It may help you to know that there is no such thing as a perfect speech. At some point in every speech, every speaker says something that is not understood exactly as he has planned. Fortunately, such moments are usually not obvious to the listeners, why? Because the listeners do not know what the speaker plans to say, they hear only what the speaker does say. If you lose your place for a moment, wrongly change the order of a couple of sentences, or forget to pause at a certain point, no one will be any the wiser. When such moments occur, don’t worry about them. Just continue as if nothing happened.
Even if you do make an obvious mistake during a speech, that doesn’t really matter. If you have ever listened to Martin Luther King’s famous speech — “I have a dream”, you may notice that he stumbles over his words twice during the speech. Most likely, however, you don’t remember. Why? Because you were fixing your attention on his message rather than on his way of speech-making. People care a lot about making mistakes in a speech because they regard speech-making as a kind of performance rather than as an act of communication. They feel the listeners are like judges in an ice-skating competition. But, in fact, the listeners are not looking for a perfect performance. They are looking for a well-thought-out speech that expresses the speaker’s ideas clearly and directly. Sometimes a mistake or two can actually increase a speaker’s attractiveness by making him more human.
As you work on your speech, don’t worry about being perfect. Once you free your mind of this, you will find it much easier to give your speech freely.
1. You don’t remember obvious mistakes in a speech because ________.| A．you find the way of speech-making more important |
| B．you don’t fully understand the speech |
| C．you attention is on the content |
| D．you don’t know what the speaker plans to say |
| A．Walks wrongly. | B．Makes an error with. |
| C．Misunderstands. | D．Forgets. |
| A．one or two mistakes in a speech may not be bad |
| B．giving a speech is like giving a performance |
| C．the listeners should pay more attention to how a speech is made |
| D．the more mistake a speaker makes, the more attractive he will be |
| A．If you are careful enough, you can make a perfect speech. |
| B．Listeners are not judges and they pay more attention to the message. |
| C．Speech-making is a kind of performance. |
| D．Martin Luther King is not a good speaker. |
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【推荐1】Whenever we make a choice, whether it’s as big as getting married or as small as an argument with a friend, we are driven by our values. Values tend to be single-word concepts like freedom, equality, selflessness, honesty.
One way to recognize the values by which you live is look at how you spend your money.
Pay attention to who you talk to, what you watch, and what you do with your time.
Values make it easier for you to surround yourself with the right people, make tough career choices, use your time more wisely, and focus your attention where it really matters to you.
| A．All of these push values and beliefs. |
| B．Is your precious time wasted or well spent? |
| C．Your bills actually reflect what matters most to you. |
| D．That might sound rather abstract, but these values are really practical. |
| E．Who you surround yourself with helps you stick to your values and achieve your goals. |
| F．Without them we are swept away by outside voice instead of following our inner voice. |
| G．When we drive through a new area, we wander aimlessly if we don’t know the directions. |
【推荐2】Defining Success on Your Own Terms
“You go to college right out of high school. That’s the rule, right?” says Nikki Ivey, a sales trainer and consultant outside Jacksonville, Fla, However, it’s not the case for her. Actually, she got her undergraduate degree at 28.
One by one, she missed the milestones she’d envisioned in some imaginary dream life: earning six figures by 30, buying a house by 35. Then she hit one- attaining a high-level executive position in a company. She didn’t love the job. She did love sitting around the dinner table laughing with her kids. “
Danielle Ponder had a career as a lawyer before dedicating herself to singing full time. Working as a public defender in Rochester, NY, Danielle Ponder would frequently Google,“Did anyone make it after the age of 35? At one point, she quit her day job, only to return a year and a half later, due to the pandemic and disappointing bookings. On the last day of 2021, five days before her 40 birthday, she tried again.
