Recently, after I gave a virtual presentation on my book Indistractable, a listener wrote something in the Zoom chat that drove me crazy, “This is great but wouldn’t work for me. I’m a Gemini (双子星座的人).”
Ironically, the Zoom listener is right. If she thinks she’s incapable, she’ll prove it correct — whether it has anything to do with the stars and moon or not. Her inflexible self-identification denies her the chance to improve her life. It’s incredibly self-limiting.
That’s why we should stop defining ourselves as fixed identities and nouns, and instead start describing ourselves using verbs.
Words are powerful. Linguistic research shows that language shapes people and culture; it can also give us insight into ourselves and our behavior. In a well-known study, researchers Robert Rosenthal and Lenore Jacobsen had all students in the same elementary school take a standard IQ test. Then they randomly selected a group of students, regardless of their test results, and told teachers the group would show “dramatic intellectual growth”. Eight months later, those students scored significantly higher on an IQ test. The study concluded that teachers’ positive perception of students correlated to those students’ high performance on intellectual and academic tests. The labels the children received became a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy (预言).
That’s because language shapes expectations, which shape our reality. If we have experiences that lead us to label ourselves with specific nouns during our life, then we are likely to stick with those labels and the behaviors that go with them.
Using verbs to identify ourselves is an effective method for releasing “trapped priors”—a term in psychology for a perception of reality that’s affected or trapped by past experiences. Verbs are action words well suited to describing short-lived behaviors that can and do change. They don’t lay claim to our entire identity, but they acknowledge that we are people first and foremost, not whatever a singular noun may say we are. So, instead of saying, “I am a procrastinator (拖拉者)”, you should say, “I am a person who often procrastinates.”
By focusing on our behaviors, not fixed characteristics, we can release harmful perceptions of ourselves that hold us back from trying methods that might improve our lives — like those that can help us achieve the critical skill of being indistractable.
1. What does the author want to show through the example of the Zoom listener?| A．The concept of flexible self-identification. |
| B．His confusion about the way to self-identify. |
| C．His understanding of proper self-identification. |
| D．The negative effects of using nouns to define oneself. |
| A．Self-fulfilling prophecies change over time. |
| B．Encouragement promotes students’ improvement. |
| C．Language usage will have an impact on teaching. |
| D．IQ has little to do with students’ academic performance. |
| A．By highlighting their behaviors. |
| B．By focusing on their advantages. |
| C．By analyzing their typical characteristics. |
| D．By assessing their academic performance. |
| A．Nouns are more powerful than verbs |
| B．Your words can determine your future |
| C．How we define ourselves really counts |
| D．Our option of words reflects our identity |
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【推荐1】While employers are all highlighting the importance of crucial (决定性的) soft skills — such as emotional intelligence and learning ability — as determinants（决定因素）of performance, the most competitive roles require graduate credentials (研究生学历), to the point of going beyond current levels of supply. At the same time, the number of people going to university continues to rise, effectively devaluating the undergraduate degree (大学本科学位). So more and more of the workforce is considering going to graduate school.
What, then, are the pros and cons you should weigh up if you are trying to decide whether or not to go to graduate school?
In terms of advantages, a graduate education increases your salary potential — it’s no secret that people who have graduate school degrees are generally paid more money than those who don’t.
Moreover, as AI and automation are replacing many roles with others, a growing percentage of workers are being pushed to reskill and up skill to remain relevant（相关的）, and there’s no doubt that most of us will have to reinvent ourselves at some point if we want to do the same. If you find yourself in this situation currently, grad school may not be a bad choice.
The challenge will be picking what to major in. If you set yourself to be a strong candidate for jobs that are in high demand, you risk being too late to the game by the time you graduate.
But what if you can learn for free? There is much online content — books, videos and more — now widely available, at no cost, to the general public. If you want a master’s degree simply to gain more knowledge or acquire a new skill, it’s important to recognize that it’s possible to recreate learning experiences without paying thousands of dollars for a class.
And you may be wasting your time. Historically, people have mostly learned by doing — there is a big difference between communicating the theoretical experience of something and actually going through that experience.
Most people would probably prefer the qualifications of a graduate degree without the underlying (根本的) experience and education, to the actual experience and education without the formal qualifications that follow. What is actually valued are the consequences of having a degree, rather than the degree itself.
1. In employers’ eyes, graduate credentials .| A．are far more important than soft skills |
| B．guarantee the possession of crucial soft skills |
| C．are becoming less and less valuable |
| D．are still necessary for the most wanted positions |
| A．Everyone needs self-improvement to stay employed. |
| B．AI and automation are making self-improvement increasingly easy. |
| C．Technical development is driving people to improve themselves. |
| D．Technical development will lead to more serious unemployment. |
| A．Convenient and affordable. |
| B．Not as reliable as graduate school classes. |
| C．Time-consuming with the large amount of content. |
| D．More interesting with the diverse forms of materials. |
| A．Should You Go To Graduate School? |
| B．How Much Value Does A Graduate Degree Have? |
| C．How Will A Graduate Degree Change Your Life? |
| D．Which Is More Important: A Degree or Ability? |
【推荐2】Researches on the effects of bad news on mood suggest exposure to negative COVID news is likely to be harmful to our emotional wellbeing. These findings leave a few key questions unanswered. Does doomscrolling (keep searching for negative information on social media) make people unhappy, or are unhappy people just more likely to doomscroll? And what would happen if, instead of doomscrolling, we were “kindness scrolling” — reading about humanity’s positive responses to a global crisis?
