TOEFL iBT Practice Test 49

NOTICE The lift in Block A is out of order until Thursday. Engineers are replacing the motor. Please use the stairs or the lift in Block B, which is accessible from the ground-floor corridor. Anyone who needs assistance getting to upper floors should contact reception on extension 200, and a member of staff will help you. We apologise for the inconvenience.

Notice: Passport renewal — new online option From next month, residents can renew an adult passport entirely online instead of visiting the office in person. You will need a digital photo, your old passport number, and a valid credit card for the $85 fee. Processing still takes 10 to 15 working days. Renewals for children under 16 must still be submitted in person, since a parent's signature is required.

Procrastination is often mischaracterised as simple laziness, but psychological research increasingly frames it as an emotion-regulation problem rather than a time-management failure. According to this view, people delay tasks not primarily because they lack the skills to plan their time, but because the task provokes an uncomfortable feeling—anxiety about failing, boredom, or resentment at being obligated—and postponing the task offers immediate relief from that feeling, even though it worsens the situation later. This explains a pattern many people notice in themselves: procrastinators frequently possess excellent planning skills and use them elaborately for tasks they enjoy, while abandoning all planning for tasks that trigger negative emotion. Brain-imaging studies lend some support to this account, showing heightened activity in regions associated with threat detection when procrastinators contemplate an aversive task, compared with non-procrastinators facing the same task. If procrastination is fundamentally emotional rather than organisational, interventions based purely on scheduling tools or deadline reminders should have limited success, and indeed, studies of such interventions show modest, short-lived effects at best. More promising approaches target the emotional root directly: techniques that reduce the perceived threat of a task, such as breaking it into small, low-stakes first steps, or techniques that build self-forgiveness after a lapse, appear to reduce procrastination more durably than tools that simply track time.