If you think about it, work-life balance is a strange ambition for a fulfilling life. Balance is about stasis(静止): if our lives were ever in balance—parents happy, kids taken care of, work working—then our overriding thought would be to shout “Nobody move!” and pray all would stay perfect forever. This false hope is made worse by the categories themselves. They imply that work is bad, and life is good. And so the challenge, we are told, is to balance the heaviness of work with the lightness of life.
Yet work is not the opposite of life. It is instead a part of life—just as family is, as are friends and community. All of these aspects of living have their share of uplifting moments and moments that drag us down. The same is true of work. Treat work the same way you do life: by maximizing what you love.
We have interviewed several anesthesiologists (麻醉师) about the thrills they feel in their jobs. One said he loved the thrill of holding each patient hovering at that one precise point between life and death. Another said she loved the bedside conversations before the operation aiming to calm the panic that affects many patients. Another was drawn mostly to the anesthetic mechanism and has devoted himself to defining precisely how each drug does what it does.
Think of your life’s many different activities as threads. Some are black and some are white. But some of these activities appear to be made of a different substance. These activities contain all the tell-tale signs of love: before you do them, you find yourself looking forward to them; while you’re doing them, time speeds up and you find yourself in flow; and after you’ve done them, you feel energetic. These are your red threads, and research by the Mayo Clinic suggests that doctors who weave the fabric (织物) of their life with at least 20% red threads are significantly less likely to experience burnout.
The simplest way for you to do this is to spend a week in love with your job. During the week, any time you find yourself feeling one of the signs of love write down exactly what you were doing in the column “Love”. And any time you find yourself feeling the inverse write down what you were doing in the column “Loathe”. By the end of the week you will see a list of activities in your “Love”column, which create in you a positive feeling, one that draws you in and lifts you up.
Our goal should be to, little by little, week by week, intentionally unbalance all aspects of our work toward the former and away from the latter. Not simply to make us feel better, but so that our colleagues, our friends and our family can all benefit from us at our very best.
1. What is the author’s attitude towards work-life balance?| A．Doubtful. | B．Disapproving. | C．Supportive. | D．Neutral. |
| A．arouse your passion | B．satisfy your desires |
| C．improve your motivation | D．require your efforts |
| A．Red threads are necessary for a balanced life. |
| B．Recording activities helps create positive feeling. |
| C．Find love in work instead of keeping work-life balance. |
| D．Maximize what you love to remove the heaviness from work. |
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【推荐1】Perhaps you think you could easily add to your happiness with more money. Strange as it may seem, if you're unsatisfied, the issue is not a lack of means to meet your desires but a lack of desires — not that you cannot satisfy your tastes but that you don't have enough tastes.
Real riches consist of well-developed and hearty capacities (能力) to enjoy life. Most people are already swamped (淹没) with things. They eat, wear, go and talk too much. They live in too big a house with too many rooms, yet their house of life is a hut.
Your house of life ought to be a mansion (豪宅), a royal palace. Every new taste, every additional interest, every fresh enthusiasm adds a room. Here are several rooms your house of life should have.
Art should be a desire for you to develop simply because the world is full of beautiful things. If you only understood how to enjoy them and feed your spirit on them, they would make you as happy as to find plenty of ham and eggs when you're hungry.
Literature, classic literature, is a beautiful, richly furnished room where you might find many an hour of rest and refreshment. To gain that love would go toward making you a rich person, for a rich person is not someone who has a library but who likes a library.
Music like Mozart's and Bach's shouldn't be absent. Real riches are of the spirit. And when you've brought that spirit up to where classical music feeds it and makes you a little drunk, you have increased your thrills and bettered them. And life is a matter of thrills.
Sports, without which you remain poor, mean a lot in life. No matter who you are, you would be more human, and your house of life would be better supported against the bad days, if you could, and did, play a bit.
Whatever rooms you might add to your house of life, the secret of enjoying life is to keep adding.
