Today's demands for measuring childhood success have chased household chores from the to-do lists of many young people. In a survey of 1,001 US adults released by Braun Research, 82% reported having regular chores growing up, but only 28% said that they require their own children to do them. “Parents today want their kids spending time on things that can bring them success, but ironically, we've stopped doing one thing that's actually been a proven predictor of success—and that's household chores.” says Richard Rende, a developmental psychologist.
Giving children household chores at an early age helps to build a lasting sense of mastery, responsibility and independence, according to research by Marty Rossmann, professor at the University of Minnesota. In 2002, Dr. Rossman analyzed data from a longitudinal(纵向的) study that followed 84 children across four periods. She found that young adults who began chores at ages 3 and 4 were more likely to have good relationships with family and friends and to achieve academic and early career success, as compared with those who didn't have chores or who started them as teens.
Chores also teach children how to be empathetic(感同身受的) and responsive to others' needs, notes psychologist Richard Weissbourd. In research, his team surveyed 10,000 high-school students and asked them to rank what they treasured more: achievement, happiness or caring for others. Almost 80% chose either achievement or happiness over caring for others. As he points out, however, research suggests that personal happiness comes most reliably not from high achievement but from strong relationships. “We're out of balance,” says Dr. Weissbourd. A good way to start re-adjusting priorities(优先事项), he suggests, is by learning to be kind and helpful at home.
The next time that your child asks to skip chores to do homework, resist the urge to let him or her off the hook. Being slack(懈怠的) about chores when they compete with school sends your child the message that grades and achievement are more important than caring about others. What may seem like small messages in the moment but add up to big ones over time.
Parents often think that time spent with their kids will gradually decrease in adolescence. But a new study suggests that while teens try to avoid spending a lot of time together with their parents, private parent-child meetings may actually increase in their early adolescent years. And that may raise a teenager's self-esteem (自尊) and social confidence, especially if it is the time that spent with Dad, the researchers added. The researchers created a long-term study in which they invited families in 16 school districts in central Pennsylvania to participate. In each family, a teenager, a younger sibling (兄弟姐妹), their mother and their father were interviewed at home and then asked about their activities and self-worth five times over a period of seven years.
The study authors were surprised to discover that when fathers spent more time alone with their teenagers, the kids reported they felt better about themselves. Something about the father's role in the family seemed to improve self-esteem among the teenagers in the study, said study co-author Susan McHale, a professor of human development at Pennsylvania State University.
“Time with Dad often involves joking, teasing, and other playful interactions. Fathers, compared to mothers, were more involved in leisure activities and had more peer-like interactions with their children, which is crucial for youth social development,” the study showed. But Marta Flaum, a psychologist in Chappaqua, New York, said, “How these findings reflect the real world is a real question. The sample in the study is so small and so unrepresentative of most families in the country today that I'm not sure how much we can generalize from it. In my community in Westchester County, I don't see parents and teenagers spend much time together at all. Parents are often working so hard and have less time to be together with their kids.”
However, Flaum encourages parents to make time for their kids no matter how much work they have to do. “Research like this reminds us of how important it is. The time we have with them is so short,” she said.
In 1999, twelve percent of public elementary schools in the United States required students to wear uniforms. Just three years later, the amount was almost double that.
A study of six big-city Ohio public schools showed students who were required to wear uniforms had improved graduation, behavior and attendance rates. Academic performance was unchanged.
Some high schools in Texas have also joined in the movement. Yet studies find mixed results from requiring uniforms. And some schools have turned away from such policies.
Supporters believe dressing the same creates a better learning environment and safer schools. The school district in Long Beach, California, was the first in the country to require uniforms in all elementary and middle schools. The example helped build national interest in uniforms as a way to deal with school violence and improve learning.
Findings in Long Beach suggested that the policy resulted in fewer behavior problems and better attendance. But researcher Viktoria, who has looked at those findings, says they were based only on opinions about the effects of uniforms.
She says other steps taken at the same time to improve schools in Long Beach and statewide could have influenced the findings. The district (the area marked by government) increased punishments for misbehavior. And California passed a law to reduce class sizes.
In Florida, for example, researcher Sharon found that uniforms seemed to improve behavior and reduce violence. In Texas, Eloise found fewer discipline problems among students required to wear uniforms, but no effect on attendance.
Sociologist David has studied school uniform policies since1998.He collected the reports in the book. In his own study, he found that reading and mathematics performance dropped after a school in Pennsylvania（宾夕法尼亚州）required uniforms.
