Describing Generation Z (Gen Z)

Listening Diary 11

• Date and Time: I began at 2.13 pm and finished at 2.30 pm on Sunday, 18th April 2021.
• Kind of Material: 6 Minutes English on YouTube Channel BBC Learning English entitled Describing Generation Z (Intermediate Level).

Summary

There are several kinds of generations. There are baby boomers, who were born between the 1940s and the early 1960s. Then, Generation X was born between the mid-1960s and the early 1980s. Then there is Generation Y, also known as millennials, born in the mid-1980s to late 1990s, and Generation Z, who was born in the late nineties or early noughties.

Gen Z is partly explained by the fact that they are the social media generation. They have never known a time when they did not have access to social media.

Most people view Generation Z as mini-millennials — and that’s because there is an obsession with the word ‘millennial’. Gen Z, according to Hiral Patel, a Barclays analyst, is not mini-millennials; they are quite different and have their own values and preferences. Gen Z is tech-innate, hyper-informed consumers, and extremely savvy. For them, the hyper-connected world we live in today is the new normal.

My strategies:

Firstly, I listened to the audio all the way through without trying to understand any of the words. Then I write the point. I re-listen to the audio to check that I understand it, and repeat some parts that I don’t understand. After that, I check the audio script to make sure and write down to add some sentences and important points.

What I learned:

I learned some new vocabulary as well as how to pronounce it.

There are:

• generations: this is a term used to describe people born in a particular period of time (usually, but not always, a period of about 18 to 20 years)
• noughties: the first decade of the 21st Century, from 2000 to 2009
• to cater for: to provide something that is needed or wanted for a particular group
• tech-innate, hyper-informed consumers: describes people who are extremely comfortable with modern technology and social media and, as a result, have a lot of information about what’s going on in the world
• savvy: smart and intelligent
• the norm: what is normal, what is usual for someone

The difficulties:

I heard some vocabulary, but I have no clue what the vocabularies are. However, there is an audio script that I can look at and read after listening to learn the vocabulary. And, there is a section where the speaker speaks fast, so I repeat it so that I understand what he or she said.