1. The author intends to tell us that _________.| A．true happiness lies in achieving wealth by fair means |
| B．big houses are people's most valued possessions |
| C．big houses can in a sense bring richness of life |
| D．true happiness comes from spiritual riches |
| A．however materially rich, they never seem to be satisfied |
| B．however materially rich, they remain spiritually poor |
| C．though their house is big, they prefer a simple life |
| D．though their house is big, it seems to be a cage |
| A．House of Life | B．Secret of Wealth |
| C．Rest and Refreshment | D．Interest and Enthusiasm |
【推荐2】My son, Ben, died when he was 23. The year after his death, I hiked 48 of the state’s tallest mountains in his memory. Every step, path and peak has been a way to restore.
About a month after his death, my husband and I hiked Carter Dome and Mount Hight, sorrow weighing heavy in our hearts and legs. Standing on the peak, I looked out across the mountains my son loved. For a moment, the heavy blow brought about by Ben’s death faded into the timeless expanse, and I could breathe.
The next weekend found us on Mount Moosilauke. Then Mount Cannon, Mount Flume, Mount Liberty and so on. It was a series of firsts, of struggles and overcoming them — climbing at night, climbing slides and rocks, camping alone, finding paths and planning routes.
Six days before the anniversary of Ben’s death, I hiked my 48th and final peak: Mount Carrigain. As I stood on the observation platform at the peak, I found the essential truth I had been grasping to express for months: The only place that feels vast enough to hold sorrow this deep and wide is the top of a mountain, looking out into forever.
These days, I hike not to hide, but to seek. I find Ben, but I also find myself: someone broken, now braver and more capable. The forced isolation of sorrow becomes the welcome loneliness of the path; the peace of nature replaces the pain of loss. Hiking is both exhausting and exciting, and it teaches us that sorrow and joy can coexist.
But there’s another, possibly more important truth: A hike is not the only way to find the peace of the natural world; a simple walk along a park path can have a similar effect. The internal journey of sorrow mixes with our steps, and we find comfort along the way.
1. How did the writer feel after climbing Carter Dome and Mount Hight?| A．Doubtful. | B．Relieved. | C．Sad. | D．Terrified. |
| A．it was possible to live with both sorrow and joy |
| B．it was the isolation of sorrow that exhausted her |
| C．only by overcoming struggles could one survive |
| D．the peaks were proper places to remember someone |
| A．Walking works best for those in sorrow. | B．We can plan our internal journey as intended. |
| C．What counts is to make peace with ourselves. | D．People tend to hike in parks to seek comfort. |
| A．The Heavy Steps That Led Me To Peaks | B．The Mountains That Held My Sorrow |
| C．The Journeys That Frustrated Me | D．The First Struggles That Empowered Me |
【推荐3】How do you get to Carnegie Hall？"Practice，practice，practice" is the well-known answer. But for some inspiring young musicians from the Afghanistan National Institute of Music in Kabul，the road to the famous concert hall was more difficult.
The Afghan Youth Orchestra（AYO）is made up of young people who study at the Afghanistan National Institute of Music. It was the first orchestra created in Afghanistan in 30 years.
Gulalai Norestani，14，plays a traditional string instrument. Like many students，Gulalai became an orphan when her parents were killed during the war. Music is her salvation（解救物）."Music for me is a language of peace，"Gulalai said." It helps connect with people."
Milad Yousufi，18， is a piano student. "Music is my life, "he said. Milad also lost many of his family members during the war. When music was banned, he couldn't even touch a piano. So as a 12-year-old boy, he started painting and drawing. "I used to draw a piano," he said. Finally, Milad was free to play a real piano. "Our dream came true," he said. "It is everyone's dream to play in Carnegie Hall."
And he has more dreams. "I have a dream to continue my education in America," he explained." I am working hard to make that happen. Then I have a dream to come back to Afghanistan and teach and serve people."