Political and community pressures may persuade schools to go to uniforms to improve learning. But David and others believe there is not enough evidence of a direct relationship. In fact, he says requiring uniforms may even increase discipline problems.
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Many people go to school for an education. They learn languages, history, geography, physics, chemistry and mathematics. Others go to school to learn a skill so that they can make a living. School education is very important and useful. Yet no one can learn everything from school. A teacher，no matter how much he knows, cannot teach his students everything they want to know. The teacher's job is to show his students how to learn. He teaches them how to read and how to think. So much more is to be learned outside school by the students themselves.
It is always more important to study by oneself than to memorize some facts or a formula(公式). It is actually quite easy to learn a certain fact in history or a formula in maths. But it is very difficult to use a formula in working out a maths problem. Great scientists, such as Einstein, Newton and Galileo didn't get everything from school. But they were all so successful. They invented so many things for mankind. The reason for their success is that they worked hard all their lives, wasting not a single moment. They would ask many questions as they read and they did thousands of experiments.
Above all, they knew how to use their brains.
When we think of leadership, we often think of strength and power. But what are these really, and how do they operate?
Leadership today is not about forcing others to do things. If this is even possible, it is short-term. If you order someone to do something against their will, they may do it because they feel they must, but the anger they feel will do more harm in the long-term. They will also experience fear.
Fear causes the thinking brain to shut down, making the person unable to function at his or her best. If they connect you with this emotion of fear, they will become less functional around you, and you will have succeeded in not only shooting yourself in the foot, but possibly making a very good employee or partner unable to perform effectively. Fear has no place in leadership.
The way we affect people in a lasting way is by our own character, and our understanding and use of emotion. We can order someone to do something, which may be part of the work day, or we can employ them at the emotional level, so they become fully devoted to the projects and provide some of their own motivation (积极性). Today's work place is all about relationships.
Anyone works harder in a positive environment in which they're recognized and valued as a human being as well as a worker. Everyone produces just a bit more for someone they like Leaders understand the way things work. They know money is not the only most motivating factor in the work life of most people.
The true strength of leadership is an inner strength that comes from the confidence of Emotional Intelligence—knowing your own emotions, and how to deal with them and those of others. Developing your emotional intelligence is the best thing you can do if you want to develop your relationships with people around you, which is the key to the leadership skills.
“Can't hold a candle to” is a popular expression. When there wasn't electricity, someone would have a servant light his way by holding a candle. The expression meant that the person who cannot hold a candle to you is not fit even to be your servant. Now, it means such a person cannot compare or compete.
Another expression is “hold your tongue.” It means to be still and not talk. “Hold your tongue” is not something you would tell a friend. But a parent or teacher might use the expression to quiet a noisy child.
“Hold out” is an expression one hears often in sports reports and labor news. It means to refuse to play or work. Professional football and baseball players ''hold out” if their team refuses to pay them what they think they are worth.
The expression “hold up” has several different meanings. One is a robbery. A man with a gun may say, “This is a hold-up. Give me your money.” Another meaning is to delay. A driver who was held up by heavy traffic might be late for work. Another meaning is for a story to be considered true after an investigation. A story can hold up if it is proved true.
“Hold on” is another expression, which means waiting or stopping. As you leave for school, your brother may say, “Hold on, you forgot your book.” It is used to ask a telephone caller to wait and not hang up his telephone.
Our final expression is “hold the line”. That means to keep a problem or situation from getting worse—to hold steady. For example, the president may say he will “hold the line on taxes”. He means there will be no increase in taxes.
Having a great collection of books at home doesn't really mean that you are a person who loves reading. It may be got from your father or your father's father, and it can just impress people around you with the fact that you are a person of culture.
From my point of view, reading is very important in our daily life. For example, reading is a way of gaining knowledge in different areas. It can help us have a great imagination, and it makes things easier when it comes to making compositions on different themes. It gives you the possibility to speak about science, even if you don't work in this field. You can express your opinions about a political event because you have read something about that.
Secondly, reading gives us the possibility to enter the world of imagination. We can imagine what life will be like in the future. Sometimes, we compare ourselves with the people in the stories we read and they can give us some clues to solve the problems and tell us what to do in certain situations. Books are based on real life. Even if writers are considered to be somehow different from common people, they often face the same problems as we all do.
