BBC 6分钟英语 自助

6 min English from BBC, learning English.

Hello, and welcome to Six Minute English.

I'm Neil, and today we are going to improve ourselves.

Ha, ha. How could we possibly get any better?

I'm Rob, and yesterday's topic is self

help, and the self help industry, what do we mean by self help?

Well, it means trying to improve yourself, psychologically, economically or in other ways, without seeking official help.

E.G., bookshops these days are full of titles which claim to boost your self confidence, your wealth, your love life, or your career.

Yes, in just seven days. There's a clear demand for this kind of thing.

The self help industry is worth $10 billion in the US alone.

That's a lot That includes things like gym memberships, diet plans and life coaching apps.

Will be looking at why. But 1st, the self help industry has been around for a long time.

Which of these well known books was published?

1st Is it a How to win friends and influence people?

B think and grow rich? See the law of attraction.

Hmm. Could you some help here?

I'll go for the 1st one How to win friends and influence people.

Okay, well, before we go further, let's take a trip around a book shop in Manchester to find out which self help books are selling.

Well, let's listen to Emma Marshall, a manager at waterstone's Bookshop.

What's popular now at the moment, We're in the tiding up and getting rid of things trend But before that, we saw coloring in, which became a huge thing.

Was kind of dwindling now because these sorts of trends come in, and then they go, like last year we saw Huger, which is the Danish art of living Well, apparen'tly?

So we're taking from all sorts of cultures.

And so I think right now, the trend is clearly about slowing down in your life.

Emma says there are a couple of trends right now.

A trend here means something new, which is popular for a period of time.

Yes. So she mentioned tidying up and getting rid of things.

Would you buy a book about tiding up?

Neil? I'd be more likely to buy a book about it than actually tidy up.

She also mentioned a current trend about slowing down in our lives.

Well, I can agree with that, and previous trends included coloring in these books have black and white outline pictures that you fill in with colors.

I used to do that as a child.

Very therapeutic, therapeutic, making you feel more relaxed and less anxious.

It's related to the word therapy.

Although the coloring in trend is dwindling.

It's becoming weaker. They're selling fewer coloring in books.

So trends come and go, but the industry is going from strength to strength.

To go from strength to strength means to remains strong or get even stronger.

Why? DR Jennifer Wild, a psychologist from Oxford University, believes that the Internet is a big factor.

We ve got used to searching for solutions online, and now these solutions even include how to fix or improve our lives.

And psychologist Caroline Beaten, writing on Forbes dot com, said she believes that millennials are a big factor.

How do we define the term millennial, also known as generation?

Why are people born between the mid 1980s and early 2000s?

Its a common term in the news, often because people born in this time in the West are seen to have certain characteristics.

Yes, they sometimes described as lazy and obsessed with themselves.

And while that's not necessarily true, caroline Beaten says millennials are highly self critical, self critical, they are aware of their own faults, which also means they're more likely to spend time or money on self help.

She says. They spend twice as much as the Generation exes.

Generation X refers to people born between the late 1960s and around 19 81.

More possible reason why the self help industry does well.

It's very resistant to recessions. When the economy does badly, as we say, it goes into recession, people are perhaps even more likely to reach for self help to improve their situation.

So there we are. Now let's go back to another recession, the Great Depression of the 1930s in America.

And to my question about which self help book was published 1st?

Well, I said a How To Win Friends and Influence People.

In fact, two of these books were published in the late 1930s, how To Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie was 1st in 1936.

It has since sold over 30 million copies.

Think and Grow Rich, by Napoleon Hill, was published in 1937, and is believed to have sold over 100 million copies.

That's a lot of self help.

Have you read either of them?

I haven't read either of them, but perhaps I should.

Well before we rush home and improve ourselves, let's improve our vocabulary.

Of course, today, we had self help, the activity of improving yourself, physically, mentally or in other ways, often through courses and books.

There are lots of trends in the self help industry.

And we also see trends in fashion, in music, in popular culture, like the trend for men to grow beards.

He talking about me anyway, I think the beard trend is dwindling.

It's getting smaller, less influential, really.

Hmm,

I'll stroke my beard here. I think that's very therapeutic.

It makes me relax and feel good.

Maybe you're right. What about our next phrase?

To Go from strength to strength?

Well, you could say a business is going from strength to strength if it's earning a lot of money, indeed.

And what about our term for young people?

Millennial? Are you a millennial rob?

Didn't quite scrape in there still Generation X OK, but I do like to think I'm in touch with what millennials do, which includes having lots of different social media accounts, just like us do.

Look up BBC, learning English on Facebook, twitter, instagram and youtube.

And good luck with your self improvement.

扫码查看听力音频