To find out, researchers conducted a study related to it. People who were shown general COVID-related news experienced lower moods than people who were shown nothing at all. Meanwhile, people who were shown COVID news stories involving acts of kindness didn’t experience the same decline in mood, but also didn’t gain the boost in mood they’d predicted. These findings suggest that spending as little as two to four minutes consuming negative news about COVID-19 can have a harmful impact on our mood.
Although researchers didn’t see an improvement in mood among participants who were shown positive news stories involving acts of kindness, this may be because the stories were still related to COVID. In other research, general positive news stories have been associated with improvements in mood.
So what can we do to look after ourselves, and make our time on social media more pleasurable? One option is to delete our social media accounts altogether. But how realistic is it to distance ourselves from platforms that connect nearly half of the world’s population, particularly when these platforms offer social interactions at a time when face-to-face interactions can be risky, or impossible? It is better for us to find some other ways to make the experience on social media more positive. For example, be mindful of what you consume on social media, seek out content that makes you happy to balance out your newsfeed and use social media to promote positivity and kindness.
As the pandemic (大流行病) continues to change our lives and newsfeeds, let’s find some other steps to make our social media a happier place.
1. Which of the following may researchers probably agree with?| A．Doomscrolling makes people unhappy. |
| B．Kindness scrolling does good to our mood. |
| C．Good news about COVID-19 boosts mood. |
| D．Unhappy people are more likely to doomscroll. |
| A．Those shown no news at all. |
| B．Those shown acts of kindness about COVID. |
| C．Those shown general positive news not related to crisis. |
| D．Those spending four minutes consuming negative news about COVID. |
| A．Don’t respond to others online. |
| B．Advocate proper behavior online. |
| C．Interact with people face to face. |
| D．Leave social media platform altogether. |
| A．To find out the effect of bad news. |
| B．To figure out the impact of COVID. |
| C．To introduce a study about doomscrolling. |
| D．To improve our experience on social media. |
【推荐3】From New York Times: super-achieving moms on Wall Street have househusbands! The report pointed to a tenfold increase (since 1980) in the number of women in finance with stay-at-home husbands, allowing them to achieve success without the distractions of housework and child raising.
I’ve been covering the elite(精英) class of big law firms for over 10 years, and I can tell you that many of the women who make it to the top often have a man at home who’s taking care of the kids, planning the meals, and otherwise keeping the fireplace fired up. Indeed, you can go to any number of big firms in New York City where there’s a handful of female partners (the national average for female equity partners has barely surpassed 16%), and the gossip among the associates is that those women in power are either single or married to men who stay at home. “They seem to belong to some sort of househusband club,” said one associate about the female partners with kids.
I sensed that reluctance when I did a story on female partners at big Wall Street firms with househusbands a few years ago. Though three couples were happy to speak to me on the record about their arrangement, many more held back from going public.
Often, successful women are reluctant to admit that their husband is really the one minding the home. “He has primary responsibility for the kids, but he also works on the side,” explained one partner about how her husband spends his time.
All of this points to our rooted uncertainty about changing gender roles. Men in these situations often feel alienated (格格不入的)，particularly if they are surrounded by stay-at-home moms.
| A．They just didn't like to talk about it. |
| B．That formula shouldn’t surprise anyone. |
| C．We live in a country that doesn’t have much of a safety net for anyone. |
| D．But when she was pressed about what type of work the husband does, the reply is often vague. |
| E．This typical arrangement may be more long-lasting if the wife makes an enormous amount of money. |
| F．But the power moms with the stay-at-home husbands are just as uneasy, often more embarrassed than proud that they’ve upset the traditional order. |
【推荐1】The conflict(争执) over what or how much homework should be comes partly from the fact that people can't seem to agree on the purpose of homework.
What teachers think?
Some teachers think that homework is necessary to reinforce(巩固)what is learned in school. And so they ask their students to memorize what was discussed in class through homework..
Some teachers think the point of homework is to cover material that the class didn't have time to get to, so their homework is to let students learn additional things.
Other teachers like homework simply because they want students to form work habits and still others believe homework is necessary because it is the best way for parents to learn what their children do in school.
Parents' Ideas.
But many parents seem to have different ideas.
