1 E
2 A
3 F
4 C
5 BThursday, 21 May 2015
Reading
Read the article about people and happiness.
Five sentences have been removed. Which sentence (A–F) fits each gap (1–5)?
There is one extra sentence you do not need to use.
A
However, there were also signs of stress in British society.
B This
could be used on supporting childcare, parenting, or help for mental health.
C He
added that we know from other European countries that this is sensitive to how
businesses reach highs and sink to lows.
D
However, a lot of young people think that wealth and celebrity will make you
happy.
E The
experts predicted that the financial decline would be deep and long.
F People were happiest, however, with their
personal relationships and mental wellbeing.
Great Britain – Or Is It?
If someone asked you how happy the people in your country are, what
would you say? The British government recently asked the Office for National
Statistics (ONS) to carry out a survey to find out if people in the country
are, in general, happy or not. Most Britons report being satisfied with life,
with concerns over work and finances overtaken by happiness gained from children,
relationships, and where people live.
The government survey was released just days after economists made
one of the most depressing forecasts of recent times about long-term economic
growth. (–––– 1 ––––) Not only that, but it would leave the public worse off
than they were ten years ago. Despite this, the survey paints a picture of the
country largely emotionally unaffected by the crisis.
The survey of 4,200 adults is part of the British Prime Minister’s
£2 million drive to get a better idea of how the country is doing, rather than
just focusing on budgets and figures. People were asked various questions about
their lives and were asked to give marks out of ten about how they felt about
these areas. The ONS’s work showed that on average people rated their life
satisfaction at 7.4 out of 10. When asked whether things they did in life were
worthwhile, people on average gave a score of 7.6. (–––– 2 ––––) Happiness with
people’s financial situation had the lowest average score of 6.2 out of 10, followed
by work situation, with 6.7 out of 10. When asked specifically about
satisfaction with the balance between time spent on work and on other areas of
life, low scores were also given, with an average of 6.4 out of 10.
The answer to the question, ‘Overall, how anxious did you feel
yesterday?’ caused some worry. More than a quarter rated this 5 out of 10 –
where 10 was feeling ‘completely anxious’. (–––– 3 ––––) These areas of life
had the highest average scores, with both scoring at 8.3 out of 10.
Lord Richard Layard, professor at the London School of Economics,
said it was likely that life satisfaction would fall as the situation gets
worse. (–––– 4 ––––) And when things are going badly and times are hard, people
start to feel less happy with their lives.
The professor, who founded the Action for Happiness group to promote
well-being, said policymakers – the people who make important financial
decisions – could use the data to lessen the pain of recession. But they would
need to first identify how to measure happiness, then work out what makes
people ‘miserable or happy’. Lastly, they ought to assess how much happiness
one can create by spending taxpayers’ cash. (–––– 5 ––––)
Paul Allen of the ONS said another big factor in happiness was
health. He said they saw that people who responded when their health was bad,
reported anxiety. He added that they were trying to build up a picture of how
people rate happiness. ‘One of the most revealing aspects of the emerging
science around happiness is about language. Britons associated happiness with
being ‘calm, relaxed, and peaceful’ rather than ‘energized and excited’. So,
perhaps it pays in more ways than one to follow the great
Friday, 15 May 2015
Thursday, 14 May 2015
Wednesday, 13 May 2015
Gapped reading 1
Click here
Strategies to answer the questions
- Quickly read through the paragraph headings so you can see what they say.
- Then look at the first paragraph.
- Often only the topic sentence needs to be read carefully because the main idea and answer are there - you may be able to just skim the rest.
- Sometimes, however, the answer is not in the topic sentence and the whole paragraph needs to be read more carefully.
- If a match is not immediately obvious, move on to the next one.
- If you are unsure between two answers at first, put them both in. You may be able to eliminate one answer later if it fits another paragraph better.
- If at the end you are still stuck between two answers for a question, pick which fits best.
Things to beware of
- There are always more choices of paragraph headings on the list than paragraphs, so be careful when matching them.
- Watch out for synonyms - often words in the paragraphs and paragraph headings will not be the same; they will be synonyms.
- Having a noun from a heading that is in the paragraph does not guarantee they match - you still need to read it carefully to check.
Wednesday, 6 May 2015
Online reading
Click here
Tip 1The first thing students should always do is cross off the missing sentence that has been given as an example. It's amazing how often students waste time trying to fit this in elsewhere.
Tip 2Students should always remember that there is an extra sentence that does not fit anywhere. If they have time, the last thing they should do is check that the part they have left over really doesn't fit in any of the gaps.
Tip 3As well as the referencing and linking devices mentioned in the lesson plan, it can also be useful for students to look at how the topics change over the length of the text and whether the text follows a chronological order.
