1 . Casting blame is natural: it is tempting to fault someone else for a mistake rather than taking responsibility yourself. But blame is also harmful. It makes it less likely that people will own up to mistakes, and thus less likely that organizations can learn from them. Research published in 2015 suggests that firms whose managers pointed to external factors to explain their failings underperformed companies that blamed themselves.
Blame culture can spread like a virus. Just as children fear mom and dad’s punishment if they admit to wrongdoing, in a blaming environment, employees are afraid of criticism and punishment if they acknowledge making a mistake at work. Blame culture asks, “who dropped the ball?” instead of “where did our systems and processes fail?” The focus is on the individuals, not the processes. It’s much easier to point fingers at a person or department instead of doing the harder, but the more beneficial, exercise of fixing the root cause, in which case the problem does not happen again.
The No Blame Culture was introduced to make sure errors and deficiencies (缺陷) were highlighted by employees as early as possible. It originated in organizations where tiny errors can have catastrophic (灾难性的) consequences. These are known as high reliability organizations (HROs) and include hospitals, submarines and airlines. Because errors can be so disastrous in these organizations, it’s dangerous to operate in an environment where employees don’t feel able to report errors that have been made or raise concerns about that deficiencies may turn into future errors. The No Blame Culture maximizes accountability because all contributions to the event occurring are identified and reviewed for possible change and improvement.
The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), which supervises air traffic across the United States, makes it clear that its role is not to assign blame or liability but to find out what went wrong and to issue recommendations to avoid a repeat. The proud record of the airline industry in reducing accidents partly reflects no-blame processes for investigating crashes and close calls. The motive to learn from errors also exist when the risks are lower. That is why software engineers and developers routinely investigate what went wrong if a website crashes or a server goes down.
There is an obvious worry about embracing blamelessness. What if the website keeps crashing and the same person is at fault? Sometimes, after all, blame is deserved. The idea of the “just culture”, a framework developed in the 1990s by James Reason, a psychologist, addresses the concern that the incompetent and the malevolent (恶意的) will be let off the hook. The line that Britain’s aviation regulator draws between honest errors and the other sort is a good starting-point. It promises a culture in which people “are not punished for actions or decisions taken by them that match with their experience and training”. That narrows room for blame but does not remove it entirely.
1. According to the research published in 2015, companies that ______ had better performance.| A．blamed external factors | B．admitted their mistakes |
| C．conducted investigations | D．punished the under performers |
| A．It encourages the early disclosure of errors. |
| B．It only exists in high reliability organizations. |
| C．It enables people to shift the blame onto others. |
| D．It prevents organizations from making any error. |
| A．Innocent people might take the blame by admitting their failure. |
| B．Being blamed for mistakes can destroy trust in employees. |
| C．The line between honest errors and the other sort is not clear. |
| D．People won’t learn their lessons if they aren’t blamed for failures. |
| A．Why We Fail to Learn from Our Own Mistakes |
| B．How to Avoid Disastrous Errors in Organizations |
| C．Why We Should Stop the Blame Game at Work |
| D．How to Deal with Workplace Blame Culture |
If you feel like you may be a people-pleaser, you’re not alone. In today’s highly-connected world, we have a growing obsession (痴迷) with being liked and needing to please others. People seek to please others for various reasons, including avoiding conflicts, securing feelings of being needed, and reducing fears of abandonment. And they are forced to use agreeableness as self-defense.
People-pleasing behavior can lead to mental and physical health problems such as fear of rejection, frustration, anger, addictions, headaches, stomach problems, and high blood pressure. It can also result in weak boundaries, problems with decision-making and dependency. Therefore, it’s important to recognize and overcome your own people-pleasing behaviors. Here are some simple exercises that you can start working on today.
Learn to love your own company. Trust that people will not abandon you, even if you don’t drop everything for them. Believing you are lovable for who you are, not what you do, means knowing that people will still be there for you even if you do not always search for ways to please them. Practice this by going to a movie or restaurant alone.
Value the plans made with yourself. They are as important as plans you make with other people. Otherwise, you are sending a message to your brain that a plan you make with yourself does not hold as much value. Don’t break long-or short-term plans you make with yourself, whether it’s going to the gym or studying for an exam.
