It is not only praise or punishment that determines a child’s level of cognition (认知). There are some other important ways we shape our kids—particularly by giving instructions and commands in a negative or positive choice of words. For example, we can say to a child “Don’t run into traffic!” or “Stay on the footpath close to me.” In using the latter, you will be helping your kids to think and act positively, and to feel competent in a wide range of situations, because they know what to do, and aren’t scaring themselves with what not to do.
Actually, it is all in the way the human mind works. When we think, we automatically practise. For example, if someone offered you a million dollars not to think of a blue monkey for two minutes, you wouldn’t be able to do it. When a child is told “Don’t fall off the tree,” he will think of two things: “don’t” and “fall off the tree”. That is, he will automatically create the picture of falling off the tree in his mind. A child who is vividly imagining falling off the tree is much more likely to fall off. So it is far better to use “Hold on to the tree carefully.”
Clear, positive instructions help kids to understand the right way to do things. Kids do not always know how to be safe, or how to react to the warning of the danger in negative words. So parents should make their commands positive. “Sam, hold on firmly to the side of the boat” is much more useful than “Don’t you dare to fall out of the boat?” or “How do you think I’ll feel if you drown?” The changes are small but the difference is obvious.
Children learn how to guide and organize themselves from the way we instruct them with our words, so it pays to be positive.
1. Why do we choose positive words when giving kids commands?| A．To help them to learn in different situations. |
| B．To instruct their own behaviors. |
| C．To guide them to imagine the picture. |
| D．To improve their imagination. |
| A．A child will act on what is instructed. |
| B．One won’t think of a blue monkey when given money. |
| C．A child will surely fall off the tree when told not to. |
| D．One can’t help imagining what is heard. |
| A．How do you think I’ll feel if you get hurt? |
| B．Don’t walk on the grass. |
| C．Stay on the sidewalk until it’s safe to cross. |
| D．Don’t you dare to walk through the red light? |
| A．Positive instructions guide kids | B．Praise makes kids confident |
| C．Right instructions keep kids safe | D．Clear commands make kids different |
相似题推荐
【推荐1】Just because you turn 18 or finish high school doesn’t mean you are ready to move out of your parents’ house and live on your own.You need to have the life skills necessary to live in the real world.
Perform basic apartment or house maintenance(维修). It may be annoying to repeatedly be told to wash your dishes, or pick up your clothes and books, but these skills go even beyond tidiness.
Manage your own schedule.Time management is very important for young adults, especially if they’re headed to college or going into the workforce.
Manage a budget.Having a basic understanding of budgeting will help set you up for success now and in the future.
Deal with your own problems.
| A．It sounds very simple. |
| B．You need to plan for study time or meeting. |
| C．You need to think though how to do the right thing. |
| D．Some basic skills are required to keep a home working. |
| E．This includes looking at what money goes out and what comes in. |
| F．If not, there’s a good chance you will find it difficult to be independent. |
| G．A big part of being independent is the ability to solve your own problems. |
【推荐2】For a long time, psychologists agreed with the findings of Roy Baumeister, whose research showed that willpower was a limited resource that could easily be exhausted through use. His book, Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength, has long been seen as the typical handbook on this subject. Plus, hundreds of experiments showed that when people had to complete two back-to-back tasks which both required willpower, they would demonstrate less willpower on the second task.
From this research, willpower came to be understood as a “brain muscle” that would grow more tired the longer you used it. With adequate rest and recovery, the muscle’s energy would be restored, and willpower levels would return to normal. This made sense and even opened the door for an optimistic long-term approach to willpower: You could improve your willpower by using it regularly, just as you can strengthen a muscle through exercise.
However, just because an idea sounds good doesn’t mean it’s true. Later research failed to find Baumeister’s willpower exhaustion effect. And other research even showed that willpower exhaustion can be reversed if you have a positive belief about what hard work does for you. If you believe using willpower is draining, you’ll experience it as draining, but if you believe it energizes you, you’ll be energized. In other words, what you believe about willpower might be a self-fulfilling prophecy.
The trouble is that studying a psychological quality like willpower in the lab is very difficult. Willpower experiments greatly oversimplify the human experience and don’t reflect how willpower is used in the real world. Sample sizes are usually small because of limited funding, and it’s difficult to find diverse subjects. It almost certainly matters how meaningful the willpower-requiring task is to the person doing it, and laboratory experiments generally don’t ask participants to perform meaningful tasks.
Furthermore, there are a great many factors that can affect how much willpower an individual has. Willpower levels change from moment to moment and day to day. Someone who has excellent willpower in one situation might have terrible willpower in another. You might have high self-control one day and low self-control another.
