跟读练习: Why is everything getting so expensive? - 通过视频学习英语口语
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132 句
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on my way to the grocery store mentally preparing myself for the sticker shock here
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we are wish me luck got my diapers
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it might be something else for you for me it's diapers is really where
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like i notice inflation the most one of the things that's interesting about this particular period of inflation
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that we're in is this is a worldwide phenomenon hi folks my question is about inflation.
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What is the real cause?
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Is it just COVID or we have others to blame?
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Thank you.
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Diapers in the U .S., food in Ghana, and home prices in India.
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What actually caused all this inflation?
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And is there something we can do about it?
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If you watch cable news in the U .S., you will see one explanation for inflation that gets a lot of attention.
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There's still too much money chasing too few goods.
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Too much money chasing too few goods.
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Say I have a car dealership.
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Say we're in a global pandemic.
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Factories are shutting down periodically and I'm just not able to keep as many cars on my lot.
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My inventory is low.
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But at the same time, I have customers willing to spend money on my cars.
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My inventory starts to dwindle and now there's more customers than there are cars.
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So I can just increase the price.
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Too much money chasing too few goods.
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Economists like this guy, Larry Summers, he's been sounding the alarm bell about this kind of inflation from the beginning.
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I am much more worried that we'll have inflation.
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This is the least responsible macroeconomic policies we've had in the last 40 years.
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He is talking about those pandemic relief checks.
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Before we can figure out if Larry Summers is right,
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We need to take a closer look at exactly how inflation is measured in the first place.
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Once a month, the U .S.
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Bureau of Labor Statistics puts together what it calls a market basket.
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These data are specific to the U .S., but you can find similar numbers around the world.
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The BLS looks at the prices for different goods and services like housing, electricity, apparel, prescription drugs, bakery products, dairy.
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They look at the price we're paying this month
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and then compare it to the price for same good or service last month or last year.
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Then they calculate a single percentage that captures all of that change.
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And that's the Consumer Price Index, or CPI.
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And it's true, the Consumer Price Index has been rising steadily for the past couple of years.
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Here's when those stimulus checks went out.
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But now let's take a closer look at some of the specific goods and services that make up the CPI.
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Some things are way more expensive than this time last year.
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Like fuel oil, airline fares, gas, baked goods, dairy products.
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But there is some stuff that's held fairly steady.
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In a normal healthy economy, the Federal Reserve expects for inflation to be about 2 % a year.
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And for stuff like clothing, prescription drugs, and education, prices are only slightly above that 2 % mark.
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For used cars and trucks, gasoline and communication, that's your phone plan, internet, streaming, prices are actually lower than this time last year.
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It seems a bit more complicated than simply people have too much money.
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If that were the only problem, wouldn't everything be more expensive?
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So unfortunately for me, the Bureau of Labor Statistics doesn't actually track the price of diapers as part of the CPI.
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But I did find a private research firm, Nielsen IQ, that does.
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So Nielsen looks at something called the unit price.
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Basically they take the box of diapers, divide it by how many diapers are in the box, and that gives you the unit price.
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They get a bunch of different brands and then come up with this average.
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So in 2019, the average unit price for diapers was 16 .1 cents.
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If prices had gone up at that expected 2 % annual inflation rate, January of 2023 would have seen me paying 17 .4 cents per diaper.
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But of course, that's not what the last few years have looked like.
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If the price of diapers had increased at the same rate as the CPI, I would be paying 19 cents per diaper in January of 2023.
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But no, no, no, no, I am currently paying 21 cents per diaper, an increase of over 30%.
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So why is it that the price of diapers is rising so much faster than the price of all these other goods?
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You can think of the cost of a business in a couple of ways, right?
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There's the wages that you pay for workers.
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There are investments in capital, in the machinery itself.
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And all of that adds up to the cost of production.
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And then there's the cost that you actually sell the good at.
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And the difference between those two costs are called a markup.
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One of the things that makes it difficult to report on inflation is that reporters and consumers,
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we don't know how much it costs companies to pay their workers.
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We don't know how much it costs them to import the materials that they need.
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But we can guess.
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Take labor costs, for example.
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We know that from 2019 to 2023, the average hourly wage for someone working in manufacturing rose by about 17%.
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Now, that is faster than what you would expect under normal 2 % annual inflation.
