Common misconceptions about stress
a) Often people become so accustomed to stress that they become unaware of it. Many of us suffer the debilitating effects of stress even though we don't feel tense. But stress can change the way you treat others, or damage your body even in the absence of feelings of frustration or anxiety.
b) Many ordinary individuals experience the constant stress of worry, leading unfulfilled lives, or of not being who they would like to be.
c) Changing your outlook on life is the most reliable and effective way of reducing stress. Stress comes from the way we perceive the world, not from the way the world really is.
d) To paraphrase the Stoic philosopher Epictetus, it is not events in themselves that cause our distress, but rather the views we take of events.
e) We can change our feelings by first changing our behavior or by changing our thinking. For example, getting some work done can keep us from worrying about it. Creating a new understanding of a situation can make it less threatening or stressful.
Section
3. Listening
3.1. Exams are always stressful events for schoolchildren and students. Listen to the conversation in which two friends are disscussing the up-coming exams. While listening choose the correct alternative.
Tim is worried about his French / German speaking exam.
Tim is good / bad at French.
Tim knows / doesn’t know for sure what the exam consists of.
Emma tells Tim to ask his friends / family to help. Tim is worried that he’ll speak too little / much in the exam.
Emma suggests downloading a French film / podcast.
Emma shows Tim how to compare and contrast two pictures / menus.
3.2. Listen to the dialogue again and say how Emma helps Tim avoid exam stress.
e.g. She reminds him that his knowledge of the subject is good enough for him to feel self-assured.
Section 4. Follow up activity
4.1. Share your own secrets how to fight exam stress with your group-mates. Do you know any rituals or techniques which may help to pass the exam successfully without much nervous tension?
4.2.
Divide into three groups and work out 3 separate lists of
recommendations for parents, teachers and schoolchildren (students)
which may help to make the examination situation less stressful.
Discuss your ideas with the students from the other groups.
Unit 11 Life Expectancy
Section 1. Warming-up
1.1. During the time of the Roman Empire, an average citizen might expect to live 28 years. By the turn of the 20th Century, an American could anticipate celebrating his or her 48th birthday. In the early 21st Century, a Japanese woman reaching 80 is not unusual.
Life expectancy is based on a number of factors, from incidence of disease to personal lifestyle choices to environmental conditions and increase in longevity has always presented a real challenge for scientists as well as for individuals.
Work out your own life expectancy from the table below. You’ll find the average life expectancy for someone your age in the column on the left. To this figure you add on or take away the totals in the columns on the right. At the end of your calculations you’ll get your individual result.