So we just don’t know how willpower really works, and we might never know. People may or may not have a limited amount of willpower. Believing you have unlimited willpower might help you work harder than you otherwise would, or it might lead to overconfidence.
1. Roy Baumeister’s book, Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength, is mentioned at the beginning of the passage in order to show that _____.| A．willpower as a limited resource has been widely accepted |
| B．his book is very popular among people in various fields |
| C．willpower is essential in completing back-to-back tasks |
| D．a great many experiments has been done on willpower |
| A．with enough rest, willpower can recover itself |
| B．with the right attitude, we can own our willpower |
| C．we can fulfil our dream as long as we have willpower |
| D．there is a fixed amount of willpower if we think positively |
| A．view willpower as unlimited to fully cultivate our potential |
| B．try doing different tasks when our willpower levels change |
| C．stop doing research on willpower since it is too changeable |
| D．treat willpower critically as it’s hard to get a full picture of it |
| A．The Definition of Willpower | B．The Great Willpower Debate |
| C．The Importance of Willpower | D．Strategies to Increase Willpower |
【推荐3】It is war without guns, bombs, or smoke. New coronavirus (新冠肺炎), a deadly disease, breaks out all over the world. More than 2.7 million present confirmed cases are reported recently, WHO says, adding that the cases have resulted in more than 325 thousand deaths. What should you do to keep yourself from this virus?
1. Clean hands with soap and water or alcohol-based hand rub.
It is quite necessary to clean your hands with soap and water completely for at least 20 seconds before you have meals and after using the toilet, especially after you return home. If you are not careful enough to contact with animals or deal with animal wastes, you’d better wash your hands with alcohol-based rub.
2.
When it comes to human-to-human transmission (传播) of the viruses, it often happens when someone comes into contact with an infected (受感染的) person’s secretions (分泌物), such as droplets (飞沫) in cough. Therefore, when you cough or sneeze, you should cover your mouth and nose with a tissue, or you can cough or sneeze into your sleeve, but avoid covering with your hands directly.
3. Wear masks.
Wearing mask is one of the most effective ways to protect you from getting infected. Make sure to wear it properly by tightening up the nose clip and pulling the bottom of it over your chin.
4. Take exercise regularly.
All in all, if you have symptoms of fever and respiratory infection, you must seek immediate medical attention.
| A．You should get up early. |
| B．Taking exercise regularly is one of the most important ways to stay away from the virus. |
| C．A mask is also needed to prevent you from spreading germs to others. |
| D．Here are some suggestions you can follow in your daily life. |
| E．Cover nose and mouth while coughing and sneezing. |
| F．Animals are very dangerous. |
| G．Viruses can spread from human contact with animals. |
【推荐1】In many fields youngsters are changing the world. Listed below are several influential young people.
Muzoon Almellehan, 19
Millions of children live in refuge? camps (难民营)，where few pave access to school. Almellehan experienced these conditions firsthand after fleeing Syria. Fighting to change that, she travels the world to tell people about the significance of education Almellehan, UNICEF’s(United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund) youngest-ever goodwill ambassador now, plans to return to her homeland Syria finally.
Auli’i Cravalho,17
The Hawaii native voiced the heroine in Disney’s hit movie Moana. Now Auli’i is taking on a new role. She’ll star on NBC’s Rise, a drama about a high school theater department’ that lifts the spirits of a struggling steel town in Pennsylvania. Based on a true story, the show has strengthened her belief that young people can bring about real change.
Moziah Bridges, 16
At 9, Moziah launched, his own handmade bow-tie business from his grandmother’s kitchen table. Now Mo’s Bows is worth about $1.5 million. More recently, Moziah signed a licensing deal with the NBA that lets him sell bow ties featuring team logos. But Moziah has even grander ambitions. He plans to expand globally. He credits his success to his natural sense of style.
Mikaila Ulmer, 13
Mikaila used to hate bees. She was stung (蜇) twice. But after learning honeybees are critical to the ecosystem and dying out, she developed a fascination with them. She was determined to help. Using her great-grandmother’s recipe, Mikaila made a mixture, sweetened with local honey. She sold it at community business fairs, donating 10% of her profits to honeybee-advocate groups. Mikaila also runs a nonprofit group called the Healthy Hive Foundation, whose goal is to raise awareness about the hardship of the honeybee.
