Expert ielts 5 Teacher’s Online Materials Pearson Education Limited 2017

Expert IELTS 7.5 Teacher’s Online Materials © Pearson Education Limited 2017
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1
Review Test 2
Listening 
Questions 1–4
Complete the sentences below.
Write 
NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS for each 
answer.
1 According to the findings of several surveys, 
people are the happiest.
2 The speaker says that 
does not have 
much impact on happiness. 
3 A survey of very happy people found that these 
people were more 
than other people. 
4 
may be the cause of many people’s 
unhappiness.
Questions 5–10
Complete the notes below.
Write 
ONE WORD ONLY for each answer.
Martin Seligman – University of Pennsylvania
• human brains evolved during times of flood, ice 
and famine
• ‘catastrophic brain’: focuses on 5 
• uses the term ‘hedonistic treadmill’ to describe 
how people 6 
to good things
• with his team, has come up with 7 
to 
help people deal with negative feelings
• encourages people to come up with some
8 
for themselves
Richard Brookes – Wells University
• gave volunteers a ‘happiness charter’
• encouraged participants to focus on their diet 
and 9 
that they could actually do
• participants discouraged from looking for a new 
job
• relationships may hold the key to happiness
• try to carry out a daily act of 10 

Expert IELTS 7.5 Teacher’s Online Materials © Pearson Education Limited 2017
Photocopiable
2
Review Test 2
A Consider any public place where people used to enjoy 
a spot of silent contemplation – from train carriages to 
parks – and these days you’ll see people plugged into 
their electronic devices. All this information overload 
seems like a modern-day problem. However, one unique 
thinker actually stumbled on a neat solution nearly a 
century ago: radical boredom. In 1942, a German writer 
called Siegfried Kracauer wrote of the massive over-
stimulation of the modern city where people listening 
to the radio were in a state of ‘permanent receptivity, 
constantly pregnant with London, the Eiffel Tower, 
Berlin’. His answer was to suggest going cold turkey on 
stimulation – to cut ourselves off for controlled periods 
to experience ‘extraordinary, radical boredom’. On a 
sunny afternoon, when everyone is outside, one would 
do best to hang about the train station,’ he wrote. And 
as a quick fix, ‘stay at home, draw the curtains and 
surrender oneself to one’s boredom on the sofa’. 
B Kracauer believed that actively pursuing boredom in 
this way and making it a priority was a valuable way 
of unlocking creative ideas and, better still, achieve ‘a 
kind of bliss that is almost unearthly’. It’s a beautiful 
theory and one that would definitely hold an appeal 
for many people. Plus, modern research suggests that 
it might actually have a sound psychological basis. To 
test the potential positives of boredom, psychologist Dr 
Sandi Mann asked a group of 40 people to complete 
a task designed to showcase their inventiveness. But 
before they got started on it, a subgroup was asked 
to perform a suitably boring task – copying numbers 
from the telephone directory for 15 minutes. The data 
pointed to the group that had previously experienced 
boredom displaying more creative flair during the task 
than the control group. According to psychologists this 
is normal, because when people become bored and 
start to daydream, their minds come up with different 
processes and they work out more imaginative solutions 
to problems.
C This would suggest perhaps, that by over-stimulating 
our minds, we’re not just making ourselves more 
stressed, we’re also missing out on a chance to unhook 
our thoughts from the daily grind and think more 
creatively. Psychologists also point out that despite its 
bad reputation, boredom has a definite evolutionary 
purpose. Mann says ‘Without it, we’d be like toddlers 
in a perpetual state of amazement. Just imagine it: 
“Wow – look at that fantastic cereal at the bottom of 
my bowl!” It may be very stimulating, but we’d never 
get anything done.’ Personally, I think that’s a neat 
description of most adults who are addicted to social 
media and smart phones. We are like attention-seeking 
toddlers scurrying around the internet screaming 
‘Look at this! Look at them! Look at me!’ while the 
real world beyond our electronic devices continues 
on untroubled and unexamined. Meanwhile, as Mann 
points out, we’re teaching our actual toddlers that 
boredom and lack of stimulation is something to be 
feared rather than embraced.
D Professor John Eastwood and his colleagues at York 
University in Canada have been carrying out research 
on boredom for a number of years. In one investigation, 
undergraduate students were asked to complete 
questionnaires to determine their predisposition to 
boredom. The students were also questioned about 
their emotions. The students who said they suffered 
from higher levels of boredom also tended to be more 
externally focused and reported difficulty identifying 
their feelings. Eastwood and his colleagues explained 
this reveals that our natural tendency to look for 
distraction when we’re bored is, in fact, an improper 
solution. According to the researchers, boredom should 
be viewed as an opportunity to ‘discover the possibility 
and content of one’s desires’.
E So how do you learn to tactically embrace periods 
of radical boredom? The first step is realising that 
it’s different from simply taking time to ponder your 
day. ‘Using boredom positively is about creating new 
opportunities when your mind isn’t occupied and you 
can’t focus on anything else,’ says Mann. This could be 
as simple as staring out the window or watching the rain 
come down. Or heading off for a solitary walk with no 
fixed destination in mind, or your smart phone in your 
pocket. Anything that gives your mind the rare chance 
to drift off its moorings. ‘I can really recommend 
it,’ says Mann. ‘It’s a very positive experience – like 
taking a holiday from your brain.’ I’m definitely sold. 
I’m trying to keep my phone turned off during the 
weekends and allow myself to relax on the sofa during 
the week, time permitting. And the best thing: it works. 
After taking a break and allowing my mind to roam, it 
returns refreshed and revitalised, with a fresh take on the 
challenges that I face during the day. When my daughter 
gets to an age when she’s ready to whine ‘I’m bored’, 
I’ll know exactly what to say.