Because of continuing limits in Afghanistan, Gulalai and Milad listen mostly to the kind of classical music they played at Carnegie Hall. But Gulalai says she's heard a bit of Jennifer Lopez and Shakira and she likes them. Milad says he has heard of lady Gaga and Justin Bieber, but hasn't yet had a chance to listen to them.
Before Milad went onstage that night with the band of Afghan kids who had survived a war, I asked him if he had ever experienced true peace. "No, not yet," he answered, adding, "I hope I will be able to."
Later during the performance, as he played one of Carnegie Hall's famous grand pianos, the look of pure joy on his face convinced me that he found peace in music.
1. In the opinion of Gulalai, music ________.| A．makes people understand each other |
| B．calms her down in the war |
| C．is a kind of violent language |
| D．saves her from the killing at war |
| A．To play a real piano. |
| B．To be a teacher. |
| C．To play in Carnegie Hall. |
| D．To be educated in America. |
| A．classical music is not played in Afghanistan |
| B．Gulalai knows lady Gaga and Justin Bieber well |
| C．the music Gulalai and Milad can hear is limited |
| D．Milad likes Jennifer Lopez and Shakira. |
| A．Traditional Afghan Music |
| B．Young Musicians |
| C．A Better Performance |
| D．Peace in Music |
【推荐1】Mr. Brown was a writer. He wrote many books, and he thought they were quite good. He lived in the city. One morning, he went to a small town near the city to visit a friend. He went there by bus. When he got to the town, he saw a bookshop not far from the bus stop. As it was early, he decided to go in and have a look. There were many books in the shop. He was very happy that all the books in the shop were written by him. “Where are other writer’s books?” he asked the man in the shop. The man looked up at him and answered. “Oh, they are all sold out.”
1. Mr. Brown was a ______.| A．teacher | B．doctor |
| C．writer | D．farmer |
| A．visit his friend | B．sell his books |
| C．have a holiday | D．buy a present |
| A．the man in the shop only liked his books |
| B．the man in the shop was Mr. Brown’s friend |
| C．his books were better than the other writer’s |
| D．the other’s book were all sold out |
【推荐2】It's never been easier to find vacant(空缺的）jobs or to apply for them nowadays.“With technology,it's much easier,”says Dennis Masel,chief operating officer of a US staffing agency.Mr. Masel says PDF files,mobile devices and fast Internet have changed the way he works.“I used to personally send my resumes (简历) to a client's(客户) office,”he says.“Now I can send an application to a client within seconds via the Internet.”
Some companies have developed their own mobile apps to simplify the process.Job seekers can post their resumes online and apply for posts with a single mouse click.And it is not only computers but also mobile phones.However, some employers do not trace the applications they receive.It results in candidates becoming disillusioned and less unlikely to get new jobs. Dennis Masel says three steps can help you stand out.
First,he advises candidates to reach out to online networking connections at the company where you want to work.“By making a personal connection,you could essentially make your application stand out and get noticed by people.”
Second, he says,you must react quickly when you see a job you want.“For every position that you are interested in,you have to imagine that thousands of jobseekers are all coming after the same position.You have to be quick.Sometimes positions are filled within the span of hours.”
Third,use email notices on job listing sites and choose to get only the ones you want.
“I absolutely love email notices because I can get exactly the jobs that interest me, and it's really easy for me to basically in,”he says.“Put keywords in,such as the location you want to search and your experience,and get exactly what you want.”
1. According to Para.1, people now change the way they work NOT because of .| A．fast Internet | B．PDF files |
| C．resume | D．technology |
| A．hopeless | B．encouraged |
| C．anxious | D．interested |
| A．Every position is filled within the span of hours. |
| B．Email notices will play important roles in job hunting. |
| C．Mobile phones will take the place of computers in job seeking. |
| D．Employers do not acknowledge the applications they receive online. |
| A．highlight the stress of job hunting |
| B．analyze the cause of failure in job hunting |
| C．introduce some currently popular hi-tech tools |
| D．offer readers some useful advice about job hunting |
【推荐3】On a windy day in early March, Fabiano Caruana decides to get away. He drives three hours west from his St. Louis apartment to a 2,000-acre field in the countryside of Missouri owned by a friend.