It can be hard to make a transition later in life.
| A．Do I even want them? On whose clock? |
| B．Why should you challenge that secret timeline of milestones in your head? |
| C．This time, quitting her job led to her first album, television appearances and sold-out shows. |
| D．Instead of feeling pressure to hit life events on someone else’s timeline, maybe it’s fine to make our own. |
| E．People are felling like they’re falling behind, when in fact they’re probably doing exactly what they should. |
| F．She spent years feeling like an outsider and failure as she watched her peers rise in school and work, figuring she’d never catch up. |
【推荐3】Smiling is a great way to make yourself stand out while helping your body to function better. It is just one fun way to live longer, read about the others and try as many as you can.
1. Smiling makes us attractive
2.
Stress can really show up in our faces, while smiling helps to prevent us from looking tired, worn down, and overwhelmed. When you are stressed, it is of great significance to take time to put on a smile, which can trick the body into helping you change your mood. The stress should be reduced and you’ll be better able to take action.
3. Smiling Lowers Your Blood Pressure
When you smile, there is a measurable reduction in your blood pressure.
4. Smiling Makes You Seem Successful
Smiling people appear more confident, are more likely to be promoted, and more likely to be approached.
Next time you are feeling down, try putting on a smile. There's a good chance your mood will change for the better.
| A．The muscles we use to smile lift the face, making a person appear younger. |
| B．Smiling Relieves Stress |
| C．Here are some reasons to keep smiling in your daily life. |
| D．Give it a try if you have a blood pressure monitor at home. |
| E．Put on a smile at meetings and appointments and people will react to you differently. |
| F．When we smile our body is sending the rest of us a message that "Life is Good !" |
| G．We are drawn to people who smile. |
【推荐1】A powerful magnitude 7.1 earthquake struck southern California on July 5, 2019. This event was widely felt.
Earthquakes are also called temblors.
Scientists give a magnitude rating to earthquakes based on the strength and duration of their seismic (地震的) waves. A magnitude of 3 to 4.9 is considered minor or light; 5 to 6.9 is moderate (中等的) to strong; 7 to 7.9 is major; and 8 or more is great.
| A．It is called the “Ring of Fire”. |
| B．They can cause huge damage. |
| C．Protect yourself as quickly as possible. |
| D．In fact, a magnitude 8 quake strikes somewhere every year. |
| E．One important way is to try to make your home as safe as possible. |
| F．However,the loss of life can be avoided through planning and education. |
| G．It caused several fires and damage to buildings and roads in Ridgecrest and nearby. |
【推荐2】When early humans killed a mammoth, how did they keep the meat before they could eat it all? We don’t know; maybe they didn’t. But perhaps they preserved their mammoth steaks in salt. However, it is hard to know for sure. We do know for certain that by 3,000 years ago, the Babylonians, Egyptians, and Chinese were all experts at salting. They used salt to preserve food.
For thousands of years, salting was a common way to preserve food. But for a long time, no one knew why salt worked. Then, in the 1800s, a Frenchman named Louis Pasteur discovered the secret: bacteria. What does salt have to do with bacteria? First, bacteria need moisture to grow and multiply. Salt pulls moisture out of food, so the bacteria no longer have enough moisture. Besides, salt is poisonous to many bacteria. If you cover food with salt, bacteria outside the food die before they get in, and bacteria already in the food are poisoned by the salt.
So how do you preserve food with salt? For meat or fish, you pour on a layer of salt, then rub it in well. Hams are often made this way. Another way is to alternate layers of food and salt in a big container. The salt will draw the moisture out of the food, creating a brine that the food sits in. You’ll need to make sure the brine completely covers the food; any food left exposed to the air will spoil. If you preserve cabbage this way, you’ll make sauerkraut.
How well salt preserves food depends on how much is used. The more salt, the longer the food is preserved. Unfortunately, using enough salt to preserve food for a very long time can cause problems. It can make food tough. It can destroy flavor. And, of course, it can make the food too salty to eat, which is harmful to our health.
Today, even though we no longer rely on salt to keep our food fresh, we haven’t lost our taste for salt. We don’t want to give up our bacon, salami, and watermelon pickles!
