题型:任务型阅读 题类:常考题 难易度:困难
江苏省启东中学2016-2017学年高二上学期英语第二次月考试卷
The back-to-school season is upon us, and once again, parents across the country have loaded their kids' backpacks up with snack packs and school supplies. It's a good moment to reflect on what else we should be giving our kids as they head off to school.
American parents are feeling particularly anxious about that question this year. The educational process feels more than ever like a race, one that starts in pre-school and doesn't end until your child is admitted to the perfect college. Most parents are more worried than they need to be about their children's grades, test scores and IQ. And what we don't think about enough is how to help our children build their character—how to help them develop skills like perseverance, optimism, responsibility, and self-control, which together do more to determine success than S.A.T. scores or I.Q.
There is growing evidence that our anxiety about our children's school performance may actually be holding them back from learning some of these valuable skills. If you're concerned only with a child's G.P.A., then you will likely choose to minimize the challenges the child faces in school. With real challenge comes the risk of real failure. And in a competitive academic environment, the idea of failure can be very scary, to students and parents alike.
But experiencing failure is a critical part of building character.A recent research by a team of psychologists found that adults who had experienced little or no failure growing up were actually less happy and confident than those who had experienced a few significant setbacks in childhood. “Overcoming those obstacles,” the researchers assumed, “could teach effective coping skills, help engage social support networks, create a sense of mastery over past adversity, and foster beliefs in the ability to cope successfully in the future.”
By contrast, when we protect our children from every possible failure—when we call their teachers to get an extension on a paper; when we urge them to choose only those subjects they're good at—we are denying them those same character-building experiences. As the psychologists Madeline Levine and Dan Kindlon have written, that can lead to difficulties in adolescence and young adulthood, when overprotected young people finally confront real problems on their own and don't know how to overcome them.
In the classroom and outside of it, American parents need to encourage children to take chances, to challenge themselves, to risk failure. In the meantime, giving our kids room to fail may be one of the best ways we can help them succeed.
Back to School: Why Perseverance Is More Important than Good Grades? | |
Common phenomena | Parents throughout America their kids' backpacks up with snacks and school supplies. |
Many American parents don't enough importance to their kids' character building. | |
The writer's | Parents should pay more attention to their kids' character building. |
Evidence and findings | Parents' anxiety about their kids' performance may them from learning some valuable skills. |
Parents concerned only with a kid's G.P.A. have a to minimize the challenges the child faces. | |
Adults who have experienced a few significant setbacks in childhood are and more confident than those who haven't. | |
Denying kids character-building experiences can in difficulties in adolescence and young adulthood. | |
The writer's suggestions | kids to be risk-takers. |
Give kids room to experience . |
Population ageing refers to the situation in which the average age of the citizens of a country increases as a result of longer life expectancy(预期寿命)of its citizens or a reduction in the number of births every year.Today, both developed and developing countries around the world are experiencing an increase in the average age of its citizens with a growing proportion(比例)of elders in the population.
An increase in the proportion of elderly persons in the population leads to a growing pool of volunteers.This has been considered as a global advantage where the elderly contribute free labor to community and government projects after retirement.These elders are more comfortable financially(财政上)and find pleasure in giving back to their communities and countries.Besides,older people are more experienced than younger people,and they can make use of their experience to help uphold morals(维护道德)and values in a country.
What's more,an ageing population has something to do with fewer children.This can save much cost because less money has to be used to meet the needs of fewer children and young people in the economy.This would result in lower public education cost,lower health-care cost and other social programs that are provided for children by the government.
However,there are also a lot of disadvantages.For example,an increase in the proportion of the elderly in the population raises questions as to how best to support them after retirement.Also older people are more likely to suffer from illnesses,so an increasing number of sick persons will put pressure on health care,which might not be able to meet the demand.
Furthermore,an ageing population also increases competition for jobs,especially if the retirement age is extended(延长).As older members of the population have a longer time to retire,young people will find it more difficult to find jobs.In this case,fewer innovations(创新)and changes take place in organizations because companies are limited to old ways of doing things.
So,in order to solve these problems brought by an aging population,careful long-term strategic planning is required.The elderly are important and they have much to offer in helping the young people to understand their purpose in life.An increase in social enterprises(规划)should be the trend to help get the elderly involved in young people's lives.
An ageing population | |
Introduction | ●Population ageing refers to an increase in the average age of a country's citizens which is {#blank#}1{#/blank#}by the longer life expectancy and lower birth rates. ●Today,an ageing population is a(n){#blank#}2{#/blank#}problem. |
{#blank#}3{#/blank#} | ●More and more retired elderly people are willing to do something for their communities and countries for{#blank#}4{#/blank#}. ●Older people's{#blank#}5{#/blank#}can be good for the growth of young people. |
●An ageing population means a reduction in finances that are required to meet the needs of children and young people. | |
Disadvantages | ●Much money is needed to support a(n){#blank#}6{#/blank#}number of older people. ●With more older people{#blank#}7{#/blank#}from illnesses,this may increase health care costs. |
●An ageing population can make young people have{#blank#}8{#/blank#}in finding jobs. ●It is hard to develop innovations in organizations and companies. | |
{#blank#}9{#/blank#} | Make a careful long-term strategic plan to make sure that the elders play a{#blank#}10{#/blank#}in young people's lives. |
注意:每个空格只填一个单词。
Changes are hard for many people to accept. However, what's worth keeping in mind is that life is constantly changing. We might lose our jobs, lose our loved ones, or have other life-changing things, but these changes are just part of life. We might not like how society is changing or how our community is changing, but we need to be able to deal with these changes in a positive way. Luckily, there are many ways to view changes, to deal with them and to finally accept them.