At 7:30 the next morning, he heads out for an hour-long run with his training partner, Cristian Chirila. As he's jogging, it’s easy to mistake him for a soccer player. He has a packed schedule for the day: a five-mile run, an hour of tennis, half an hour of basketball, and an hour of swimming.
But Caruana is, in fact, an American grandmaster in chess, the number two player in the world. His training partner, Chirila? A Romanian grandmaster. And they're doing it all to prepare for the physical demands of …chess? Yes, chess.
It seems to make no sense. How could two humans-seated for hours, with no greater manner than off and on extending their arms a foot at a time-face physical demands?
In October 2018, Polar, a U. S. based company that tracks heart rates, monitored chess players during a tournament and found that 21-year-old Russian grandmaster Mikhail Antipov had burned 560 calories in two hours-roughly what Roger Federer bums in an hour of tennis.
Grandmasters in competition are subjected to constant stress. That causes their heart and breathing rates to increase, which forces their bodies to produce energy.
Meanwhile, players eat less during tournaments, simply because they don't have the time or the appetite. Stress also leads to disturbed sleep patterns, which in turn cause more tiredness and can lead to more weight loss. A brain operating on less sleep, even just one hour, requires more energy to stay awake during the chess game.
It all combines to produce an average weight loss of 2 pounds a day, or about 10 to 12 pounds over the course of a ten-day tournament.
To fight against the stress, some players have begun to adopt strict food and fitness methods to increase oxygen supply to the brain during tournaments, prevent sugar-related crashes, and sustain their energy. " Physical fitness and brain performance are tied together, M Ashley says, a grandmaster and commentator(解说员).
So back in Missouri, Caruana and Chirila hole up in the dining room for six hours of chess. Afterward, Caruana looks tired. Still, he grabs a handful of nuts and heads out for a final hour of tennis before dinner.
After dinner, he passes on the chocolate pudding pie. “No dessert for me today”, he says. Last year, Caruana gave up alcohol before the world championship. This time, he has chosen sugar. In his mind, Caruana knows what he has to do: he just needs his body to hold up.
1. What do we know about chess players?| A．They eat dessert for energy during the competition. |
| B．They all have physical training during the tournament. |
| C．Disturbed sleep patterns are common among chess players. |
| D．Playing chess is physically demanding for chess players. |
| A．Clever and strong. | B．Humorous and knowledgeable. |
| C．Determined and ambitious. | D．Straight and honest. |
| A．Having little appetite. | B．B. Giving up alcohol. |
| C．Sleeping worse. | D．Competing under pressure. |
| A．Train Like a Master | B．A Day with a Packed Schedule |
| C．Physical Training Your Choice | D．Get Tied Together |
【推荐1】I was born and raised in England in a culture where privacy and “keeping yourself to yourself”were valued traditions. Speaking to strangers was not encouraged. People were most hospitable (好客的) and friendly — but only once they had been introduced to new people.
However, I have been lucky enough to spend some time in both Italy and the US, where I found traditions of hospitality and politeness to be very different.
I experienced Italian hospitality first-hand on a crowded railway carriage traveling, one afternoon, from Genoa to Florence. Sinking gratefully into an empty seat, I was berated (斥责) in rapid Italian by a gentleman who was returning to this seat — it had not been “spare” after all. I apologized in English, and got up to allow him back into the seat. The gentleman obviously had no understanding of the English language, but he, too, realized my genuine mistake. He smiled and gestured for me to remain in the seat, and he himself remained standing in the corridor for the rest of the journey. The other passengers of the carriage smiled and nodded at me and made me feel quite welcome amongst them. I feel that if this had been in England, a foreigner who made a mistake would not always be so kindly treated.
