Name: Learn English with News: American English Conversation + Vocabulary Training | Free English Lesson
Uploaded: 2020-10-20T19:11:22.000Z
Duration: 33 min 51 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Today we're going to study some  vocabulary and some idioms together,  

watching a news clip on YouTube. It's Anderson  Cooper interviewing Bill Gates on Covid-19,  

some of the therapies that are being developed,  and what the fall is going to look like,  

a very current topic, something  that's on a lot of people's minds.

You're going to hear some words that  relate specifically to Covid-19,  

but also just some more advance vocabulary  words that can help your English sound more  

sophisticated. I think learning English  this way is a great way because when you  

learn a word in a context like this, I  think it makes it easier to remember.

As always, if you like this video or  you learn something new, please like it,  

give it a thumbs up, and subscribe  with notifications, it really helps.  

Let's talk about the format of this  video. You're going to watch a clip,  

and onscreen, there will be  white words with a red outline,  

those are the words that we'll study  after we watch the clip. Like this:

That's always been the most  promising therapeutic category.  

The other therapeutic categories, the antivirals,  like Remdesphere has only had modest benefit--   

Then after the clip, you and I will go over it  in-depth, together looking at the pronunciation,  

the meaning, and the context  of the word or phrase so that  

you'll definitely understand it and remember it.

The first clip is the question that Mr. Cooper  asked, it's 45 seconds long, let's take a look.

The coronavirus death toll in the United states  is now more than 212,000 people in this country,  

total number of cases more than seven and a  half million. Staggering numbers of course.  

There's precious little sign of things slowing  down. Add to that, president trump's diagnosis,  

the high infection numbers, the white house,  the overall lag in widespread testing, contact  

tracing, it's certainly a recipe for concern  as the fall begins in the winter, Bill Gates is  

joining us he's co-chair of the Bill and Melinda  Gates foundation, has long put his fortune  

and talent behind searching for cures for this  global health crisis and for other global health  

crisis. He joins me now, Bill, thanks for being  with us. Looking at where the US is right now in  

this pandemic, and during the fall in the winter,  cases on the rise, not just in small clusters, but  

across most of the nation, how concerned  are you about the months ahead?  

Wow, okay, a lot of words there to learn  there. The first was: death toll.   

The coronavirus death toll in the United states  is now more than 212,000 people in this country--

Death toll. This refers to  the number of people who died  

in relation to a particular event. For  example here, the coronavirus pandemic.  

Or it could be a natural disaster  like an earthquake or a tsunami.

Death toll. We have an unvoiced TH, the tongue  tip does have to come through the teeth there.  

Death-- and then you'll go right into a true T.  Now the word 'toll' has the OH as in No diphthong,  

but when it's followed by a Dark  L like it is here, it's not tow--  

towl-- towl-- but it's toh-- ohl--  ohl-- A little bit more rounded,  

tongue pulled back a little bit more,  death toll. Let's watch that clip again.

Total number of cases more  than seven and a half million.

Cases. This word has a couple of different  uses. But in this particular case,  

it means an instance of something, an  occurrence of something. In other words,  

one person who has the coronavirus.  That would be a case. And all of the  

people would be a bunch of cases, people who  have the coronavirus. Let's listen again.

Total number of cases more  than seven and a half million. 

Staggering means overwhelming, a huge amount,  a very large number. Let's watch again.

There's precious little  sign of things slowing down.

Precious little, you might also hear the  term 'precious few', this means very little,  

a very little amount of something, extremely  low in number, let's watch this clip again.

'Precious little sign' means really no  sign at all. If anything, just a very,  

very small sign, but there's  precious little evidence  

that the pandemic is slowing  down. Let's go to our next clip.

Add to that, President Trump's diagnosis,  the high infection numbers, the White House.

A couple words here. First, diagnosis. This  is when you figure out a problem or an issue,  

specifically by looking at the different clues.  For example, in medicine. If someone is sick, you  

look at the different ways in which they're sick.  What hurts? What happened? What are their blood  

levels? This kind of thing. And you look at all  of that information and you can make a diagnosis  

based on that information, you think you have this  disease. Um, it can also be used for, for example,  

the word problem, we need to diagnose the problem.  Let's say something is wrong with my car, it's  

not working, I don't know why. I have to get in  there and look at what specifically is happening.  

Well, it looks like nothing  happens when I turn the key. Okay,  

I'm going to make a diagnosis that my car needs  a new battery. Diagnosis. Let's watch again.

Infection and numbers. The number of people  that are infected. What does this mean? Well,  

infected just means sick, in this case, got  the disease. Let's watch that one more time.

The overall lag in widespread  testing, contact tracing, it's--

To lag means to fall behind. So this could be  either a goal that you have, you're falling  

behind your goal, you're lagging, or it can mean  compared to someone else. For example, in a race,  

maybe you're winning the race, and you're  running right next to somebody, and then  

when you're getting close again, you  start to feel tired, you can't keep up,  

you start to lag behind just a little  bit. Let's listen to this example again.

A lag in widespread testing. What does widespread  mean? It means something that many people are  

doing or feeling. For example, if a mayor  is very popular of the town, you could say  

that mayor has widespread support. Most of  the people, lots of people support that. So  

widespread testing means most people getting  tested, many tests happening, in this case,  

we're lagging behind, so that's not happening,  we're not meeting the goal of widespread testing.

What is contact tracing? This is when someone is  sick and you go back and you look at the window  

where they might have gotten sick. And you try to  find out everyone that they were in contact with.  

Then you reach out to those people. You see  are any of them sick? When you find somebody  

who's sick, you think: okay maybe this is  how that person got sick. So you're going  

back to everyone that somebody was in contact  with and you're trying to find out who's sick,  

who else might have gotten sick, and you find  that path of how the infection was passed  

so you can understand how it's  spreading. Let's listen one more time.

It's certainly a recipe for concern  as the fall begins and the winter--

If something is a recipe for something,  then that means it's likely to lead to it.  

You may have heard the phrase 'a recipe  for disaster' it's a pretty common phrase,  

and it means what we're seeing makes it seem like  it's very likely that a disaster will happen.  

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Learn English with News: American English Conversation + Vocabulary Training | Free English Lesson

assume

pronunciation

phrase

sophisticated