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?