跟读练习: America is running out of teenagers. Universities are worried | BBC Global - 通过YouTube学习英语口语
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The US is about to have far fewer teenagers.
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The US is about to have far fewer teenagers.
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And for universities in particular,
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that's a really big problem.
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Colleges, of course, rely on a steady flow of young people coming onto their campuses.
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But right around the 2008 financial crisis,
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Americans just started having fewer kids.
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Now, nearly 18 years later,
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there are fewer teenagers than there usually are.
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And that's before you even ask them whether they think college is really still worth it.
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This isn't just a one-time dip.
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For the foreseeable future, year after year,
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America is going to have fewer students than the year before.
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By 2040, there'll be at least half a million fewer 18-year-olds than there are today.
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And that shift won't just reshape campuses,
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it could reshape the entire country.
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Some of us can think,
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well, this doesn't apply to me,
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I'm not, you know, in education.
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But I think it will apply to all of us.
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We're anticipating somewhat fewer students entering into those college pools.
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But then four or six years later,
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we have fewer young people coming on the job market.
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We have fewer young professionals available to support people in old age and so on.
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So even if you're OK with the new normal when we get there,
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the transition can be hard.
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So colleges are looking at your numbers and they see the decline.
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When does the real crunch hit them?
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When do they have to address this?
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I would say sort of yesterday.
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The problem, it's not going to happen all at once.
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I think the problem is not so much that there's this instantaneous drop.
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It's that it's just one year after another with the tightening of the belt.
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And so if you experience that and you don't make fundamental changes,
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instead you just try to belt tighten on the budget,
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we'll cut this program, we'll lay that person off.
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That's not a very strategic way to get through this.
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And doing that one year might be fine.
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Doing it three years in a row might be okay doing it 18,
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20 years in a row is not going to leave the
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institution in a position of strength where they're actually meeting their student needs.
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American colleges presumably are looking at this drop-off in their potential client base and thinking what?
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How are they thinking they might plan for this?
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I think unfortunately the number one answer is we're going to recruit harder
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and I say unfortunately not because we shouldn't think hard about expanding access and recruiting more students.
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We should for a large number of reasons.
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But it's just that the numbers don't add up if that's our only response.
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So the numbers of babies born since 2007 have declined by over 15%.
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And so if we imagine overcoming that just by recruiting harder,
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we would have to attract a ridiculously large fraction of high school graduates into higher ed.
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And that just doesn't seem like it's going to happen over the next 15 years.
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Another response we're seeing is that institutions are focusing on student success and retention.
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We can maintain enrollments with the same number of students entering the front door
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if we just have fewer students leaving the back door.
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And to me, that's the most promising outcome,
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that if we can do better by our students,
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we're better fulfilling our missions,
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we've got fewer students who are dropping out and yet being saddled with debt,
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we have more students who are succeeding.
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Yes, there's a financial incentive for colleges and universities to do that,
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but it's also obviously a great thing for our students and for society.
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So I'm assuming, okay, so all of these universities are out there and they're all competing for a smaller number of students.
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I'm assuming that the colleges that are at the top level,
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they're still going to be okay they can still get the kind of cream of the crop.
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People are still going to want to go there.
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Is it then that it's a cascading effect?
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So you get more elite universities doing okay in terms of applications,
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but as you go down the scale,
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the more affordable and perhaps less prestigious universities and community colleges are the ones where we start to get a drop off.
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Is that right?
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Is that how it would work?
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Yeah, I think you're absolutely right to be concerned about that.
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I think for two reasons,
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the more selective institutions will do fine.
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First, they're only accepting one in five or one in 10 or one in 20 of their applicants currently.
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So if we have fewer applicants in the pool,
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they can just go deeper into their pool.
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So the more elite institutions don't have a whole lot to fear directly from this.
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I would say, though, that with that cascading effect you're talking about,
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it's going to create a lot of hunger and some desperate moves by institutions further down the food chain.
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And as they discount tuition more aggressively,
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you will see greater pressure,
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even on the selective institutions,
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as they talk with parents whose students have applied to multiple colleges.
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And they say, why should we pay
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so much money to go to your school when we're getting a really great financial aid offer from this other school?
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Okay, I think that is actually a very good discussion to be having.
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I've had four children go through the American higher education system.
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I have a daughter who's in college at the moment and it's costing me,
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I mean, just like an eye popping amount of money to send her to a private university.
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Anything in my mind that would put pressure on universities to bring down the costs,
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actually, I mean, paradoxically, the numbers that you're talking about in the kind of supply and demand of basic economics,
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if the demand is lower,
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does the supply have to get cheaper?
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I mean, are we looking at peak university cost in the state?
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Maybe that's not a bad thing.
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There are some positives.
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So again, I don't think we're going to see as much of this at the truly top most prestigious institutions.
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But for other institutions, we are going to see families have an easier conversation.
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I think the word of caution is that the quality education
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that the American system has provided really does cost a lot of money.
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And so when we see this more aggressive discounting,
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and the college board suggests that we're already seeing declining net fee income for about a decade now,
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what that looks like on the campus is that there are fewer resources to support that high quality product.
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And so I think parents have to be a little bit concerned that you might be getting a low sticker price,
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you might be paying a small amount,
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but when your students don't get the same level of support because colleges are lowering the price but cutting the support,
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you might not be getting the education you thought you were hoping to get.
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I mean, beyond reducing the number of universities,
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because potentially, I assume if there are fewer people going to universities,
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some of those universities will just fail and we'll have fewer universities.
