Reading Provides Necessary Survival Skills
博览群书能给你提供种种必要的生存技能
Wi t h the coming of the television age and the increasing emphasis on pictures and sound in all quarters of our society, many people would have us believe that we are moving rapidly away from reading as a necessary life skill. But this is not the case at all.
Good reading is a more important life skill than ever before and the printed word continues to be the cornerstone of both hig her education and better positions in the job market.
For students, almost all studying involves reading. For adul t s, reading is day to day, either a stumbling block or a smooth p ath to pleasure and opportunity. This is why good reading hobits are not only an important study skill for the student, but also an important life skill for anyone.
SCANNING - You can get a good idea about the material by taking a few moments right off to read the title, chapter headings, section titles and headlines. The purpose of scanning is to get a quick understanding of what to expect from the reading, so that you will know what you are reading as you go along.
Maps, charts, graphs and pictures are clues that will help the reader to cue in on the content and organization of the material. This simple technique of scanning can help you read for ideas because you will know where you are going when you begin to read.
READING SPEED - Another good reading habit is reading fast. The expression "haste makes waste" does not apply to reading. In fact, most people read much too slowly. Right now you are probably reading this slower than you need for good comprehension. Studies show that fast readers are the best readers, and that slow readers often lose their concentration and comprehension abilities because their minds will wander out of boredom.
Remember, nothing hurts concentration more than reading too slowly. Your mind will keep up with your reading speed if you ask it to. By always reading at your top speed, you challenge your understanding and make it easier for y our mind to concentrate on the material.
VOCABULAR Y BUILDING - For a person with good reading habi t s, a printed page contains not only words but ideas, actions, thoughts and feelings. But all these things are built on words. The more words you are familiar with, the less you are ware of reading words and the more you are aware of content and meaning. Expanding your vocabulary will help you to read more effectively and rapidly.
Many people simply skip over words they do not understand. This, naturally, hurts their overall comprehension. Other people stop at each new word and look it up in the dictionary, but this method can slow down your reading, affecting concentration and comprehension.
But you can build your vocabulary wi t hout using a dictionary each time. Here are two rules:
Pause for a moment on each new word and let it register in your mind.
Try to guess what the word means from context clues, from the words around it.
What happens wi t h this method is that you will see the word again and again. Each time you will have a stronger impression of the meaning. Soon, the new word will be familiar and its meaning clear.
The key to the method is to be alert to new words. Don't skip over them. You'll find you are adding to your vocabulary each day and a good strong vocabulary is a great help to reading quickly and with strong comprehension.
Good reading habits like these can help students and working adults alike to be more successful. The special world of school and the real world of school and of everyday life can be more comfortable, productive and rewarding with the addi t ion of simple yet important life skills such as good reading habi t s.
因为进入了电视时代，社会生活的各方面都把图像和声响放在越来越重要的位置。所以有许多人认为我们应该迅速地改掉阅读这一生存所必须具备的技能，但实际情况根本就不是这样。
现在良好的阅读能力是比过去任何时候都更加重要的一种生存技能。书面的文字资料依然是高等教育和就业市场上能找到较好职位的垫脚石。
对学生来说，几乎任何课程都必须经过阅读；对成年人来说，坚持天天读，就是一条通往幸福快乐能够抓住大好机遇的一条平坦大道，否则就会成为你前进路上的绊脚石。因此，良好的阅读习惯不但是学生学习的重要技能，对任何人都是一种重要的生存技能。
快速游览--拿到阅读材料先用极短的时间马上看看标题、篇章题目、小节的题目及文中的大号字体，以便能抓住这份材料的主要思
想内容。快速游览的目的就是要迅速地理解你从这份阅读材料中所期望获得的信息，以便你能知道在你接着继续读下去的时候你将会读到些什么内容。
