Study Options
Video Response
Listen to six people share their feelings about what they worry about most.
- Transcript
- Audio Slide Show
- Vocabulary
Sarah / England
I am probably more worried about political dangers rather than environmental, mainly because with environmental, you have the option to change what's going to happen to the environment. You can sort of try and change that as much as you can; whereas with political issues, you can't really change how a person thinks. You can try and change the political party that's in charge, but you can't really change how one person thinks. So, I think that' more unpredictable.
Lindsay / United States
I'm much more worried about environmental dangers. I feel like politically, we're going to be fine. I'm never going to go to these countries that are war-torn. I'm going to try and stay always in safe countries. But the environment, I feel like it's affecting everything, and the seasons are changing, and the icebergs are melting, and in the next twenty years, we're going to have some major problems.
Gareth / England
I'm more concerned with environmental dangers. This is because I believe it's like a snowball rolling down a hill. Once it gets going, it's very difficult to stop. And I believe that's the same for environmental issues; once these environmental issues start, it's going to be very, very difficult to stop them.
Tim / United States
Although I don't worry too much about political or environmental problems, I would say I'm more concerned about political problems, because they have the tendency to be more unpredictable and they can escalate very quickly unexpectedly; whereas with environmental problems, things usually happen more slowly and we can usually anticipate what's going to go wrong.
Antoinette / United States
I'm probably more worried about environmental dangers, because we, humans, are damaging the earth, and the damages that we do will affect generations and generations to come, so I probably think more about that. I'm not as politically in tuned, so, yeah, I worry more about environmental dangers.
Tony / Mozambique
I would say both. As you know, Africa- like the countries surrounding my country tend not to have stable political system, which means that maybe in the near future, a war can break out. And environmental dangers, because if we should deplete our natural resource, it could affect our future.
I think that' more unpredictable.
If something is unpredictable, that means you it has more than one possible outcome. Notice the following:
- The weather is always unpredictable.
- In sports, the final score is always unpredictable.
I'm never going to go to these countries that are war-torn.
A war-torn area is an area negatively affected by war. Notice the following:
- France in WWII was a worn-torn area.
- She won awards for her photography of the war-torn area.
They can escalate very quickly unexpectedly.
We use the word escalate to describe how a bad situation quickly gets worse. Notice the following:
- Violence escalated after the football match between the two sets of fans.
- The argument between the two people escalated into a fist fight.
It will affect generations and generations to come.
A generation is a set of population about the same age. Generations to come are future generations that have not been born yet. Notice the following:
- That movie will remembered for generations to come.
- Football will still be popular for generations to come.
In the near future, a war can break out.
When a war or fight breaks out, that means it starts unintentionally. Notice the following:
- A fight broke out at the school between two gangs.
- A riot broke out after the home team lost the hockey game.
