【一起听英语】蜘蛛恐惧症

 Kate: Welcome to this week's 6 Minute English. I'm joined today by Rebecca. Hi

Rebecca. Now a bit of a scary question to start the programme with today –
how do you feel about ….spiders….?
Rebecca: Eurrgh…..
Kate: I can't say I'm delighted to find them lurking 1 around the house either but I
do think that the poor old spider does get some bad press. People think
they're much worse than they really are when most of them in the UK
anyway, are not dangerous and are completely harmless.
Rebecca: Well they might be harmless but they seem to strike more fear in people
than any other creature. In fact the fear of spiders even has a name –
arachnophobia. We'll hear more about that later in the programme.
Kate: There has recently been some bad news for anyone who has a phobia of
spiders because experts have told us that we could be facing an invasion of
them in the next few weeks. Autumn is typically the season when spiders
turn up in houses and gardens but this year, we could be finding far more
than usual…..urghh!!! 
6 Minute English © bbclearningenglish.com 2008
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Rebecca: Yes, a combination of environmental factors has led experts to predict a
mass influx 2 of spiders this autumn. Mass influx means the arrival of
something in large numbers. Researchers say that last year's wet autumn and
this year's temperate 3 summer (which means it's been neither too hot, nor
too cold) have been excellent insect breeding conditions and there is a good
chance to see lots of fantastic spiders in homes and gardens.
Kate Well, 'fantastic' a matter of opinion! But, on to my question for today. Are
you ready? How many known spider species 4 are there in the world today? Is
it:
a) 2000
b) 20 000
c) 40 000
Rebecca: answers
Kate: OK – we'll check your answer at the end of the programme. Now, we heard
earlier that the word is to describe the phobia or fear of spiders is
arachnophobia.
Rebecca: That's right and we call people who have this condition arachnophobes.
Kate: Well, we're going to hear from a former arachnophobe, Dave Clark who
works at London Zoo. He's not afraid of spiders anymore and in fact works
with them every day. We're going to hear how he got over his
arachnophobia. Listen to the following extract 5 – what rather strange
expression does he use?
 
Extract 1
What I had to do was go cold turkey and I did something called 'flooding' when I put a big
spider on my hand and that sudden exposure managed to get me over my fear. 
6 Minute English © bbclearningenglish.com 2008
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Rebecca: He said he went cold turkey. This is an expression we use when talking
about doing something we don’t really want to do. It is often used when
giving up something we know is bad for us, drinking alcohol or smoking for
example. Instead of gradually stopping, we stop completely and suddenly –
we go 'cold turkey'. In this context 6, going cold turkey means that instead of
gradually trying to overcome our phobia, we face our fear head on and in
this case Dave held a big spider in his hand and confronted 7 his fear. He also
called this technique 'flooding'.
Kate: Well, this technique certainly seemed to work because now Nick runs
special workshops to help people get over their fear of spiders. Listen to the
next extract – how long does it take to rid someone of their fear and what
type of therapy does he use?
Extract 2
We do it a lot more gently now. The course we run at London Zoo is for people to come along
in one afternoon and within 3 hours, we can get rid of their fear. Hypnosis - just half an hour's
hypnosis and we can get rid of a fear forever.
Rebecca: Dave said he uses hypnosis. Hypnosis is a mental state like sleep, in which a
person's thoughts can be easily influenced by someone else. Using this method
he can cure someone of their arachnophobia within 3 hours. That's quite
impressive!
Kate: Yes, it is. Let's listen to the final extract and listen out for what the success rate
of his courses are. How many people are cured of their phobia?
Extract 3
We have over 80% success rate – it's been pretty much 100% this year and we've had such big
demand at the moment because there's a lot of spiders around, that's we've added an extra date.
 
6 Minute English © bbclearningenglish.com 2008
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Rebecca: Wow – over 80% success rate. I suppose the last 20% are just people whose
fear of spiders is a little deeper than average!
Kate: Do you think you need to go on a course to prepare you for this autumn's influx
of house spiders? You know who to call now…
Rebecca: answers
Kate: Now on the question I asked you earlier. I asked you how many species of
spiders do you think there are.
Rebecca: And I said….
Kate: There are in fact about 40,000 known spider species, and potentially thousands
more we haven't even discovered yet.
Rebecca: Wow – I had no idea there were so many.
Kate: Would you mind giving us a quick re-cap of the vocabulary we've heard today?
Rebecca: Of course. First we had mass influx, temperate, arachnophobia,
arachnophobes, cold turkey and hypnosis.
Kate: Thanks Rebecca – that's all we've got time for. Bye!