各类地图、图表、曲线图和图片都是很有用的线索，为帮助读者去理解所读的材料的内容和组织结构提供一些启示。这种简易可行的快速浏览的技巧有助于你在阅读中抓住中心思想、段落大意，因为在你开始阅读以后你就会知道你将要读到的内容。
阅读速度--还有一种良好的阅读习惯就是快速阅读。不能把"欲速则不达"这句话套用到阅读上。事实上绝大多数人的阅读实在是太慢了。也许此时此刻你在新闻记者本文时的速度要比为了更好地理解本文所需要的阅读速度更慢。多次调查研究都表明了，读得快阅读效果最好，读得慢就不能集中精神，因而也就丧失了理解力，由于感到枯燥，思想上就会开小差，心不在焉。
切记，阅读速度太慢只能妨碍你集中注意力。如果你要求你的思路能与你的阅读速度保持同步，那你是能做到的。一贯用你所能达到的最快的速度来阅读，向你的理解力挑战，那么把你的思想全神贯注到所阅读的材料上就是很容易做到的了。
积累词汇--对于一个养成了良好阅读习惯的人来说，每一页文字资料里不只是包含一些词句，还饮食有一些观点、行动、思想和感情。但是，这一切都是通过词汇表达出来的。你所认识的词汇越多，你越会觉得你不是在阅读一个一个的孤立的单词，你越会更加去体会文章的内容和作者的意思。扩大了词汇量将会帮助你读得效率更高更快。
很多人干脆把他们所不认识的词跳过去不管它。当然，这样会妨碍你对文章的整体理解。还有些人一遇到生词就停下来查词典，这种做法也会减慢你的阅读速度，会影响你不能全神贯注不能全面理解。
每遇到生词，你可以不用去查词典，就能扩大你的词汇量。这里教给你两手绝活：
一是每遇到一个生词，你稍稍停留片刻，把这个生词先存贮到脑海里；
二是从上下文所提供的线索，从这句话的语言环境来试着猜一猜这个词的意思。
使用这种方法就会出现这样的情况：在下文中你会一遍又一遍地见到这个词。每再见到一次你就会对该词的意义有更强烈的印象。不久，这个生词就会变成熟词，那么它的意义也就清楚明白了。
使用这种方法的关键是要处处留心那些生词。不要对这些生词置之不理。这样，你就会发现你的词汇量每天都在扩大。有了很丰富的词汇量才能极大地提高你快速阅读的速度，才能使佻理解得更深刻。
像上述这些良好的阅读习惯能帮助学生们和在职的成年人取得更大的成熟。由于养成了这些良好的阅读习惯，增强了这些简单易行的重要的生存技巧，在校读书的特殊环境，学生和日常生活的真实环境，就会变得更舒适，你就会取得更大的成就并从中获得更大的益处。
Move Over, Big Brother 1.Living without privacy, even in his bedroom, was no problem for Louis XIV. In fact, it was a way for the French king to demonstrate his absolute authority over even the most powerful members of the aristocracy. Each morning, they gathered to see the Sun King get up, pray, perform his bodily functions, choose his wig and so on. 2.Will this past—life without privacy—be our future? Many futurists, science fiction writers and privacy advocates believe so. Big Brother, they have long warned, is watching. Closed-circuit television cameras often track your moves; your mobile phone reveals your location; your transit pass and credit cards leave digital trails. Now there is the possibility that citizens are being watched. 3.But in the past few years, something strange has happened. Thanks to the spread of mobile phones, digital cameras and the internet, surveillance technology has become far more widely available. Bruce Schneier, a security guru, argues that a combination of forces—the miniaturisation of surveillance technologies, the falling price of digital storage and ever more sophisticated systems able to sort through large amounts of information—means that “surveillance abilities that used to be limited to governments are now, or soon will be, in the hands of everyone.” 4.Digital technologies, such as camera phones and the internet, are very different from their analogue counterparts. A digital image, unlike a conventional photograph, can be quickly and easily copied and distributed around the world. Another important difference is that digital devices are far more widespread. Most people take their camera phones with them everywhere. 5.The speed and ubiquity of digital cameras lets them do things that film-based cameras could not. In October, for example, the victim of a robbery in Nashville, Tennessee, used his camera-phone to take pictures of the thief and his getaway vehicle. The images were shown to the police, who broadcast descriptions of the man and his truck, leading to his arrest ten minutes later. 6.The democratisation of surveillance is a mixed blessing, however. Camera phones have led to voyeurisms and new legislation to strengthen people?s rights to their own ima ge. In September, America?s Congress passed the “Video Voyeurism Prevention Act”, which prohibits the photography of various parts of people?s unclothed bodies or undergarments without their consent. The legislation was prompted both by the spread of camera-phones and the growing incidence of hidden cameras in bedrooms, public showers, toilets and locker rooms. Similarly, Germany?s parliament has passed a bill that outlaws unauthorized photos within buildings. In Saudi Arabia, the import and sale of camera-phones has been banned, and religious authorities have denounced them for “spreading obscenity”. South Korea?s government has ordered manufacturers to design new phones so that they beep when taking a picture. 