Do you often compare yourself to other people? Comparisons can help to make decisions and motivate you but they can also pull you into a comparison trap.
Whether it’s the number of goals you’ve scored at football or how many books you’ve read, it’s easy to compare yourself to someone else. Scientists say it’s a natural behaviour that helps humans learn from each other, live happily together and achieve more. Although comparing can be good for you, it’s not always helpful and you can find yourself stuck in a comparison trap. This is when you always measure yourself against others and base your feelings on how well they seem to be doing.
Becky Goddard-Hill is a child therapist (someone who helps children understand their feelings) and author of Create Your Own Confidence. She says that comparisons can make us feel good and bad about ourselves. “Comparing up” means seeing someone doing better than you and using that to inspire yourself to aim higher and try harder. However, Goddard-Hill says, “Sometimes it can make you feel rubbish about yourself and knock your confidence.” “Comparing down” is when you see someone who seems like they’re not doing as well as you. This might make you feel you’re doing well, says Goddard-Hill,but it can also stop you wanting to improve.
If your feelings depend on what other people are doing, “Surround yourself with cheerleaders,” suggests Goddard-Hill. Notice how people make you feel and spend time with friends who celebrate your strengths rather than compare themselves to you. If you follow social media accounts that make you feel you are failing in any way, unfollow them. “Find ones that make you laugh or show you lovely places instead,” she says. Finally, focus on your own achievements and how you can improve. “The best person you can compete with is yourself,” says Goddard-Hill.
1. How does a comparison trap affect us?| A．It makes us focus on our own behaviour. |
| B．It stops us from learning from each other. |
| C．It prevents us from living happily together. |
| D．It bases our feelings on others’ achievements. |
| A．Both of them usually enhance our confidence. |
| B．Both of them have advantages and disadvantages. |
| C．The former is positive while the latter is negative. |
| D．The former makes us feel good while the latter makes us feel bad. |
| A．Aiming to be our best. | B．Trying to be the best. |
| C．Trying to be a cheerleader. | D．Valuing someone else’s achievements. |
| A．Achievement. | B．Entertainment. | C．Health. | D．Politics. |
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【推荐1】It’s a common practice to take off your shoes when you enter your home. Many do this to prevent dirt and bacteria from getting inside.
Technically, yes. As you walk around outside, your shoes pick up bacteria, viruses and dirt. A 2017 study showed that more than 26 percent of the sole (鞋底) of shoes worn in homes contained Clostridium difficile, or C. diff, a common healthcare-associated infection that can be deadly.
But if that worries you, get this — the average person has more than 100 trillion microbes (微生物) in and on their body.
In the end, the choice of whether or not to go shoeless is yours.
| A．But is that really an issue? |
| B．Sweat can also contain microbes. |
| C．Your home is covered in bacteria, too. |
| D．Despite this, other people think this is unnecessary. |
| E．Some people just like the feel of walking around in bare feet. |
| F．Still, there are some cases where it may make sense to remove your shoes. |
| G．If you’re really determined to cut down on dirt, keep your slippers on rather than going barefoot. |
【推荐2】Ma Yan is not really a writer. But this 15-year-old girl has written a book that has moved many people around the world. “Ma Yan’s Diary” tells us about Ma’s life. She lives in a poor village called Zhangjiashu in Tongxin, Ningxia, and she has no money to go to school. But she is brave and has a strong desire to go to school.
Her mother gave her diary to a French reporter, Pierre Haski when he went to Zhangjisshu in 2001. Now, it has been published in France Italy, Germany, Japan and China.
Ma is now a Junior Three student at Yuwang Middle School in Tongxin. Before this, she had to leave school twice. When she had to stop going to school the first time, her mum told her there was no money for her to go to school. She worked for 21 days and saved 13 yuan. With this money, she went back to school. The second time, her family told her she had to leave school but her two brothers could stay.
“I want to study,” Ma wrote in her diary. “Why can boys study but girls can’t? It would be wonderful if I could stay at school forever.”