Say “no” when necessary. If you’re a people-pleaser, you may find it hard to say “no” because you feel it comes across as cruel or uncaring. But it absolutely does not have to. Be clear, be direct, and use “I” statements. Try statements like: “I would really love to be able to help you, but unfortunately, I’m already committed at that time.” By consistently integrating these strategies into your life, you’ll break your people-pleasing habits and develop more healthy, interdependent relationships.
1. What is a people-pleaser like?2. Besides mental and physical problems, what other problems may a people-pleaser suffer from?
3. Please decide which part is false in the following statement, then underline it and explain why.
If you don’t want to be a people-pleaser, you should love being with others, value the plans made with yourself, and decline others’requests when necessary.
4. What do you think of the behavior of pleasing others? (In about 40 words)
3 . Demanding days seem designed to test our self-control. We all need to rely on willpower to avoid short-term temptations and override unwanted thoughts or impulses (冲动). The prevailing psychological theory proposed that willpower resembled a kind of battery. With each exercise of self-control, you exhausted this resource. Without a chance to recharge, that resource ran low, making it harder to maintain self-control. This process was known as “ego depletion”.
In 2010, however, psychologist Veronika Job published a study that questioned the foundations of “ego depletion” theory, with some interesting evidence that ego depletion depended on people’s underlying beliefs. In the study, Job divided participants into two categories: those with a “limited” view of willpower and those with a “non-limited” view of willpower, based on a prior questionnaire. She then gave the participants some standard laboratory tests examining mental focus, which was considered to depend on the reserves of willpower. The study found that people with a limited mindset tended to perform exactly as ego depletion theory would predict but the non-limited individuals did not, which indicated that people’s beliefs about willpower could be self-fulfilling prophecies (预言). Those who believed willpower was easily depleted saw their self-control decrease, while those who believed in “mental stamina (耐力)” experienced no ego depletion.
Subsequent debates about the reliability of the laboratory tests of ego depletion emerged, but Job’s work demonstrated that mindset significantly impacted real-life outcomes. Her follow-up study revealed that after completing demanding tasks, most participants recovered to some degree overnight, but those with non-limited mindsets actually experienced an increase in their productivity the following day, as if energized by the extra pressure.
If you already have a non-limited mindset about willpower, these findings might be a cause for self-satisfaction. For those with limited mindsets, hope is not lost. Learning about this science can help shift beliefs. Sharing this knowledge with others can further consolidate this shift. Moreover, recollecting times of engaging in taxing yet enjoyable tasks naturally shifts people’s beliefs toward non-limited mindsets, as they see proof of their own men tal stamina. To provide yourself with further evidence, you can conduct small self-control tests. As you realize your willpower’s growth, you’ll find resisting temptations and distractions easier.
While immediate miracles aren’t guaranteed, perseverance will lead to a changed mindset and increased self-control, propelling actions toward personal goals.
1. “Ego depletion” theory shows that willpower ________.| A．helps control our impulses | B．reduces after exercising self-control |
| C．is a test of your character | D．is like a chargeable battery |
| A．Extra pressure boosts mental focus. |
| B．Demanding tasks reduce mental focus. |
| C．Reserves of willpower depend on mental focus. |
| D．The change of mental focus relies on one’s mindset. |
| A．Picturing your ideal university. |
| B．Doing homework in front of a TV. |
| C．Sharing science knowledge with friends. |
| D．Recalling mastering a challenging piano piece. |
4 . Hardly a day goes by without some new claim promising to bring us closer to the metaverse (元宇宙) in the not-too-distant future. On hearing this, some will feel pure excitement, but others will feel unsure or downright opposed. Our habit in recent history has been looking down upon those with doubts on technological progress. It may be time to re-examine that.
There has been a backlash to technology since historical memories began. Every new form of communication has attracted criticism for increasing the pace of life. For example, people once feared that cars travelling at 20 to 30 miles per hour might rob their passengers of oxygen.
When we look back, contemporary resistance to technological advancement can look completely foolish, but often it isn’t. The Luddites, for example, the destroyer of mill (作坊) machinery in the early industrial revolution, are generally referred to as a historical joke. But if we look at their real complaints, it wasn’t some naive anti-progress movement; it was about economics. Cotton mills replaced skilled, home-based, independent work with lower-skilled work in a factory, accompanied by much less autonomy and much less pay.
