IELTS / TOEFL Academic Vocabulary: Society

everybody will come through right to the top I'm Adam in today's video I want to give you some more vocabulary we're gonna start building vocabulary for the IELTS and TOEFL exams and for the essay especially and today's topic is society now I've seen a few essays where people are writing about society and social values especially and it seems to me that maybe some of you don't actually understand what some of these words actually mean so we're gonna look at them today and make sure it's more clear for everybody and especially this word values the the question was about economic development versus loss of social values and this person talked about the social consequences what happens in society a little bit different okay social values basically what is important in life or not even social values just values what is important to you what what do you think is important what does your family think is important so these values they're like individual family community country etc they change and they're adaptable they're bit abstract but I'll get them into more details morals basically knowing what is right and wrong and ethics is basically how we behave towards one another in a nice way or not nice way ethically or unethically so basically these are all abstract ideas there's nothing you can point to specifically about them they're just ideas so examples of social values respect we should respect one another and that way we can all live together cooperation cohabitation tolerance you do whatever you want to do as long as it doesn't affect me negatively right so if you're talking about religious tolerance or sexual orientation gay lesbian etc straight all these tolerances honesty and justice freedom fairness equality all of these are social values your own values are for you to make every button has their own idea of what is important in life what needs to be pursued what needs to be let go okay so make sure you understand that when you're talking about values so again this was the topic in this person wrote about how is the more development means more slums because not everybody can afford to compete so they good they have to live in a poor area where young people have to leave their village to go work in the city to make money and their parents are left alone these are not values these are consequences of Economic Development value so you can talk about something like this economic development drives competition so what I'm getting into the disadvantages of it which often results in the loss of certain social values such as honesty and respect as people begin to view the road to success as necessarily being paved by those fallen in battle so if you're competing for a promotion or a raise you're competing with somebody else so sometimes they'll the only way to beat them is to do something dishonest like to cheat or to betray right in other words to climb the corporate ladder one might need to resort to cheating and betrayal so I'm going to say bad things about this person like we're gonna pretend to be his or her friend so then I can push them away and I can climb up and be successful right the problem is that in the long term one consequence is that desensitization to the loss of morals or social values the more we do this over the long time we will forget what it means to be honest what it means to be to help each other to be tolerant and respectful and justice right that's one of the losses of social values from economic development that's an example so be careful that you know what it is you're at you're being asked about now when we're talking about society and we're talking about all these values and stuff we're also talking about heritage and traditions or we're talking about customs and rituals so heritage of traditions these are ideas and beliefs that are inherited or they're are passed down from generation to generation so they come from a religion they come from our ancestors experiences with nature and they create these ideas and they pass these ideas on to us they're not necessarily our own ideas and then whatever the heritage are the traditions they come with customs and rituals these are actions we take or gestures that we make to commemorate something to celebrate something it could be a religious holiday a national holiday seasonal holiday all kinds of things all kinds of beliefs come with all kinds of rituals and ceremonies now when you're talking about all of these things in terms of giving concrete examples so if you're talking about social values you can talk about traditions and heritage that is being lost or customs and rituals that are being manipulated or being you know changed evolving or devolving depends how you look at it and you can use these to give concrete examples so religious observances these are rituals so for example a pilgrimage or a fast pilgrimage is going to somewhere like for example people go to Mecca to make the Hajj pilgrimage or a fast where you don't eat for a period of 24 hours or whatever national holidays these are brought down from tradition in Canada we celebrate Canada's a day on July 1st Canada became an independent nation over 150 years ago we still celebrate that today so historical places events figures means people etc all of these create our heritage our traditions ok so now I want to talk about these two words I want to talk about social and societal these are two different words that people tend to mix up all the time when we're talking about social we're talking about behavior basically an interaction between people you could talk about an individual and you could talk about groups right social behavior how you interact in groups how you're interacting in this place or that place when we're talking about society societal we're talking about that society that you're in so societal demands societal beliefs are specific to a society social could be anywhere your social behavior you're gonna have behavior anywhere in the world societal is based on the one society you're talking about okay it's a large group and it has certain ideas sociable basically means friendly if you're sociable you're friendly or outgoing extroverted etc in some countries societal pressures often lead even highly social people to seek out isolation so in in certain areas it doesn't matter how friendly you are the society doesn't want you to be too friendly they want you to be quiet and reserved and respectful to the elders but you're young and you're full of energy so sometimes it's easier just to go be alone than to be in a group where you can't be sociable right so you have to be a little careful societal social same sentence different meanings make sure you know the difference between them now oh so sorry let me go back here so an escape from the demands put on them to conform so in some societies everybody wants you to be the same as everybody else