—Thanks for caring, sir. Wish I could tell you something about the noise. But I _______ a thing.
—Poor me! I didn't read the contract fully before I signed it but I'm _______ now.
—_______. You know what? I've had enough of your lame excuses.
As Christensen and her daughter Riley were scanning the home page of the Bike Rack, a shop in their town, a video link for Project Mobility 1their eyes. She clicked on it out of 2. The video told how Bike
Rack co-owner Hal Honey man had created a(n) 3 to provide bicycles that are 4engineered for people with disabilities. It showed the happy faces of those who were now riding them—accident victims, 5veterans(老兵), and children with disabilities.
"I'm going to buy a bike for one of those kids", Riley told her mother. Two days later, she showed Christensen a 6 she had written asking for donations: "I think it's amazing to 7 bikes for kids who can't walk," the letter said. I saw how happy a boy was when he got one...I'm writing to ask for your 8."
Christensen was blown away by her daughter's effort, but doubts quickly 9. The cost of just one of those special bikes could be as 10 as $4,000. Riley could never raise the money. 11, her letter went out to 75 relatives and friends. Within three days, checks and cash began 12. Then word about Riley's plan 13 and as Christmas neared, more and more 14 rolled in. The teen 15 raised more than $12,000, enough to pay for three bikes.
Last Christmas Eve, Riley pulled on a Santa hat and 16 the bicycle to one of the 17 kids: Ava, a 13-year-old girl, who couldn't move her legs with a rare genetic disorder. "This is the best Christmas I ever had," said Riley.
She and Ava have since 18 together. "When I ride, I like to go fast, get sweaty and feel the breeze", Riley says." So does Ava. She pumps with her arms, not her 19 but she really flies."
Riley is determined to keep her 20 going every holiday season. "I want kids to feel the wind in their faces," she says.
Save Kumwenda, 41, Ph.D. student
"The biggest challenge is to get funding, let alone enough funding. Most grants assume that the institutions where you are applying from have some basic infrastructure, especially related to research involving the lab. But when you get the funding, it is not enough, because most of the equipment is not available and if it is available, it is outdated. Using it makes your results questionable and difficult to publish in high-impact journals."
Jacque Pak Kan Ip, 35, postdoctoral researcher
"We are planning to have kids. I cannot ask my wife to sacrifice her career again. But it has taken me a lot of time to do my research already. When she is pregnant and might need help, I might need to dial it back to help her. So we hesitate. A tenure-track position(终生教职)would be much more stable. Maybe at that time, we could plan to have a child. But then, I am 35; she is 34. The time window is getting narrower for us to have children."
Sophia Nasr, 26, second-year Ph.D. student
"The most devastating experience I ever had was applying for an NSF scholarship. I put my whole heart into it. I think my application was solid, and it just took one reviewer to flush it all down the drain. I found out right in the middle of my qualifying exams, so it was just crushing to my confidence. I've bounced back from that, but as a theorist, it's kind of hard to look for other places that will even offer me funding. For me, the NSF was where it was at, so it was heartbreaking.
Ashley Juavinett, 28, postdoctoral researcher
"So few people within academia talk about it because it's so expected: ‘Of course, you'll move across the country for a postdoc because that's what everybody does.' The move definitely took a toll on my relationship. My partner is in the Bay Area. There was, for a long time, this question of whether she should move to New York instead."
The idea that some kids pick up information better when it's presented visually, and others physically or by listening, is a myth(错误观念)that could rob children of opportunities to learn and a waste of parents' money, according to scientists.
Researchers at the University of Michigan looked at the pervasiveness of myths about so-called learning styles. They questioned what is known as psychological essentialism(本质主义): The idea that the category something fits into is determined by a biological "truth" with a genetic basis. For instance, girls liking pink, pitbulls being violent, or visual learners only remembering information when it is presented to them in a specific way.
They thought despite the theory existing for decades, there is no evidence to suggest tailoring a person's learning experience to their self-reported learning style helps them to remember information.
The researchers recruited a total of 668 U.S. adults for the study, asking them about their beliefs about learning styles. Respondents were asked to rate their agreement or disagreement with statements like "People are born with a tendency to have a certain learning style." In both surveys, over 90 percent of participants said they believed in learning styles. And around half of the people tested said they believed that we are born with learning styles; that they can easily be identified; inherited from our parents; and help to predict what a child will do in life.
Shaylene Nancekivell, a visiting scholar at the University of Michigan and study co-author, told News- week: "We should be using best practices in our classrooms and at home to teach our children. The popularity of the learning style myth and commercial products means that it is very easy to spend money and time on programs or strategies that may not be helping children learn. My biggest concern is that time is being spent teaching young children maladaptive strategies for learning. It is important that children from a very young age are taught with the best practices so they will succeed."
Asked how the study was limited, Nancekivell explained: "We need to reexamine and better understand our findings with educators. It will be important to dive deeper into educators' beliefs and reexamine our finding that educators who work with younger children are more likely to view learning styles in an essentialist light. We also need to better understand how the differing beliefs we have discovered translate into practice."
Dr. Paul A. Kirschner also commented: "The study identifies origins of the belief, and thus is possibly theoretically or philosophically significant, it stops there. The real problem is that THEY rob children of opportunities to learn by branding or classifying them as belonging to a specific group that cannot do certain things. It's also a good excuse for parents to blame teachers and schools for their children's poor study habits and for schools and teachers to blame makers of learning materials."
