083 – Following The Crowd | ESL Podcast

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083 – Following The Crowd | ESL Podcast

ESL podcast | Following The Crowd | English learning lesson about following others.

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English Learning Reading

A: Why do you drink coffee if you know it’s bad for you?

B: Who says it’s bad for you?

A: I see it in the news all the time. It apparently causes all kinds of complications.

B: First of all, I drink it in moderation. Secondly, there haven’t been any convincing studies linking moderate coffee drinking with health problems. I’ve even heard that drinking it in moderation can reduce certain cancer risks.

A: I read that coffee drinkers have a 60% higher risk of developing heart disease than non-coffee drinkers.

B: That’s such a misleading statistic. They are lumping people who drink one cup per day and people who drink 10 cups per day in the same group.

A: I still wouldn’t risk my health like that.

B: You are such a sheep! You’ll believe anything.

Complications: This word often refers to “problems”. It’s often used in medical situations and refers “health problems”
“If you continue taking this medication for a long time it might cause complications in the future.”
Moderation: Doing something in moderation means that you do it a “reasonable amount” ie. not too much.
Many people believe that drinking red wine in moderation is good for their health.

Convincing studies: A “convincing study” is a study or a scientific experiment that provides really clear evidence.

Misleading statistic: A misleading statistic is a statistic that is true but is used in a way to make people believe something else that isn’t true. For example, an advertisement might say, “eating this weight-loss pill along with doing 30 minutes of cardiovascular exercise,
and eating a healthy diet, made our participants lose an average of 10 Kilograms over a 6 week period”. This statistic may be true but it is used to persuade people that the weight-loss pill helped the results. It is still possible that if those same people just exercised 30 minutes per day and ate well, might have the same or better results.
In another example a company might say, “Our revenue went up 50% last year!” That alone sounds like a good thing, but it is possible that the company’s expenses also rose by 300% and now they are losing money.

Lumping: Sometimes we use the word “lumping” to mean “putting” or “grouping”. It is often used negatively. For example, you could say, “you can’t lump me in the same group with that guy just because we are both from the same hometown”. In other words, “it’s not fair to think of us as the same in all respects just because we have this one similarity”.

You are such a sheep: A “sheep” is the type of person who can’t think for themselves and just blindly follows the opinions of other people.

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