Views #345 | Intermediate 4

Population Up

Heidi talks about the population situation in her country of Mongolia.

Script
Vocab
Quiz



Heidi	Todd

Todd: Now, Heidi, you are from Mongolia, correct?

Heidi: Yes, I am from Mongolia.

Todd: Now, your country is quite unique in that it's a big country, but you have a small population.

Heidi: That's right.

Todd: How many people live in Mongolia?

Heidi: It was actually two million before ten years, but now it's three million so it's getting bigger and bigger.

Todd: Wow, so the population went from two million to three million in just ten years?

Heidi: Yeah, that's right.

Todd: Do you know by any chance of any projections about how big it will be in the future?

Heidi: Probably, it's gonna get bigger and bigger because actually our government is working for it and there is a project they call "I feel like give a birth one child" [which] gets money and probably they're trying to have more and more child.

Todd: So, if young couples, if young women have children they get money from the government?

Heidi: Yes, that's right.

Todd: So, is it working? I mean, do women want to take advantage of it?

Heidi: Probably it's not like because of the money, but they kind of realize that Mongolia needs more population to make Mongolia a more developed country.

Todd: So, what is the main reason why fewer women want to have children? Or women are having less children?

Heidi: Cause, definitely it's gonna be so hard for them to take care of the child. It costs a lot and this time it's kind of hard to like pay for the tuition fees and other stuff so probably women are trying to have less child because of that, but if you think about the country's development it's better to have more child so yeah, probably everyone has a different opinion about it.

Todd: Right. Actually, what age do people usually get married in mongolia?

Heidi: For the women, they get married around twenty-four till twenty-eight. For the men, they are quite late: twenty-six until twenty-two.

Todd: Has there been an increase in females or women going to college?

Heidi: Yeah, that's actually increasing because the family and parents are actually worried about their daughters so they help them to go to university, so in Mongolia, the number of universities is getting increased, so there are more chances to go to university

Todd: OK, well, that sounds quite dynamic how it's working.

Heidi: Yeah.

Learn vocabulary from the lesson!

unique

Your country is quite unique.

When something is unique, it is very different, and there is nothing else that is similar. Notice the following examples:

Your style of fashion is very unique. No one dresses like you.
His house is unique because it is made of plastic.

by any chance

Do you know by any chance of any projections?

We use the phrase 'by any chance' when a question is being asked. The phrase 'by any chance' lets the listener know it is OK if they do not have an answer or cannot meet the request. Here are some sample sentences:

By any chance do you have a pen I can borrow?
You don't have the schedule by any chance do you?

projections

Do you have any projections of how big it will be?

A projection is a guess about the future. To make a projection, you need to look at data in the present and then think about how it will change over time. Notice the following:

I do not believe the latest sales projections. They are too low.
Sometimes projections are right, but sometimes they are wrong.

take advantage of

Do women take advantage of it?

When you take advantage of something, you use it even though you do not have to. For example, perhaps you have a company cafeteria with cheap food. You can eat lunch at work or go outside, so if you eat at work, you take advantage of the cafeteria. Notice the following: