#17: United Nations Estimates World Population to Reach 8 Billion

Hello my beautiful students and welcome back to English News Pod, the best way for you to learn practical English through the news. I’m your host and teacher, Caroline. 

In this episode, we’ll be discussing the United Nations’ global population forecast. You can find a full transcript of this podcast episode in the description. 

The United Nations predicts that the global population will reach 8 billion people by November 2022 and India is expected to overtake China as the most populated country next year. Scientists claim exponential population growth over the past 200 years is due to innovations and increased access to improved healthcare systems, resulting in longer life expectancies and more children being born. Despite the news that the global population will reach new heights, the UN has found that population growth has slowed to less than 1% in 2020, the slowest growth rate since the 1950s. Is your town more populated?   

Let’s take a look at some grammar:

1. To predict - “to predict” is a verb that means to estimate something. This verb is often used in scientific situations. For example, the UN predicts, or estimates, that the global population will reach 8 billion people by November 2022. This is a scientific situation, because the population estimate and timeline has been predicted by scientists who collected data.
2. To overtake - “to overtake” is used to describe when passing something. A common way to use this verb is when describing driving. For example, when you drive around a car that is going slow, you are overtaking the slow car! In this episode, we are using the verb overtake to describe India’s population passing, or exceeding, China’s next year. 
3. Exponential - exponential is an adjective to describe rapid growth. The word exponential comes from a mathematical function, called an exponential function, which is when a line on a graph increases upward quickly. In this case, we are describing the rapidly, or exponential, increase of the global population over the past 200 years. 
4. Life expectancy - exactly as it sounds! a noun that describes how long people are expected to live. Thankfully, life expectancy is longer today than it was 100 years ago. This is resulting in population increase.
5. Despite - "despite" is a preposition that is used when something is unaffected by something else. In this episode, I said the sentence “despite the news that the global population will reach new heights, the UN has found that population growth has slowed,” meaning that the population growth has slowed in recent years, even though the global population is hitting an all-time high. 

Bonus:

Do you know what a preposition is? A preposition is a part of speech that shows a relationship between other elements of speech. Usually prepositions are used when describing time, space, direction, location, and more. The most common are prepositions for time, such as “in December,” “to be on time,” “the party starts at 7pm,” and prepositions for space, like “on the table,” “under the bed,” and “behind the door.” 

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Thanks for listening, and I will see you soon for more news in English!