Emotional intelligence is the ability
2 . All the feels
You can make your picture book memorable by concentrating on emotional connection. This works across every principle of writing, regardless of age range or genre (文体), because it is universally recognized.
The reason why emotional connection works is that emotion is a fundamental human experience.
For example, if it’s a funny picture book, your reader is clearly expecting to laugh. Make sure they laugh. If it’s an adventure story, your reader will be expecting to feel excitement, anticipation and probably a little mild fear. If it’s a heartwarming story, your reader expects to feel warm, comforted and overflowing with love.
Another reason for including emotion in your picture book is to really get your reader inside your character’s head. Firstly, it helps build on the young reader’s emotional development and understanding of self and others.
If you want your story to stand out amongst other stories, give your reader something to remember — a strong emotional connection.
| A．Secondly, it creates interest in the character. |
| B．It helps us make sense of the world around us. |
| C．An emotional ending in a picture book works well. |
| D．When we feel something, we will have sharp minds. |
| E．This is obviously not a complete list, but it is a starting point. |
| F．Here is why it works and how you can use it in your picture book writing. |
| G．Picture books have many different genres and your job is to know which genre your story sits in. |
If you feel like you may be a people-pleaser, you’re not alone. In today’s highly-connected world, we have a growing obsession (痴迷) with being liked and needing to please others. People seek to please others for various reasons, including avoiding conflicts, securing feelings of being needed, and reducing fears of abandonment. And they are forced to use agreeableness as self-defense.
People-pleasing behavior can lead to mental and physical health problems such as fear of rejection, frustration, anger, addictions, headaches, stomach problems, and high blood pressure. It can also result in weak boundaries, problems with decision-making and dependency. Therefore, it’s important to recognize and overcome your own people-pleasing behaviors. Here are some simple exercises that you can start working on today.
Learn to love your own company. Trust that people will not abandon you, even if you don’t drop everything for them. Believing you are lovable for who you are, not what you do, means knowing that people will still be there for you even if you do not always search for ways to please them. Practice this by going to a movie or restaurant alone.
Value the plans made with yourself. They are as important as plans you make with other people. Otherwise, you are sending a message to your brain that a plan you make with yourself does not hold as much value. Don’t break long-or short-term plans you make with yourself, whether it’s going to the gym or studying for an exam.
Say “no” when necessary. If you’re a people-pleaser, you may find it hard to say “no” because you feel it comes across as cruel or uncaring. But it absolutely does not have to. Be clear, be direct, and use “I” statements. Try statements like: “I would really love to be able to help you, but unfortunately, I’m already committed at that time.” By consistently integrating these strategies into your life, you’ll break your people-pleasing habits and develop more healthy, interdependent relationships.
1. What is a people-pleaser like?2. Besides mental and physical problems, what other problems may a people-pleaser suffer from?
3. Please decide which part is false in the following statement, then underline it and explain why.
If you don’t want to be a people-pleaser, you should love being with others, value the plans made with yourself, and decline others’requests when necessary.
4. What do you think of the behavior of pleasing others? (In about 40 words)
4 . Have you ever bought a new car and started noticing the exact color and model of car everywhere? Has that type of car just become popular in your city? Were they there before? Or are you just going crazy?
You’re not going crazy. The reason you are now just noticing them is what psychologists call “priming”. Basically, the cars were always there. You just didn’t recognize them consciously. However, when that certain model of car becomes part of your conscious thinking, you start “automatically” recognizing all of the other cars that are the same, because you are already “primed” to do so.
The priming effect takes many forms. In one study, students were asked to walk around a room for 5 minutes at a rate of 30 steps per minute, which was about one-third their normal pace. After this brief experience, the participants were much quicker to recognize words related to old age, such as forgetful, old, and lonely. Reciprocal priming effects tend to produce a coherent reaction: if you are primed to think of old age, you would tend to act old, and acting old would reinforce the thought of old age. This research shows that the way we think influences the way we act, and the way we act influences the way we think.
A similar conclusion was reached by the American psychologist William James a century ago, but he emphasized the effect on feeling. “Actions seem to follow feeling, but really actions and feeling go together; and by regulating the action, which is under the more direct control of the will, we can indirectly regulate the feeling, which is not. Thus the path to cheerfulness, should our cheerfulness be lost, is to sit up cheerfully and to act and speak as if cheerfulness were already there.”
So, that’s it. If you want to be happy, just sit up and act happy. Based on these scientific findings, we can adopt certain priming effects to help make ourselves consistently happier.
One thing we have in common is our ability to think, and thus feel. Pleasant thoughts have been proven to produce the chemicals that make us feel happy, particularly thoughts and feelings of gratitude. When we purposefully go through and think about the things we’re grateful for and deliberately feel as much gratitude as we can, we are flooding our mind with the “happy chemicals”. Furthermore, by consciously thinking, feeling and expressing gratitude, we will not only be happier in the moment, we will be “primed” to recognize the things in our life to appreciate. Each time this happens, the “happy chemicals” will be produced. Do this every day and we will become consistently happier. This makes up for the momentary happiness we gain from eating chocolate or buying new clothes. More than that, combining thoughts of gratitude with happy acts like smiling and laughing will have a supplementary positive effect on our state of mind.
