Listening exercise:
100 Ways to Motivate Yourself: Change Your Life Forever
by Steve Chandler
YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pPimZfAoX3Y
start at the 13:48 and stop at the 19:30 minute point

Vocabulary:
for a living
passively
Groucho Marx
educational
Abraham Lincoln
to drive s.o. crazy
law partners
to read aloud
silently
to make an impression on
deathbed
to pretend
to run out of
vividly
to create
paradoxical
sensation
to be born
self-motivation
lazy
Henry Ford
to handle
to break down into
to allow oneself
irony
overwhelming
to be aware of
mental picture
furiously
 to avoid
altogether
politely
to walk away
so-called
to support goals
pessimist
to have a way of doing s.t.
narrow sense of
cynicism
to settle in
Calvin Coolidge
cynic
contagious
optimist
to open oneself up to
to design
game plan
to respond to
the other way around
Bill Walsh
former
head coach
San Francisco
49ers
eccentric
extensively
in advance of
to unfold
 appropriate
to pace
sidelines
sheet
team
to run a play
Superbowl
proactive
crucial
inner
Albert Einstein
Capacity
genius
level
to commit to
recommendation
to become accustomed to
worst-case scenario
all day long
visualization
to be channeled into
misuse
to comprehend
to be designed for
to achieve
I.Q.
stage
future
motivated

Listening comprehension questions:
1. What question does Chandler suggest we ask ourselves regarding television watching?
2. What are Chandler's reasons for the suggestions he makes regarding television watching?
3. In what way did comedian Groucho Marx say he considered television 'educational'?
4. What advantage is there in reading something we consider important out loud?
5. Why, does Chandler suggest, is it useful to think often of our own death?
6. Describe the 'paradox' Chandler refers to in his suggestion #16.
7. During what part of a task does Chandler suggest we be 'lazy'?
8. What is the 'irony' in his suggestion that we be lazy?
9. What kind of 'friends' should we avoid?
10. Why?
11. What does Chandler say is 'contagious'?
12. What is the advantage of planning things in advance?
13. What evidence does Chandler give that this approach works?
14. How can we develop our 'inner Einstein'?
15. Why is this often difficult for grown-ups?
16. What, according to Chandler, is worry?
17. What can we do instead with the energy we use to worry?
18. Which of Chandler's suggestions did you find most useful to you personally, and how might you put them into practice in your own life?

 

home