Transport was also obvious in the differences I noticed between English and American culture. I flew to New York on a plane with mainly English passengers. We sat together in near silence. Nobody spoke to me nor, as I expected, to anyone else they did not know. They felt it was not polite to disturb someone else’s privacy. However, when I traveled across the United States, whether by plane or Greyhound bus, I was never short of conversation. Conversation was going on all around me and whoever sat next to me was happy to introduce themselves and ask me about myself. They obviously felt it would have been rude not to speak to another person, whether they were strangers or not.
1. What do we know about the passengers of the carriage when the author was travelling in Italy?| A．They were all on the side of the gentleman. |
| B．They all laughed at the author for this mistake . |
| C．They all showed their understanding of the author’s mistake. |
| D．They would not bear a mistake like the author’s in public. |
| A．they were too tired to speak |
| B．they were all strangers to each other |
| C．everybody had their own share of privacy |
| D．privacy was a valued tradition in England |
| A．his traveling experience |
| B．how to adapt ourselves to a new culture |
| C．the culture shock he experienced in Italy and the US |
| D．cultural differences in hospitality and politeness |
【推荐2】Some people think if you are happy, you are blind to reality. But when we research it, happiness actually raises every single business and educational outcome for the brain. How did we miss this? Why do we have these social misunderstandings about happiness? Because we assumed you were average. When we study people, scientists are often interested in what the average is.
Many people think happiness is genetic. That’s only half the story, because the average person does not fight their genes. When we stop studying the average and begin researching positive outliers -- people who are above average for a positive aspect like optimism or intelligence -- a wildly different picture appears. Our daily decisions and habits have a huge impact upon both our levels of happiness and success.
Scientifically, happiness is a choice. It is a choice about where your single processor brain will devote its limited resources as you process the world. If you scan for the negative first, your brain really has no resources left over to see the things you are grateful for or the meaning embedded(嵌入) in your work. But if you scan the world for the positive, you start to acquire an amazing advantage.
I wrote the cover story for the Harvard Business Review magazine on “Happiness Leads to Profits”. Based on my article called “Positive Intelligence” and my research in The Happiness Advantage, I summarized our researched conclusion: the single greatest advantage in the modern economy is a happy and busy workforce.
A decade of research in the business world proves that happiness raises nearly every business and educational outcome: increasing sales by 37%, productivity by 31%, and accuracy on tasks by 19%, as well as a number of health and quality-of-life improvements.
1. The underlined word “this” in the first paragraph refers to ________.| A．the fact that people are happy |
| B．the connection between happiness and educational outcome |
| C．the fact that people often misunderstand happiness |
| D．the fact that most people are average |
| A．Scientists are only interested in what the average is. |
| B．You can choose to be happy or not. |
| C．The average are not happy at all. |
| D．Our decisions and habits have nothing to do with happiness. |
| A．To advertise himself. |
| B．To arouse the readers’ interest. |
| C．To support his point about happiness. |
| D．To attract the readers to read his articles. |
| A．To describe the misunderstandings about happiness. |
| B．To show people the importance of happiness. |
| C．To make the point of what business and educational outcome lies in. |
| D．To make the point that happiness promotes business and educational outcome. |
【推荐3】Some people think that success is only for those with talent or those who grow up in the right family, and others believe that success mostly comes down to luck. I’m not going to say luck, talent, and circumstances don’t come into play because they do. Some people are born into the right family while others are born with great intelligence, and that’s just the reality of how life is.
However, to succeed in life, one first needs to set a goal and then gradually make it more practical. And, in addition to that, in order to get really good at something, one needs to spend at least 10,000 hours studying and practicing. To become great at certain things, it’ll require even more time, time that most people won’t put in.
This is a big reason why many successful people advise you to do something you love. If you don’t enjoy what you do, it is going to feel like unbearable pain and will likely make you quit well before you ever become good at it.
