Population and Migration

The unit opens with four pictures. Each shows a kind of population (how many of something live in a place) or migration (moving from one place to another).

Picture	What it represents
A crowded city street, people crossing a busy road between tall buildings	population growth and crowded cities: more and more people live in towns
A chart of reindeer numbers, falling from about 4.7 million in the mid-1990s to about 2.1 million in 2016, a fall of 56%	an animal population in decline: wild reindeer and caribou in the Arctic, whose numbers have fallen by more than half
A long line of people walking along a road with bags and children	human migration: people leaving their homes because of war, poverty or disaster, looking for safety or work
A flock of birds flying in a V across the sky	bird migration: birds traveling between their summer and winter homes

Before you read

What kind of text it is

The text is adapted from World Population Prospects 2022, a report by the United Nations, whose population experts publish new estimates and projections of every country’s population every two years. It is a report full of numbers: it says what happened (since 1950), what is happening (2022) and what is projected (expected, from today’s trends) up to 2050. When you read it, ask of every number: is it a fact about the past, or a projection about the future?

The report, part by part

1. A hundred years of growth

In 1950 the world had about 2.5 billion people. It took about 37 years for that number to double, to more than 5 billion in 1987. Doubling again will take longer, about 70 years: the world is expected to pass 10 billion by 2059. Today’s population is more than three times what it was in 1950.

Growth was fastest in 1962–1965, at 2.1 percent a year on average. Since then it has slowed by more than half, because fertility (the number of children born to each woman) has fallen. In 2020, for the first time since 1950, growth fell below one percent a year, and it is expected to keep slowing until the end of the century. The projections: about 8.5 billion in 2030 and 9.7 billion in 2050.

2. How sure can we be?

A projection rests on guesses about the two components (parts) of world population growth: fertility and mortality (deaths). So it is uncertain, and more uncertain the further ahead it looks. But the next few decades are fairly certain, because most of the people who will have children before 2050, the women whose offspring (children) will add to the population, are already alive. Some countries are still growing; others have reached stabilization (their numbers have stopped changing) or have started to shrink.

3. The regions in 2022

The United Nations groups the world’s countries into eight regions (the regions of the Sustainable Development Goals). In 2022:

• The most populous region was Eastern and South-Eastern Asia, with 2.3 billion people, 29 percent of the world.
• Next came Central and Southern Asia, with 2.1 billion, 26 percent. Nepal is in this region.
• China (in the first) and India (in the second) each had more than 1.4 billion people.
• Europe and Northern America (more than 1.1 billion) and sub-Saharan Africa (more than 1.2 billion) were about the same size, but they got there along very different trajectories (paths). Europe and Northern America have grown by less than 1 percent a year since the mid-1960s, and by close to zero in 2020 and 2021. Sub-Saharan Africa’s growth peaked (reached its highest) at 3 percent a year in 1978 and stayed above 2.8 percent through the 1980s; since then it has been the fastest-growing region.
• Oceania (Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific islands) had about 45 million people. Without Australia and New Zealand, the islands grew from about 2.5 million in 1950 to about 13.6 million in 2022.

Region	2022	2030	2050
World	7,942	8,512	9,687
Sub-Saharan Africa	1,152	1,401	2,094
Northern Africa and Western Asia	549	617	771
Central and Southern Asia	2,075	2,248	2,575
Eastern and South-Eastern Asia	2,342	2,372	2,317
Latin America and the Caribbean	658	695	749
Australia/New Zealand	31	34	38
Oceania (without Australia and New Zealand)	14	15	20
Europe and Northern America	1,120	1,129	1,125
Least developed countries	1,112	1,328	1,914
Landlocked developing countries	557	664	947
Small island developing states	74	79	87

Population of the world, its regions and some groups of countries, in millions, 2022, with the United Nations’ medium projections for 2030 and 2050 (World Population Prospects 2022). The last three rows are groups that overlap the regions: Nepal is both a least developed and a landlocked developing country.