1. What did Auli’i Cravalho learn from the drama Rise?| A．Young people indeed have the ability to make a difference. |
| B．High school theater department can help the steel town. |
| C．She can voice any kind of NBC drama in the future. |
| D．She has the ability to take up acting as her lifelong profession. |
| A．making money to help people in need |
| B．rescuing the endangered but beneficial honeybees |
| C．putting her great-grandmother’s recipe to good use |
| D．developing a traditional technique for producing honey |
| A．They are commercially successful. |
| B．They’re leading a wealthy and full life. |
| C．They’ve gained wide recognition now. |
| D．They have no interest in academic subjects. |
【推荐2】A new research from the University of Michigan stated, “People tend to have one of three beliefs about the meaning of work and which category you fall into largely depends on your parents.” Workers who are job-oriented (有工作倾向的) are those just trying to make a living who much prefer the activities they pursue outside of the office. Career-oriented adults value the social status and fame that comes with professional achievement. Calling-oriented people do work that they are passionate about because they want to have a positive impact on the world.
In the first study into how these orientations originate, researchers found that how teenagers perceive their parents’ work habit is central to the development of their own work attitudes. It’s not a straightforward transfer of values. People who perceive their father to have a strong career-orientation are more likely to be career-oriented themselves-but career-determined mothers have no effect on their kids’ work orientation. The researchers owed this to generational gender norms. When the study’s participants were teenagers, mostly in the1980s, men were more commonly employed outside of the home and were more likely than women to hold “career” jobs with opportunity for advancement. Mothers do have a notable effect on whether children have a job-orientation mentality. Teenagers who are close to their mothers are less likely to view work as just a job when they grow up, probably because they’ve been raised to value social, rather than instrumental life experiences.
Having both parents display the same work ethic (行为准则) has a strong influence, but only in the case of calling-oriented offspring (子女). As the society nowadays favors money and professional achievement, a child with two calling-oriented parents is more likely to have the confidence to ignore these societal pressures and pursue her dreams. Children can affect their parents’ work ethic, too. Allowing people to bring their children into the office has been shown to boost efficiency and productivity and could help raise that next generation of career-oriented workers.
1. What motivates calling-oriented people to do work they like?| A．To achieve social status and fame. | B．To pursue activities outside the office. |
| C．To believe they can earn them much money. | D．To make a positive contribution to the world. |
| A．Peer pressure. | B．Personal preferences. |
| C．Educational background. | D．Awareness of parents’ work habits. |
| A．Because mothers value social life experiences. |
| B．Because mothers focus on instrumental life experiences. |
| C．Because mothers tend to have a stronger career orientation. |
| D．Because mothers emphasize the importance of work as just a job. |
| A．The influence of societal pressures on work beliefs. |
| B．The preferences of workers in different occupations. |
| C．The impact of parental work habits on teenagers’ attitudes. |
| D．The relationship between money and professional achievement. |
【推荐3】Forget about the “post-1995 generation”. Young people born in 1995 or later have another name in English — Generation Z. They are entering adulthood and will soon shape our future, which is why policy makers, as well as employers and marketers, are trying their best to understand these young people. So, how should we pin down the Gen Z-ers?
Most people will agree that the single biggest difference between Gen-Z and other generations is how connected they are. This is a group of people who had access to social media as soon as they were born. Social media has changed the way Gen Z-ers interact with each other and how they get and process information. They read news from Twitter, watch videos from Vine, share experiences in Instagram and post recipes in Pinterest.
“We are the first true digital natives. I can almost simultaneously create a document, edit it, post a photo on Instagram and talk on the phone, all from the user-friendly iPhone,” said Hannah Payne, an 18-year-old UCLA student.
It is noted that young people in the UK are becoming more active in Politics. Young people regard voting as one option among many to show their political engagement that can potentially influence policies. Instead of party politics, they focus more on single-topic issues such as feminism or climate change. And “much of the engagement and organizing they do takes place on social media rather than through traditional political structures,” according to the Guardians.
Gen Z-ers are also culture creators. Growing up with the Internet has freed this generation from traditional cultural expression. They are no longer willing to let their creativity be limited by their parents or traditional rules. “We decide what kind of content we want to experience and choose how we experience it,” wrote Masback, a Huffington Post blogger and a Gen Z-er herself.
1. What does the underlined phrase “pin down” mean in Paragraph 1?| A．Cooperate with. | B．Firmly convince. |
| C．Communicate with. | D．Clearly understand. |
| A．It’s topic-specific. | B．It stresses social response. |
| C．It’s party-based. | D．It has an immediate effect. |
| A．They are socially responsible. | B．They are friendly and generous. |
| C．They are addicted to social media. | D．They are rooted in traditional culture. |
| A．Worried. | B．Suspicious. | C．Objective. | D．Disapproving. |
