英语流利说 第27天

Posted 2021-01-24 qianyindichang

红色表示重点词汇

蓝色表示句子主干

带着问题听讲解

Q1: 文章总结了哪些自杀率下降的原因？

Q2: 名词 means 在文中作单数还是复数？

Q3: 词组 a suicide postponed 如何理解？

Why suicide is falling around the world

At a global level, suicide is down by 29% since 2000. As a result, 2.8m lives have been saved in that time—three times as many as have been killed in battle.

Why are people now less likely to take their own lives? Urbanisation and greater freedom have helped. Accounts of those who attempt suicide, and of the relatives of those who succeed, suggest  that many young Asian women were driven to despair by violent husbands and overbearing in-laws. As people move to cities and the grip of tradition loosens, women have more choice about whom they marry or live with, making life more bearable. Leaving the village helps in another way, too. Because farming involves killing things, rural folk are likelier to have the means to kill themselves—guns, pesticides—to hand.

Suicide is surprisingly impulsive. A study of young Chinese women who had tried to kill themselves showed that three-fifths had been contemplating suicide for less than two hours, and one in ten for less than a minute. Of 515 people who had survived the leap from San Francisco’s Golden Gate bridge between 1937 and 1971, 94% were still alive in 1978—which suggests that a suicide postponed is likely to be a suicide prevented.

全球自杀率普遍下降的原因

自 2000 年以来，全球范围内的自杀率下降了 29%。这个数字意味着 280 万条生命得以幸存于世——这是同一时期内殒命于战场的人数的三倍之多。

为什么人们轻生的几率更小了呢？一部分原因在于城市化的进展和更大的行动自由。一个个故事告诉我们，许多年轻的亚洲女性是被施暴的丈夫和咄咄逼人的姻亲推上绝路的。这些故事，有的来自自杀未遂的人，有的来自逝者的亲属。随着人们移居城市，传统习俗的势力减弱，女性对于结婚或同居对象的选择更加自由，她们的生活也变得不那么难以承受。离开农村还带来了另一种改变。农耕免不了杀生，因此，农村的人们离那些可以夺走自己生命的器物也更近——比如枪支和农药。

让人意外的是，自杀是一种冲动的行为。针对曾经试图自杀的中国年轻女性的一项研究显示，有五分之三的人起了自杀的念头后，不到两小时就真的这么做了。考虑时间不到一分钟的，十人中就有一人。在 1937 年到 1971 年间，从旧金山的金门大桥一跃而下却又生还的 515 人中，94%的人直至 1978 年仍然在世。这一数据表明，如果轻生者从深渊边上退回来一次，他们都可能再也不会走上悬崖。