4. The world in 2050

The regions will grow at very different rates, so the world’s population will be spread out differently in 2050:

• Central and Southern Asia is expected to become the most populous region by about 2037, because Eastern and South-Eastern Asia may start to shrink in the mid-2030s.
• Sub-Saharan Africa is expected almost to double between 2022 and 2050, passing two billion in the late 2040s. With women there still having about three children each in 2050, it will provide more than half of the world’s growth. In 2022 it was growing by 2.5 percent a year, more than three times the world’s 0.8 percent.
• Europe and Northern America are expected to reach their peak and begin to decline in the late 2030s, because fertility has been low for a long time.
• More than half of the growth to 2050 will come from just eight countries: the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Egypt, Ethiopia, India, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Philippines and Tanzania. The Congo and Tanzania will grow by 2 to 3 percent a year.
• Because the largest countries grow at disparate (very different) rates, their ranking will change: India was projected to surpass (become larger than) China as the most populous country in 2023.

Words from the report

Word	Meaning
populous	having many people living in it
mortality	the number of deaths in a place or a period of time
fertility	here, the number of children born to women: a fertility of three births per woman
projection	an estimate of what a number will be in the future, from today’s trends
demographic	about the population and the groups in it (by age, sex, place)
peak	to reach the highest point; (noun) the highest point
stabilization	becoming steady, unlikely to change
trajectory	the path something follows
surpass	to become greater than; to exceed
disparate	completely different from each other
offspring	a person’s child or children; an animal’s young
witness	to see something happen
inhabitant	a person who lives in a place

A. Match the words with their meanings

B. Complete the sentences

C. Answer the questions

D. Will it happen?

In British English (and most of the English taught in Nepal’s textbooks), the letter r is said only when a vowel sound comes right after it. Before a consonant, or at the end of a word, it is silent and the vowel before it is longer: world /wɜːld/, car /kɑː/, bird /bɜːd/. In American English every r is said: /wɜːrld/.

Pronounced with /r/	Pronounced without /r/
growth /ɡrəʊθ/: gr + vowel	furthermore /ˌfɜːðəˈmɔː/: no vowel after either r
experience /ɪkˈspɪəriəns/: r + i	fertility /fɜːˈtɪləti/: r + t
comparable /ˈkɒmpərəbl/: r + ə	uncertain /ʌnˈsɜːtn/: r + t
zero /ˈzɪərəʊ/: r + o	future /ˈfjuːtʃə/: at the end
distribution /ˌdɪstrɪˈbjuːʃn/: tr + i	birth /bɜːθ/: r + th
concentrated /ˈkɒnsntreɪtɪd/: tr + a

To interpret a picture or a table is to say what it shows and what it means: first what it is about, then the main point, then the details, then what you think it tells us. Useful phrases:

• The figure shows / illustrates…
• First…, then…, after that…, finally… (for steps)
• The most common… is…, followed by…; Only…% of households have…; Just over half…, about a third…
• This suggests that…, It is clear that…

a. First aid for an unconscious person

The first figure shows what to do when you find someone unconscious (not awake and not answering). The steps, as first-aid organizations teach them:

1. Check for danger. Make sure that you and the person are safe: traffic, electric wires, fire.
2. Check for a response. Kneel beside them, tap their shoulders and ask loudly, “Are you all right?”
3. Shout for help and call an ambulance: in Nepal, 102 (police 100, fire 101). Put the phone on speaker.
4. Open the airway. Put one hand on the forehead and gently tilt the head back; lift the chin with two fingers.
5. Check breathing for up to 10 seconds: look at the chest, listen and feel for breath on your cheek.
6. If they are breathing, put them in the recovery position: on their side, the upper leg bent at the knee to stop them rolling, the head tilted back so that vomit can run out of the mouth. Stay with them and keep checking their breathing.
7. If they are not breathing, start CPR: push hard and fast in the center of the chest, 5–6 cm deep, 100–120 times a minute, and give two rescue breaths after every 30 pushes if you are trained. If you are not trained, keep pushing on the chest until help arrives.

b. Household facilities in Nepal

The second is a table from the National Population and Housing Census 2011: the percentage of Nepal’s households that had each facility.

