【推荐1】Discouragement generally occurs when what we think should happen doesn’t come true.     1     However, if properly dealt with, it's part of what makes the human experience rich and helps us become more strong-willed. So the next time we start to feel discouraged, we should:

∙     2     If we do something just in order to get something back, then we are setting ourselves up for discouragement. However, when we don’t need someone else's praise for our actions, then we are truly free to just focus on our work and make it great. When we create great work, we’re happy. Even if we fail in something, we should choose to think of the failure as an education.     3     As a result, we will feel less discouraged.

∙ Go outside and breathe.     4     So if we start to feel down, go outside, feel the fresh air, let the sun hit our face and go for a hike, a walk, a bike ride, a swim, a run, etc. We’ll feel better if we do this.

∙ Going to find someone we can help is a great way to remove discouragement. So go to find someone who needs help, and then help them. When we serve others, and when we go out of our way to help other people in need, we feel better.     5     When we stop thinking about ourselves and, instead, direct our attention to another, we feel better.

A．Focus on our actions.

B．Consider who we are spending time with.

C．It can make us unwilling to do something.

D．If we're just focusing on ourselves, we're likely to feel bad.

E．This will help with any feelings of discouragement we may have.

F．When we view it this way, we realize failure isn't something bad.

G．Fresh air and sunshine can have an amazing effect on our feelings.

【推荐2】Anger is good for you, as lon g as you control it, according to new psychology research. A new study from Carnegie Mellon University shows anger may help people reduce the negative impacts of stress and help you become healthier.
"Here getting emotional is not bad for you if you look at the case of anger," said Jennifer Lerner of Carnegie Mellon. "The more people display anger, the lower their stress responses."
Lerner studied 92 UCLA students by asking them to count back from 6,200. They must say out loud every thirteenth number. Researchers disturbed them by asking them to count faster or ask them other questions. If they made any mistakes, they had   to restart from the very beginning. Many students felt depressed about making so many mistakes or got angry because the researchers were interrupting them.
Lerner used a hidden video camera and recorded all their facial expressions during the test. The researchers describe their reactions as fear, anger and disgust.
Other researchers recorded the students' blood pressure, pulse and production of a high-stress hormone (荷尔蒙) called cortisol. People whose faces showed more fear during th e experiment had higher blood pressure and higher levels of the hormone. Both can have lasting effects such as diabetes (糖尿病), heart disease, depression and extra weight gain.
When people feel fear, negative impacts increase, but when they get angry, those negatives go down, according to the study.
"Having that sense of anger leads people to actually feel some power in what otherwise is maddening (令人发狂的) situation,"
Lerner said. Lerner previously studied Americans' emotional response to the 911 terrorist attacks two months after the incident. She found people who reacted with anger were more optimistic. These people are healthier compared with those who were frightened during the event. So in maddening situations, anger is not a bad thing to have. It's a healthier response than fear.
1. Which statement will Jennifer Lerner agree with?

A．It's better to be angry than to be frightened.

B．Different reactions reflect different outlooks on life.

C．Don't control your anger and it makes you powerful.

D．Pessimistic people are generally healthier than opt imistic people.

2. What does the underlined word "both" refer to according to the passage?

A．Fear and anger.

B．Higher blood pressure and higher levels of the hormone.

C．Blood pressure and pulse.

D．Blood pressure and cortisone.

3. The researchers made the experimented students angry by ______.

A．recording their performance secretly

B．asking them to count to 6,200 again and again

C．disturbing them and making them start all over again

D．criticizing them when they made mistakes

4. In what way can anger be beneficial to people?

A．By showing their optimistic side.

B．By reducing their stress.

C．By reducing high blood pressure.

D．By taking the place of fear.

5. What is the story mainly about?

A．The findings of new psychology research.

B．What you can do with anger in certain cases.

C．Different effects produced by anger and fear.

D．Healthier responses in maddening situations.

【推荐1】A good joke can be the hardest thing to understand when people are studying a foreign language. As a recent article in The Guardian noted, “There’s more to understanding a joke in a foreign language than understanding vocabulary and grammar.”

