The Reading / Listening - Happiness - Level 5

Happiness is something we all want. However, happiness varies greatly from person to person. A new study shows that how happy we are depends on a wide variety of factors. An assistant professor of psychology at the University of California led the study. It could help mental health professionals to provide better treatments for people who have depression and anxiety. The professor wrote: "We have to understand the sources of happiness to build effective interventions." Her study has been published in the journal "Nature Human Behaviour".

The professor suggested that happiness comes from external circumstances (like income and possessions) or internal feelings. She said there were three models of happiness. The first is "bottom-up". This is based on our overall satisfaction with factors like wealth, jobs and relationships. This is the one used for the World Happiness Report. The second is a "top-down" model. This suggests happiness comes from our attitudes towards life. People can control this through meditation or therapy. The final model is a bidirectional one, where bottom-up and top-down models interact.

Try the same news story at these levels:

    Happiness - Level 4 or  Happiness - Level 6

Sources
  • https://neurosciencenews.com/happiness-unique-psychology-28798/
  • https://phys.org/news/2025-05-secret-happiness-society.html
  • https://www.nationalgeographic.com/health/article/happiness-well-being-culture-community


Make sure you try all of the online activities for this reading and listening - There are dictations, multiple choice activities, drag and drop activities, sentence jumbles, which word activities, text reconstructions, spelling, gap fills and a whole lot more. Please enjoy :-)

Phrase Matching

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Listening — Listen and fill in the gaps

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Put a slash (/) where the spaces are

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Student survey

Write five GOOD questions about this topic in the table. Do this in pairs. Each student must write the questions on his / her own paper. When you have finished, interview other students. Write down their answers.

(Please look at page 12 of the PDF to see a photocopiable example of this activity.)

Discussion — Write your own questions

STUDENT A’s QUESTIONS (Do not show these to student B)

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STUDENT B’s QUESTIONS (Do not show these to student A)

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Free writing

Write about this topic for 10 minutes. Comment on your partner’s paper.

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Answers

(Please check your answers against the article above.

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