Facility	% of households	Facility	% of households
Radio	50.8	Mobile phone	64.6
Television	36.5	Motor (car)	1.6
Cable television	19.3	Motorcycle	9.6
Computer	7.3	Bicycle	32.4
Internet	3.3	Other vehicle	0.7
Telephone (landline)	7.4	Refrigerator	7.2

Sometimes the second idea is a surprise after the first: It was raining heavily. We continued the match. English has many words to join such ideas. They are called connectives of contradiction (or of contrast, or concession). The trick is to know what follows each one:

Connective	What follows	Example
although, even though, though	a clause (subject + verb)	Although it was raining, we continued.
despite, in spite of	a noun phrase or -ing, no verb	Despite the rain, we continued. In spite of feeling tired, she went.
despite the fact that, in spite of the fact that	a clause	Despite the fact that it was raining, we continued.
however, nevertheless	a new sentence, with a comma after it	It was raining. However, we continued.
but, yet	a clause, in the middle, after a comma	It was raining, but/yet we continued.
while, whereas	a clause: a contrast between two things	I like cricket, while my brother likes football.

Even though is stronger than although: it stresses the surprise. Though is the same as although, a little more informal, and can also end a sentence: It was cold. We enjoyed it, though.

A. Match the sentence halves

B. Complete the sentences

An interpretation (or description) of a graph or chart is a short paragraph, or two, that says in words what the picture shows. It has three parts:

1. Introduction: what the graph shows, where, and when (The bar graph shows the number of Nepali students who went abroad to study from 2009/10 to 2018/19.).
2. The main trend or the main point: the biggest change, the largest share.
3. Details with numbers: the highest and lowest, the changes, comparisons. Then, if you like, one sentence of conclusion.

Use the past tense for past years, round the numbers where it helps (about 27,000), and don’t give reasons the chart doesn’t show unless you mark them as your opinion (This may be because…).

a. Nepali student migration

Year	Students	Year	Students
2009/10	26,948	2014/15	30,696
2010/11	11,912	2015/16	37,037
2011/12	10,258	2016/17	50,659
2012/13	16,499	2017/18	58,758
2013/14	28,126	2018/19	63,259

b. The languages of Kathmandu

Before you read

What kind of text it is

The text is adapted from Animal Behavior, a book for young readers by Gretel H. Schueller and Sheila K. Schueller, two American science writers. It is an informative text: it starts with a puzzle (where do birds go in winter?), gives the old wrong answers, then the true one, and explains it with many examples, mostly from North America.

The text, part by part

1. Where do birds go in winter?

A snowy forest is quiet in winter, but full of birdsong in spring. Where were the birds? Long ago people had strange answers: birds slept in holes in the ground; they hid in the mud at the bottom of ponds, alive and waiting for spring; or summer birds transformed (changed) into other kinds of birds for the winter. The truth is even more incredible (hard to believe): they migrate. They fly over land and oceans, with no roadmap or compass, to places sometimes thousands of kilometers away.

2. Like marathon runners

Birds pace themselves like marathon runners, so that they don’t run out of energy before they can land. All the time they adjust their speed, height and path to the winds, their own weight and storms. In spring they retrace their path (go back the same way) to their summer homes.

Each autumn about five billion birds fly south from North America for the winter, and nearly 500 of its 650 kinds of birds migrate. Around the world about 1,800 of the roughly 10,000 bird species are long-distance migrants, and many more make shorter journeys; each species makes its own.

3. Not only birds

Insects, amphibians, reptiles, fish and mammals migrate too. Huge herds of wildebeest arrive at the green pastures of the southern Serengeti in Africa every January; swarms of free-tailed bats reach caves in Texas every March; northern fur seals gather on islands of Alaska every June; and Chinook salmon swim up the rivers of Washington State in September. You can witness (see) these journeys if you are in the right place at the right time. But birds can be seen migrating almost anywhere, and most of what we know about migration comes from studying them.

