People often talk about cultural differences between western and eastern countries, but how about the western world itself? Surprisingly, a closer look at it can reveal a good many curious details.
The most obvious characteristic of the majority of Americans is that they smile a lot. It does not matter whether they have a strong reason to smile；they do it，sometimes simply because they have to. A smile is not just a powerful marketing tool but also a way to show that someone is friendly，and that life in general is fine. Europeans, on the contrary(相反), prefer to keep a more neutral(不带感情色彩的)facial expression. They smile mostly when they are in a good mood，or feel amused；if not, a European's face will remain neutral, or even dull. In Russia, for example, there is a proverb saying that laughing for no reason is a sign of a fool. It does not mean that Europeans are serious, or that they do not have a sense of humor.
The same refers to communication in general. Americans are extremely communicative;small talks and chats are common. Europeans talk mostly when there is something to say, and rarely enter communication just for the purpose of talking to other people. American people prefer to express what they think carefully, considering how it might affect surrounding people. Europeans are more straightforward, even with unfamiliar people. A European friend will almost always voice his opinion on different occasions, and will not hesitate to remind you that you need to lose some weight or take a shower.
It can be said that Americans are people of contrasts. They are openminded, flexible, and ready to accept everything new enthusiastically; but at the same time, American society manages to bring up unbelievable conservatives(保守者). Americans are extremely politically correct, which, in most cases, is indeed a secure and beneficial practice, but it can also mess up daily or even private communication, sometimes preventing having close relationships. Europeans, on the contrary, are more straightforward, preferring to tell the truth in direct ways. Each way of communication is different — neither is correct or incorrect.
1. What does the author say about smiling?| A．It is a powerful marketing tool across cultures. |
| B．It is culturerelated within western countries. |
| C．It is thought of as a sign of a fool in America. |
| D．It is regarded as a social necessity in Europe. |
| A．Beating around the bush. | B．Hiding their feelings carefully. |
| C．Expressing themselves openly. | D．Having small talks and chats. |
| A．Being politically correct. |
| B．Being straightforward. |
| C．Accepting everything new. |
| D．Raising unbelievable conservatives. |
| A．By making comparisons. | B．By analyzing cause and effect. |
| C．By classifying body language. | D．By discussing research findings. |
| A．Ways of communication in American society. |
| B．Ways of communication in European society. |
| C．The differences between Americans and Europeans. |
| D．Cultural differences in Western countries. |
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【推荐1】Young sunflowers turn and swing every day. New findings add to evidence that the plants are animal-like.
Harmer, a professor in the University of California at Davis’ Department of Plant Biology, carried out a series of experiments on sunflowers in the field, in pots outdoors and in indoor growth chambers.
By staking plants so that they could not move, Harmer showed that he could destroy their ability to track the sun. He also noticed that sunflowers prevented from moving were not as tough and leafy as those that were free to move. When plants were moved indoor with a settled overhead light, they continued to swing back and forth for a few days.
The indoor plants did start tracking the “sun” again when the apparent source of lighting was moved across the room. The plants could reliably track the movement and return at night when the artificial day was close to a 24-hour cycle, but not when it was closer to 30 hours.
When sunflowers track the sun, the cast sides of their stems grew more rapidly than the west sides. Ai night, the west sides grew faster as the stem swung the other way. The team identified a number of genes that were expressed at higher levels on the sunward side of the plant during the day, or on the other side at night. A plant growth-regulating hormone, called auxin, appears to be a key driver.
The “dance” to the sun cycle obviously slows when the sunflower matures and its flowers open up. At that point, the plants stop moving during the day and settle down facing the sun in the east.
“Bees like warm flowers.” Harmer said, adding that the bees are cold-blooded, so landing on a warm flower saves them energy and perhaps feels really good.
“The morning warmth changes the flowers in a way to make them more appealing to insects, perhaps causing them to release more attractive scents earlier in the day.” he said. “We’re currently testing this idea.”
1. Why did Harmer do the experiment on sunflowers?| A．To see how sunflowers grow up. |
| B．To show what sunflowers’ genes are. |
| C．To study why sunflowers track the sun. |
| D．To check if sunflowers swing in cloudy days. |
| A．Tracking. | B．Fastening. |
| C．Preserving. | D．Researching. |
| A．They won’t grow well. |
| B．They will grow faster than usual. |
| C．They won’t swing back though set free. |
| D．They will produce a number of new genes. |
| A．They attract more insects. | B．They save more energy. |
| C．They mature more rapidly. | D．They produce more flowers. |
【推荐2】In 2013 Tallinn(爱沙尼亚首都塔林) became the world’s first capital city to offer people free public transport. Last year Estonia(爱沙尼亚) set the aim to become the first country with free public transport nationwide. Buses are now free of charge in 11 of its 15 counties.