When you see people exhibiting some great skills or having achieved great success, you know that they have put in a huge part of their life to get there at a huge cost. It’s sometimes easy to think they got lucky or they were born with some rare talent, but thinking that way does you no good, and there’s a huge chance that you’re wrong anyway.
Whatever you do, if you want to become great at it, you need to work day in and day out, almost to the point of addiction, and over a long period of time. If you’re not willing to put in the time and work, don’t expect to receive any rewards. Consistent, hard work won’t guarantee you the level of success you may want, but it will guarantee that you will become really good at whatever it is you put all that work into.
1. Paragraph 1 mainly talks about ________.| A．the meaning of success |
| B．the reasons for success |
| C．the standards of success |
| D．the importance of success |
| A．work makes one feel pain |
| B．one tends to enjoy his work |
| C．it takes a lot of time to succeed |
| D．one gives up his work easily |
| A．People sometimes succeed without luck or talent. |
| B．Successful people like to show their great skills. |
| C．People need to achieve success at the cost of life. |
| D．It helps to think that luck or talent leads to success. |
| A．Having a goal is vital to success. |
| B．Being good is different from being great. |
| C．Luck, talent and family help to achieve success. |
| D．One cannot succeed without time and practice. |
【推荐1】April Fool’s Day and Easter Sunday rarely coincide. Since 1900, Easter has fallen on April Fools’ Day for only five times--1923,1934, 1945, 1956 and 2018. Obviously, it's a once-in-a-lifetime chance to play Easter-themed pranks on your children. Here are some suggestions.
A treasure hunt with a twist
A fantastic Easter Sunday tradition is to do a treasure hunt where the Easter Bunny has left eggs around your house. Each egg has a small written clue or riddle (谜语)directing the children to where they can find the next one. But when April Fools' Day and Easter Sunday coincide, why not leave some carrots in their place, instead of hiding chocolate eggs ?On the third or fourth clue, you can make it appear as if the Faster Bunny has left a note apologizing for eating all the chocolate but saying they hope you enjoy this left-behind lunch.
An Easter basket with a difference
Prepare an Easter basket for the children, and either wrap it up or cover it up so that the contents can’t be seen. Have a card from the Easter Bunny next to it which they can open first, with a message that the Easter Bunny wants them to have an extra special Easter and so has prepared a special gift for them. But rather than chocolate or sweets, what you've put in the basket is incredibly dull stuff that kids will be completely unimpressed by---new toothpaste, some socks or a packet of batteries.
A sticky situation
“You' ll need to prepare this in advance. Buy some of the plastic eggs that contain toys. Unwrap them, open them and then carefully glue them shut and re-wrap them. You don't have to be too tidy---your children are going to be thinking about getting to the toy and are not going to be suspicious. Sit back and enjoy them trying and failing to open the eggs.
The invisible Easter egg hunt
This is an excellent plan if you have a garden. Tell the children there is an Faster egg hunt in the garden and lead them there.Close the back door. Let your children spend ages searching fruitlessly for Easter eggs that you haven't actually hidden. After you have enjoyed a rare ten minutes of peace and quiet indoors, while they get increasingly confused and frustrated, go into the garden claiming to have found a note from the Easter Bunny. The note reads "April Fool."
1. The target readers of this passage are ________| A．Schoolchildren | B．head teachers in schools |
| C．children who have younger siblings | D．parents of young children |
| A．A treasure hunt with a twist | B．An Easter basket with a difference |
| C．A sticky situation | D．The invisible Easter egg hunt |
| A．A treasure hunt for carrots is an Easter tradition |
| B．April Fools Day and Easter Sunday coincide every 11 years |
| C．Children are usually disappointed at gifts like socks and batteries |
| D．All of the four recommended pranks require extensive preparations |
【推荐2】Tourism probably started in Roman times. Rich Romans visited friends and family who were working in another part of the Roman Empire. But when the empire broke down, this kind of tourism stopped.