1. Which of the following is an example of the priming effect?| A．Walking much faster after attending a lecture about old age. |
| B．Donating money to the poor after seeing pictures of cute cats. |
| C．Learning about various types of cars after purchasing the first car. |
| D．Completing SO_P as SOUP rather than SOAP after seeing the word EAT. |
| A．Related. | B．Two-way. | C．Well-rounded. | D．Opposite. |
| A．Eating or shopping leads to consistent feelings of happiness. |
| B．Our will has greater control over emotions than over actions. |
| C．Happy chemicals make us think about the things we’re grateful for. |
| D．Practicing gratitude frequently prepares us for long-term happiness. |
| A．Prime Yourself to Be Happier |
| B．Share Happiness to Enhance Wellbeing |
| C．Why Gratitude Is Important in Psychology |
| D．How Happy Chemicals Affect People’s Thoughts |
5 . Ryuichi Sakamoto, the Japanese composer who died on March 28, 2023, was a talented musician. For many, his combination of noisy notes and joyous ones made him timeless and avant-garde (前卫的). But for me, Sakamoto was first and foremost a creator of complex emotions.
Before I learned to love Sakamoto, my mother loved him. After her days studying textiles (纺织) at a women’s college in our hometown of Nagoya, Japan, she would come home and play the Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence theme over and over. When she sat at her piano bench, she was trying to mold herself into the most attracting woman that she could be. Still, her childhood desire for a bigger life never died. Years later, when she played it again on that same piano, now transported to our Chicago home, her hands would crash down on Sakamoto’s drumming and upset bridge. It seemed that she buried herself in her younger dream and at the same time got lost in the reality of living away from her home and family. Both the joy of a fulfilled dream and the sorrow of its harsh realities mixed in Sakamoto’s score, pervading (弥漫) our living room.
Following in my mother’s footsteps, I too learned to play Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence. I played it in an open music room at college, where I was quite depressed under the gaze of strangers as well as excited about becoming my own adult. I played Sakamoto again in my then-boyfriend’s grandparents’ sitting room, the piece now reflecting my struggle to see how my Japanese and American self could fit into this white family, even though I was in love.
Sakamoto’s genius for telling the contradictions (矛盾) of existence arises again and again. I’m still playing Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence, now at the electric piano in my living room, as I puzzle through becoming a new mother, frightened and thrilled at the same time. Maybe someday my daughter will play Sakamoto’s music, and it will help her understand her life too.
1. The author loves Sakamoto for_________.| A．his Japanese identity |
| B．his talent as a composer |
| C．his way to combine notes |
| D．his creation of mixed emotions |
| A．Contented with her current life. |
| B．Joyful and sorry at the same time |
| C．Annoyed with the difficult bridge |
| D．Lonely and upset away from home. |
| A．The life and accomplishments of Ryuichi Sakamoto. |
| B．The challenges of being a Japanese-American woman. |
| C．Contradicting emotions aroused by Sakamoto’s music. |
| D．A mother and daughter’s shared love for playing the piano. |
Last year, I baked biscuits for complete strangers to say “thank you”. I’d had to call 999 because I found my husband unconscious on the floor. Within minutes, a police car arrived and soon my husband received medical care in hospital.
A week later, when I dropped off still-warm biscuits and presented a thank-you note at the police station, the policemen thanked me for delivering gifts.
I drove away feeling light and happy. Later, I realized that my natural high might have been more than it seemed.Research has shown that sharing gratitude has positive effects on health. People who express gratitude will increase their happiness levels, lower their blood pressure and get better sleep.
What about people who receive gratitude?Research has confirmed that when people receive thanks, they experience positive emotions.“Those are happy surprises,”says Jo-Ann Tsang, a professor of psychology. When someone is thanked,he’s more likely to return the favor or pass kindness on, and his chances of being helpful again doubles, probably because he enjoys feeling socially valued.
The give-and-take of gratitude also deepens relationships. Studies show that when your loved ones regularly express gratitude,making you feel appreciated,you’re more likely to return appreciative feelings, which leads to more satisfactory in your relationships.
Nowadays,however,many people don’t express gratitude. Our modern lifestyle may be to blame. With commercial and social media, everything is speeding the younger generation to feel they’re the center of the world. If it’s all about them, why thank others?
Why not thank others? Just take a look at how many positive effects can saying “thank you”have on personal health—and the well-being of others.
If you aren’t particularly grateful, I strongly suggest you learn to be.People who are instructed to keep gratitude journals,in which they write down positive things that happen to them,cultivate gratitude over time.
1. What health benefits can people gain from expressing gratitude?2. How do people probably respond when they receive gratitude and feel socially valued?
3. Please decide which part of the following statement is false, then underline it and explain why.
▷ Saying “thank-you”improves relationships,but nowadays some young people don’t want to do it because everything is making them feel blamed by the whole society.