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Does this shrinking population also mean that universities might change their offerings?
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Would we have more of a focus on trade schools or vocational degrees,
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for example, or is that a separate question from the sheer numbers of people being born?
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No, I think it's very much the same question,
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because I think when we think about recruiting harder,
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for instance, we should try to attract more students.
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It's very hard to do that without thinking,
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but what are the programs that we're offering?
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How do we make these programs the kinds of programs that students want and that future employers need?
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Similarly, if we say we want to improve retention.
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There are a number of factors that we know go into retention,
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but one of them is students seeing a connection between what they're learning in their class
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and the life that they're pursuing after college.
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And this doesn't suggest, I'm at a liberal arts college,
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so I'm never going to suggest that we need everybody to be in a pre-professional program,
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but we do need to increasingly think about how we need
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to adapt what we're doing in the classroom to make it easier for students to imagine those futures
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and to take those next steps.
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As a professor, can I just ask you personally living in this moment.
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I mean, there are clearly enormous amounts of kind of turbulent,
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an enormous amount of turbulent change that is happening in our society and in our education system at the moment.
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But you're a professor teaching in a liberal arts college,
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not just dealing down the track with fewer people being born and therefore fewer students,
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and therefore potentially less demand for the services that you have to offer and your college has to offer,
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but also a rapidly changing technology that we don't fully understand the impacts of in terms of jobs and education.
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How are you in your kind of daily life confronting all of these changes?
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Is it stressful?
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Is it exciting?
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Is it bewildering not quite knowing what's coming around the corner.
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I'm not, you know, I'm your therapist.
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I'm cheaper than a therapist.
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Go ahead.
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It's all of the above, right?
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I mean, there are some real exciting things when we think about AI
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and how can we think about teaching students to use this tool effectively?
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What are its limitations?
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What are its strengths?
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But it is obviously just a constant load of work that comes with change and change and more change.
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So I think it's a more turbulent time than when I started my career 25 or 30 years ago.
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There were some things that were really great about that stability,
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but I think there are some really great things about change as well.
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It focuses you to really think hard about what is our primary mission and how can I live that out every day?
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How can I connect with every student
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that comes into my office with every conversation
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that I have in a way that while not necessarily comfortable might lead us to be better versions of ourselves.
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And so So I try to remind myself that we can,
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to some degree, choose how we will adapt to these kinds of stresses.
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Presumably we don't want to break,
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but we can also choose instead of choosing that fragile pathway,
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we can choose instead to be a system that gets stronger under stress.
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I imagine your advice is in demand.
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So what is your advice?
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What's the advice that you give to college administrators,
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to colleges as businesses, ensure the survival of the university education model in the States?
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Yes, I think the bottom line is to focus on your mission.
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And that has several parts to it.
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There are all sorts of changes that we can make that don't align with who we are.
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Those changes and tactics that don't align with our bigger identity usually are not successful.
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So the first step is to figure out what is our mission and have just great clarity on that.
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And the second reason is because I think what higher ed offers students does have great value.
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But we have to deliver that.
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And when we've cut corners or we haven't fulfilled the mission is where we have students walking away and saying,
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this isn't worth it to me.
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So our best strategy is to think very clearly about what is our mission,
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what are we trying to do for these students,
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and then how can I deliver on that more and more effectively every day.
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Professor Graw, thank you very much.
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Thank you.
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关于本课
在这一课中，您将通过观看一段关于美国青少年数量下降及其对大学影响的YouTube视频，来提高您的英语听力和口语能力。您将Learn the necessary vocabulary and phrases that relate to教育和人口变化，并通过看YouTube学英语的方式，充分练习您的英语发音和表达技巧。
关键词汇与短语
- 青少年 (teenagers)
- 大学 (universities)
- 教育 (education)
- 人口变化 (population change)
- 经济危机 (financial crisis)
- 招聘 (recruit)
- 年轻专业人士 (young professionals)
- 影子跟读 (shadowing)
练习技巧
为了更好地提高您的英语发音和口语能力，建议您使用英语影子跟读的方法进行练习。您可以在观看视频时，尝试跟读视频中的对话。请注意以下几点：
- 控制速度： 视频的语速可能比较快，初学者可以尝试先减慢播放速度，以便跟上讲述的内容。
- 模仿语调： 在模仿时，不仅要关注发音，还要注意语调和情感投入，这能帮助您提高口语的自然度。
- 重复练习： 可以多次观看同一段落，直到能流畅无障碍地跟读，助您自然提高发音。
- 使用影子跟读工具： 如果可行，您可以在shadowspeaks等影子跟读网站上进行进一步练习，获取更好的学习资源。
通过这些练习，您将能够在提高英语发音和口语表达方面取得实质性的进展。如果您定期用这种方式学习，便能在语言学习的道路上更加得心应手。
什么是跟读法？
跟读法 (Shadowing) 是一种有科学依据的语言学习技巧，最初开发用于专业口译员的培训，并由多语言者Alexander Arguelles博士普及。这个方法简单而强大：您在听英语母语原声的同时立即大声重复——就像是一个延迟1-2秒紧跟说话者的影子。与被动听力或语法练习不同，跟读法强迫您的大脑和口腔肌肉同时处理并模仿真实的讲话模式。研究表明它能显着提高发音准确性，语调，节奏，连读，听力理解和口语流利度——使其成为雅思口语备考和真实英语交流最有效的方法之一。