The mill might have been more efficient and thus more profitable, but it would take decades of campaigning to distribute those gains even approximately fairly — with the birth of the trade union movement, the welfare state and more. So, was their resistance really so unreasonable?
While metaverse advocates would like to paint skeptics as simply rooted in the past, at least some doubts are well founded. The reasons to be cautious of the next wave of technology are varied. One is simply whether the technologies in question are where they are claimed to be. If the company has a habit of over promising, few in the know will take its claims of inventions seriously.
Other more striking metaverse technologies rely on virtual reality, which still largely consists of heavy headsets and odd arm controls — all just to be able to operate an avatar through an awkward online world. VR has been “the next big thing” for decades and the public has consistently felt otherwise: there isn’t much to do once you are there, the technology gives many people motion sickness and, perhaps most problematically of all, the whole thing just seems extremely silly. Another popular innovation, health tracking, hasn’t caught the wider public by storm because many consumers worry about what will happen to their data.
There is much to anticipate as we bring online and offline worlds together. But we should learn not to dismiss concerns or caution about this, either. There are many rational reasons for people to take part in the techlash.
1. What does the underlined word “backlash” in Paragraph 2 most probably mean?
| A．Exposure. | B．Commitment. |
| C．Opposition. | D．Transformation. |
| A．It contributed to the success of the industrial revolution. |
| B．It made lower-skilled workers replaced by mills. |
| C．It led to the birth of the trade union movement. |
| D．It was launched largely for economic reasons. |
| A．are not interested in virtual reality |
| B．think some companies make overstatements |
| C．worry about the inaccuracy of their data collected |
| D．are embarrassed about wearing the awkward headsets |
| A．enthusiasts are being unreasonable |
| B．the public should stay cool-headed |
| C．most of the criticism is groundless |
| D．people should welcome new technology |
The Weight of White Lies
A man taking his mother to a surprise party tells her they’re going to the mall. A woman fibs that the store was out of her overweight boyfriend’s favorite junk food. A tutor assures his student that her spotty resumé looks fine.
Even benevolent forms of deception come in shades of acceptability, and people who learn that they have been misled don’t always see it the way deceivers do. A lie that’s meant to inflate someone’s confidence or discourage a bad habit, for example, often involves making a judgment about what’s best for that person. That presumption can backfire.
In recent experiments, participants playing an economic game on a computer received a tip that led them to one of two possible payoffs. Some learned that the sender of the tip had lied to them to secure them a particular option. If the best option had been debatable rather than obvious—such as receiving $10 right away rather than $30 after three months—participants judged that person as less moral for lying and were less satisfied with the outcome, on average, even if it was the one they had previously said they preferred. “People seem to feel they have a right to the truth, and that by taking that away, you diminish their ability to act freely,” says study co-author Matthew Lupoli, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of California, San Diego.
Making up falsehoods isn’t the only way to kindly deceive, though: You might also simply leave out unpleasant facts. Recent studies by University of Chicago researcher Emma Levine and colleagues examined both types of lie in hypothetical patient-doctor talks and other contexts.
People in the role of deceiver tended to view the omission of potentially harmful details (such as a poor prognosis) as comparable to or more acceptable than offering a comforting fiction (that a patient’s outlook was favorable). But those in the role of the deceived often considered false-but-supportive statements more tolerable than lies of omission. For deceivers, actively committing a lie feels more intentional and might provoke more guilt than omission, Levine says. But the targets of deception “aren’t likely to be sensitive to these differences because they just experience the consequences.”
In general, honesty is probably still the best policy. A lie that provides some emotional benefits and has little downside could be the closest second.
1. What is the presumption people make when telling a white lie (a lie that’s meant to be good)?2. What are the ways to kindly deceive others?
3. Please decide which part is false in the following statement, then underline it and explain why.
Those in the role of the deceived often considered lies of omission more tolerable than false-but-supportive statements.
