跟读练习: Read the NEWS in English 🌐 Advanced Vocabulary and Grammar from CNN - 通过YouTube学习英语口语
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In today's English lesson, we're going to read a CNN news article together.
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In today's English lesson, we're going to read a CNN news article together.
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This advanced lesson will focus on the essential vocabulary and grammar you need to know not only to fully understand this article,
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but to participate in the culture of the English-speaking world.
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We will analyze each paragraph.
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I will take detailed notes,
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and you can download a free PDF of these notes by clicking the link in the description.
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Finally, at the end of the lesson,
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I will read the article one more time a little faster at a natural speed
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so you can focus on my pronunciation and intonation.
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Let's get started.
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Here's the title of today's article.
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Sony to lay off 900 at PlayStation as tough times for the video games industry persists.
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Here we have the phrasal verb, lay off.
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This means to stop employing someone because there's no work for them to do.
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This is different than when someone gets fired.
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Usually you get fired because you've done something wrong.
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You get laid off if a company decides to close or downsize to reduce costs.
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We have a grammatical structure that's very common in news articles.
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Sony to lay off 900.
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It's very common to omit the verb be in the titles of news articles.
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So this is a reduced form of Sony is to lay off 900.
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This sentence uses be plus the to infinitive as a formal way to announce
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that something is planned to happen in the future.
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It sounds more official and professional than just saying,
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Sony will lay off 900.
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Some more examples would be,
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the president is to make an announcement this week,
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or the author is to publish a new book next month.
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Tough times is an adjective noun collocation.
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A collocation is a group of words that are frequently used together.
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In this case, the adjective tough and the noun times create a very common phrase.
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Tough times usually refer to a difficult economic period.
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Persist is a very useful verb,
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which in this context means that something bad continues to exist or happen.
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If you're a fan of video games like me,
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then you are aware that tough times persist for many companies in this industry right now.
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Let's read the first paragraph.
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Electronics giant Sony announced on Tuesday that it will be cutting 900 jobs or 8% in PlayStation's global workforce.
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The layoffs will impact all regions for Sony Interactive Entertainment.
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According to the PlayStation press release,
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with its in-house London studio responsible for the competitive singing video game SingStar closing entirely.
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Here, a giant refers to a large successful company that is well known in its industry.
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Sony is a giant in the field of electronics.
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In this context, cut means to reduce the amount of something.
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We're using the future continuous tense here.
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We'll be cutting.
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We're emphasizing that the action will happen over a longer period of time,
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not all at once.
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Well, hopefully not all at once.
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A workforce is the group of people who work in a particular company.
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Layoffs should look familiar because we've already seen the phrasal verb to lay off.
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A layoff is the event or occasion when this action happens.
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A press release is a company's official statement that gives information to newspapers,
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TV programs, and radio stations.
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If something is in-house or if something is done in-house,
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That means it's created by the employees in the offices of a company.
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Unfortunately, these days it's rare to find a company that does everything in-house.
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It's usually cheaper to contract out certain tasks.
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Let's keep reading.
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These are incredibly talented people who have been part of our success,
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and we are very grateful for their contributions,
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wrote Jim Ryan, president and CEO of Sony Interactive Entertainment.
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However, the industry has changed immensely,
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and we need to future-ready ourselves to set the business up for what lies ahead.
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Another common collocation, this time with the adverb incredibly and the adjective talented.
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The adverb immensely means very much or a lot.
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For example, we enjoyed the performance immensely or the company has become immensely popular.
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Future ready is a verb in this context.
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It means to make or plan something so that a company can quickly identify changes and respond to future challenges.
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You'll often see this as an adjective, to be future ready.
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Basically, Sony wants to make sure that it continues to make as much money as possible,
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even if there are big industry changes in the future.
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Hello!
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I like money!
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Here we have a common phrasal verb,
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set up, which means to prepare.
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Usually you set something up for something.
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In some formal contexts, the verb lie plus an adverb or a preposition means to exist.
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So lie ahead, another collocation,
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means exist in the future.
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No one knows what lies ahead.
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Next paragraph.
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The workforce reduction follows the company's slashing sales forecasts for the year,
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and Naomi Matsuoka, Sony's senior vice president,
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saying the PlayStation 5 console was approaching the latter end of its life cycle, according to Bloomberg.
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Bloomberg is another popular news company in the US.