Tallinn’s city government came up with the idea of free transport in 2008. Even though the city paid more than 70% of public-transport costs, ticket prices were still too high for poorer people. Crowdedness had also become a problem. Since 1991, the number of people owning cars has doubled.
Opponents(反对者) thought the idea unaffordable and critics(批评者) predicted the transport system would become overcrowded and lack money.
Surprisingly, public transport has improved, despite a €12 million hit to the system’s finances from lost ticket sales. Tallinn’s population has grown, leading to an increase in local tax intake. Additional revenu(财政收入) comes from tourists, who still have to buy tickets. The use of public transport in Tallinn has gone up by 10%, while the number of cars in the city has gone down by 10%, meaning less congestion.
Now other countries are looking at Estonia’s experience. Tallinn officials say they have had interest from France, Sweden, Poland, Italy and Germany. Other places have already introduced free public transport for certain groups or at certain times. In England 1/3 of all bus trips are fare-free especially for pensioners(领养老金者); Wales runs free travel at weekends to improve tourism. But so far full fare-free travel is rare. The city of Hasselt in Belgium ran free public transport for 16 years before reintroducing fares because of increasing costs.
1. Which of the following places offers full fare-free public transport?| A．Hasselt | B．Estonia | C．Wales | D．Tallinn |
| A．The government wouldn’t have enough money to carry it out. |
| B．It wouldn’t help with the city’s over crowdedness. |
| C．It would lead to the heavy loss from ticket sales. |
| D．Years later the city would reintroduce fares from people. |
| A．pollution | B．population | C．crowdedness | D．income |
| A．It offers more job opportunities for people. |
| B．It helps to solve the traffic problem in cities. |
| C．It encourages people to stop driving. |
| D．It attracts more tourists to take buses. |
【推荐3】The twilight (朦胧的) time between full wakefulness and being sound asleep may be packed with creative potential. Rumor has it that Thomas Edison, the famous inventor, used to prefer such moments between wakefulness and sleep. Supposedly, he used to fall asleep in a chair holding two steel balls. As he fell asleep, the balls fell into metal pans. The resulting sound woke him. Then, he could write down his inventive ideas before he fell into a deep sleep and forgot them.
Researchers tested Edison’s method of developing creativity with 103 healthy people. Volunteers came to the lab to solve a tricky number problem. After doing the task 60 times, they earned a 20-minute break in a quiet, dark room. They relaxed in chairs, each holding a light drinking bottle, something like the steel balls that Edison used. Participants were told to close their eyes and rest or sleep if they desired. Meanwhile, machines monitored their brain waves. About half of the participants stayed awake. Twenty-four fell asleep and stayed in the shallow short stage of sleep called N1. Fourteen others progressed to N2, a deeper stage of sleep.
After their rest, participants returned to their number problem. The researchers saw a clear difference between the groups. People with a shallow early sleep were 2.7 times as likely to spot the hidden trick as people who stayed awake. Shallow sleepers were 5.8 times as likely to spot the trick as people who reached the deeper N2 stage.
Such differences in such experiments are rare, says Delphine Oudiette, a cognitive neuroscientist. “The results raise an interesting possibility. It may help people to learn to reach that twilight stage of sleep on demand. It seems Edison was onto something about the creative powers of nodding off. But don’t put too much faith in his habits. He also is said to have considered sleep ‘a criminal waste of time’.”
1. Why is Thomas Edison mentioned in paragraph 1?| A．To imply the inspiration of the study. | B．To explain how habits can help. |
| C．To support the idea theoretically. | D．To lay scientific basis of the study. |
| A．It belonged to Thomas Edison. | B．It was made of a kind of steel. |
| C．It may serve as an alarm o'clock. | D．It was in the shape of a metal pan. |
| A．Being awake is as creative as being asleep. |
| B．Wakefulness differs from sleep in many aspects. |
| C．Being asleep is more productive than wakefulness. |
| D．Shallow sleepers may be better problem solvers later. |
| A．Ridiculous. | B．Doubtful. | C．Realistic. | D．Useful. |
【推荐1】In the film Inside Out, 11-year-old Riley’s emotions are personified as brightly colored internal figures that drive her behaviors. The same five emotions—anger, fear, disgust (憎恶), sadness, and joy—appear in every other character’s head as well, functioning in much the same way in each individual. In Western cultures, this is the case, argues psychologist Batja Mesquita in Between Us. Emotions in such contexts, she writes, are considered “MINE,” or “Mental, INside the person, and Essentialist,” the latter defined in the book as always having the same properties.
This conception of emotion is not universal, however. Emotions elsewhere, she argues, are thought of as “OURS”—“OUtside the person, Relational, and Situated.” Using this distinction, Mesquita sets about contrasting emotions in “the West,” where the individual is the top concern, with “the Rest,” where community is prioritized.