4. Do you prefer to be honest or tell a white lie when informing your friend of something unpleasant? Why? (In about 40 words)
6 . Every day, thousands of rangers patrol national parks and other protected areas in Africa. Their job is fraught with danger, both from hostile humans armed with automatic weapons and from the unappreciative and potentially aggressive wildlife, armed with tusks, teeth and claws, which they are helping to preserve.
That is particularly true of data on poaching (偷猎), which remains, in both senses of the word, an elephantine problem. Since 2006 African elephant populations have declined by around 30%. In 2021, according to Monitoring the Illegal Killing of Elephants (MIKE), a conservation programme, around 40% of elephant deaths were a result of poaching.
Elsewhere, there is great variation in the pressure on animals like elephants. Some parks, like Garamba in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), are badly hit — with more than 90% of the bodies found by rangers being victims of poachers.
Natural variables such as habitat type, they discovered, make little difference.
One factor that was unquantifiable, and therefore untestable, according to Dr Kuiper, was local political will to preserve wildlife. But this study does nevertheless confirm observations made elsewhere, that the best form of conservation is a prosperous population.
| A．Human ones predominate. |
| B．The severity of elephant poaching varies from place to place. |
| C．Humans are the biggest factor defining elephant ranges across Africa. |
| D．There was one unexpected result, though — the impact of armed conflict. |
| E．But their work is important, not least because the data they collect are crucial to conservation planning. |
| F．In others, like Chobe, in Botswana, less than 10% of dead elephants discovered have been killed illegally. |
| G．Current discussion of how to reduce poaching focuses on two areas: reducing demand and reducing supply. |
7 . The question of how trucking capacity is growing or declining is common in industry, but the reality is that demand fluctuations are far more important to monitor as they swing much more violently.
Since December of 2018, the total tractor count from for-hire fleets (non-private) has grown 18%, according to the FMCSA, but has never shown a monthly change of over 2%. By contrast, the Outbound Tender Volume Index (OTVI), a measure of total truckload demand, has grown 12% over the same period, but monthly fluctuations topped 20% at times.
Even before the pandemic, the OTVI had 5-7% monthly swings in demand. Given the OTVI measures total tenders and is not a pure proxy (指标) for shipments, it is reflective of how fast demand-side conditions change in trucking.
The point is that capacity shifts are slow and stable, while demand changes much more rapidly and is very unpredictable over time. This is the consummate struggle of supply chains and transportation companies across the globe — how much infrastructure (capacity) is needed to be able to flex up but not have too much overhead when demand softens?
The process of ordering and seating a truck takes close to a year. That truck can haul roughly seven 500-mile loads per week, or 360 loads per year. This only occurs if shipping patterns are consistent and drivers are readily available, and neither are true. So it isn’t a pure question of how much capacity is available in aggregate, but are those trucks available in the right places at the right times in general? This metric is extremely difficult to attain.
Since demand is uneven and spread unevenly throughout the country, trucks and drivers need to exceed the number of shipments available. So even if capacity grows by 1%, it just increases the chances that loads will be covered marginally.
Probably more important than any of the previous points is that there are already measures of the relationship between supply and demand in trucking. Tender rejection rates (OTRI) and spot rates (NTI) measure when capacity is meeting demand in the contract and spot markets, respectively.
There is little use for knowing how much capacity is available in the for-hire freight market other than being interesting. But there is exceptional value in knowing how well capacity and demand are lining up and in what direction they are trending. Since December 2021 tender rejection rates have fallen from over 20% to under 4%, while spot rates are down 27%.
Demand-side indicators are probably the most crucial to getting the earliest signs of market shifts, while rejection rates and spot rates answer the two most important questions that companies want answered: Can I get a truck and how much will it cost me?
1. The Outbound Tender Volume Index ________.| A．is a proxy for shipments only |
| B．is a measure to track truckload demand |
| C．can tell the current trucking capacity in the US |
| D．can tell the relationship between supply and demand in trucking |
| A．How capacity can meet the changing demand. |
| B．How capacity and demand can be predicted. |
| C．What facilities are needed to ship the goods. |
| D．What trucks can function the best. |
| A．They are both measures in the contract and spot markets. |
| B．They are of little use to know the capacity and demand. |
| C．They can change the uneven demand situation in the US. |
| D．They can help to tell the companies how market might change. |
| A．In a school newspaper. | B．In a book. | C．In a biography. | D．In a magazine. |
Faced with health or nutrition questions, it is
9 . As a doctor, I can give you a lot of useful advice about how to get healthy and stay that way, but you don’t need me to tell you that exercise is good for you. Staying active can benefit the heart, the waistline, even the mind.
