节目资讯
刊物:空中英语教室
日期:2012-08-24
难易度:High
关键字:ditch, pedestrian, exclude, fatal, surveillance, archive
Hi, friends.
Welcome to Studio Classroom Worldwide.
My name is Steve.
Thanks for joining us today.
Not too long ago, Studio Classroom looked at the dangers of texting while
driving.
Do you remember that?
And I hope by now you all realize how dangerous that is.
Then we looked at texting while walking, which, at first glance, seems harmless
enough,
but in reality also can create very dangerous situations for the texter.
Well now, we're going to pick up this personal electronic gadget creates danger
theme,
again with this month's SAFETY feature about the hazards of wearing headphones
outside.
Let's begin our lesson with the reading on page 46.
Study Suggests Hazards of Wearing Headphones Outside.
Using electronic gadgets outdoors may endanger users' lives.
People who wear headphones might want to ditch them while walking outside.
A study finds that accidents involving pedestrians wearing the devices have
tripled in recent years.
Researchers combed several sources to find incidents in the U.S. of crashes
involving pedestrians and vehicles from 2004 to 2011.
Searching the National Electronic Injury Surveillance System, the U.S. Consumer
Product Safety Commission,
Google News archives and Westlaw Campus Research,
they found 116 cases of death or injury involving pedestrians wearing
headphones.
(Music).
Hello, everyone.
Thank you for joining us.
My name is Ryan.
And my name is Kaylah.
And today we're talking about SAFETY.
Now it's always important to pay extra close attention when we talk about
SAFETY.
That's right.
Now friends, if you remember from a couple months ago,
we were talking about text messaging while you are walking and how that can be
dangerous.
Well, it turns out that's not the only thing that can be dangerous while being
outdoors.
That's right.
Studies suggest the hazards of wearing headphones outside.
Now "hazards" means the dangers of them, of wearing headphones, which is how we
listen to music through our MP3s.
OK. Now using electronic gadgets outdoors might endanger or be dangerous for
users' lives.
So let's see how... what this means.
How does this really work?
Well, let's get started with: People who wear headphones might want to ditch
them while walking outside.
Now what does it mean to ditch something?
All right.
If you "ditch" something, that means you leave it behind or get rid of it.
And headphones are what you wear on your ears to listen to music.
Well, why should they ditch them?
Well, a study that has been done finds that accidents involving pedestrians
wearing the devices have tripled in recent years.
OK. "Pedestrians" are just people walking on the streets.
So most of you walk along the street, and if you wear headphones and listen to
music while you're doing that,
well, you could get into an accident.
Now we have some more information about this.
So let's go visit the Information Station.
You know, Bryan, today people can listen to music wherever and whenever they
want to.
So true, Bill.
But listening to music hasn't always been so convenient.
So to learn more about the history of portable music players, we need to go
to...
Information Station.
In 1954, the Regency TR-1 was released.
This portable transistor radio allowed people to listen to music on the go for
the first time.
Over the years, portable music players got bigger.
This trend came to a peak in the mid-1970s with the release of the first boom
boxes.
That's right, Bill.
Designed to be stereos on the go, boom boxes had tape players and radios.
And the "boom" meant these small systems could be loud.
If you watch old music videos, you'll see people dancing while holding boom
boxes on their shoulders.
But then Bill, something big happened.
In 1979, Sony introduced a truly portable and personal music player - the Sony
Walkman.
Sony ended up selling more than 200 million Walkmans.
But as we all know, the cassette tape was about to be replaced by the compact
disc.
That's right.
So it was no surprise when Sony released the first portable CD player, the D50,
in 1984,
allowing people to listen to their CDs wherever they went.
Fourteen years later in 1998, the first MP3 player was released.
The MPMan F10.
It came with 32 megabytes of storage, enough to hold 8 songs.
Wow! That's it, Bill?
Wow, even tape players can hold more songs than that.
Well, today's MP3 players are much more powerful.
Some can hold up to 4,000 different songs.
It would take almost 200 hours to listen to all of those.
I don't have much time for that.
I don't either, Bill.
Of course, these days most people simply listen to MP3s on their cell phones.
That's right, so.
From boom boxes to smart phones, portable music has come a long way and gotten a
lot lighter.
So friends, get out and take your music with you.
And we'll see you all next time here at...
Information Station.
I know we all love to listen to music in our headphones when we're walking
around as pedestrian.
But you might need to be more careful because accidents have increased three
times the amount.
So we should be more careful.
Well, how do we know this?
Well, it's because researchers have combed, or looked through,
several different sources to find incidents in the U.S. of crashes involving
pedestrians and vehicles between 2004 and last year.
So between 2004 and 2011, they did this research.
Now searching the "National Electronic Injury Surveillance System," that's a big
name.
We need to know what "surveillance" means, though.
OK. So this is a system that is watching for injury surveillance.
And I use that word "watching" there.
That's another way to say "surveillance." That means to watch something
carefully and see if anything bad happens.
That's right.
Usually you're looking for some sort of problem, the police conduct a lot of
surveillance.
So you look at this system, and the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission as
well as the Google News archives,
and Westlaw Campus Research.
These are the different information systems that we combed through, or looked
through, to get this information.
All right.
And we saw the word "archives." That's a great place to look for saved
information.
Well, that's because an archive is a place where you keep information.
That's right.
So it's kind of like looking in the history of something.
So they look through these different ones, the Westlaw Campus Research,
and they found 116 cases of death or injury involving pedestrians wearing
headphones.
OK, friends, so what we've seen here is between 2004 and 2011,
there have been 116 cases where people have died because they were walking along
the street wearing headphones and got into an accident.
Well, not all of them died, 116 cases of either them dying or being injured.
Oh, death or injury. Right.
So this is definitely still a bad thing.
If you're wearing your headphones walking along the street, you might think,
well,
it's the job of all the other cars driving around me to know when I am there.
But that means you can't hear when they're coming.
It still could be your problem.
That's right, friends. We're going to look at more reasons, explain more of this
research,
why maybe wearing headphones outside is not safe after we visit Ken and Bryan in
the Chat Room.
So tell me again, why did your teacher return the paper without a grade?
Oh. Well, that's not so bad.
She just want you to comb your sources and check all the facts.
You can do it.
OK. Talk to you later.
Bye now.
Hey, Bryan, were you talking to someone you used to tutor?
No. That was my nephew James calling from college.
His teacher returned his first paper without a grade, so he was a little
worried.
That would be scary.
I overheard you talking about combing sources.
What did you mean exactly?
I think we should call in an expert for this one.
Let's have Studio Classroom Editor-in-Chief Doris explain it for us.
OK.
Comb, as a verb, can have a couple of different meanings.
Of course, when you comb your hair, you use a comb to straighten your hair and
make it look better.
But another meaning of "comb" is to look through something or examine it very
thoroughly.
When students comb sources, they look through them to find specific details or
facts.
OK. That makes sense.
Are there any other things that people can comb besides sources?
Sure.
Police often combs through evidence to discover who committed a crime.
So comb and comb through can mean the same thing, right?
That's right.
You might also hear people talk about going through something with a fine-tooth
comb.
A fine-tooth comb? What's that?
You know how a comb has a row of teeth.
Well, some combs have wider teeth than others.
A fine-tooth comb is a comb which has teeth that are very close together.
Oh. So the spaces between the teeth are very narrow.
Right.
So if you go through a place with a fine-tooth comb, the comb can easily pick up
whatever items are in that place.
Ah, interesting.
Well, I hope James has fun combing his sources.
He'd better if he wants to get a good grade.