7.There are also concerns about the use of digital cameras and camera-phones for industrial espionage. Sprint, an American mobile operator, is now offering one of its best-selling phones without a camera in response to demands from its corporate customers, many of which have banned cameras in their workplaces. Some firms make visitors and staff leave camera-phones at the entrance of research and manufacturing facilities—including Samsung, the South Korean company that pioneered the camera phone. 8.Cheap surveillance technology facilitates other sorts of crime. Two employees at a petrol station in British Columbia, for example, installed a hidden camera in the ceiling above a card reader, and recorded the personal identification numbers of thousands of people. They also
2014年6月大学英语四级考试真题及答案(完整版) Part I Writing (30 minutes) Directions: You should write atleast 120 words but no more than 180 words. Supposea foreign friend of yours is coming to visit your hometown, what is the mostinteresting place you would like to take him/her to see and why? Part III Reading Comprehension (40 minutes) Section A Questions 36 to 45 are based onthe following passage. Global warming is a trend towardwarmer conditions around the world. Part of the warming is natural; we haveexperienced a 20,000 -year -long warming as the last ice age ended and the ice 36 away.However, we have already reached temperatures that are in 37 withother minimum-ice periods, so continued warming is likely not natural. We are 38 toa predicted worldwide increase in temperatures 39 between 1℃and 6℃over the next 100 years. The warming will be more 40 in some areas, less in others, and some placesmay even cool
We all listen to music according to our separate , for the sake of analysis, the whole listening process may become clearer if we break it up into its component parts, so to certain sense we all listen to music on three separate lack of a better terminology, one might name these: 1) the sensuous plane, 2) the expressive plane, 3) the sheerly musical only advantage to be gained from mechanically splitting up the listening process into these hypothetical planes is the clearer view to be had of the way in which we listen. The simplest way of listening to music is to listen for the sheer pleasure of the musical sound is the sensuous is the plane on which we hear music without thinking, without considering it in any turns on the radio while doing something else andabsent-mindedly bathes in the kind of brainless but attractive state of mind is engendered by the mere sound appeal of the music. The surprising thing is that many people who consider themselves qualified music lovers abuse that plane in go to concerts in order to lose use music as a consolation or an enter an ideal world where one doesn’t have to think of the realities of everyday course they aren’t thinking about the music allows them to leave it, and they go off to a place to dream, dreaming because of and apropos of the music yet never quite listening to it. Yes, the sound appeal of music is a potent and primitive force, but you must not allow it to usurp a disproportionate share of your sensuous plane is an important one in music, a very important one, but it does not constitute the whole story. The second plane on which music exists is what I have called the expressive , immediately, we tread on controversial have a way of shying away from any discussion of music’s expressive not Stravinsky himself proclaim that his music was an “object”, a “thing”, with a life of its own, and with no other meaning than its own purely musical existenceThis intransigent attitude of Stravinsky’s may be due to the fact that so many people have tried to read different meanings into so many knows it is difficult enough to say precisely what it is that a piece of music means, to say it definitely to say it finally so that everyone is satisfied with your that should not lead one to the other extreme of denying to music the right to be “expressive”. Listen, if you can,to the 48 fugue themes of Bach’s Well-tempered to each theme, one after will soon realize that each theme mirrors a different world of will also soon realize that the more beautiful a theme seems to you the harder it is to find any