Grammar, Vocabulary, and
Pronunciation
GRAMMAR
1 1 the other
2 Otherwise
3 Obviously
4 Besides
5 Incidentally
6 a
matter
7 After
all
8 at
least
2 1 brings
2 had
3 have
phoned
4 Supposing
5 have
made
6 promise
3 1 to think
2 making
3 to
arrive
4 to
visit
5 waiting
6 come
Vocabulary
4 1 sniper
2 revolution
3 treaty
4 Refugees
5 casualty
6 ceasefire
5 1 machine gun
2 spears
3 blew
up
4 looted
5 on
6 of
6 1 credits
2 sequences
3 few
4 hand
5 narrow
6 well
7 hooked
8 with
Pronunciation
7 1 gambling, hang up
2 besieged,
refugee
3 high-minded
8 1 review
2 substance
3 anxious
4 become
5 harmless
Reading
1 C
2 C
3 B
4 A
5 B
6 A
7 C
8 B
9 A
10 B
HELP YOURSELF
In the last couple of decades, (1) self-help books have been a publishing phenomenon,
often topping the bestseller lists. Readers have lapped up their advice on how to do a wide variety of
things, from becoming successful and rich to improving their relationships. If
you’re facing a particular problem in your life, there’s a host of self-help books
for you. If you have the idea that you want to improve yourself in some way,
there are any number of self-help titles just waiting to advise you. If you
want a successful career, no problem – step-by-step guides will tell you
exactly what to do. But, despite their enormous success, there’s a
question many people ask: do these books actually do what they claim to?
Obviously, as in any field of publishing, (2) some self-help books are better than others. Some may
be based on actual research and case studies – there’s some substance to them
that suggests they can, at least to some extent, be taken seriously.
Others, however, amount to little more than psychobabble – empty nonsense
dressed up as serious psychological insight. These books bombard the reader
with a mass of meaningless jargon, disguising the fact that they have nothing
to say beyond the obvious that you would not need to buy a book to know. (3) It’s the latter category that has given self-help
books a bad name among critics of the genre.
The kind of advice given in self-help books
is often more or less the same. What really amount to pretty standard
statements are made in many of them, but does this advice stand up to scrutiny?
Psychologists who have studied a range of (4) self-help
books connected with happiness say the answer to this is ‘not always’.
They say that although the emphasis the books place on aiming for good
relationships with families, friends and colleagues has, in some ways, some scientific basis in terms of
what does actually lead to personal happiness, in other ways the advice
given is actually false.
(5) For example, the
books commonly tell you that it is good to express your anger; the
psychologists say this simply causes you to remain angry. You are often told to
try to think happy thoughts when you are sad; the psychologists say that
attempting to do this simply emphasizes your unhappiness for you. The books
tell you to focus entirely on your aims in life, looking only at the desired
outcome; psychologists say you need to focus just as much on the problems you
have to overcome in order to reach your goals. (6) The books tell you to keep praising yourself to increase and maintain a
high level of self-belief; the psychologists say that actually this doesn’t
work because you need praise from other people in order to increase your
self-esteem.
Perhaps the key question on self-help books
is: do they work? Do people feel they have directly helped them? Whatever
critics may say, do the people who buy and read them get real results from
them? The answer to this question appears to be ‘sometimes’. (7) Research indicates that the kind of book that deals
with a particular problem can be effective in helping people with that problem,
particularly if the problem in question isn’t a severe one, for example mild
depression or anxiety. The situation is less clear with books dealing
with personal growth or development. Some people do say that these books have
helped them but it is by no means certain, and hard to measure, whether this is
really the case.
What is clear about (8) all self-help books, however, is that they offer
people hope. (9)
The actual advice they give
and whether or not this is accurate or effective is probably less important
than the fact that they tell the reader that change is possible, that there is
hope of a better life, that people can overcome difficulties and improve
themselves and their situation. While this may sound like a good thing,
there is, however, a downside to it. To get people to buy them, these books often
make exaggerated claims about what they will do for people. (10) They can raise unrealistic expectations in the
reader, suggesting that a better life can quite easily be achieved, that anyone
can get what they want out of life. The truth is of course that changing
yourself and your life may be very difficult indeed and require an immense
amount of effort, if it is even achievable at all. So self-help books are open
to the claim that they present
a false picture that can only lead to disappointment in the end.
Listening
1 1 E
2 B
3 D
4 H
5 F
2 1 A
2 C
3 B
4 B
5 C
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