To deal with changes wisely, you should accept that feeling when a type of change is upsetting you. There's no way you'll get past it if you ignore it and don't work through it. Thus, if you've lost your job, let yourself feel mad and/or disappointed. You can even express your feelings to others, but do so in a polite way. Also you can ask yourself, "Why am I upset or worried about this change?" Then, "What is it that I believe will happen, as a result of this change?" And then, "Are these thoughts and beliefs correct and practical?" Going through these questions can help you determine if the change is really worth worrying about. What's more, even though the change can have a negative effect on your life, in most situations you can use it to turn a loss into an opportunity or a way to rediscover your enthusiasm for life.
Of course, when it comes to dealing with changes, taking action is more important. If you're going through a period in your life when the change is negatively influencing you, make yourself busy. Making yourself busy, by working, producing something or engaging socially with others, will do more than just make you forget worries–it'll help you contribute to changing your life positively for the future. Besides, you can try something you've never done before.
An important part of accepting changes is finding a way to move on and thinking about your future. By looking ahead, you'll be able to better deal with the past and accept it as that had to happen in order to move forward. So accept the change that makes you uncomfortable, and determine you're going to try to use your energies to make an even better world. In this way, you're using it to power what you think is a positive change.
How to accept changes | |
Introduction | ●A lot of people have {#blank#}1{#/blank#} in accepting changes, which, however, are {#blank#}2{#/blank#}in life. ●Whether you like or dislike the change, you have to learn to deal with it. |
Ways of {#blank#}3{#/blank#}changes wisely | ●Accept your feelings about changes and you can even {#blank#}4{#/blank#}it with others politely. ●Ask yourself {#blank#}5{#/blank#}about the change to develop your understanding of it. ●Look on the bright side and take {#blank#}6{#/blank#}of the change. |
Tips on taking action | ●{#blank#}7{#/blank#} yourself with something meaningful to forget the change. ●Find pleasure in a(n){#blank#}8{#/blank#} activity so that you can enjoy life after the change. ●Set life goals for yourself and accept the change as something {#blank#}9{#/blank#}for you to achieve them. ●Use an uncomfortable change as a driving{#blank#}10{#/blank#}in making a better world. |
Most people have a list of wishes—things that they think will bring them happiness. Happiness lists are easy to come up with. However, the mechanism behind them is somewhat complicated, since it involves what psychologist Daniel Gilbert calls the greatest achievement of the human brain—the ability to imagine. To imagine what will bring joy to our future selves requires mental time travel, which is a unique human skill resulting from two million years of evolution. We use this skill every day, predicting our future emotions and then making decisions, whether big or small, according to our forecasts of how they'll make our future selves feel.
Yet, our imagination often fails us. When we're lucky enough to get what we wished for, we discover that it doesn't come with everlasting happiness. And when the things we feared come to pass, we realize that they don't crush us after all. In dozens of studies, Gilbert has shown that we can mispredict emotional consequences of positive events, such as receiving gifts or winning football games, as much as negative events, like breaking up or losing an election. This impact bias(影响偏差) —overestimation of the intensity and duration of our emotional reactions to future events—is significant, because the prediction of the duration of our future emotions is what often shapes our decisions, including those concerning our happiness.
Just as our immune systems work tirelessly to keep our bodies in good health, our psychological immune systems routinely employ an entire set of cognitive(认知) mechanisms in order to deal with life's habitual attack of less-than-pleasant circumstances. Actually, our psychological immune system has an impressive feature of its own: the ability to produce happiness. Thus, when life disappoints us, we "ignore, transform, and rearrange" information through a variety of creative strategies until the rough edges of negative effects have been dutifully dulled. When we fail to recognize this ability of our psychological immune systems to produce happiness, we're likely to make errors in our affective forecasting.
Happiness, Gilbert points out, is a fast moving target. As passionate as we're about finding it, we routinely misforecast what will make us happy, and how long our joy will last. In reality, he adds that the best way to make an affective forecast is not to use your imagination, but your eyes. Namely, instead of trying to predict how happy you 'll be in a particular future, look closely at those who are already in the future that you're merely contemplating(冥想)and ask how happy they are. If something makes others happy, it'll likely make you happy as well.
Forecasting Happiness |
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The mechanism behind happiness lists |
*It's a bit complicated because of the involvement of the human ability to {#blank#}1{#/blank#}. *Mental time travel is a unique human skill we use on a(n) {#blank#}2{#/blank#} basis to make predictions about our future emotions and then {#blank#}3{#/blank#} all our decisions on them. |
The {#blank#}4{#/blank#} with predicting happiness |
*We can make wrong predictions about emotional consequences of positive or negative events, which can {#blank#}5{#/blank#} us from making right decisions. |
The functions of the psychological immune system |
*Our psychological immune system routinely help {#blank#}6{#/blank#} unpleasant circumstances in life. *Our wrong affective forecasting results from our{#blank#}7{#/blank#} to recognize the power of our psychological immune system. |
An effective {#blank#}8{#/blank#} to predict happiness |
*Use your eyes {#blank#}9{#/blank#} of your imagination while making affective forecasts. {#blank#}10{#/blank#} others who are in the future that you're contemplating and ask how happy they are. |
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