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Slash is a verb that you hear a lot in advertisements and newspapers.
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The literal meaning of slash is to cut something with a knife or a sword in a very violent way.
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But here, slashing means to greatly reduce an amount or a price.
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A forecast is a prediction of what will probably happen in the future based on current information or data.
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Most of the time, this word refers to a weather forecast or an economic forecast.
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Here we have a formal adjective,
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latter, which means close to the end of a time period.
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For example, the couple plans to get married in the latter half of next year.
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Next, Ryan had already announced in September plans to retire in March as Sony Group Corporation president.
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Hiroki Totoki, the chief operating officer and chief financial officer,
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will take the reins as interim CEO.
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Had already announced.
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This is the past perfect tense.
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This is typically a comparative tense.
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The focus is on the relationship between two events in the past.
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One event is a reference point.
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The event that happened further in the past,
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or the event that happened first,
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is stated in the past perfect tense.
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In this sentence, we are comparing when Ryan announced his plans to retire with our reference point,
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which is Sony's recent layoff announcement.
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This emphasizes the fact that Ryan's plans to retire happened at an earlier time in the past.
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It's important to note that in American English,
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the past perfect tense is much more common in formal writing.
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In this situation, native speakers often use the simple pass in everyday conversation.
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Saging Ryan already announced is perfectly natural.
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If you're interested in a more detailed lesson on the differences between the simple tenses and the perfect tenses,
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please let me know in the comments.
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The expression take the reins means to take control of an organization or a government.
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Reins are the straps that you put on a horse's head to control it.
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Interim means temporary.
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An interim president or an interim solution is one that is only used until something final can be made.
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Next, the new CEO will be facing an entire tech sector
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in upheaval as industry giants laid off 5,500 workers within the first two weeks of 2024 alone.
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This is a very important verb for speaking and writing to face.
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If you face a difficult situation,
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that means that a problem is going to affect you and you must deal with it in a direct way.
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A sector is a specific area of an economy.
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There's the tech sector, the tourism sector,
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the agricultural sector, etc. An upheaval is a major change that causes a lot of problems,
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anger, and confusion.
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You often hear this word in collocations like social upheaval,
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economic upheaval, massive upheaval, etc. We have an interesting use of the word alone as an adverb.
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This is a more formal way to say only or without including anything else.
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For example, it's impossible to learn how to speak another language with textbooks alone.
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Let's keep going.
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Specifically, the video game industry has been seeing jobs hemorrhage from 2023 into this year as well,
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with Epic Games cutting 830 jobs last September and Tencent's Riot Games laying off 11% of its workforce in January.
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Has been seeing.
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This is the present perfect continuous tense.
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So this started in the past,
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continues today, and will probably continue for a while into the future.
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Okay, this is a very interesting word.
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A hemorrhage as a noun is a serious medical condition in
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which someone is bleeding a lot and they can't stop or control it.
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But in this context, we're obviously not talking about blood.
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The verb to hemorrhage means to lose a lot of people
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or a lot of money very quickly and you can't stop this from happening.
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Echoing the leadership of those other game companies,
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Ryan wrote in his email to employees,
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we had to step back,
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look at our business holistically,
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and move forward focusing on the long-term sustainability of the company and delivering the best experiences possible for our community.
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Usually, if a sound echoes,
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you hear the sound again.
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Echo!
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Echo!
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Echo!
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Echo!
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But in this context, to echo something means to repeat what someone else has done
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or to be similar to something that happened before.
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Step back.
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This phrasal verb means to stop doing something so you can think about it clearly and make a better decision.
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If you do something holistically,
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you consider something or someone as one whole, not as separate parts.
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So the CEO wanted to make a holistic decision that would benefit the future of the entire company.
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Here we have the adjective long-term.
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A long-term plan or a long-term goal is something that considers what will happen in the very distant future.
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The opposite would be short-term.
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Sustainability is a noun that comes from the adjective sustainable.
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If something is sustainable, it is able to continue for a long time.
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We have another verb being used in an interesting way.
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Deliver.
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If you do something that you promised or something that other people expected or wanted,
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then you deliver.
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Or deliver on something.
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For example, our boss gives us a lot of freedom,
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but he expects us to deliver on our project.
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Or maybe you watched the first movie in a series and you loved it,
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but then you watched the second movie and it didn't meet your expectations.
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It failed to deliver.
