SectionC Recording
Recording1
(积极情绪和消极情绪以及其利弊)
Let’s say you start to brainstorm a list of all the emotions you’ve ever experienced. Just for fun. Try it now. What’s on your list? Chances are you included things like happy, sad, excited, angry, afraid, grateful, proud, scared, confused, stressed, relaxed and amazed. Now sort your list into two categories: positive emotions and negative emotions. Feeling both positive and negative emotions is a natural part of being human. We might use the word “negative” to describe more difficult emotions, but it doesn't mean those emotions are bad or we shouldn't have them. Still, most people would probably rather feel a positive emotion than a negative one. It's likely you'd prefer to feel happy instead of sad or confident instead of insecure. What matters is how our emotions are balanced, how much of each type of emotion, positive or negative we experience. Negative emotions warn us of threats or challenges that we may need to deal with. For example, fear can alert us to possible danger. It's a signal that we might need to protect ourselves. Angry feelings warn us that someone is stepping on our toes, crossing a boundary or violating our trust. Anger can be a signal that we might need to act on our own behalf. Negative emotions focus our awareness. They help us to zero in on a problem so we can deal with it. But too many negative emotions can make us feel overwhelmed, anxious, exhausted or stressed out. When negative emotions are out of balance, problems might seem too big to handle. The more we dwell on negative emotions, the more negative we begin to feel. Focusing on negativity just keeps it going. Positive emotions balance out negative ones. But they have other powerful benefits, too. Instead of narrowing our focus, like negative emotions do, positive emotions affect our brains in ways that increase our awareness, attention and memory. They help us take in more information, hold several ideas in mind at once and understand how different ideas relate to each other. When positive emotions open us up to new possibilities, we are more able to learn and build on our skills that lead to doing better on tasks and tests. People who have plenty of positive emotions in their everyday lives tend to be happier, healthier, learn better and get along well with others.
 
Q16. What does the speaker say about negative emotions?
Q17. What happens to people whose negative emotions are out of balance?
Q18. How do positive emotions affect us?


Recording2
(3D打印机引领服饰新潮流)
In the past few months, I've been traveling for weeks at a time with only one suitcase of clothes. One day, I was invited to an important event, and I wanted to wear something special for it. I looked through my suitcase but couldn't find anything to wear. I was lucky to be at the technology conference then, and I had access to 3D printers. So I quickly designed a skirt on my computer, and I loaded the file on the printer. It just printed the pieces overnight. The next morning, I just took all the pieces, assembled them together in my hotel room, and this is actually the skirt that I'm wearing right now. So it wasn't the first time that I printed clothes. For my senior collection at fashion design school, I decided to try and 3D print an entire fashion collection from my home. The problem was that I barely knew anything about 3D printing, and I had only nine months to figure out how to print five fashionable looks. I always felt most creative when I worked from home. I loved experimenting with new materials, and I always tried to develop new techniques to make the most unique textiles for my fashion projects. One summer break, I came here to New York for an internship at a fashion house in Chinatown. We worked on two incredible dresses that were 3D printed. They were amazing — like you can see here. But I had a few problems with them. They were made from hard plastics and that's why they were very breakable. The models couldn't sit in them, and they even got scratched from the plastics under their arms. So now the main challenge was to find the right material for printing clothes with. I mean the material you feed the printer with. The breakthrough came when I was introduced to Filaflex, which is a new kind of printing material. It's strong, yet very flexible. And with it, I was able to print the first garment, a red jacket that had the word "freedom" — embedded into it. And actually, you can easily download this jacket, and change the word to something else. For example, your name or your sweetheart's name. So I think in the future, materials will evolve, and they will look and feel like fabrics we know today, like cotton or silk.
 
Q19. What does the speaker say about the skirt she is wearing now?
Q20. When did the speaker start experimenting with 3D printing?
Q21. What was the problem with the material the speaker worked on at New York fashion house?
Q22. What does the speaker say about the Filaflex?

Recording3
(中小企业的发展)
Welcome to the third lecture in our series on the future of small businesses in Europe. The purpose of today's lecture, as you have seen from the title and the abstract, is to examine in more detail the problems facing small and medium sized enterprises which arise at least in part from having to adapt to rapid advances in technology. And I want to look at these both from a financial and from a personnel point of view and to offer a few hopefully effective solutions. Here we have three of the most important problems facing small businesses that I want to look at today. First, keeping up with the pace of technological change, recruiting high quality staff in a time of skills shortages in I.T. as a whole and in a highly competitive market and the issue of retaining staff once they've been recruited and trained. Now all of these problems involve significant costs for all businesses, but they're a particularly challenging issue for small and medium sized enterprises. And those costs will vary depending on the size and scale of the businesses. So let's come to the first issue on our list which is keeping pace with developments in technology. Now we all know that the technology industry is intensely competitive with new products being launched all year round, as the various companies strive to compete with each other rather than say once a year or every couple of years. And this is a real headache for smaller businesses. So let's imagine we have a small company which is doing OK. It's just about making a profit, and it spends most of its income on overheads. So for a company in this situation, keeping up to date with the latest technology, even if it's only for the benefit of key staff, this can be hugely expensive. So in my view, some creative thinking needs to come in here to find ways to help companies in this situation to stay ahead in the game. But at the same time to remain technologically competitive. Well there's the possibility that small groups of companies with similar requirements, but not directly competing with each other, they could share the cost of upgrading in much the same way as let's say, an Internet operates within larger organizations. In fact, cost sharing could be a very practical solution, especially in times of financial difficulty. If there's downward pressure on costs, because of a need for investment in other areas, I would argue that this is a perfectly feasible solution.
 
Q23. What does the speaker say about the problems facing small and medium sized enterprises?
Q24. Why does the speaker's say about the technology industry?
Q25. What is a practical solution to the problems of small and medium sized businesses?

Section C Lecture
16. [B] They are necessary in our lives.
17. [B] They feel too overwhelmed to deal with life's problem.
18. [A] They expand our mind.
19. [B] It came from a 3D printer.
20. [C] When she was studying at a fashion design school.
21. [C] It was hard and breakable.
22. [D] It marks a breakthrough in printing material.
23. [A] They arise from the advances in technology.
24. [D] It is intensively competitive.
25. [D] Sharing of costs with each other.