In short, I would like to say that literature is the perfect way of enriching our culture, expressing correctly, having a rich vocabulary, being able to understand different fields and really being considered to be a learned person.
In the movie Alice in Wonderland, Alice comes across a Cheshire cat and asks the cat which road she should take. The cat responds, “Well, that depends on where you're trying to get to.” Alice replies, “I don't know.” The cat responds, “Then any road will do.”
You see, knowing where you're going increases your chances dramatically of getting there, and there is no better way of “GETTING THERE” than setting your goals for the upcoming year. Think of your goals as destinations and the action steps as your GPS guiding and directing you. If you are like many other people, for years you have resisted the need to set goals and even laughed at the thought that setting goals and, even more importantly, committing them to writing have positive effects on your life. However, a closer look might convince you that setting goals is a sensible thing to do.
In 1979, a class of Harvard MBA students was asked: Have you set clear, written goals for your future and made an action plan to accomplish them? The following will astonish you. Only 3 percent of the class had written goals and a plan in place, 13% just had goals, and an amazing 84% had no specific goals at all.
Ten years later the numbers of the class were interviewed once again and the following results will no doubt give the reason for our setting goals. The findings were that the 13% who had goals were earning, on average, twice as much as the 84% who had no goals at all. And the 3 percent who had clear, written goals with a plan to achieve them were achieving ten times as much as the entire 97% combined.
Goal setting will increase your chances of arriving successfully at your destination. Remember, always set SMART goals. Goals should be: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-bound!
Mary bought a dress in a women's clothing store.She felt very happy about buying the dress until she got home. Then she remembered she had left her purse at the store.It was the third time that month that Mary had forgotten something important.Mary was angry with herself.She said,“Am I losing it?”
Emma was teaching a class in mathematics at a college.She began to explain to the students how to solve a very difficult problem.She understood it very well.But somehow,at that moment,she could not explain it.Emma said,“I must be losing it.”
Americans seem to have a lot of concern about losing it.At least that is what you would think from hearing them talk.They use the expression when they feel they are losing control.It can mean losing emotional control.Or losing the ability to do something.Or losing intelligence.
Word experts differ about how the expression started.Some believe it came from television programs popular in the 1980s.Others believe it began with psychologists,who deal with how people think,feel and act.
“We Americans have many concerns about controlling our lives.Perhaps we worry too much,”one psychologist said.“In many situations to say you are losing it eases the tension（不安）.”
It's healthy.And most people who say they are having a problem are not losing it.
People may feel more like they are losing it when they are “down in the dumps”.Word expert Charles Funk says people have been feeling down in the dumps for more than 400 years.The word dumps probably comes from Northern European countries.The languages of Denmark and Norway both have similar words.The words mean to fall suddenly.Americans borrowed this saying.And,over the years,it has become a popular way of expressing sadness.
Anyone can try to lead a group, but not every individual is cut out for leadership. The better leaders possess a few qualities that can mean the difference between the success and failure of the group. These are the qualities the leader of higher rank will look for when choosing a leader for a group, or when evaluating the performance of a leader. They're also the qualities team members want in a group leader, and appreciate when they find them.
Take Responsibility
Group leaders might share tasks around a group as necessary, but eventually a group leader needs to be able to accept that responsibility lies on his shoulders. That means that if things go wrong in a group project, he's the one who must accept the consequences and work out what mistakes are made. The group leader won't always have the power to control everything group members do, but he should be ready to admit any mistakes the group has made as a result of his leadership
Concern for Members
The group leader has a commitment to the task or project at hand, but perhaps more importantly, he has a real concern for each and every person who is part of his group. This means getting to know the strengths, weaknesses and goals of team members, as well as making time to build the group through collective activities. The group leader should make sure that everyone is included, even if an individual is new to a group.
Good Listener
The group leader needs to be able to listen to the suggestions, complaints and ideas of group members. Not only will this allow complaints to be addressed and potentially suitable ideas to be put into practice, but a leader who listens will also encourage group members to share their concerns and thoughts, creating an atmosphere of free speech and productivity.
There are some very good things about open education. This way of teaching allows the students to grow as people, and to develop their own interests in many subjects. Open education allows students to be responsible for their own education, as they are responsible for what they do in life. Some students do badly in a traditional classroom. The open classroom may allow them to enjoy learning. Some students will be happier in an open education school. They will not have to worry about grades or rules. For students who worry about these things a lot, it is a good idea to be in an open classroom.