In the early 17th century, the idea of the "Grand Tour" was born. Rich young English people sailed across the English Channel（英吉利海峡）. They visited the most beautiful and important European cities of the time, including Paris in France, and Rome and Venice（威尼斯） in Italy. Their tours lasted for two to four years, and the tourists stayed a few weeks or months in each city. The "Grand Tour" was an important part of young people's education—but only for the rich.
In the 18th century, tourism began to change. For example, people in the UK started to visit some towns, such as Bath to "take the waters". They believed that the water there was good for their health. So large and expensive hotels were built in these towns.
In the 19th century, travel became much more popular and faster. When the first railways were built in the 1820s, it was easier for people to travel between towns, so they started to go for holidays by the sea. And some started to have holidays in the countryside as cities became larger, noisier and dirtier. Traveling by sea also became faster and safer when the first steamships were built. People began to travel more to faraway countries. The 20th century saw cars become more and more popular among ordinary people. Planes were made larger, so ticket prices dropped and more people used them.
Thus tourism grew. In 1949, Russian journalist Vladimir Raitz started a company called Horizon Holidays. The company organizes everything—plane tickets, hotel rooms, even food and tourists pay for it all before they leave home. The package tour（跟团游）and modern tourist industry was born.
The first travel agency（旅行社）in China was set up as early as 1949. But tourism did not take off until 1978. In 2002, the industry was worth 500 billion yuan and became an important part of China's social development.
1. Modern tourism was born___________.| A．in Roman times | B．in 1949 |
| C．in the early 17th century | D．in the 19th century |
| A．Transportation | B．Education |
| C．The first travel agency | D．People' s ideas |
| A．a plane rising into the air |
| B．develop very fast |
| C．remove hats and clothes |
| D．bring down the prices |
One important variable affecting communication across cultures is destiny（命运）and personal responsibility. This refers to the degree to which we feel ourselves the masters of our lives, contrary to the degree to which we see ourselves as subject to things outside our control. Another way to look at this is to ask how much we see ourselves able to change and act, to choose the course of our lives and relationships. Some have drawn a parallel between the personal responsibility in North American settings and the view itself. The North American view is vast, with large spaces of unpopulated land. The frontier attitude of “King” of the wilderness, and the expansiveness of the land reaching huge distances, may relate to generally high levels of confidence in the ability to shape and choose our destinies.
In this expansive land, many children grow up with a heroic sense of life, where ideas are big, and hope springs forever. When they experience temporary failures, they encouraged to redouble their efforts, to “try, try again.” Action, efficiency（效率）, and achievement are valued and expected. Free will is respected in laws and enforced by courts.
Now consider places in the world with much smaller land, whose history reflects wars and tough struggles: Northern Ireland, Mexico, Israel, Palestine. In these places, destiny’s role is more important in human life. In Mexico, there is a history of hard life, fighting over land, and loss of homes. Mexicans are more likely to see struggles as part of their life and unavoidable. Their passive attitude is expr4essed in their way of responding to failure or accident by saying “ni modo”(“no way” or “tough lick”), meaning that the failure was destined.
This variable is important to understanding cultural conflict. If someone believing in free will crosses paths with someone more passive, miscommunication is likely. The first person may expect action and accountability. Failing to see it, he may conclude that the second is lazy, not cooperative, or dishonest. The second person will expect respect for the natural order of thins. Failing to see it, he may conclude that the first is forcible, rude, or big headed in his ideas of what can be accomplished or changed.
1. The author thinks that one’s character is partly determined by .
| A．physical senses | B．general attitude |
| C．financial background | D．geographic characteristics |
| A．impractical | B．dishonest | C．ambitious | D．hesitant |
| A．a topic of a discussion | B．a branch of knowledge |
| C．a person being experimented on | D．a person under the power of others |
| A．vast land may lead to a more controllable desire |
| B．heroic sense of life roots deeply in a small country |
| C．living in limited space contributes to an accepting attitude |
| D．fighting over land may help people gain high levels of confidence |