Tip 4Teachers should insist that students get into the habit of underlining the language that helps them complete the task (e.g. expressions like 'after that'), and then underline the language that it refers/ links to (e.g. 'the birthday party'). Being strict on this in class and for homework will make it much easier on the students during the exam, and also makes it easier to discuss students' answers as a class.
Tip 5A great activity for referencing devices is to write out some dialogue selected from a TV program, radio play or clip from a film, underline some of the pronouns etc. in it, and get students to watch/ listen for what is being referred to. For example, if a character says 'You can take it or leave it', students should listen for what 'it' refers to. You will need to make sure that the sentences you choose are not too densely packed in the text, maybe only one per minute of film/ tape. It can also be useful to choose sentences with difficult vocabulary, as you can then pre-teach this before they watch/ listen. The combination of this pre-teaching and a fairly straightforward task can really help the students understand the text, so it provides great motivation as well as perfect exam practice
Tip 6As always, if students don't know they should guess, as a blank space is always zero points and there are no deductions for guesses.
Tip 7There is nothing really to be gained from filling in the missing sentences in the same order as the text, so it is always best to start with the one students feel most sure about after having read through all of the gapped text and the missing bits (and having underlined the relevant parts, of course).
Tuesday, 5 May 2015
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Wednesday, 11 February 2015
Danes
Why are people from Denmark so happy? It's all in their DNA
- University of Warwick researchers investigated why Danes are so happy
- The country regularly tops polls of the world's happiest people
- They found there was a correlation between Danish genes and happiness
- And they also discovered people with Danish ancestry were more likely to have a positive outlook on life
- Last year's World Happiness Report ranked Denmark as the happiest nation on Earth
Studies have shown that people from Denmark are officially the happiest people on Earth, and now scientists think they know why.
According to research from the University of Warwick, genetics could be the key to explaining a nation’s levels of happiness.
Researchers who looked at survey data from 131 countries found that the closer a nation was genetically to the Danes, the happier its people were.
Last year's World Happiness Report from the United Nations ranked Denmark the happiest nation on Earth, with an average life satisfaction score of 7.69 out of 10.
It was followed by four other northern European countries, Norway, the Netherlands, Switzerland and Sweden.
The UK was ranked 22nd on the list of 156 countries, with a score of 6.88.
The world's most miserable country was said to be Togo, west Africa, which managed only 2.93 on the satisfaction scale. Other African countries also dominated the bottom of the ratings.
Denmark has also topped the European Commission's "Eurobarometer" table of citizen well-being and happiness every year since 1973.
Compared with people from other countries, Danes were less likely to possess a short version of the gene linked to low levels of life satisfaction.
‘The results were surprising,’ said Economist Dr Eugenio Proto from Cage.
‘We found that the greater a nation's genetic distance from Denmark, the lower the reported wellbeing of that nation.
‘Our research adjusts for many other influences including Gross Domestic Product, culture, religion and the strength of the welfare state and geography.’
The researchers used data on 131 countries from a number of international surveys including the Gallup World Poll, World Value Survey and the European Quality of Life Surveys.
The researchers linked cross-national data on genetic distance and well-being.
The second form of evidence looked at existing research suggesting an association between mental wellbeing and a mutation of the gene that influences the re-uptake of serotonin, which is believed to be linked to human mood.
Serotonin is a neurotransmitter that helps to relay nerve signals.
‘We looked at existing research which suggested that the long and short variants of this gene are correlated with different probabilities of clinical depression, although this link is still highly debated,’ Dr Proto continued.
‘The short version has been associated with higher scores on neuroticism and lower life satisfaction.
‘Intriguingly, among the 30 nations included in the study, it is Denmark and the Netherlands that appear to have the lowest percentage of people with this short version.’
A deficiency of the chemical in the brain is strongly linked to depression while levels are boosted by the drug Ecstasy.
The final piece of evidence looked at whether the link between genetics and happiness also held true across generations, continents and the Atlantic Ocean.
Co-author Professor Andrew Oswald, also from the University of Warwick, said: ‘We used data on the reported well-being of Americans and then looked at which part of the world their ancestors had come from.
‘The evidence revealed that there is an unexplained positive correlation between the happiness today of some nations and the observed happiness of Americans whose ancestors came from these nations, even after controlling for personal income and religion.
‘This study has used three kinds of evidence and, contrary to our own assumptions when we began the project, it seems there are reasons to believe that genetic patterns may help researchers to understand international well-being levels.
‘More research in this area is now needed and economists and social scientists may need to pay greater heed to the role of genetic variation across national populations.’
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