But many students will not do well in an open classroom. For some students, there are too few rules. These students will do little in school. They will not make good use of open education. Because open education is so different from traditional education, these students may have a problem getting used to making so many choices. For many students it is important to have some rules in the classroom. They worry about the rules even when there are no rules. Even a few rules will help this kind of students. The last point about open education is that some traditional teachers do not like it. Many teachers do not believe in open education. Teachers who want to have an open classroom may have many problems at their schools.
You now know what open education is. Some of its good points and bad points have been explained. You may have your own opinion about open education. The writer thinks that open education is a good idea, but only in theory. In actual fact, it may not work very well in a real class or school. The writer believes that most students, but of course not all students, want some structure in their classes. They want and need to have rules. In some cases, they must be made to study some subjects. Many students are pleased to find subjects they have to study interesting. They would not study those subjects if they did not have to.
Brriiinnng. The alarm clock announces the start of another busy weekday in the morning. You jump out of bed, rush into the shower, into your clothes and out the door with hardly a moment to think. A stressful journey to work gets your blood pressure climbing. Once at the office, you glance through the newspaper with depressing stories or reports of disasters. In that sort of mood, who can get down to work, particularly some creative, original problem-solving work?
The way most of us spend our mornings is exactly opposite to the conditions that promote flexible, open-minded thinking. Imaginative ideas are most likely to come to us when we're unfocused. If you are one of those energetic morning people, your most inventive time comes in the early evening when you are relaxed. Sleepy people's lack of focus leads to an increase in creative problem solving. By not giving yourself time to tune into your wandering mind, you're missing out on the surprising solutions it may offer. The trip you take to work doesn't help, either. The stress slows down the speed with which signals travel between neurons(神经细胞), making inspirations less likely to occur. And while we all should read a lot about what's going on in the world, it would not make you feel good for sure, so put that news website or newspaper aside until after the day's work is done.
So what would our mornings look like if we wanted to start them with a full capacity for creative problem solving? We'd set the alarm a few minutes early and lie awake in bed, following our thoughts where they lead. We'd stand a little longer under the warm water of the shower, stopping thinking about tasks in favor of a few more minutes of relaxation. We'd take some deep breaths on our way to work, instead of complaining about heavy traffic. And once in the office we'd click on links not to the news of the day but to the funniest videos the web has to offer.
Professor Stephen Hawking recently came out with a serious warning for people. While at the Starmus Festival, a festival in Trondheim, Norway, celebrating science and the arts, Hawking warned people that the human race is in serious danger.
Hawking criticized President Donald Trump for denying climate change. Then the physicist warned the audience, "I am not denying the importance of fighting climate change and global warming, unlike Donald Trump, who may just have taken the most serious, and wrong, decision on climate change this world has seen."
Hawking proposed that the leading countries should send astronauts to the Moon before 2020 to restart a movement of more exploration in space. BBC reported that Hawking suggested that we "build a lunar base in 30 years' time and send people to Mars by 2025."
According to BBC, Professor Hawking said, "Spreading out into space will completely change the future of humanity." He continued, "I hope it would unite competitive nations in a single goal, to face the common challenge for us all." The physicist shared more ideas to motivate the younger generation to continue exploring space. Hawking stated, "a new and ambitious space program would excite (young people), and stimulate interest in other areas, such as astrophysics and cosmology."
Hawking also revealed his vision for other forms of energy that could move us to a new planet. He warned the audience, "The Earth is under threat from so many areas that it is difficult for me to be positive." He continued, "Our natural resources are being drained, at an alarming rate. We have given our planet the disastrous gifts of climate change, rising temperatures, reduction of the polar ice caps, deforestation, and decimation (大量毁灭) of animal species. We can be ignorant, unthinking lot (人)."
The professor warned the audience that doing nothing would lead nowhere. He said, "If we succeed, we will send a probe (航天探测器) to Alpha Centauri within the lifetime of some of you alive today. It is clear we are entering a new space age. We are standing at the threshold (起点) of a new era. Human colonization and moving to other planets is no longer science fiction, and it can be science fact." Hawking advised the audience to move to other worlds because we are running out of space.
"The price of books for our students is just getting higher and higher and. combined with the rising cost of tuition. it's killing these students. "said Peter Jason. a college professor. "Remember. students are one of the poorest groups of people in America. Almost half of them have at least one part-time job. In fact. one of my students has three jobs. And she still manages to have high scores and go to school full-time. "
Textbook prices are traditionally high. Adding to that problem, many college teachers change textbooks year after year; they either upgrade to a new edition or switch to an entirely different textbook. This further hurts students because if an instructor no longer uses a particular textbook. that book has no resale value.