word that will describe it to your complete , you will certainly know whether it is a gay theme or a sad will be able, on other words, in your own mind, to draw a frame of emotional feeling around your study the sad one a little closer. Try to pin down the exact quality of its it pessimistically sad or resignedly sad; is it fatefully sad or smilingly sadLet us suppose that you are fortunate and can describe to your own satisfaction in so many words the exact meaning of your chosen is still no guarantee that anyone else will be need they important thing is that each one feels for himself the specific expressive quality of a theme or, similarly, an entire piece of if it is a great work of art, don’t expect it to mean exactly the same thing to you each time you return to it. The third plane on which music exists is the sheerly musical the pleasurable sound of music and the expressive feeling that it gives off, music does exist in terms of the notes themselves and of their listeners are not sufficiently conscious of this third plane. It is very important for all of us to become more alive to music on its sheerly musical all, an actual musical material is being intelligent listener must be prepared to increase his awareness of the musical material and what happens to must hear the melodies, the rhythms, the harmonies, the tone colors in a more conscious above all he must, in order to follow the line of the composer’s thought, know something of the principles of musical to all of these elements is listening to the sheerly musical plane. Let me repeat that I have split up mechanically the three separate planes on which we listen merely for the sake of greater clarity. Actually, we never listen on one or the other of these we do is to correlate them—listening in all three ways at the same takes no mental effort, for we do it instinctively Perhaps an analogy with what happens to us when we visit the theater will make this instinctive correlation the theater, you are aware of the actors and actresses, costumes and sets, sounds and these give one the sense that the theater is a pleasant place to be constitute the sensuous plane in our theatrical reactions. The expressive plane in the theater would be derived from the feeling that you get from what is happening on the are moved to pity, excitement, or is this general feeling, generated aside from the particular words being spoken, a certain emotional something which exists on the stage,that isanalogous to the expressive quality in music. The plot and plot development is equivalent to our sheerly musical playwright creates and develops a character in just the same way that a composer creates and develops a to the degree of your awareness of the way in which the artist in either field handles his material will you become a more intelligent is easy enough to see that the theatergoer never is conscious of any of these elements is aware of them all at the same same is true of music simultaneously and without thinking listen on all three planes. It is not surprising that modern children tend to look blank and dispirited when info rmed that they will someday have to “go to work and make a living”. The problem is that they cannot visualize what work is in corporate Americ a. Not so long ago, when a parent said he was off to work, the child knew very well what was about to happen. His parent was going to make something or fix something. T
[1] For most of its history, psychology had concerned itself with all that ails the human mind: anxiety, depression, neurosis, obsessions, paranoia, delusions. Over the decades, a few psychological researchers had ventured out of the dark realm of mental illness into the sunny land of the mentally hale and hearty. Martin Seligman，a psychologist at University of Pennsylvania, wanted to look at what actively made people feel fulfilled, engaged and meaningfully happy. Mental health, he reasoned, should be more than the absence of mental illness. It should be something akin to a vibrant and muscular fitness of the human mind and spirit. What Makes Us Happy [2] So, what has