Mesquita describes amae as a central emotion in Japanese culture, where it builds interdependence by encouraging tolerance in parenting process. She describes hasham—which includes shame, embarrassment, and social respectability—as a fundamental emotion for Egyptian Bedouins (游牧人). Such observations provide a background for her to explore a range of issues, including childhood socialization, the nature of friendship, the role of language in shaping emotions, and cross-cultural communication in a globalized world.
Despite Mesquita’s emphasis on cross-cultural emotions, there is little discussion of whether the MINE-OURS dichotomy (二分法) accurately explains global cultural variation. Other scholars have noted, for example, that hunter-gatherer societies at the same time emphasize both individual self-government and social cooperation. And in an apparent contradiction to her earlier arguments, Mesquita herself ultimately concludes that Westerners have OURS emotions.
Taken as a whole, however, the book contributes much to the discussion of the origins of emotions, presenting a remarkable collection of cross-cultural studies intermixed with personal stories about foreign residents’ struggles to reunite diverse emotional and social worlds. In chapter 8, for example, Mesquita describes an incident where she—a Dutch native living in the United States—bumped into the famous American psychologist Hazel Markus at a conference Markus helped organize. Wishing to express understanding of Markus’s workload, Mesquita declared “You look a little tired.” The remark appeared to make Markus nervous and confused but was intended as an expression of sympathy—to sympathize in Dutch is to acknowledge suffering, not offer comfort as in the US.
The book’s take-home message is fundamental: There are no natural emotions, no inborn emotions, no universal emotions. Mesquita argues that emotions are “meaning making” and “a preparation for action” and that the idea of “emotions as inner states” is a Western construct. Instead, she suggests that emotions are a “dance” cocreated between people who live in a specific cultural context at a particular historical moment.
1. In Between Us, Mesquita indicates that ______.| A．the Japanese build kids’ emotion of shame in parenting |
| B．MINE-OURS dichotomy is the very cause of cross-cultural emotions |
| C．emotions outside “the West” are considered community-centred |
| D．hunter-gatherers have both emotions of “OURS” and “MINE” |
| A．the emotion of sympathy is to offer help in Dutch culture |
| B．foreign residents from different cultures usually unite as one |
| C．as Dutch Mesquita shows her personality of warmth and caring |
| D．cross-cultural emotional exchanges probably cause misunderstanding |
| A．Family education hardly influences one’s emotions. |
| B．Sociocultural contexts largely contribute to emotions. |
| C．Western people’s emotions have no properties of OURS. |
| D．Internal factors play a vital role in shaping how we feel. |
| A．The cultural landscape of emotions | B．The cultural origin of emotions |
| C．The cultural convention of emotions | D．The cultural shock of emotions |
【推荐2】How Sociologists Define Culture
Sociologists recognize that culture plays a crucial role in our social lives. It is important for shaping social relationships, maintaining social order, and in shaping our actions and experiences in society.
In brief, sociologists define the non-material aspects of culture as the values and beliefs, language and practices that are shared in common. Expanding on these categories, culture is made up of our knowledge, common sense, the norms and morals; the symbols we use to express meaning and ideas.
Sociologists see the two sides of culture — the material and non-material — as closely connected. Material culture emerges from the non-material aspects.
| A．Material culture is composed of the things that humans make and use. |
| B．This is why cultural products tend to follow patterns. |
| C．Without culture, we would not have relationships or society. |
| D．Culture is also what we do and how we behave and perform. |
| E．In other words, what we value and believe influences the things that we make. |
| F．Culture is distinct from social structure and economic aspects of society. |
| G．It is composed of both non-material and material things. |
【推荐3】In the Arab world, a souk is a market usually held in an open-air location. Souks are an important part of life in the Middle East.
Most major souks probably started as informal meetings of merchants (商人) in open spaces, which slowly developed into more formal markets.
Everything from glassware to meat can be found at a souk,with merchants coming from nearby areas to sell their products.
If you happen to be traveling in the Middle East, just pay a visit to a souk. Some regions have famous markets with a long and interesting history, and a souk is a great place to get souvenirs. You can find a local guide for your visit to ensure that you know local cultural rules well.
| A．Europeans prefer to pay the list price. |
| B．Many countries in the Middle East have long artistic traditions. |
| C．That will certainly allow you a more enjoyable day at the market. |
| D．People may be shocked at the long process of making a deal at souks. |
| E．There are many cultural differences between the West and the Middle East. |
| F．Nowadays, souks make special designs to create a customer-friendly environment. |
| G．Many visitors to the Middle Eastern countries enjoy going to souks to buy great goods. |