1. Why are examples of the ancient people mentioned in the first paragraph?| A．To make an introduction to the topic. |
| B．To explain our ancestors were very clever. |
| C．To tell us the ancient people had a lot of food to eat. |
| D．To show the ancient people were good at preserving food. |
| A．If you want to make a ham, you should keep it in a brine. |
| B．If you want to make sauerkraut, you’d better pour on a layer of salt and rub it. |
| C．To keep our food longer, you should put as much salt on the food as possible. |
| D．People needn’t give up salty food completely as long as they control the amount. |
| A．To explain how the ancient people preserve food. |
| B．To tell us how salt works in preserving food. |
| C．To persuade people to give up salty food. |
| D．To introduce the way of preserving food with salt. |
【推荐3】If you’ve studied biology, you’ve probably learned about blood types. Or perhaps you have learned something about blood types from social media.
South Korea is one place where the blood type personality theory catches on. A study released in 2017 suggests that nearly 60%South Koreans believe that blood types serve as an indicator of a person’s personality.
But such theory can also cause discrimination. In the above-mentioned study, about half of the respondents said that they like people with type-O blood the best.
| A．Many factors contribute to your blood type. |
| B．So, what does blood type mean to you personally? |
| C．Meanwhile, only 6%of those surveyed said they like AB-types. |
| D．They have a large social circle but are very easy to get annoyed. |
| E．Or perhaps you think your blood type influences your personality. |
| F．Even those that don’t agree with the concept are familiar with the idea. |
| G．Either way, you’ll know there are four main blood types: A, B, O, and AB. |
【推荐1】If you know someone who is generally ill-tempered, it might please you to know that they're probably not as smart as they think they are. "Anger differs significantly from other negative emotions, such as sadness, anxiety or depression," said Marcin Zajenkowski, a psychologist in Poland. Previous research has shown that anger is an unusual negative emotion, which is often associated with positive qualities, like optimism.
But how anger affects perceived intelligence was unclear. Zajenkowski and his colleague suspected that angry people might be more likely to overestimate how smart they are. To test this, the researchers surveyed more than 520 undergraduate students attending schools in Warsaw. The students answered a series of survey questions to gauge how easily and how often they get angry. Then, the students took a survey to assess their own intelligence before taking an objective intelligence test.
In general, the students with a higher tendency to get angry also overestimated their cognitive abilities, the study found. On the other hand, the students who were more neurotic, a quality that's often associated with anger, generally underestimated their intelligence. Neuroticism refers to negative qualities including unreasonable anxiety and strong upset.
Perhaps not surprisingly, the researchers found that narcissism was a key factor in how people judged how smart they were. The more ill-tempered personalities were associated with "narcissistic illusions," Zajenkowski said.
It's important to note that while the study found that angry people tend to be more narcissistic and overestimate their intelligence, anger was unrelated to actual intelligence level. And, although the researchers found an association between the two qualities, it's unclear whether there's a cause-and-effect relationship between anger and overestimating intelligence. More research is needed to explore that link. And the study didn't test how anger affects perceived intelligence in the heat of the moment. The study assessed anger as a personality quality, but anger is often a temporary emotion. Additional research is needed to find out if people who don't anger easily might be overly confident in their abilities only in the moment when they're upset.
1. From Paragraph 1, we know that anger ________.| A．is hard for people to control |
| B．makes people satisfied with their smartness |
| C．tends to make people overconfident about their brilliance |
| D．has the same influence on people as other negative feelings |
| A．Judge. | B．Explain. | C．Remind. | D．Guess. |
| A．A curious student. | B．A narcissistic customer. |
| C．An anxious manager. | D．A good-tempered teacher. |
| A．The necessity of the study. | B．The limitations of the study. |
| C．The motivation of the study. | D．The significance of the study. |
【推荐2】A new study in which researchers explore the human capacity for cooperation finds that people rely on each other for help.
The study shows that when people signal a need for assistance, their small requests don’t go unanswered. Across cultures, people follow these small requests far more often than they decline them. On the rare occasions when people do decline, they explain why. These human tendencies suggest that, deep down, people from all cultures have many similar cooperative behaviors.