Elissa Cohen,who has twins at Lafayette Elementary School, doesn't like the fact that third-grade students in DC elementary schools are asked to write about 25 book summaries a year. “They do the same thing over and over without really getting into alternate(交替) ways of thinking about books and thinking about reading and writing. ”
Experts' opinions.
Some education reformers (改革者), such as Howard Gardner, a Harvard University, professor well-known for his theory on multiple intelligence(智力), think that Cohen is on the right track. But it is often hard to persuade overworked teachers to give much thought to homework tasks.
1. How many opinions do the teachers have on "homework"?| A．3. | B．4. |
| C．5 | D．6 |
| A．teachers should give necessary work to the students |
| B．teachers should not work too hard or too long |
| C．teachers should let the students repeat what they didn't have time to get in class |
| D．what Cohen's thinking about is correct |
| A．They find homework really hard. |
| B．They simply copy one repeatedly. |
| C．They aren't given much thinking about what they read. |
| D．They get different ways of thinking about their work. |
| A．prosperous | B．aimless |
| C．troublesome | D．improving |
| A．increasing homework | B．changing schools |
| C．changing teachers | D．reducing homework |
【推荐2】The minute you start talking about what you’re going to do if you lose, you have lost.
Some people have a great fear of losing. In fact, fear is not the best description of what they have. It is more like a crazy phobia(恐惧症) that they cannot keep away from. Day after day, these people allow their fear of losing to control everything in their lives. They are so afraid of losing that they try to keep away from losing without considering the cost of doing so.
When things start to get out of control, fear begins to come in. As the fear of losing or getting hurt overwhelms(充溢) them, they quickly look for excuses, rather than fight back or find a way to deal with their fear. They never realize that losing is just as common as eating and breathing.
If one is given a choice, who wouldn’t prefer winning over losing? After all, winning is exciting and winning is what living is all about. Although we might try hard all the time, we’re not going to win every time. In fact, most of us are going to lose a lot more often than we win and, believe it or not, it’s not all bad.
In order to make the most of our abilities ，we have to take risks every now and then. When we take risks, we might get knocked down, or even knocked flat, but with each failure and each loss, we have an opportunity to get better and get closer to the life we expect.
1. Which of the following might be the best title for the passage?| A．The Bad Effects of Losing |
| B．Make the Most of Every Success |
| C．We Win Some and We Lose Some |
| D．Winning Is the Main Purpose in Life |
| A．one should avoid losing by using any kind of means |
| B．one is too afraid to deal with losing properly by himself |
| C．one is so afraid of losing that he can’t step forward at all |
| D．one should make efforts to deal with losing rather than avoid it |
| A．fear works most when one is eager to win |
| B．losing is a common part of our daily lives |
| C．one should avoid losing without considering the cost |
| D．the more losing one experiences, the stronger one will become |
| A．Losing is of great value to success. |
| B．The more we fear, the better we will perform. |
| C．Only when we improve our abilities can we win. |
| D．Only through experiencing losing can we get what we want. |
【推荐3】One day I stopped to think about growing apples. I was eating a delicious, juicy apple and took a big bite. As a result, I got an apple seed into my mouth. I spat it out into my hand, with the intention of throwing it away. But instead I looked at the apple seed. I realized I was holding an apple tree in the palm of my hand. A little seed with the potential to become a beautiful big tree-a tree that could grow thousands of apples in its lifetime. Why then the world wasn't filled with apple trees? It is a rule of nature that only a few of these seeds grow.
And it came to my mind that it's also quite often so with people's dreams. Wonderful ideas come to our minds but they die too soon-we don't tend to the little saplings, we don't protect them as we should. And then one day we wonder what happened to our dreams-why did they never come true?
The seeds of your dreams did not automatically grow, like planting an apple tree. It might take many tries: like a hundred job applications to get that good job. You might send your manuscript out two hundred times before it was accepted.
Some people think their best time in life is when they are young. I refuse to believe that. There are plenty of examples out there that prove you can achieve amazing things even in your mature years. I love the little story of a woman who decided she wanted to go and study when she was in her forties. Her husband asked her.”Do you realize that if you start your studies now, you will be fifty when you graduate?" To which this admirable lady replied:“Darling-l shall be fifty in any case".
So go ahead and follow your dreams. No matter what they are, no matter what your age, and no matter what others think of it. It's your life after all.
1. How does the author introduce the topic of the text?| A．By giving a classic example. |
| B．By telling us a natural phenomenon. |
| C．By asking and answering a question |
| D．By describing a personal experience. |
| A．Wonderful ideas will not die easily. |
| B．The seeds of our dreams grow naturally. |
| C．Our dreams will not come true without tries. |
| D．We never know what will happen to our dreams. |
| A．People will grow old anyway. |
| B．It's never late to achieve things. |
| C．It's better to start doing things early. |
| D．We should not care what others think of us. |
| A．To describe how our dreams are ruined. |
| B．To treat apple seeds like our dreams. |
| C．To encourage us to pursue our dreams. |
| D．To explain the process of growing apple trees. |