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But when you consider the fact that corporations have successfully kept wages
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so low in the years leading up to that point that they were actually declining relative to inflation,
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this recent bump starts to look more like a kind of return to normalcy.
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Okay, but what about the cost of materials?
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I went to the Pampers website and looked at what goes into making a diaper.
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It turns out this stuff is made out of wood
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and these are all plastics which are made by refining petroleum in slightly different ways.
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According to the Federal Reserve's producer price index, the average price for both of these materials, wood pulp and plastic products,
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has risen significantly over the past five years, but both of these rising input costs still don't completely explain the price hike in diapers.
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One of the reasons I really wanted to talk to Rakeen is
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that she and her colleagues have listened to hundreds and hundreds of hours of earnings calls.
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What we found is big corporations who are jacking up prices beyond what their production costs would justify.
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These are some transcripts of those earnings calls that Rakeen and her colleagues have been listening to.
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The CEO of Hostess Brands, for example, says of these price hikes, consumers get used to it.
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When all prices go up, it helps.
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A Tyson Foods executive claimed that price increases for beef more than offset the higher costs.
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Visa's CEO says that, historically, inflation has been a positive for us.
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All three of these corporations experienced record profits over the past three years.
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But what they did with those profits is instructive.
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They paid that money out to their shareholders and raised prices for the rest of us.
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So we have our three theories for this current moment of inflation.
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Too much money floating around, supply shocks, and massive markups.
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Unfortunately, it's probably going to be months
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or maybe even years before we have all of the data necessary to figure out
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which one of these three explanations holds the most weight.
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But there are still things we can do to help bring prices down.
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When we think of inflation in a really singular way,
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I think that really limits the vast panoply of tools that we actually have to fight this problem.
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Let's start with a tool that the Federal Reserve has already busted out, raising interest rates.
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The way that works is it makes it more expensive for companies to borrow money,
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which makes it harder for them to invest in new projects and hire new people.
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So far, the Fed has raised interest rates eight times, and the unemployment rate has stayed pretty low.
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But that could change if the Fed keeps raising rates.
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The last time inflation got super high, back in the early 80s, the Fed did huge interest rate hikes, and inflation did go down.
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But look what happened to unemployment.
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It shot way up.
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By 1982, 1 in 10 people were out of work.
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In the last month of 2022, prices were starting to come down in some key areas.
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Dairy, fruits and veggies, airline fares.
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Prices for these two items, gasoline and fuel oil, are way down.
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And the reason likely has very little to do with raising interest rates.
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Over the past 12 months, President Biden released millions of barrels of oil from the U .S.
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emergency stockpile, which increased global supply and drove down the price.
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There's precedent for doing this in other areas of the economy.
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In 1939, U .S.
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President Franklin Roosevelt asked
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Congress for nearly $900 million to help the airline industry quadruple their output.
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Ships, planes, tanks, guns.
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That is our purpose and our pledge.
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Something Rakeen told me about diapers got me thinking about a third way we might start bringing prices down.
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Turns out that somewhere between 70 % and 80 % of all the diapers produced in the U .S.
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are made by two companies.
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This honestly threw me a little bit, but then I went back and looked at some of that footage that I shot in the grocery store.
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Loves, Pampers, Ninjamas — those are all made by Procter & Gamble.
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Huggies, Pull -Ups, Good Nights — all made by Kimberly Clark.
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So while it looks like parents have a lot of choices in the diaper aisle, we actually don't.
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Policymakers have allowed really rampant deregulation that has facilitated these companies having
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so much power in a way that they can jack up prices without any cost to them.
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That supply dial and that corporate power dial, we've let them get dusty.
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We do not, and we never did, have to throw workers under the bus in order to bring down prices.
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I'll see you next time.
