节目资讯
刊物:空中英语教室
日期:2014-04-12
难易度:High
关键字:insight, trustworthy, contradict, variation, random sample, NSA (National
Security Agency), terroris
Hello, and welcome to Studio Classroom.
My name is Gabe.
My name is Carolyn.
And today we have a very informative lesson on polls.
Do you always believe the information that is reported through poll numbers?
Let's take a closer look at how polls really work and what those numbers
actually mean.
So open up your magazine to Let's Take a Poll, and we'll begin with our first
reading.
Let's Take a Poll.
Raise your hand if you believe that polls really reveal public opinion.
Governments, businesses and journalists often look to polls to gain insight into
public opinion.
Not all polls are created equal, though.
Only polls in which respondents are selected in a random sample can be
considered scientific and, therefore, trustworthy.
Meeting that standard allows a poll of 1,000 people to potentially represent the
opinions of millions of citizens!
Any poll in which respondents volunteer should be considered entertainment - not
an accurate representation of public opinion.
Hi, everyone. I'm Michelle.
(Chinese).
Thank you, Michelle.
Polls are very interesting things.
Many times if an organization wants to know the general opinion of a group of
people, they will use a poll.
And this means that they ask a small number of people what they think about
something.
Then they apply that information gathered from a small number and apply it to
reflect the opinion of an entire group.
This is very useful when you have a large number of people like an entire
country but you don't want to ask every single person what their opinion is.
Right. So instead, you take a poll.
Our author is very clever with the words found next to the title.
We see: Raise your hand if you believe that polls really reveal public opinion.
So our lesson is taking a poll.
Yep.
One way that you can take a quick poll is to ask a group of people to raise
their hands in response to a statement or question.
So do you believe that polls really reveal public opinion?
If you raised your hand, you just participated in a poll.
And that's a great thing to do if you think that polls do reveal public opinion.
But what exactly is public opinion?
It's a belief or feeling shared by most people.
The government is usually the organization that is most interested in knowing
what the public opinion is because it helps them to make important decisions.
And so they look to polls to gain insight.
And there is a phrase that Liz wants to talk to us about in the Grammar Gym.
Let's join her now.
Hello, friends.
How are you doing today?
My name is Liz.
And thanks for joining me here at the Grammar Gym.
Let's have a look at today's Grammar Tip sentence.
Governments, businesses and journalists often look to polls to gain insight into
public opinion.
Our focus today is on the phrase: look to.
It means to turn to or to go to something with an expectation.
So in the case of today's sentence, the writer is saying that if people want to
gain insight into public opinion, they turn to polls.
Now "to look to" is different from to look at.
If you look at something, that means you let your eyes rest on something and
direct your attention to that thing, like:
I'm looking at my mother, and I see she is wearing a dress.
But if you know there is someone or something that you can go to consistently
with an expectation, then you can use look to.
For example: Wendy looks to her grandmother for advice.
Or: John looked to his friends for support.
So friends, give this phrase a try.
And if you need to see some more example sentences, they're available in today's
Grammar Tip section in your Studio Classroom magazine.
That's it for today.
This is Liz from the Grammar Gym.
See you next time.
Thank you, Liz.
So many organizations, governments, businesses, journalists and others look to
polls to know more about public opinion.
However, we also learn from our lesson that not all polls are created equal.
And we should look at that phrasing: all some things are created equal.
If we say that all some things are created equal, that means that each of the
individual things are just as important or valuable as all of the other things
that are like it.
This phrasing was made famous by the United States of America's Declaration of
Independence.
Thomas Jefferson wrote:
All men are created equal and that they have certain rights that cannot be taken
away from them such as life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
Now you may be wondering about the grammar of this phrase.
Should it say all men are created equally?
Well, that would change the meaning of the phrase.
If you use the word equal, then it is referring to the noun, in this case, the
word men.
But if you use "equally," it would refer to the verb created.
So if you say that all men are created equally, that would mean that everyone is
exactly the same.
But we know that's not true.
Each person is a unique individual with their own personality and experiences.
But if you say that all men are created equal, that means that men are equal and
should be given the same rights and freedoms as everyone else regardless of
other factors.
Now something else you may be wondering about is the use of the word men.
What about women?
Yeah.
Actually, "men" does not always mean people who are male.
Right.
The words men and man can... or may also refer to human or person regardless of
their gender.
It can simply mean a person.
So you could also say all people are created equal.
And for Thomas Jefferson and the founders of America, that means that everyone
has certain rights that should not be taken away from them, especially by the
government.
Well, according to our lesson, not all polls are created equal.
If a poll is to be trustworthy, it has to be conducted in a scientific way.
This is important because if you ask 10 people from the same family what their
opinion is on something,
and they say that everyone in the city feels the same way, your poll could be
very wrong.
Right.
You need to have a random sample of people.
So poll participants should be chosen at random and from a wide variety of
backgrounds and locations.
But if a poll does meet the scientific standard, then the results can reflect
the opinion of thousands or even millions of people.
That's amazing.
Now Carolyn, you just used the phrase "meet a standard," which we see in our
lesson as well, so let's talk about it.
A standard is a certain level of quality that is to be expected.
So if you meet a standard, that means that you have achieved a certain level of
quality.
And this is very important.
For example, restaurants should meet a certain health standard.
That means that the restaurant should be clean, and people who eat there should
not get sick.
It meets the standard.
And there are standards for just about everything in life, and that includes
polls.
Polls should meet scientific standards so that the results of the poll can be
trusted to really reflect public opinion.
And in our lesson we see an example of a poll that should not be trusted as
representing the public opinion.
This is any poll in which people volunteer to give their opinions.
If people are volunteering, then it is not a random sample and can therefore
skew the results.
Carolyn, you just used a great word: skew.
This means that there is a bias or the truth is distorted or twisted in some
way.
For example, the journalist wrote an unbalanced article that skewed public
opinion because it lacked all the facts.
Ah, so media and news reporting can skew public opinion on an issue because they
control the information that reaches most of the people.
Now in the same way, a poll can be skewed if the people who are polled are not
selected randomly.
Right.
If this happens, then you are really just getting the opinion of a small group
of people, and those results don't reflect the thoughts or feelings of the
larger group.
Well, we will learn about how even the way a poll question is asked can skew the
results when we come back.