Being able to understand local jokes is often seen as an unbelievable icebreaker for a language learner eager to form friendships with native speakers. “I always felt that humor was a ceiling that I could never break through,” Hannah Ashley, a public relations account manager in London, who once studied Spanish in Madrid, told The Guardian. “I could never speak to people on the same level as I would speak to a native English speaker. I almost came across as quite a boring person because all I could talk about was facts.”

In fact, most of the time, jokes are only funny for people who share a cultural background or understand humor in the same way. Chinese-American comedian Joe Wong found this out first-hand. He had achieved huge success in the US, but when he returned to China in 2008 for his first live show in Beijing, he discovered that people didn't think his Chinese jokes were as funny as his English ones.

In Australia, meanwhile many foreigners find understanding jokes about sports to be the biggest headache. “The hardest jokes are related to rugby because I know nothing about rugby,” said Melody Cao, who was once a student in Australia. “When I heard jokes I didn’t get, I just laughed along.”

In the other two major English-speaking countries, the sense of humor is also different. British comedian Simon Pegg believes that while British people use irony(反话)——basically, saying something they don’t mean to make a joke—every day, people in the US don't see the point of using it so often. “British jokes tend to be more subtle and dark, while American jokes are more obvious with their meanings, a bit like Americans themselves,” he wrote in The Guardian.

1. It is implied in the noted sentence in Paragraph 1 that __________.

A．making jokes is a possible way for one to learn a foreign language better

B．humor is always conveyed to foreigners through vocabulary and grammar

C．vocabulary and grammar help you understand jokes in a foreign language

D．there tends to be something behind the words of a joke in a foreign language

2. What can we learn about Hannah Ashley?

A．She thought that Spanish people generally did not have much of a sense of humor.

B．She believed that one had better rely on facts when speaking a foreign language.

C．She found that humor was a barrier to her to get along well with Spanish people.

D．She had a better command of Spanish language than English language.

3. Joe Wong is used as an example to ___________.

A．suggest that there are cultural differences in humor

B．show that it’s hard to put jokes into another language

C．prove that local people have different taste in humor

D．show that expressing ability affects the sense of humor

4. From the text we can learn that ___________.

A．jokes about sports are difficult for all foreigners to understand

B．Americans are generally more humorous than British people

C．not all English speakers can understand English jokes easily

D．British people’s dark jokes often make people uncomfortable

【推荐2】At your next meeting, wait for a pause in conversation and try to measure how long it lasts.

Among English speakers, chances are that it will be a second or two at most. But while this pattern may be universal, our awareness of silence differs dramatically across cultures.

What one culture considers a confusing or awkward pause may be seen by others as a valuable moment of reflection and a sign of respect for what the last speaker has said. Research in Dutch (荷兰语) and also in English found that when a silence in conversation stretches to four seconds, people start o feel uneasy. In contrast, a separate study of business meetings found that Japanese people are happy with silences of 8.2 seconds-nearly twice as long as in Americans’ meetings.

In Japan, it is recognized that the best communication is when you don’t speak at all. It’s already a failure to understand each other by peaking because you’re repairing that failure by using word.

In the US, it may start from the history of colonial (殖民地的) America as a crossroads of many different races. When you have a complex of difference, it’s hard to develop common understanding unless you talk and there’s understandably a kind of anxiety unless people are verbally devoted to developing a common life. This applies also to some extent to London.

In contrast, when there’s more homogeneity, perhaps it’s easier or some kinds of silence to appear. For example, among your closest friends and family it’s easier to sit in silence than with people you’re less well acquainted with.

1. Which of the following people might have the longest silence in conversation?

A．The Dutch	B．Americans
C．The English.	D．The Japanese

2. What might the Japanese agree with in conversation?

A．Speaking more gives the upper hand

B．Speak out what you have in your mind.

C．Great minds think alike without words

D．The shorter talking silence, the better

3. What can we learn from the text?

A．A four-second silence in conversation is universal

B．It’s hand for Americans to reach n common agreement

C．English speakers are more talkative than Japanese speakers.

D．The closer we and our family are, the easier the silence appears

4. What does the underlined word “homogeneity” in the last paragraph mean?

A．Similarity	B．Difference
C．Diversity.	D．Misunderstanding