Ma loves school so much because she wants to have a better life.
“My parents work hard in the fields but they are still poor. They have no knowledge. Most girls in my village leave school early and get married young. I don’t want that kind of life,” Ma said.
After her story became known, many French student sent money to her. Ma’s dream is the same as ever. She hopes to go to Tsinghua University and become a reporter. “Then , I can find poor kids like me and help them, ” she said.
1. Which of the following can describe Ma Yan’s character（性格）best?| A．Brave. | B．Pretty. |
| C．Lucky. | D．Poor. |
| A．Germany | B．Britain |
| C．Japan | D．France |
| A．Her mother gave her enough money to publish the book. |
| B．She wrote about the poor life in her village. |
| C．She is very good at writing. |
| D．Her diary was read by a French reporter. |
| A．She had to help her mother do some housework. |
| B．Her brothers studied better than she did. |
| C．Girls were not equally treated（平等对待）in their village. |
| D．She didn’t study hard. |
| A．teach her parents knowledge |
| B．get more money for her study in Tsinghua University |
| C．become more famous |
| D．get more knowledge to change her own life |
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【推荐1】The famous French beauty company L’Oreal has promised that by 2030, 95 percent of its ingredients will come from renewable plant sources and be respectful of the environment. Asked what is driving the beauty industry to clean and green beauty, Laurent Gilbert, one of L’Oreal’s directors said, “Natural science has made progress in the past years, so that we can change to natural ingredients.”
L’Oreal says it will draw on recent developments in Green Sciences to get the best that nature has to offer through technology. Up to now, 80 percent of the Group’s materials have been easily biodegradable, 59 percent have been renewable, and 34 percent have been natural or of natural origin. And 29 percent of the ingredients used in their products were developed following the rules of Green Chemistry.
“We have already used active ingredients which are plant-based. The way we are getting and producing ingredients will change. For example, we are now fully getting vitamin C from biotechnology processes, which was not the case in the past,” Gilbert added.
As part of their sustainability program, the brand had also promised to use less plastic. It said, “By 2030, 100 percent of the plastics used in L’Oreal’s products’ packaging will be from recycled sources. We have a strong policy to help reach that goal. Besides making it recycled, we are trying to move to a new kind of packaging.”
“All our promises are global. We have two research centers in India, one in Bengaluru and one in Mumbai. Those are really important to those goals. The Bengaluru one is being specialized in natural ingredients. It will give support to this change,” says the research center, which was set up in India in 1994.
To achieve these aims, L’Oreal has brought all of its resources in Green Science together, including recent progress in agricultural economics, together with new developments in biotechnology, Green Chemistry and modelling tools. The Group is also building strong relationships with universities, new companies and its own material supplies.
1. What plays an important role in L’Oreal’s decision to change its ingredients?| A．The support from the local government. | B．The development of natural science. |
| C．The call for smart spending habits. | D．The research on target markets. |
| A．By listing data. | B．By making comparisons. |
| C．By telling personal stories. | D．By showing causes and effects. |
| A．To bring convenience to customers. | B．To avoid damage to its products. |
| C．To cut the cost of packaging. | D．To reduce plastic use. |
| A．Develop new resources and join hands with different groups. |
| B．Limit the number of factories in developed countries. |
| C．Grow more plants and invite plenty of professionals. |
| D．Keep the traditional way of producing materials. |
We are in the 21st century now, but step into almost any college classroom and you step back in time at least a hundred years Desks are normally in straight rows, so students can clearly see the teacher but not all their classmates. The assumption behind such an arrangement is obvious: Everything of importance comes from the teacher.
With a little imagination and effort, unless desks are fixed to the floor, the teacher can correct this situation and create space that encourages interchange among students. In small or standard-size classes, chairs, desks, and tables can be arranged in a variety of ways: circles, U-shapes or semicircles. The primary goal should be for everyone to be able to see everyone else.