science learned about what makes the human heart sing? More than one might imagine—along with some surprising things about what doesn?t ring our inner chimes. Take wealth, for instance, and all the delightful things that money can buy. Research by Deiner, among others, has shown that once your basic needs are met, additional income does little to raise your sense of satisfaction with life. Neither do education, youth, marriage and sunny days. [3] On the positive side, religious faith seems to genui nely lift the spirit, though it?s tough to tell whether it?s the God part or the community aspect that does the heavy lifting. Friends? A giant yes. A 2002 study conducted at the University of Illinois by Diener and Seligman found that the most salient characteristics shared by the 10% of students with the highest levels of happiness and the fewest signs of depression were their strong ties to friends and family and commitment to spending time with them. “Word needs to be spread,” concludes Diener. “It is i mportant to work on social skills, close interpersonal ties and social support in order to be happy.” Measuring Our Moods [4] Of course, happiness is not a static state. Even the happiest of people—the cheeriest 10%—feel blue at times. And even the bluest have their moments of joy. That has presented a challenge to social scientists trying to measure happiness. That, along with the simple fact that happiness is inherently subjective. To get around those challenges, researchers have devised several methods of assessment. Diener has created one of the most basic and widely used tools, the Satisfaction with Life Scale. Though some scholars have questioned the validity of this simple, five-question survey, Diener has found that it squares well with other measures of happiness, such as impressions from friends and family, expression of positive emotion and low incidence of depression. [5] Just last month, a team led by Nobel Prize winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman of Princeton University unveiled a new tool for sizing up happiness: the day reconstruction method. Participants fill out a long diary and questionnaire detailing everything they did on the previous day and whom they were with at the time and rating a range of feelings during each episode (happy, impatient, depressed, worried, tired, etc.) on a seven-point scale. [6] Seligman, in contrast, puts the emphasis on the remembering self. “I think we are our memories more than we are the sum total of our experiences,” he says. For him, studying moment-to-moment experiences puts too much emphasis on transient pleasures and displeasures. Happiness goes deeper than that, he argues in his 2002 book Authentic Happiness. As a result of his research, he finds three components of happiness: pleasure (“the smiley-face piece”), engagement (the depth of involvement with one?s family, work, romance and hobbies) and meaning (using personal strengths to serve some larger end). Of those three roads to a happy, satisfied life, pleasure is the least consequential, he insists: “This is newsworthy because so many Americans build their lives around pursuing pleasure. It turns out that engagement and meaning
大学英语四、六级考试分数解释 大学英语四、六级考试（CET）分为四级（CET-4）和六级（CET-6）两个级别。大学英语四、六级考试的设计参照了《大学英语课程教学要求》（以下简称教学要求）。四级参照《教学要求》中规定的“一般要求”；六级参照《教学要求》中规定的“较高要求”。大学英语四、六级考试的分数报道采用常模参照方式，不设及格线。四级考试的常模群体选自全国16所高校的约三万名非英语专业的考生；六级常模群体选自全国五所重点大学的约五千名非英语专业的考生。每次考试等值后的卷面分数都参照常模转换为报道分。四、六级考试报道总分为710分，计算公式为： 公式中TotSco表示总分，X表示每位考生常模转换前的原始总分，Mean表示常模均值，SD表示常模标准差。每次四、六级考试等值后的卷面分数都将参照此常模公式转换为报道分数。 四、六级考试单项成绩有四个部分，这四个部分以及所占的分值比例为：听力占35%，阅读占35%，翻译和写作占30%。各单项报道分的满分为：听力249分，阅读249分，翻译和写作212分。各单项报道分之和等于报道总分。 每位考生的报道分在常模群体中都有一个相应的百分位位置。下面的表1 和表2是大学英语四、六级考试报道分数常模百分位对照表。举例说明表1的使用方法如下（表2的使用方法和表1相同）。 例1：某考生四级报道总分是450分，从表1可以查到其在常模群体中的相应百分位是25%，表示这名考生的英语成绩优于常模群体中25%的人，但劣于75%的人。
例2：某考生四级报道总分是500分，从表1可以查到其在常模群体中的相应百分位在44%～55%之间，表示这名考生的英语成绩至少优于常模群体中44%的人，但不会优于55%的人。 例3：某考生四级报道的听力单项分是140分，从表1可以查到其在常模群体中的相应百分位在12%，表示这名考生的听力成绩优于常模群体中12%的人。 例4：某考生四级报道的阅读单项分是140分，从表1可以查到其在常模群体中的相应百分位在17%，表示这名考生的阅读成绩优于常模群体中17%的人。 表 1：大学英语四级考试报道分数的常模百分位对照表