Dr. Jason decided to make reading a little easier and a lot cheaper for his students by writing his own book on public speaking. "Many books have an increased price because of CD-ROMs. lots of color photographs and pictures. I talked to my students. and many of them. like me. prefer to keep things simple! So. a few years ago. I wrote my own textbook. Compared to most other public speaking books. mine is half the number of pages. and one-third the price. That is. $30 instead of $90. When I wrote a second edition last year. students only had to buy the 35 new pages, For only $7. 00. they had almost a new book. Now my loose-leaf textbook enjoys great popularity among the students. Maybe in the future more writers and publishers will try it."
It is the stock response to a parent struggling with a crying baby or a bad-tempered teenager: "Treasure every moment because they grow up so fast." Now researchers have found there may be something in the old saying. Watching children grow up really does seem to make time fly. Scientists have found that parents feel time passing more quickly than non-parents.
The findings could be due to the fact that children change fast. "Over ten years, children go through dramatic changes not only in their physical appearance, but also in their understanding abilities and their status," the researchers said. The results could also be a consequence of parents spending a large amount of their time on their children, they said, even though they found no difference in the time pressures recorded by parents compared with non-parents in the study.
For the study, published in the journal Timing & Time Perception (感知), the researchers asked 431 people aged from 20 to 59 to fill in a subjective time questionnaire, a tool used by psychologists to measure time perception. They were asked: "How fast did the last ten years pass for you?" An answer of very slowly gave a score of-2; slowly was-I; neither fast nor slow was 0; fast was I and very fast scored 2. So the higher the score, the faster they felt time had passed. The parents had an average score of I. 22, compared with 0. 76 for the non-parents.
Participants were also asked how quickly the last year, month and week had passed, but there were no differences between the groups for these shorter intervals (间隔). Previous studies have suggested that time also seems to speed up when we get older. Research published in 2019 by Duke University in North Carolina suggests this could be due to physical changes in our bodies, with a slowdown in image processing speeding up our perception of time passing.
Days that seemed to last forever in our youth were "not due to experiences being much deeper or meaningful", the researcher Adrian Bejan said, "but due to the fact that they were being processed rapidly."
Would you bet on the future of this man? He is 53 years old. Most of his adult life has been a losing struggle against debt and misfortune. A war injury has made his left hand stop functioning, and he has often been in prison. Driven by heaven-knows-what motives, he determines to write a book.
The book turns out to be one that has appealed to the world for more than 350 years. That former prisoner was Cervantes, and the book was Don Quixote(《堂吉诃德》). And the story poses an interesting question: Why do some people discover new vitality and creativity to the end of their days, while others go to seed long before?
We've all known people who run out of steam before they reach life's halfway mark. I'm not talking about those who fail to get to the top. We can't all get there. I'm talking about people who have stopped learning on growing because they have adopted the fixed attitudes and opinions that all too often come with passing years.
Most of us, in fact, progressively narrow the variety of our lives. We succeed in our field of specialization and then become trapped in it. Nothing surprises us. We lose our sense of wonder. But, if we are willing to learn, the opportunities are everywhere.
The things we learn in maturity seldom involve information and skills. We learn to bear with the things we can't change. We learn to avoid self-pity. We learn that however much we try to please, some people are never going to love us—an idea that troubles at first but is eventually relaxing.
With high motivation and enthusiasm, we can keep on learning. Then we will know how important it is to have meaning in our life. However, we can achieve meaning only if we have made a commitment to something larger than our own little egos(自我), whether to loved ones, to fellow humans, to work, or to some moral concept.
Many of us equate(视……等同于)"commitment" with such "caring" occupations as teaching and nursing. But doing any ordinary job as well as one can is in itself an admirable commitment. People who work toward such excellence—whether they are driving a truck, or running a store—make the world better just by being the kind of people they are. They've learned life's most valuable lesson.
Across Britain, burnt toast will be served to mothers in bed this morning as older sons and daughters rush to deliver their supermarket bunches of flowers. But, according to a new study, we should be placing a higher value on motherhood all year.
Mothers have long known that their home workload was just as heavy as paid work. Now, the new study has shown that if they were paid for their parental labours, they would earn as much as $ 172,000 a year.
