If you intend using humor in your talk to make people smile, you must know how to identify shared experiences and problems. Your humor must be relevant to the audience and should help to show them that you are one of them or that you understand their situation and are in sympathy with their point of view. Depending on whom you are addressing, the problems will be different. If you are talking to a group of managers, you may refer to the disorganized methods of their secretaries; alternatively if you are addressing secretaries, you may want to comment on their disorganized bosses.
Here is an example, which I heard at a nurses’ convention, of a story which works well because the audience all shared the same view of doctors. A man arrives in heaven and is being shown around by St. Peter. He sees wonderful accommodations, beautiful gardens, sunny weather, and so on. Everyone is very peaceful, polite and friendly until, waiting in a line for lunch, the new arrival is suddenly pushed aside by a man in a white coat, who rushes to the head of the line, grabs his food and stomps over to a table by himself. “Who is that?” the new arrival asked St. Peter. “Oh, that’s God” came the reply, “but sometimes he thinks he’s a doctor.”
If you are part of the group which you are addressing, you will be in a position to know the experiences and problems which are common to all of you and it’ll be appropriate for you to make a passing remark about the inedible canteen food or the chairman’s notorious bad taste in ties. With other audiences you mustn’t attempt to cut in with humor as they will resent an outsider making disparaging remarks about their canteen or their chairman. You will be on safer ground if you stick to scapegoats like the Post Office or the telephone system.
If you feel awkward being humorous, you must practice so that it becomes more natural. Include a few casual and apparently off-the-cuff remarks which you can deliver in a relaxed and unforced manner. Often it’s the delivery which causes the audience to smile, so speak slowly and remember that a raised eyebrow or an unbelieving look may help to show that you are making a light-hearted remark.
Look for the humor. It often comes from the unexpected. A twist on a familiar quote “If at first you don’t succeed, give up” or a play on words or on a situation. Search for exaggeration and understatements. Look at your talk and pick out a few words or sentences which you can turn about and inject with humor.
To make your humor work, you should ________.
第一段说“要使你的听众发笑，你就必须知道如何识别你和他人的共同的经历和问题。”第三句话说“Depending on whom you are addressing, the problems will be different.”说话的对象不同，处理的问题就因 人而异。因此想让对方发笑，说话就要因人而异。
The joke about doctors implies that, in the eyes of nurses, they are ________.
定位为第二段，本题讲述了一个经典的护士看待医生的笑话，上帝插队，毫不顾忌他人，圣彼得就讽 刺上帝和医生一样，傲慢无理。站在护士的角度上，这里实际上是在说医生通常把自己的责任看得特别重 大，如上帝般，对待护士也是傲慢无礼的。C项只是解释了上帝插队的现象，真正要揭示的是医生的傲 慢。因此B项符合题意。
It can be inferred from the text that public services ________.
第三段最后一句，这句话中提到了“邮局”和“电话”这两个行业。文章说“安全的做法是咬住一些替罪羊 比如邮局和电话业，之所以安全是因为这样不会冒犯什么人”。由此可知，大家经常会拿“公共服务业”来开 玩笑。因此选D。
To achieve the desired result, humorous stories should be delivered ________.
第四段，它指出幽默要“自然”（natural），“随意”（casual），“即兴”（off-the-cut），“放 松”（relaxed），“舒缓”（unforced），“缓慢”（slowly），“轻松”（light-hearted）。因此选择D。
The best title for the text may be ________.
通读全文，本文主要是指导人们怎样有效地利用幽默，能让听众发笑。D项不同的幽默策略，文章中 最后一段也提到不同的幽默策略，但那是文章主旨的一部分。