2024年4月10日发(作者：)

英语专业

四级/六级

真题解析

2014年英语专八真题听力原文

听力原文

Part 1, Listening Comprehension

SECTION A MINI-LECTURE

How to Reduce Stress

Good morning! Today we look at how to reduce stress. As you all know,

life always hasstresses, Ur, things which are causing us stress and living

without stress is virtuallyimpossible. So, if we have to live with stress, we may

as well find out more about what it is,how we can deal with it and so is

stress, then? The term was originally used in physicsto describe the force

exerted between two touching bodies. That was strictly a termdescribing a

physical reaction. Then in the 1930s, a doctor named Hans Selye, S-E-L-Y-E,

firstused this term to describe a human’s reaction to a demand placed on it,

pleasant or not. Andhe included in this response, things like accelerated

breathing, accelerated heart rate, increasedblood pressure, muscle tension

and so on.

Now, please notice that I said that stress can be pleasant or not, this

response can also bepleasant or not. And stress can be both negative and

’s take a look at positivestress. Positive stress occurrs in a life

situation towards which one feels positively, things likeChristmas or getting

married are usually positive events, but still stressful,r

example is the pressure in a job can give some people incentive towork and

excitement, but it still is stress. Negative stress is what most of us think of

when wethink of stress. And negative stress occurs logically enough in

situations towards which onefeels negatively. And those examples could be

test-taking, a friend’s death and so on. But herea thing to remember is that

stress in itself is not hazardous. Rather, the danger is in theindividual’s

reaction to the stress. So psychologists have found that if we

developappropriate ways to cope with stressful situations, individuals can

reduce the physiologicalharm which is caused by stress, or which can be

caused by stress. And that’s what I want totalk a bit about today – what are

these appropriate ways to deal with stress, how to minimizeany negative

first thing that most psychologists suggest is to learn

torecognize your own stress signals. We all have different types of stress

signals, butindividuals should monitor themselves for stress signals, so that

they can focus on minimizingor acknowledging the stress before it gets out of

common early signs for manypeople include irritability, insomnia,

weight loss or even weight gain, smoking, drinking,increases in small errors, all

kinds of things that people get which could be an early signal ofstress.

You can consider ways to protect yourself when you start seeing these

signs coming on. Soyou might decide to withdraw from a stressful situation or

reward yourself with equalamounts of low stress activity time. That’s really the

first important way to deal with stressappropriately. The second important way

to deal with stress is to pay attention to your body’sdemands. Most

psychologists are finding that a good exercise program, good

nutrition,decreases the amount of stress, or the effect of stress on the body or

in the mind. And thisseems quite apparent because exercise can provide a

stress-free environment away fromyour usual stresses and it keeps your body

busy and preoccupied with non-stressful , the third thing to reduce

stress is to make plans and act when appropriate. What issuggested is that

rather than wasting energy on worrying, an individual can direct his or

herenergy to plan the steps and often, just the planning of the action

helps to reduce thestress, because it reduces the worrying. And also the

results of the plans or action may serveto remove or weaken the original cause

of the stress. Please notice that I just now said“when appropriate”. And this

next suggestion has to do with that idea of when third

suggestion was to make plans and act when appropriate, rather than just sit

aroundand worry. But the fourth plan, or fourth idea, says to learn to accept

situations which are outof your control. These two then go hand in hand. You

can make plans and act when it’sappropriate, but when it’s not appropriate, or

when it’s impossible, the only way is to learnto accept that some things are

unchangeable and out of your hands.

So, for example, if you are in traffic, lateness caused by traffic is out of

your hands. There’s nosense in getting really crazy about that. If you do so, it

only increases your stress to wasteenergy trying to resist what’s inevitable or

what can’t be avoided. The last item thatpsychologists suggest is to pace your

activities. By “pace”, I mean giving yourself somemanageable tasks to do at a

reasonable speed. That is, you go at a speed that you canhandle, break your

task into manageable parts, rather than try to deal with the whole task allat

once. So, as an example in your lives as students, a whole term paper might

feeloverwhelming. But if you say to yourself, today I’m going to the library and

gatherresources, tomorrow, I’m going to read three articles, and so on, you’ll

have broken this onelarge task, that’s writing a term paper, down into many

smaller and more manageable will certainly reduce your .

Having said all these, I want you to remember that theproblem is not in the

stressful experiences themselves. We all experience stress and

stressfulevents. The problem is in our reactions to these experiences. And

each of us has our own limitsfor stress and our own ways of coping with stress.

So long as we have our own appropriateways, stress or stressful situations

can certainly be dealt . That’s all for today’s you next week.

SECTION B INTERVIEW

Damon: First of all, thank you obviously for yourtime, Angelina. You are

now in Iraq. So what is your main aim in this visit? What are you tryingto

accomplish while you are out here?