4. Different journeys

• East to west: not all birds fly north and south. White-winged scoters, ducks that dive for up to a minute to grab shellfish from the sea floor, spend the summer by ponds and lakes in Alaska and western Canada, and fly to the milder Pacific and Atlantic coasts for winter.
• Up and down: some mountain birds, like brindled titmice and mountain chickadees, move only about 300 meters (1,000 feet) down, from high evergreen forests to wooded valleys: a short trip for a big change of climate. Many Himalayan birds do the same, coming down the hills in winter.
• Partial migration: in some species some birds migrate and others don’t. American robins are a sign of spring in the northern United States, because they fly south for the winter; but some robins live in the south all year.

5. Nonstop, or with stops?

Some birds fly nonstop. Sea terns, for example, can’t rest on the water for long, because their feathers get waterlogged (soaked). But for most birds nonstop flights are unusual: they stop to rest and refuel. Even a small cluster (group) of bushes with berries can give crucial (very important) energy. They may stay at a stopover for days or weeks, and wait for good weather or wind for the next leg (part) of the journey.

Some stopovers draw huge crowds. A 120-kilometer (75-mile) stretch of the Platte River in Nebraska is a gathering place for up to nine million birds each spring. Almost all the world’s sandhill cranes, about 500,000, spend about six weeks there, eating corn in the fields to put on fat, before flying north to Canada, Alaska and Siberia. Some birds make long, perilous (dangerous) journeys: many kinds of ducks and other water birds fly from Siberia to Nepal to escape the cold.

6. By day or by night

Ducks, geese and swans fly both by day and by night. Some day travelers feed as they fly: swallows and swifts catch flying insects on the way. But most songbirds feed and rest by day and fly at night, perhaps because the air is cooler and calmer. In the dark they are almost invisible, except for their chattering calls, and they can be seen only when they pass in front of the moon. That is how people count them: on a migration night, a moon watcher with a telescope may see as many as 200 birds an hour.

Words from the text

Word	Meaning
migrate	to move from one place to another, often every year, for food, a better climate or to breed
transform	to change completely
incredible	hard to believe; amazing
roadmap	a map of roads; a plan to follow
retrace	to go back along the same path
grab	to take hold of something quickly
elevation	height above sea level
waterlogged	so full of water that it is heavy or can’t work
refuel	to take in more fuel (for a bird, food)
cluster	a small group of things close together
crucial	extremely important
perilous	very dangerous
stopover	a short stay on a long journey

A. Synonyms and antonyms

B. Complete the sentences

C. Answer the questions

D. Why animals migrate

A. Before you listen

The textbook’s listening task is a news report about the World Wildlife Fund’s study of wildlife around the world. CDC’s own recording is below: read the questions in B and C first, then listen, as many times as you need. The answers are hidden under the questions; after that, practice with a talk of our own that your browser reads aloud.

B and C. The textbook’s audio: answers

The connectives of Grammar I, again, in harder sentences. Two things to watch:

1. The meaning. The second part must really be a surprise after the first: ✗ Although it was raining, we stayed at home (that is no surprise: use because).
2. The grammar of what follows: a clause, a noun phrase, or a new sentence.

	Before the comma	After the comma
Although / Even though	a clause	the main clause
Despite / In spite of	a noun or -ing	the main clause
…However, / …Nevertheless,	(after a full stop or a semicolon)	a clause

A. Choose the correct alternative

B. Join the sentences

An adjective modifies (tells us more about) a noun or pronoun: what kind, how many, which one, whose. Most come before the noun (a tall building), but some also come after a verb like be (The building is tall).

Type	What it does	Examples
Descriptive (also called of quality)	describes a quality: what kind	a brown bear, a tall building, a good student, a beautiful house
Proper	made from a proper noun; starts with a capital	Chinese tea, a French soldier, Nepali people
Of quantity	how much of an uncountable thing	much money, a little water, more information, some time, enough / sufficient food
Numeral (numerical)	how many, or in what order	five people, sixty students, the first day, many birds, few chances
Demonstrative	points out which one	this vitamin, that tree, these houses, those days
Interrogative	asks a question, before a noun	Whose pen is this? Which watch did you buy? What time is it?
Possessive	shows whose	my, your, his, her, its, our, their shoes
Distributive	refers to the members of a group one at a time	each man, every student, either side, neither answer

SEE-style practice on this unit. Try each one as in the exam, then open the answer.