墨尔本PTE素材库——Gambling Gave Science Some Lucky Breaks
2016/08/24墨尔本PTE素材库——Lower Your Voice Pitch to Persuade
2016/08/24
墨尔本PTE素材库——Holiday Letters’ “Have-Done” Lists Fail to Engage Emotionally
中文批注
这段Podcast讲解了一个关于“Have Done”Lists的有趣现象。相信很多同学也有类似的习惯，就是在年末时整理一下过去一年中自己做过或者发送的一些事件。然而科学家们通过研究发现，这样罗列出事情得到的List反而并没有什么好处。
这篇文章生词不多，而且信息量也不大。如果是目标分数65分的同学，应该能轻松地听懂这段录音。如果发现其中有大量不认识的词语，那你的词汇量就必须要提升了，肯定达不到65分的水平哦！同时有一些单词的含义可能不是常用用法，例如epic这个词，在这里的含义就跟我们平时用它来形容大场面、大场景时不太一样，如果理解歪了，很可能会导致误解。
澳大利亚语言学院会定期整理一些PTE的素材库，让各位PTE的考生，能够在平时练习的时候就能接触到一些和official questions criteria相近的话题素材，不但能够锻炼PTE考生的听力和复述的能力，也能在消化每篇素材的过程中提高自己的阅读能力以及词汇量。
这段录音就是一个绝佳的Re-tell Lecture的材料，同时一些短句也可以用来大家可以试着re-tell这段音频的内容，主要的关注点是研究者们研究的过程，以及最后的研究结果。
【Key Vocabulary】
epic ： adj. 叙事的，而不是常用的“史诗级的”含义
beloved ： adj. 心爱的，挚爱的 n. 心爱的人
annual report ： 年度报告，年报
missive： n. 公文，公函，信件，信函
storytelling： adj. 讲故事的
formatted： adj. 格式化的，有格式的
perspective： n. 观点，远景
personally： adv. 亲自的，当面，就自己而言
Full Transcript
Those holiday letters that summarize a family’s year usually leave out the key component of the experiences: the feelings about what happened.
By now you may have written, or received, one of those epic holiday letters many people still send. “Dear Friends and Family, It’s been a busy year. We lost our beloved Spot…but we finally fixed the toilet!” Well, if you write these annual reports, take a look at your latest. Because scientists at North Dakota State University say that the style of these missives may reveal as much as their content.
The researchers have analyzed more than 1,200 holiday letters written over the past decade. Many follow the one-person-per-paragraph approach to storytelling. Others are formatted to look like newspaper articles. One was even written from the perspective of a deceased pet, reporting on the family’s activities from its resting place: sitting, stuffed, in the den.
More than 80 percent of the letters provide a bullet-point list of the year’s happenings. But only 5 percent talk about how major events—births, death, weddings, divorce—affected the writers personally. Such reflection is key to living life to the fullest, say the scientists in a paper published last year in the Journal of Happiness Studies. [Becky DeGreeff, Ann Burnett and Dennis Cooley, “Communicating and Philosophizing About Authenticity or Inauthenticity in a Fast-Paced World”]
So brag about your kids or complain about your bunions. Because there’s more to a good story than who, what, when, where. And how.
—Karen Hopkin
(Source:http://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode/holiday-lettershave-done-lists-fail-10-12-22/)