4. If possible, who would you like to express gratitude to most? Why? (In about 40 words)
7 . The Positive Effects of a Positive Affect
Parents often have high hopes for how their children will turn out in adulthood, such as wanting them to be healthy, to feel satisfied with their career, and to have strong friendships.
Recent research suggests that a teen’s affect—especially positive affect—is one critical factor. What exactly is affect? Affect is the tendency to express positive or negative emotions, which in turn influences how we experience things and determine whether to judge a given situation as positive or negative.
Affect is typically described in terms of being either positive or negative, and it seems that positive affect, in particular, is related to a number of beneficial outcomes in adulthood.
In support of this crucial role that positive affect has in development, a study by researchers at the University of Virginia followed teenagers and young adults from ages 14 to 25, allowing them to understand the predictive power of positive affect across the critical developmental period from adolescence to young adulthood.
But what about the effects of negative affect? The researchers also examined whether negative affect would predict problems in young adulthood.
| A．Affective responses to events typically happen automatically. |
| B．So how can parents help their children grasp the meaning of positive affect? |
| C．But what factors help produce these outcomes as teens move from adolescence to adulthood? |
| D．Interestingly, the results suggested that positive affect may go beyond helping teens build positive relationships. |
| E．The results uncovered that negative affect might account for many life problems when a teenager became a young adult. |
| F．Unlike positive affect, having greater negative affect did not have any significant associations with any of the later life outcomes. |
| G．This study found that positive affect was strongly predictive of life outcomes in young adulthood, such as developing better friendships. |
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Nobody likes to feel anxious. Anxiety is among the most common and criticized of human emotions. Studies show that over 100 million people in the U.S. will suffer from an anxiety disorder in their lifetime. Rates, especially among the young, have been rising for the past decade. It seems, then, that our efforts to contain anxiety aren’t working.
As a clinical psychologist and neuroscience researcher, I believe that we mental health professionals have made a terrible mistake. Feeling anxious isn’t the problem. The problem is that we don’t understand how to respond constructively to anxiety. That’s why it’s increasingly hard to know how to feel good.
This “bad” feeling isn’t a failure of mental health. It’s a triumph of human evolution: the ability to think about the uncertain future and prepare for it. The unpleasant emotion, for example, fear, signals that you may be in danger—from a predator, bully or speeding car—and readies your body and mind to fight or take flight.
Anxiety, by contrast, has nothing to do with present threats. Instead, it turns you into a mental time traveler, drawing your attention to what lies ahead. Will you succeed or fail in that interview for a job you desperately want? Anxiety prompts your mind and body into action. Your worries force you to prepare thoroughly for the interview, while your heart races and pumps blood to your brain so that you stay sharp and focused, prepared to pursue your goals.
Research has also shown something that many scientists didn’t expect: higher levels of dopamine (多巴胺) when we’re anxious. We have long known that dopamine soars when an experience is pleasurable and also in anticipation of rewards. The fact that anxiety also boosts dopamine levels points to its role in making positive possibilities into reality.
Many of us feel overwhelmed by lasting anxiety and don’t see any benefit from it. We have come to believe that the best way to cope is to get rid of it. But treating anxiety like a disease prevents us from distinguishing between ordinary anxiety and anxiety disorders. We need to develop a new mindset about this misunderstood emotion. Anxiety can’t do its job unless it makes us uncomfortable, forcing us to sit up and pay attention. We don’t need to like anxiety—just to use it in the right way.
1. Why is it increasingly hard for us to know how to feel good?2. How does anxiety help one in a job interview?
3. Please decide which part is false in the following statement, then underline it and explain why.
Research has shown that dopamine soars when an experience is pleasurable, but it is in lower levels when we are anxious.
4. How do you cope with anxiety positively in your daily life? (In about 40 words)
| Awesome Achievement Your college graduation Fills us with love and pride. We always knew that you could do Whatever you really tried. It’s a long and challenging journey To get a college degree, But you wouldn’t quit it, you just went and did it, And we’re beaming affectionately. Your achievement is awesome, my kid; You’ve worked hard and you’ve passed the test. We love you so, and we want you to know, We think you’re the very best! By Joanna | _______________________ Mom, from the time I was really young, I realized I had someone… you, who always protected me, who was always there for me no matter what. You taught me to do the right thing, even when it was hard to do. You took care of me when I was sick, and your love helped make me well. You had rules, and I learned that when I obeyed them, my life was simpler, better, richer. You were and are the guiding light of my life. My heart is filled with love for you, my teacher, my friend, my mother. By Karl |
| A．A website for school curricula (课程). |
| B．A website for kids reading. |
| C．A website for advice. |
| D．A website for learning tips. |
| A．Her great pride in her son’s graduation. |
| B．Her gratitude to her mom after her graduation. |
| C．Her son’s happiness in passing the final exams. |
| D．Her joy in the hard and challenging journey. |
| A．My Guiding Light. | B．When I Was Young. |
| C．No Matter What. | D．The Rules to Follow. |