The slowdown occurs for most at the beginning of college. Academic pressure and lack of organized sports are certainly part of the problem. A bigger part may be looking at life changes as an occasion to blow up old rules and not create new ones in their place.
The good news is, there are solutions to all these. We can begin with exercises as simple as remembering to sit straighter or drink enough water. Specific workout plans can turn a general desire to exercise into a firm commitment.
We may never again have the energy of a two-year-old, but getting back even a little of our early-life energy can make our later lives a whole lot healthier.
| A．Being in college is certainly part of the problem. |
| B．This is especially so when it comes to staying fit. |
| C．Not having a clearly defined exercise plan can hurt. |
| D．We often wish to go back to our two-year-old selves. |
| E．For instance, you can schedule a weekly gym visit with friends. |
| F．Still, there’s a real disconnect between what we know and what we do. |
| G．The most puzzling part of our inactive nature is that we don’t start out that way. |
10 . As we enter a period of profound economic uncertainty, presaged (预示) by recent high-profile layoffs and a culture of “quiet quitting”, thinking about the future of work might well seem a daunting (令人生畏的) prospect.
Indeed, an ever-increasing digital skills gap threatens to stop businesses adopting the game-changing technologies that will help to power growth in the months and years ahead. For instance, with each exciting new technology comes a growing concern about whether we have a digitally savvy (精明的) workforce ready to take advantage of it. After all, keeping the workforce up to speed with the latest advances is a key element of the digital transformation process, which will prove essential if we hope to improve business productivity and efficiency alongside our efforts to achieve sustained growth.
Likewise, at the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos, the cybersecurity skills gap was named as one particular area of concern. There’s good reason for this focus: if businesses can’t protect themselves against external threats, they risk going backwards. And that’s before they even start thinking about achieving growth. This is why we need to address the digital skills gap urgently.
Well, we should start by changing the narrative to help us recruit and retain from a more diverse pool of talent, giving businesses a far better chance of finding the up-to-date digital skills they need. And, when it comes to engaging and empowering the current workforce, learning and development opportunities will be key, helping employees to improve their skills for the benefit of both themselves and their employers.
To make this all happen, leaders and employers must demonstrate a commitment to teaching their workforces digital skills by setting clear expectations and providing all the resources required. One approach, for example, would be to focus on the potential in the existing talent pool by identifying those already skilled in digital capabilities and supporting them to upskill their colleagues. Creating a culture of learning, with an emphasis on personal growth, can be an impressive motivator in the workplace.
Of course, it’s all well and good saying that digital skills are vital, but a workforce with purely hard skills will not future-proof a business. There’s a need for soft skills that support the broader goal, so as not to neglect the other competencies required in a digital transformation: communication, critical thinking, creative design skills, and leadership. To exploit the technology to its full potential, such qualities are equally important.
Fundamentally, getting the interaction right between humans and technology will be paramount if businesses are to succeed. As a result, human skills must not be underestimated. Every business will need a range of people with a variely of skills — not only those well-versed in math, engineering, and science, but also those with creative minds and leadership qualities.
1. The writer’s main concern in the digital transformation process is ________.| A．the threats from technology | B．the challenge of upskilling workforces |
| C．the culture of quiet quitting | D．the shortage of experienced workers |
| A．replacing current workforces with digital talents is the key |
| B．high requirements of recruitment ensure a sound workforce |
| C．employers should develop a learning culture inside their workforces |
| D．business leaders should focus on the training of the existing talent pool |
| A．Crucial. | B．Beneficial. |
| C．Challenging | D．Inspiring |
| A．To advocate the necessity of improving digital skills. |
| B．To warn humans of the potential problems with technology. |
| C．To stress the importance of combining hard skills with soft skills. |
| D．To draw people’s attention to the ever-increasing digital skills gap. |
