get medical help.
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That is a positive conclusion.
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It's just a truth.
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Nobody would argue.
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Generally speaking, people do not argue over positive conclusions.
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And so what I'm going to put over here is, I'm going to say here, no arguments.
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No arguments over positive economics.
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Sometimes we call it positive economics and normative economics.
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So I'm going to put positive econ, and here it's going to be normative econ, okay?
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So in positive economics, generally, people do not argue over the truth.
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Everybody agrees that 17 % of the people get no health care at all.
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Yes.
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What do your numbers say?
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17%.
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What do your numbers say?
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17%.
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We all agree there's no argument, but here's where it becomes argumentative, okay?
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People disagree over what that means we should do.
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People disagree because of their values, because of their value judgments, okay?
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So, values, because of their values, people disagree on normative economics about what should be done.
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And what some people are going to say is, wow, well, those 17 % of people, they should be able to get medical care.
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And therefore, what we should do is take some money from somewhere and give those people medical care.
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And some other person, because they have different values, they're going to say, no, that's not what it means at all.
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That would be very expensive.
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We can't take money away from those other things to give health care to these people.
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They're just going to have to deal with not having health care.
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And this is where people argue is in the normative economics.
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We will do a little bit of normative economics and you will hear me make statements that are related to normative economics.
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And I may say some things that you will disagree with.
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And when you disagree with me, chances are you have different values than I have.
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And that's okay.
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You can have different values than me.
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You should have different values than me you can have very similar values, but generally speaking, every human being has a different set of values.
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And so we're going to disagree sometimes on what should be done.
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But positive economics is what is, generally speaking, there are no arguments over that.
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And here's what I'm telling you.
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As far as positive economics, one of the things that we're going to learn in positive economics is the fact
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that when the price of something goes down, people do buy more of it.
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And we're going to get to that in a much later lesson.
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Okay?
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But that's an example of positive economics.
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All right.
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So economics is scientific.
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This speaking lesson is built on the video “Introduction to Economics Part 1 - Professor Ryan”. The speaker keeps coming back to these words: economics, assumption, conclusion, scarcity, positive. This video has 212 sentences and 2506 words to shadow. The speech runs for 17:43. The speaker talks at a steady 141 words per minute, a comfortable pace for shadowing. 85% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English; the rest is worth studying before you start.
Key vocabulary in this video
15 words from the video worth learning, with pronunciation and meaning:
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| economics noun | /ˌiːkəˈnɒmɪks/ | The study of resource and wealth allocation, consumption, and distribution, of capital and investment, and of management of the factors of production. |
| assumption noun | /əˈsʌm(p).ʃ(ə)n/ | The act of assuming, or taking to or upon oneself; the act of taking up or adopting. |
| conclusion noun | /kənˈkluːʒən/ | The end, finish, close or last part of something. |
| variable adjective | [ˈvæɹ.i.ə.bl̩] | Able to vary or be varied. |
| disagree verb | /dɪsəˈɡɹi/ | To fail to agree; to have a different opinion or belief. |
| rational adjective | /ˈɹæʃ(ə)nəl/ | Capable of reasoning. |
| principle noun | /ˈpɹɪn.sɪ.pəl/ | A fundamental assumption, fundamental law or guiding belief. |
| argue verb | /ˈɑɹ.ɡju/ | To show grounds for concluding (that); to indicate, imply. |
| garbage noun | /ˈɡɑɹ.bɪd͡ʒ/ | Food waste material of any kind. |
| semester noun | /sɪˈmɛstɚ/ | Half of a school year (US) or academic year such as autumn or spring semester. |
| tire verb | /ˈtaɪ̯ɚ/ | To become sleepy or weary. |
| lesson noun | /ˈlɛs.ən/ | A section of learning or teaching into which a wider learning content is divided. |
| define verb | /dɪˈfaɪn/ | To determine with precision; to mark out with distinctness; to ascertain or exhibit clearly. |
| examine verb | /ɪɡˈzæmɪn/ | To observe carefully or critically to learn about someone or something. |
| conclude verb | /kənˈkluːd/ | To end; to come to an end. |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Meaning |
|---|---|
| go down verb | To descend; to move from a higher place to a lower one. |
| break up verb | To break or separate into pieces. |
| find out verb | To discover, as by asking or investigating. |
| break down verb | To stop functioning. |
| go along with verb | To acquiesce to or comply with a proposal, despite lacking a desire or value for it. |
| go through verb | To travel from one end of something to the other. |
| put over verb | To state or explain (a concept) in a clear, understandable manner. |
| write down verb | To produce or set (something) down in writing; to record something. |
Sentences worth repeating
Short, complete lines from the video that you can reuse in everyday conversation:
- I'm going to put quote marks around it.
- And I'm going to say, you know what?
- I'm trying to get rid of my garbage.
- Which one do you want?
- What do your numbers say?
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing | people who come · people who get · people who don |
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | is called · should be done |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 77 contractions and reduced forms, such as we're, I'm, you're. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: assumption /əˈsʌm(p).ʃ(ə)n/, conclusion /kənˈkluːʒən/, rational /ˈɹæʃ(ə)nəl/, foundational /faʊnˈdeɪ.ʃə.nəl/
- Long words — get the stress right: economics /ˌiːkəˈnɒmɪks/, primarily /ˈpɹaɪ.mə.ɹə.li/, fundamental /ˌfʌn.dəˈmɛn.təl/, eliminate /ɪˈlɪm.ɪ.neɪt/, phenomenon /fəˈnɒm.ɪ.nən/
How to practise with this video
- Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
- Shadow it sentence by sentence at normal speed, repeating each one until your rhythm matches the speaker.
- Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like economics, assumption, conclusion.
What is the Shadowing Technique?
Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.