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Sony Group Corporation stock fell less than one percent following the news on Tuesday.
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A stock is the percent of a company that someone owns.
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You can buy and sell stocks.
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Also, if the value of a stock increases or decreases,
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then we say that the stock rises or the stock falls.
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Now I'll read the whole article at a natural speed,
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from start to finish.
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Use this as an opportunity to read along with me and practice your listening and pronunciation.
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Sony to lay off 900 at PlayStation as tough times for the video games industry persist.
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Electronics giant Sony announced on Tuesday that it will be cutting 900 jobs,
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or 8%, in PlayStation's global workforce.
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The layoffs will impact all regions for Sony Interactive Entertainment,
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according to the PlayStation press release with its in-house London studio responsible for the competitive singing video game SingStar closing entirely.
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These are incredibly talented people who have been part of our success and we are very grateful for their contributions,
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wrote Jim Ryan, president and CEO of Sony Interactive Entertainment.
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However, the industry has changed immensely and we need to future ready ourselves to set the business up for what lies ahead.
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The workforce reduction follows the company's slashing sales forecasts for the year and Naomi Matsuoka,
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Sony's senior vice president, saying the PlayStation 5 console was approaching the latter end of its life cycle,
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according to Bloomberg.
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Ryan had already announced in September plans to retire in March as Sony Group Corporation president.
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Hiroki Totoki, the chief operating officer and chief financial officer,
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will take the reins as interim CEO.
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The new CEO will be facing an entire tech sector in
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upheaval as industry giants laid off 5,500 workers within the first two weeks of 2024 alone.
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Specifically, The video game industry has been seeing jobs hemorrhage from 2023 into this year as well,
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with Epic Games cutting 830 jobs last September and Tencent's Riot Games laying off 11% of its workforce in January.
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Echoing the leadership of those other game companies,
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Ryan wrote in his email to employees,
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we had to step back,
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look at our business holistically,
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and move forward focusing on the long-term sustainability of the company and delivering the best experiences possible for our community.
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Sony Group Corporation stock fell less than one percent following the news on Tuesday.
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Now I have some homework for you.
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Use some of today's vocabulary words to answer the following questions.
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Number one, why are so many companies in the tech sector facing low sales and laying off their employees?
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Number two, what do you think lies ahead for Sony and other video game companies?
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Leave your answers in the comments.
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Remember to download the free PDF to get the article and all of today's notes.
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If you enjoyed this lesson,
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please like this video and subscribe to my channel.
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Thank you so much for watching.
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I'm Gina, this is Your World in English,
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and I'll see you in the next lesson.
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Bye!
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you
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背景與脈絡
在今天的英語學習課程中，我們將會一起閱讀一篇來自CNN的新聞文章。這次高級課程將專注於理解這篇文章所需的基本詞彙和語法，幫助學習者不僅能完整理解新聞內容，還能參與英語社會的文化交流。通過分析每段文字，我們將提高自己的語言能力，學習如何在日常溝通中使用更高級的詞彙。
日常交流的五個常用短語
- lay off：解雇，這指的是因為公司沒有工作可做而終止員工的雇用。
- to be cut：被削減，通常用來表示某事物的減少或淘汰。
- tough times：困難時期，常用來形容艱辛的經濟環境。
- persist：持續存在，表示某種情況或問題未能消失。
- workforce：勞動力，特定公司內所有工作的員工。
逐步跟讀指導
對於想透過視頻學習英語的學習者，以下是有效的跟讀指導，讓你能更好地克服學習的難度：
- 初步聆聽：首先，靜下心來聽整篇文章，記住整體內容和語境。看YouTube學英語的時候，注意語音的自然流暢感。
- 逐段重播：將視頻分段播放，便於深入理解每一個表達。試著重複每段時，將新學的詞彙，如shadowspeak，加進去。
- 模仿練習：選擇一小段特定的對話內容，進行跟讀，專注於模仿講者的語調和重音，這將大大提升你的雅思口語練習。
- 回顧和反思：完成跟讀後，回放視頻，對照你的發音和講者，找出需要改正的地方。
- 持之以恆：持續進行shadow speak練習，保持語言能力的進步，定期檢視自己的發音與流暢度。
透過這些方法，你將能夠在日常交流中更自信地使用英語，並相應地提高你的聽說能力，讓你在任何場合都能流利表達自己，享受用語言帶來的愉悅。
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。