everybody's doing it like this you should as well that's conformed so I want to give you a few words here assimilate adapt conform now technically all of them mean change to fit your surroundings but they're slightly different right and this is where you have to be a little bit careful with synonyms synonyms doesn't mean you can interchange words it means you're talking about generally the same idea but how you use the word is a little bit different to assimilate means to absorb so you can assimilate assimilate something means you can take it inside and make it part of you or your group or you can be absorbed you can assimilate into the society and you can become like one like the whole basically you're not separated from the whole to adapt means to make changes you know you make changes and then you fit in and everything works out fine to conform basically do what other people are doing what other people want you to do so they're all very similar slight differences although many immigrants struggle to adapt to their new host nation their children often find it easier to conform to the societal norms and thereby assimilate to the new culture usually at the expense of their parents their parents culture okay all three words giving a slightly different angle on the same idea okay now we continue to talk about Society you have an inclusive society you have an exclusive society and you have diversity and you have inclusion noun inclusion exclusion noun inclusivity exclusivity also nouns so inclusive means you take everybody doesn't matter race ethnicity religious belief any sort of views on anything political views you accept everybody exclusive you have a very particular set of ideals or characteristics that you want everybody else can stay out okay if you think about a country club if you're not a billionaire we don't want you right it's an exclusive Country Club only for billionaires as an example so diversity basically means a variety diverse adjective diversity noun diversify verb variety all kinds of different looks all kinds of different backgrounds not homogeneous homogeneous means one type so for example Japan is considered a homogenous society because it's 99.9% Japanese an inclusive society except all its members and prides itself on his diversity and exclusive organization usually has strict admittance guidelines they don't take everybody prejudice and stereotype I think most people already know these words a stereotype I want to point out can be a noun or a verb you can stereotype someone or you can stare your type of a situation prejudice you can have a prejudice against or be prejudiced prejudiced toward so basically what these words mean this is a general and oversimplified idea or view apply to specific people things so for example if I say something if I want to say something about the Chinese can I say anything about the Chinese there's a billion Chinese obviously I can't say one thing about a billion different people anything I say would be oversimplified and not necessarily correct because it doesn't apply to 1 billion people so that's where you have to be careful about stereotypes and Prejudice you have an idea that's based on a few examples and then you apply it to all examples of something so a very dangerous thing to do now the main problem with stereotypes and prejudices is that they lead to bias and discrimination which is basically taking action that is favored like bias you're favoring one person more than another or discrimination basically you have ideas against discrimination is always against based on your stereotypes you discriminate you act against a particular person or thing or a place etc okay lastly we're gonna look at race ethnicity oh no yeah second lastly race ethnicity and ethnocentrism race generally is your physical appearance and your physical characteristics ethnicity is your socio-cultural so in one country you can have many many people all the same race but of different ethnicities different tribes with different beliefs different cultures different ways of living life okay ethnocentrism basically doing things according to my ethnicity and thinking that everybody else is wrong or irrelevant now ethnocentrism is often a base for xenophobia xenophobia and well any phobia phobia means fear xeno means foreigner outsider stranger fear strangers basically fear of anybody not in your group okay and that's that's a very common situation in a lot of societies unfortunately and then you have minority majority minority technically means less than fifty percent but when we're talking about people a minority is the smaller group within the larger group so in let's say in America for example the majority is cocky white there are very there's quite a lot of minorities there's Hispanics and blacks and Asians and all kinds of different minorities the majority that's the bigger group so you can use these words as well to talk about groups of people now just a couple of examples and that's it I think everybody everyone has heard of the me2 movement the me2 movement is trying not only to protect women but to break down stereotypes and and biases that limit their growth potential in the workplace minority groups regularly face discrimination in the workplace this is especially true of visible minorities so you can be a minority but not nobody knows you are for example you don't you look the same as everybody else but you're a different ethnicity a visible minority has a different skin color different features different looks so especially true of visible minorities whose race or ethnic affiliation affiliation means like connection or connection may stir up xenophobic tendencies and their surroundings okay so again lots of different words lots of different ways to use them about Society again don't forget start collecting words ideas samples for each topic that you're given you might have trouble with in the writing section start building your idea banks right away now if you have any questions about this video please ask me in the youtube comment section like the video if you liked it don't forget to subscribe by clicking this button up here and come back next week I'll have some more interest topics for you to help you with your English writing okay see you then bye bye

Channel: Write to the Top

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Keywords: IELTS, TOEFL, English writing, writing skills, language test, English vocabulary, how to write an essay, essay writing, test tips, English test, word choice, English skills, test preparation, study tips, IELTS high score, TOEFL high score, lexical resource, language skills, collocations, how to write in English, IELTS high band, IELTS writing, TOEFL writing, academic vocab, academic writing, academic vocabulary, society vocabulary, synonyms

Id: rb6qpbB5_bY

Length: 15min 9sec (909 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 10 2019