The study looked at the range of jobs mothers do, as well as the hours they are working, to determine the figure. This would make their yearly income $ 30,000 more than the Prime Minister earns.
By analysing the numbers, it found the average mother works 119 hours a week, 40 of which would usually be paid at a standard rate and 79 hours as overtime. After questioning 1,000 mothers with children under 18, it found that, on most days, mums started their routine work at 7am and finished at around 11pm.
To calculate just how much mothers would earn from that labour, it suggested some of the roles that mums could take on, including housekeeper, part-time lawyer, personal trainer and entertainer. Being a part-time lawyer, at £ 48.98 an hour, would prove to be the most profitable of the "mum jobs", with psychologist (心理学家) a close second.
It also asked mothers about the challenges they face, with 80 percent making emotional demand as the hardest thing about motherhood.
Over a third of .mums felt they needed more training and around half said they missed going out with friends.
The study shows mothers matter all year long and not just on Mother's Day. The emotional, physical and mental energy mothers devote to their, children can be never-ending, but children are also sources of great joy and happiness. Investing (投入) in time for parenting and raising relationships is money well spent.
Lazy people will never gain anything in life. However, laziness can be defeated once a few changes have been made in your mind.
One way to fight laziness is to get enough sleep. Many people lack sleep constantly, since they stay up too late and get up too early to prepare for work. These people have little motivation once they arrive home. Laziness works hand in hand with a lack of motivation and a tendency to put off things. By adjusting your sleep schedule to provide a few more hours of meaningful rest, you can fight laziness throughout the day.
Another way to fight laziness is to change your mind from passive to active. Some people treat their lives as if they were pushed from task to task. Others take a more positive approach, viewing each task as a challenge they must overcome alone. Laziness appears when you no longer feel in charge of your own mind.
Some people fight laziness by removing the temptations that surround them. A television in the living room may provide entertainment, but watching too much TV often contributes to laziness. Create a reward system for yourself, just as parents do for a child. Complete a few tasks and reward yourself with what you enjoy, such as a good dinner or a film.
Laziness can also be a lasting problem at home. Couples and children may all have different energy levels, but laziness can be spread if not dealt with immediately. To fight family laziness, set an example. Be the first to collect and wash dishes after a meal. Others in the home may eventually follow your example and perform their own task. It is difficult to practice laziness when you are surrounded by motivated (积极的) people.
Finally, taking exercise regularly can help you fight laziness. Enough exercise and a balanced diet can help you to develop a healthy lifestyle, thus enabling you to have more energy and help lift your spirits.
Please take a few seconds and think of your personal biggest goal. Imagine telling someone you meet today what you're going to do. Imagine their congratulations and their high opinions of you. Doesn't it feel good to say it out loud? Don't you feel one step closer already? Well, bad news: you should have kept your mouth shut, because that good feeling will make you less likely to do it.
Any time you have a goal, there is some work that needs to be done to achieve it. Ideally, you would not be satisfied until you'd actually done the work. But when you tell someone your goal and he acknowledges(认可) it, psychologists have found it's called a " social reality". The mind is kind of tricked into a feeling that it's already done. And then, because you've felt that satisfaction, you're less motivated to do the actual and necessary hard work. This goes against the traditional wisdom that we should tell our friends our goals, right?
In 1982, Peter Gollwitzer, a professor of psychology, wrote a whole book about this. And in 2009, he did some new tests that were published. It goes like this: 163 people across four separate tests—everyone wrote down their personal goal. Then half of them announced their commitment (承诺) to this goal to the room, and half didn't. Then everyone was given 45 minutes of work that would directly lead them towards their goal, but they were told that they could stop at any time. Finally those who kept their mouths shut worked the entire 45 minutes on average, and when asked afterwards, said they felt they had a long way to go to achieve their goal. But those who had announced it quit after only 33 minutes on average, and when asked afterwards, said that they felt much closer to achieving their goal.
Listening test is one of the most important parts of the English exam. Here are some tips for you.
Before you start to listen, you need to relax. Don't be stressed out. And try to read the questions. These questions usually help you understand the conversation or the passage.
Then listen carefully to the first sentence. It usually tells you the main idea of the passage. When you're listening, try to do some thinking and take some notes, such as: What happened? When, where, and how? What does the speaker want to tell us? In this way, you may understand the passage better.
Please remember not to think about one or two words for a long time. When you hear some words you don't know, don't spend too much time on them. Very often, you'll find out what they mean later when you go on with the listening.