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本课的词汇与口语要点
这节口语课以视频“Why is everything getting so expensive?”为素材。 视频中反复出现的词有：price, inflation, diaper, cost, rate。 这段视频共有 124 个句子、1663 个单词可供跟读。 讲话部分时长为 9:33。 说话人语速自然，每分钟约 174 个词，接近日常对话。 84% 的单词属于英语最常用的 3,000 词，其余的词建议在练习前先学一下。
视频中的重点词汇
视频中 15 个值得学习的单词，附发音和释义：
| 单词 | 发音 | 释义 |
|---|---|---|
| inflation 名词 | /ɪnˈfleɪ.ʃən/ | 通貨膨脹 /通货膨胀, 通脹 /通胀 |
| chase 动词 | /t͡ʃeɪs/ | 追逐, 追 |
| wage 名词 | /weɪd͡ʒ/ | 工資 /工资, 薪金 |
| worker 名词 | /ˈwɝ.kɚ/ | 工人, 工作者 |
| dairy 名词 | /ˈdɛə.ɹi/ | 乳製品 /乳制品 |
| airline 名词 | /ˈɛɹˌlaɪn/ | 航空公司 |
| hike 名词 | /haɪk/ | 遠足 /远足 |
| shock 名词 | /ʃɔk/ | 衝擊 /冲击 |
| explanation 名词 | /ˌɛkspləˈneɪʃən/ | 解釋 /解释, 說明 /说明 |
| earnings 名词 | 收益, 收入 | |
| unemployment 名词 | /ʌn.ɪmˈplɔɪ.mənt/ | 失業 /失业 |
| inventory 名词 | /ˈɪn.vən.tɹi/ | 庫存 /库存, 儲存 /储存 |
| prescription 名词 | /pɹəˈskɹɪp.ʃən/ | 藥方 /药方, 處方 /处方 |
| colleague 名词 | /ˈkɒliːɡ/ | 同事, 同僚 |
| fare 名词 | /ˈfɛə/ | 車費 /车费 |
视频中出现的短语动词
| 单词 | 发音 | 释义 |
|---|---|---|
| figure out 动词 | 弄清楚 | |
| turn out 动词 | 原來 /原来 | |
| come up with 动词 | 想出, 提出 | |
| go back 动词 | 回去, 返回 | |
| go down 动词 | 下降, 下去 | |
| go out 动词 | 出, 出口 | |
| go up 动词 | 上昇 /上升, 上去 | |
| make up 动词 | /ˌmeɪk ˈʌp/ | 組成 /组成 |
视频中的语法
说话人最常用的结构，并附上视频中的原话：
| 结构 | 视频中的用法 |
|---|---|
| 现在完成进行时 have/has been + -ing — 以前开始、现在仍在继续的动作 | he's been sounding · has been rising · have been listening |
| 现在完成时 have/has + 过去分词 — 过去发生但与现在仍有关联的事 | we've had · have looked · has risen |
| 被动语态 be + 过去分词 — 强调发生了什么，而不是谁做的 | is measured · are called · is made |
需要注意的发音
说话人用了 13 次缩略和弱读形式，例如 don't, we're, we've。请按听到的简短形式来说。
- “sh” 和 “zh” 音: inflation /ɪnˈfleɪ.ʃən/, shock /ʃɔk/, explanation /ˌɛkspləˈneɪʃən/, prescription /pɹəˈskɹɪp.ʃən/, capture /ˈkæp.(t)ʃɚ/
- 长单词——注意重音位置: explanation /ˌɛkspləˈneɪʃən/, unemployment /ʌn.ɪmˈplɔɪ.mənt/, complicated /ˈkɑm.plɪˌkeɪ.tɪd/, successfully /səkˈsɛs.fə.li/, electricity /ɪˌlɛkˈtɹɪsɪti/
中文母语者容易读错的音：
- /v/ — 不要读成 /w/，上齿轻触下唇: inventory /ˈɪn.vən.tɹi/, vast /væst/, relative /ˈɹɛl.ə.tɪv/, invest /ɪnˈvɛst/, divide /dɪˈvaɪd/
- 词尾辅音 — 要读清楚，后面不要加元音: chase /t͡ʃeɪs/, wage /weɪd͡ʒ/, hike /haɪk/, shock /ʃɔk/, unemployment /ʌn.ɪmˈplɔɪ.mənt/
- /r/ 和 /l/ 的区别: airline /ˈɛɹˌlaɪn/, relative /ˈɹɛl.ə.tɪv/, electricity /ɪˌlɛkˈtɹɪsɪti/, alarm /əˈlɑɹm/, barrel /ˈbæɹəl/
如何用这段视频练习
- 先完整听一遍视频，不要开口，记下不认识的单词。
- 先用 0.75 倍速逐句跟读，熟练之后再回到正常速度。
- 录下自己的声音并与原声对比，特别注意 inflation, chase, wage 这类单词。
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。