Arrangement of the classroom should also make it easy to divide students into small groups for discussion or problem-solving exercises. Small classes with movable desks and tables present no problem. Even in large lecture halls, it is possible for students to turn around and form groups of four or six. Breaking a class into small groups provides more opportunities for students to interact with each other, think out loud, and see how other students’ thinking processes operate---all these are essential elements in developing new modes of critical thinking.
In courses that regularly use a small group format, students might be asked to stay in the same small groups throughout the course. A colleague of mine, John, allows students to move around during the first two weeks, until they find a group they are comfortable with. John then asks them to stay in the same seat, with the same group, from that time on. This not only creates a comfortable setting for interaction but helps him learn students’ names and faces.
1. The final purpose of arranging desks in circles or U-shapes is __________.
| A．for teachers to divide students into small groups |
| B．to make it possible for students to interact with each other |
| C．for teachers to find out how students think |
| D．to give students more opportunities to practice speaking |
| A．college classrooms often reminded people of their past |
| B．critical thinking was encouraged even one century ago |
| C．desk arrangement in a classroom was quite different from that a hundred years ago |
| D．today’s arrangement of college classroom space has little difference from past’s |
| A．students can be easily prevented from cheating during tests |
| B．it is convenient for teachers to monitor students |
| C．teachers play a significant role in a classroom |
| D．it is good for students to concentrate on listening to teachers |
【推荐3】Every language and culture has curse words (脏话). What gives a curse word its power is partly its meaning and partly its sound. “In English, for example, curse words tend to contain a high percentage of plosive (爆破音) sounds, including P, T and K, ” said Ryan McKay, a psychologist at University of London.
Dr. McKay teamed up with his colleague Shiri Lev-Ari to learn whether this familiar pattern went beyond English. They wondered whether it might even represent what’s called sound symbolism. Sound symbolism is when a word sounds like what it means.
The researchers first asked fluent speakers of Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Korean and Russian to list the most vulgar (粗俗的) words they could think of. Once they’d made a list of each language’s most frequently used curse words, the researchers compared these with neutral words from the same language. In these languages, they didn’t find the plosive sounds that seem common in English curse words. “Instead, we found that the vulgar words were defined by what they lacked: the approximant (近似音) sounds that include letters I, L, R, W and Y,” Dr. Lev-Ari said.
Next, the scientists invited 215 native speakers of six languages: Arabic, Chinese, Finnish, French, German and Spanish. The participants listened to pairs of words in a language they didn’t speak, and guessed which word in each pair was offensive. In reality, all the words were invented. For example, the researchers started with the Albanian word “zog,” for “bird,” and created the pair of fake words “yog” and “tsog.” Participants were more likely to guess that words without approximants, such as “tsog,” were curses.
Finally, the researchers combed through the dictionary for English curse words and their cleaned-up versions. Once again, the clean versions included more of the sounds I, L, R, W and Y.
A 20th-century linguistic principle claimed that the sounds of words were arbitrary: Any word could have any meaning. With curse words, though, as in other cases of sound symbolism, “the sounds themselves seem to carry meaning,” said Lev-Ari. “That’s a new thing,” said linguist Benjamin Bergen. “Curse words across languages, unrelated to each other, may pattern similarly.” He also pointed out, to make sure the pattern of approximants missing from curses isn’t an accident, it would be nice to find it in an even larger sample of languages.
1. What is the purpose of McKay and Lev-Ari’s research?| A．To analyze a phenomenon. | B．To explain a definition. |
| C．To confirm an assumption. | D．To challenge a theory. |
| A．To tell the rude word according to its sound. |
| B．To make up new curse words from real words. |
| C．To decide which curse words are used more frequently. |
| D．To identify the approximants in curse words. |
| A．Tusck | B．Sola | C．Darn | D．Biach |
| A．The old linguistic principle of sounds and meanings is wrong. |
| B．In sound symbolism, a word’s sound represents its meaning. |
| C．The research reveals the similarities between different languages. |
| D．The result of the research is not fully accepted by scientists. |
