全新版大学进阶英语视听说教程第3册--Unit 8 文本

Unit 8 Change

Part II LISTENING AND SPEAKING

Lesson A Millennials

Listening

SCRIPT

Track 8-1

The Millennial Generation includes people born roughly between the early nineteen eighties and the year two thousand. These people are in their teens and twenties today, and they are different from earlier generations in some important ways.

Firstly, they’re more urban. In the early 1990s, only about 40 percent of all people lived in cities worldwide. Today, due to more work and educational opportunities in cities, more than 50 percent of the world's population live in an urban area, and many of those people are Millennials.

Many Millennials are also better educated than people in earlier generations. Wealth worldwide is increasing. So families have more money to spend on educating their children. In the mid 1990s, for example, China had only three million college students; today there are more than 25 million and that number is increasing.

Unlike earlier generations, many Millennials say they are more open to dating or marrying someone from a different background, in great part because it's easy to learn about other cultures via the Internet and social media. In the U.S., a recent study done by the Pew Research Center showed that over 85% of Millennials say they would date or marry someone from a different ethnic or cultural background; that number dropped to 55% for Americans aged 55 to 64 years old.

Most Millennials aren't hurrying to get married, though. Worldwide, they are marrying later, or not at all. In the early nineteen nineties in South Korea, for example, women often married by age 25; today, many women are marrying at age 30. For men, that number jumped from age 28 to 32. What's causing this change? For some, they are waiting to marry until they have a good job—which is harder for some to get. Others are simply harder to please. They are waiting to find their ideal man or woman.

1. be in their teens and twenties：十几岁、二十几岁

2. due to：由于

3. in the mid 1990s：二十世纪九十年代中期

4. in great part：在很大程度上

5. the Pew Research Center：皮尤研究中心，美国的一间独立性民调机构

Conversation

Track 8–2

A: In the past, fewer people used to live in cities. Today many more do.

B: That’s a big change, and I definitely think it’s an improvement.

A: Why’s that?

B: There are more opportunities in a city.

A: Yeah, but it’s also more crowded and expensive.

Lesson B A Disappearing Culture

Listening 1

SCRIPT

Track 8-3

In Northern Pakistan, near the Afghan border, there is a group of people called the Kalasha. Once powerful and widespread, the Kalash civilization once had tens of thousands of people; today, there are only about 3,500. In just a few generations, this culture, which is over 3,000 years old, may disappear.

Sayed Gul Kalash, a member of this community, is working hard to save her language and culture from extinction, but it won’t be easy. “Our language, spoken since 1,000 BCE, has no written script,” she explains. But the culture's early history, stories, and songs have a lot to teach us about ourselves and the human experience, says Gul Kalash. She is trying to preserve the language by writing down these stories and songs for the first time. In an increasingly globalized and connected world, languages like Mandarin and English, Russian and Hindi, Spanish and Arabic dominate. Parents in small villages often encourage their children to move away from their language and culture and toward those that will help them be more successful in life. Today, numbers are decreasing as more and more Kalash children are being educated in mainstream schools, and more people are moving away and marrying outside the Kalash culture. “It’s understandable,” says Sayed Gul Kalash. But she reminds us that every culture is unique and has value. When one culture is lost, we all lose something.

1. extinction：灭绝

2. Our language, spoken since 1,000 BCE, has no written script：塑造一种文字是非常困难的，很多民族都只有口头语言而没有书面文字。

3. an increasingly globalized and connected world：全球化是指全球联系不断增强，人类生活在全球规模的基础上发展，以及全球意识的崛起。

Listening 2

SCRIPT

Track 8-4

A: In addition to writing down traditional Kalash stories and songs for the first time, Sayed Gul Kalash is also working to preserve her culture in other ways. Tell us what some of these are. B: Sure. One thing she’d like to do is to encourage more Kalash people to become teachers.

A: How will that help?

B: Well, right now, many Kalash children are educated in mainstream Pakistani schools. But if there are more Kalash teachers and schools in the villages, children will also have a chance to learn more about their own language and culture.

A: What else is she doing?

B: She’s also working to open a museum in her area that will feature Kalash art, jewelry, ancient