The new findings help solve a puzzle generated by prior research which has emphasized variation in rules and standards governing cooperation. For example, in Kenya, wealthier Orma villagers are expected to pay for public goods such as road projects. Wealthy Gnau villagers of Papua New Guinea, on the other hand, would reject such an offer because it creates an awkward moral duty to return for their poorer neighbors.
“Cultural differences like this have created a puzzle for understanding cooperation and helping among humans,” said Rossi, a chief researcher. “Are our decisions about sharing and helping shaped by the culture we grew up with? Or are humans generous and giving by nature?”
To answer those questions, the researchers analyzed over 40 hours’ video recordings of everyday life involving 350 people in geographically and culturally diverse sites. The analysis focused on the order in which one person sent a signal for help and another person responded. The situations involved “low-cost” decisions about sharing items for everyday use. Such decisions are more frequent than “high-cost” decisions like contributing to a village road’s construction, the types of decisions considered to be significantly influenced by culture.
People followed small requests seven times more often than they declined. They helped without explanation, but when they declined, 74% of the time they gave a specific reason.
“A cross-cultural preference for following small requests is not predicted by prior research on resource-sharing and cooperation, which instead suggests that culture should cause helping behavior to vary in appreciable ways due to local values and adaptations to the natural, technological, and socio-economic environment,” said Rossi. “These factors could in principle make it easier for people to say ‘no’ to small requests, but this is not what we find.”
1. What is included in “These human tendencies” underlined in paragraph 2?| A．To ask for assistance. | B．To aid others on request. |
| C．To return the previous favor. | D．To turn down an offer of help. |
| A．To indieate humans are born generous. | B．To evaluate varied interpersonal bonds. |
| C．To show cultural differences on helping. | D．To reveal the origin of non-cooperation. |
| A．It’s my pleasure. |
| B．I’d love to, but it depends. |
| C．I’m afraid not. Wait till others come. |
| D．Sorry, but I’m to attend an urgent meeting. |
| A．It involved no environmental factors. |
| B．It stressed the value of following requests. |
| C．It failed to prove the universal willingness to help. |
| D．It produced an outcome consistent with the new study. |
【推荐3】A new study proves when their teenagers cut back on social media use, they seem to feel better about themselves. Helen Thai, a doctoral student in psychology at McGill University, conducted the study. She said the research came from her own personal experiences. “I couldn’t help but compare myself when I was using social media, making me unsatisfied with my self-image.” Thai says. Although she was aware that social media posts often presented images that can be unrealistic in real life, it still had a negative impact on her. So, Thai and a team of researchers decided to test whether reduced time on social media would increase self-confidence in body image.
They hired a few hundred volunteers, aged 14-18, all of whom had experienced signs of anxiety or depression, which could make them easier to be affected by social media. Half of the teens were asked to reduce their social media to 60 minutes a day for three weeks. The other half continued to use social media freely, which averaged about three hours per day. The researchers gave the teens surveys at the beginning and end of the study. It included statements such as “I’m pretty happy about the way I look,” and “I am satisfied with my weight.”
Among the group that cut social media use, the overall score on appearance satisfaction improved from 2.95 to 3.15 on a 5 point scale. “This may seem like a small change, but any change in such a short period of time is striking,” the authors say.
“This research showed promising results that weight and appearance confidence can improve when people cut back on social media use,” wrote Thai. Thai says it’s encouraging that teens were willing to cut back screen time, even for three weeks. It’s also worth experimenting this approach with other groups, such as people with or at risk of eating disorders.
1. What inspired Thai to do the research?| A．Her major. | B．Online posts. | C．Her experience. | D．Social pressure. |
| A．Family background. | B．Mental problems. | C．Learning abilities. | D．Body shape. |
| A．It proved their expectation. | B．It made them disappointed. |
| C．It changed their first idea. | D．It needed further study. |
| A．Higher confidence, more image satisfaction | B．Less social media use, less image anxiety |
| C．To be a social media addict or not | D．Social media, love at first sight |