TRAITS OF THE KEY PLAYERS 核心员工的特征 What exactly is a key play？ 核心员工究竟是什么样子的? A “Key Player” is a phrase that I've heard about from employers during just about every search I've conducted. 几乎每次进行调查时，我都会从雇主们那里听到“核心员工”这个名词。 I asked a client — a hiring manager involved in recent search — to define it for me. 我请一位客户——一位正参与研究的人事部经理，给我解释一下。 “Every company has a handful of staff in a given area of expertise that you can count on to get the job done. “每家公司都有少数几个这样的员工，在某个专业领域，你可以指望他们把活儿干好。On my team of seven process engineers and biologists, I've got two or three whom I just couldn't live without,” he said. 在我的小组中，有七名化工流程工程师和生物学家，其中有那么两三个人是我赖以生存的，”他说， “Key players are essential to my organization. “他们对我的公司而言不可或缺。 And when we hire your company to recruit for us, we expect that you'll be going into other companies and finding just: 当请你们公司替我们招募新人的时候，我们期待你们会去其他公司找这样的人： the staff that another manager will not want to see leave. 其他公司经理不想失去的员工。 We recruit only key players.” 我们只招募核心员工。” This in part of pep talk intended to send headhunters into competitor's companies to talk to the most experienced staff about making a change. 这是一段充满了鼓动性的谈话，目的是把猎头们派往竞争对手的公司去游说经验丰富的员工们做一次职业变更。 They want to hire a “key player” from another company. 他们想从另一家公司招募核心员工。 Every company also hires from ranks of newbies, 然而，每家公司也从新人中招人。 and what they're looking for is exactly the same. 他们要寻找的是完全一样的东西。 “We hold them up to the standards we see in our top people. “我们把他们和公司顶级员工表现出的特质进行对照。 If it looks like they have these same traits, we'll place a bet on them.” 假如他们看起来有同样特征的话，我们就在他们身上赌一把。” It's just a bit risker.只是这样有点儿冒险。 “It's an educated guess,”“这是一种有根据的猜测，” says my hiring manager client.我的人事经理客户说。 Your job as a future employee is to help the hiring manager mitigate that risk. 作为未来的一名员工，你的工作是帮助人事部经理降低这种风险，
大学英语四级考试真题及答案(绝对完整） Part I Writing (30 minutes) Directions: For this part, you are allowed 30 minute to write a short essay on the topic of students selecting their lectures. You should write at least 120 words following the outline given bellow: 1. 越来越多的博物馆免费对外开放的目的是什么？ 2. 也会带来一些问题 3. 你的看法？ Part II Reading Comprehension (Skimming and Scanning) (15 minutes)Directions: In this part, you will have 15 minutes to go over the passage quickly and answer the questions on Answer Sheet 1. For questions 1-7, choose the best answer from the four choices marked A),B),C) and D). For questions 8-10, complete the sentences with the information given in the passage. How Do You See Diversity? As a manager, Tiffany is responsible for interviewing applicants for some of the positions with her company .During one interview, she noticed that the candidate never made direct eye contact. She was puzzled and somewhat disappointed because she liked the individual otherwise. He had a perfect resume and gave good responses to her questions, but the fact that he never looked her in the eye said “untrustworthy,” so she decided to offer the job to her second choice. “It wasn’t until I attended a diversity workshop that I realized the person we passed over was the perfect person,” Tiffany confesses. What she hadn’t known at the time of the interview was that the candidate’s “different” behavior was simply a cultural misunderstanding . He was an Asian-American raised in a household where respect for those in authority was shown by averting(避开) your eyes. “I was just thrown off by the lack of ye contact; not realizing it was cultural,” Tiffany says. “I missed out ,but will not miss that opportunity again.” Many of us have had similar encounters with behaviors we perceive as different. As the world becomes smaller and our workplaces more diverse, it is becoming essential to expand our under-standing of others and to reexamine some of our false assumptions . Hire Advantage At a time when hiring qualified people is becoming more difficult ,employers who can eliminate invalid biases(偏爱) from the process have a distinct advantage .My company, Mindsets LLC ,helps organizations and individuals see their own blind spots . A real estate recruiter we worked with illustrates the positive difference such training can make .