节目资讯
刊物:空中英语教室
日期:2012-05-17
难易度:Medium
关键字:friend, cruelty, tragedy, unknown, cyber bullying, anonymous
Hi, everyone.
Thanks for joining us here at Studio Classroom Worldwide.
My name is Steve.
Now back in February, we looked into the social issue of bullying.
That ugly and harmful behavior most of us have, at one time or another, either
witnessed, experienced or participated in.
Now when bullies threaten and intimidate people, bad things happen.
That's why it's important to study and talk about it so we can learn how to
prevent it.
Let's open our magazines now to page 36 and read a true but very disturbing
story about one cyber bully victim.
(Music).
Cyber Bullying.
Understanding this harmful behavior and what can be done to prevent it.
In 2006, 13-year-old Megan Meier excitedly friended Josh Evans, a cute
16-year-old on her MySpace account.
After six weeks of friendly chat, Josh sent the following message:
"The world would be a better place without you." The cruelty of the message sent
Megan into her closet, where she hanged herself.
Later everyone was shocked to discover that "Josh" never existed.
The MySpace account had actually been created by a mother who had hoped to catch
Megan gossiping about her daughter.
Sadly, the shocking tragedy pointed out how dangerous cyber bullying had become.
Hello, friends. Thank you so much for joining us in the studio.
My name is Kaylah.
And my name is Ryan.
And I'm glad to be discussing this SOCIAL ISSUES article today because this is
an important issue that we're talking about, Kaylah.
It's called Cyber Bullying.
Now we've talked about bullying before.
And that's when you make fun of someone, you harass them, you beat them up,
you're terrible, you're mean to them.
That's bullying.
Now what is cyber bullying?
Well, the word "cyber" is referring to the Internet and using the Internet
specifically to communicate with people.
So if normal bullying happens maybe in work or usually in school, cyber bullying
happens online.
OK. So that is probably not so much physical beating someone up, but making them
feel uncomfortable, unwanted, bad about themselves.
So we're talking about cyber bullying.
We're trying to understand this harmful behavior, and we're going to learn what
we can do to help prevent it.
Yes, exactly.
We start off here with a story.
In 2006, 13-year-old Megan Meier excitedly friended Josh Evans, a cute
16-year-old on her MySpace account.
Now MySpace is a social network that you can use.
And back in 2006, it was the most popular social network just like Facebook is
today.
So she friended a cute 16-year-old boy.
Right. And if you "friend" someone, this is actually a newer word in the English
language.
This word means to become friends with someone on a social network like MySpace
or Facebook.
That means that you are... you have them on a list on your account.
Right. And it shows that you are friends, and you can share information with
your friends.
So she friended him.
He was a cute 16-year-old and she's only 13.
And I can tell you, Ryan, being a 13-year-old girl, if a 16-year-old boy would
pay attention to you, you would feel very special, especially if he's cute.
OK. I... I wouldn't know about that, but I guess so.
All right. So she was probably very excited.
And after six weeks of friendly chat on MySpace, Josh sent the following
message.
So they were talking.
And when we said they were "chatting," that means they were writing back and
forth of not usually about very important things.
But he was being very friendly.
And when you're 13 and he's 16, that usually means: Oh! He might like me.
She probably enjoyed that very much.
And here we're showing you the following message.
The word "following" simply means that it is going to come next.
So let's see what he said to her.
Well, the message read: The world would be a better place without you.
Ouch!
"The world would be a better place without you." That means that if... if Megan
was not in the world, he would feel like the world would be better.
That's so sad.
That's terrible.
That's a terrible thing to say to anybody.
You shouldn't ever tell anybody that.
That's rude.
It's... it's just mean.
Now he sent this message after being friendly with her, which, you know, Ryan,
that would be such an insult.
You know... you thought you were friends.
You thought you were building a friendship and a relationship with this person.
And then they say this!
That would break your heart.
That would be terrible.
It is! It's a terrible thing to say.
It's a cruel thing to say.
And we see the cruelty of that message, that sent Megan into her closet.
Now first, what does the word "cruelty" mean?
OK. Well, "cruelty" means you are being extremely mean, unkind, unpleasant,
intentionally causing pain.
And that's what cruelty is.
You can be mean or accidentally cause pain.
But when you are intentional about it, when it's something you are doing because
you want to do it to somebody, that is called cruelty.
Right. He did it on purpose.
And that made it very cruel.
And that's the adjective form.
And it was so cruel, in fact, that Megan went into her closet where she hanged
herself.
Now when you hang yourself, that is a way that you... you commit suicide.
It means you take your own life.
You choose to die and kill yourself.
Now "hanging" is when you would... it would be with around... a rope around your
neck.
And she hung herself in her closet.
This is a terrible story.
Right. She was so hurt by this message that she took her own life, she killed
herself.
That's a very sad message.
Just because this 16-year-old boy decided that he would tell her that the world
would be better without her in it, she believed him.
She was so hurt by what he said that she did this; she... she took her own life.
Now that person who said this would be responsible for the actions.
But there's an interesting point to this story because later everyone was
shocked, or surprised, to discover that "Josh" never existed.
The MySpace account "Josh Evans" had been actually created by a mother who had
hoped to catch Megan gossiping about her daughter.
So a woman had created an account to try to catch this Megan girl being mean to
her daughter, and instead, caused this awful thing.
Right. This is cyber bullying.
Now this is horrible.
And sadly, this shocking tragedy pointed out how dangerous cyber bullying had
become.
Now a "tragedy" is something that is very sad, an event or situation most often
involving death.
And this is definitely a tragedy.
It's terrible what happened to Megan.
But it brought out the concept of cyber bullying.
And we're going to talk about what it is after the break.
But first, let's visit the Chat Room.
Oh, no. This is terrible.
What are you looking at there, Ken?
Today's news.
Some prisoner was bullied so bad in prison that he hanged himself.
Oh, that's awful.
Yeah.
Hey, Bryan, isn't the past tense of hang "hung"?
Shouldn't this news story say the prisoner hung himself?
That's a good question.
Why don't we go to Studio Classroom Editor-in-Chief Doris for an explanation.
OK.
Both "hung" and "hanged" are the past tense of hang.
The difference lies in the meaning.
"Hanged" is used in the sense of putting to death by hanging as in: Saddam
Hussein was hanged in Baghdad.
In all of the senses of the word "hung" is a preferred form as a past tense as:
I hung the picture on the wall.
Interesting.
So this reporter actually used "hanged" correctly.
Well, if he'd used "hung," I wouldn't fault him as you'll hear lots of people
use "hung" when they should be using hanged.
But the standard English word is "hanged" when you're talking about killing
people by dangling them from a rope.
I see.
What about a "hang-up"?
What's that?
Well, "hang-up" is an informal word that refers to a psychological or emotional
difficulty.
If you have a hang-up about something, you have a feeling of fear, anxiety or
embarrassment about it.
Do you have a hang-up, Ken?
Um, I guess I have a hang-up about speaking good English.
Well, that shouldn't be your hang up, Ken.
You already speak English very well.
Thanks for the encouragement, Bryan.
Don't mention it.