【推荐1】The hardest thing to do is keep trying hard to achieve our goal when we see no signs of change. This is because our brains like observable evidence that our efforts are getting us closer to what we want and who we want to become.     1     So how do we keep motivated and continue fighting when it seems to make no progress?

Keep a detailed daily record. Write down any and all observable changes, even if you feel like they are not worthy to be written down. Those kinds of changes usually do not continue in our memories, so we may not be able to notice all the changes that are actually happening.     2    

Don’t compare with anyone else. Celebrate what is happening in your journey rather than looking at someone else’s path and thinking about what happened to them.     3     You don’t need to come in “first place”.

Question your expectations. Remember to often ask yourself:     4     Unrealistic expectations increase frustration and disappointment and can be difficult for you to recover from when unmet.

    5     If you stare at the minute hand of a clock, the passing of an hour will seem like a lifetime. When you are working on a goal, it is important to diversify（使多样化）how you spend your time. Doing so will reduce your disappointment if your goal is not happening fast enough.

A．Have a life outside of your goal.

B．Remember that life is not a race.

C．However, things don’t always go smoothly.

D．What do I expect to achieve by setting this goal?

E．Undoubtedly, our efforts will pay off sooner or later.

F．Are my expectations for how and when I meet my goal realistic?

G．Small changes, when gathered, eventually lead to the big change that we long for.

【推荐2】By now you’ve probably heard about the “you’re not special” speech, when English teacher David McCullough told graduating seniors at Wellesley High School: “Do not get the idea you’re anything special, because you’re not.” Mothers and fathers present at the ceremony — and a whole lot of other parents across the Internet — took issue with McCullough’s ego-puncturing words. But lost in the uproar was something we really should be taking to heart: our young people actually have no idea whether they’re particularly talented or accomplished or not. In our eagerness to elevate their self-esteem, we forgot to teach them how to realistically assess their own abilities, a crucial requirement for getting better at anything from math to music to sports. In fact, it’s not just privileged high-school students: we all tend to view ourselves as above average.

Such inflated self-judgments have been found in study after study, and it’s often exactly when we’re least competent at a given task that we rate our performance most generously. In a 2006 study published in the journal Medical Education, for example, medical students who scored the lowest on an essay test were the most charitable in their self-evaluations, while high-scoring students judged themselves much more stringently. Poor students, the authors note, “lack insight”

into their own inadequacy. Why should this be? Another study, led by Cornell University psychologist David Dunning, offers an enlightening explanation. People who are incompetent, he writes with coauthor Justin Kruger, suffer from a “dual burden”: they’re not good at what they do, and their very ineptness prevents them from recognizing how bad they are.

In Dunning and Kruger’s study, subjects scoring at the bottom of the heap on tests of logic, grammar and humor “extremely overestimated” their talents. Although their test scores put them in the 12th percentile, they guessed they were in the 62nd . What these individuals lacked (in addition to clear logic, proper grammar and a sense of humor) was “metacognitive skill”: the capacity to monitor how well they’re performing. In the absence of that capacity, the subjects arrived at an overly hopeful view of their own abilities. There’s a paradox here, the authors note: “The skills that engender competence in a particular domain are often the very same skills necessary to evaluate competence in that domain.” In other words, to get better at judging how well we’re doing at an activity, we have to get better at the activity itself.

There are a couple of ways out of this double bind. First, we can learn to make honest comparisons with others. Train yourself to recognize excellence, even when you yourself don’t possess it, and compare what you can do against what truly excellent individuals are able to accomplish. Second, seek out feedback that is frequent, accurate and specific. Find a critic who will tell you not only how poorly you’re doing, but just what it is that you’re doing wrong. As Dunning and Kruger note, success indicates to us that everything went right, but failure is more ambiguous: any number of things could have gone wrong. Use this external feedback to figure out exactly where and when you screwed up.

If we adopt these strategies — and most importantly, teach them to our children — they won’t need parents, or a commencement (毕业典礼) speaker, to tell them that they’re special. They’ll already know that they are, or have a plan to get that way.

1. Which can be the best title of this passage?

A．Special or Not? Teach Kids To Figure It Out

B．Let’s Admit That We Are Not That Special

C．Tips On Making Ourselves More Special

D．Tell The Truth: Kids Overestimate their Talents

2. The author thinks the real problem is that ______.

A．we don’t know whether our young people are talented or not

B．young people don’t know how to assess their abilities realistically

C．no requirement is set up for young people to get better

D．we always tend to consider ourselves to be privileged

3. Which is NOT mentioned about poor students according to the passage?

A．They usually give themselves high scores in self-evaluations.

B．They tend to be unable to know exactly how bad they are.

C．They are intelligently inadequate in tests and exams.

D．They lack the capacity to monitor how well they are performing.

4. We can infer from the passage that those high-scoring students ______.

A．know how to cultivate clear logic and proper grammar

B．don’t know how well they perform due to their stringent self-judgement

C．don’t view themselves as competent because they know their limits

D．tend to be very competent in their high-scoring fields

【推荐3】Active Listening

The idea of active listening is this: you focus on the person you’re speaking to, and use verbal(言语的) and non-verbal hints(暗示)both to show them you’re paying attention and to keep your attention where it needs to be. Here are some basic tips:

1. Keep your mind directed towards the speaker.    1    Don’t get too drawn into internal distractions either, such as what you’re going to say in reply or who they remind you of when they say this or that. Focus your attention on the words they say.

2.    2    You may or may not agree with what they’re saying, but you can decide that when they’ve finished. As long as you’re listening, see them as an interesting person who has a right to be separate and different from you and whose thoughts and feelings are as vivid and meaningful to them as yours are to you.

3. Don’t jump to speak. Sometimes a pause is the beginning of an awkward silence, but sometimes the speaker is just gathering their thoughts or stopping for breath.    3    

4. Ask constructive (建设性的)questions.    4    Listeners can encourage the flow of conversation by asking questions of the speaker or by paraphrasing (解释)some of what the speaker has said. This helps the speaker reflect on his or her own words and clarify (阐明)them, retract (撤回)them or continue with more detail to explain the issue at hand

5. Use open body language. This can include: eye contact and good facial expressions. Don’t stare, of course, because that’s uncomfortable and can feel aggressive (好斗的).    5    Meanwhile, let your face show that you’re following them emotionally (情感地).

A．Be sure they’re finished before you start talking yourself.

B．Ignore outside distractions (分心)as much as you can

C．There is a place to talk in an active listening model

D．Everyone loves a good listener.

E．Be accepting and empathetic (共鸣的).

F．Use language that shows you’re listening.

G．Make sure you meet their gaze (凝视)regularly.