①Robbing children of learning opportunities. ②Wasting children's time and money.
③Acquiring maladaptive learning strategies. ④Being taught with the best practices.
⑤Believing they are born with a certain learning style.
Though the spread of good reproduction(复制品)of works of art can be culturally valuable, museums continue to promote the special status of original work and highlight the authenticity(真实)of its exhibits. Unfortunately, this seems to place severe limitations on the kind of experience offered to visitors.
One limitation is related to the way the museum presents its exhibits. Art museums are often called "treasure houses". We are reminded of this even before we view a collection by the presence of security guards who keep us away from the exhibits. In addition, a major collection like that of London's National Gallery is housed in numerous rooms, where a single piece of work is likely to be worth more than all the average visitor possesses. In a society that judges the personal status of the individual so much by their material worth, it is therefore difficult not to be impressed by one's own relative "worthlessness" in such an environment.
Furthermore, consideration of the "value" of the original work in its treasure house setting impresses upon the viewer that since these works were originally produced, they have been assigned a huge value in terms of money by some person or institution more powerful than themselves. Evidently, nothing the viewer thinks about the work is going to alter that value, and so today's viewer is discouraged from trying to extend that spontaneous, immediate, self-reliant kind of interpretation which would originally have met the work.
The visitor may then be struck by the strangeness of seeing such a variety of paintings, drawings and sculptures brought together in an environment for which they were not originally created. This "displacement effect" is further heightened by the huge volume of exhibits. In the case of a major collection, there are probably more works on display than we could realistically view in weeks or even months.
This is particularly distressing because time seems to be a vital factor in the appreciation of all art forms. A fundamental difference between paintings and other art forms is that there is no prescribed time over which a painting is viewed. Operas, novels and poems are read in a prescribed time sequence, whereas a picture has no clear place at which to start viewing, or at which to finish. Thus art works themselves encourage us to view them superficially, without appreciating the richness of detail and labor that is involved.
Consequently, the dominant critical approach becomes that of the art historian, a specialized academic approach devoted to "discovering the meaning" of art within the cultural context of its time. This is in harmony with the museum's function, since the approach is dedicated to seeking out and conserving "authentic", "original" readings of the exhibits.
No one knew Prince Edward Street as well as Pierre Dupin. He had delivered milk to the families on the street for thirty years. For the past fifteen years a large white horse named Joseph pulled his milk wagon. Joseph was a gentle horse with beautiful spirit shining out of its eyes, so Pierre named him after Saint Joseph.
Every morning at five, Pierre arrived at the milk company's stables to find Joseph waiting for him, Pierre would call, "Good morning, my old friend.", as he climbed into his seat, while Joseph turned his head toward the driver. And the two would go proudly down the street. Without any order from Pierre, the wagon would roll down three streets. Then it turned right for two streets, before turning left to Saint Catherine Street. The horse finally stopped at the first house on Prince Edward Street. There, Joseph would wait perhaps thirty seconds for Pierre to get down off his seat and put a bottle of milk at the front door.
Pierre knew every one of the forty families that got milk. The cooks knew that Pierre could not read or write; so, instead of leaving orders in an empty milk bottle, they simply sang out if they needed an extra bottle.
Pierre also had a wonderful memory. When he arrived at the stable he always remembered to tell Jacques, the foreman(领班)of the stables, "The Pacquins took an extra bottle this morning; the Lemoines bought a pint of cream …" Most of the drivers had to make out the weekly bills and collect the money. But Jacques, liking Pierre, never asked him to do this.
One day the president of the milk company came to inspect the early morning milk deliveries.Jacques pointed to Pierre and said: "See how the horse listens and how he turns his head toward Pierre? See the look in that horse's eyes? You know, I think those two share a secret. I have often felt it. He is getting old. Maybe he ought to be given a rest, and a small pension."
"But of course," the president laughed. "He has been on this job now for thirty years. All who know him love him. Tell him it is time he rested. He will get his pay every week as before."
But Pierre refused to leave his job. He said his life would be nothing if he could not drive Joseph every day. "We are two old men," he said to Jacques. "Let us wear out together. When Joseph is ready to leave, then I too will do so."
Then one cold morning Jacques had terrible news for Pierre. Jacques said, "Pierre, your horse, Joseph, didn't wake up. He was very old, Pierre." Jacques said softly. "He is over in his stall, looking very peaceful. Go over and see him." Pierre took one step forward, then turned. "No … no … I cannot see Joseph again. You …, you don't understand, Jacques."
For years Pierre had worn a large heavy cap that came down low over his eyes. It kept out the bitter cold wind. Now, Jacques looked into Pierre's eyes and he saw something that shocked him. He saw a dead, lifeless look in them.
"Take the day off, Pierre," Jacques said. Pierre walked to the corner and stepped into the street. There was a warning shout from the driver of a big truck … there was the screech(尖锐的刹车声)of rubber tires as the truck tried to stop. But Pierre heard nothing.
Five minutes later a doctor said, "He's dead …, killed instantly."
"I couldn't help it," the truck driver said. "He walked in front of my truck. He never saw it, I guess. Why, he walked as though he were blind."
The doctor bent down. "Blind? Of course, this man has been blind for five years." He turned to Jacques, "Didn't you know he was blind?"
"No …no …" Jacques said softly. "None of us knew. Only one … only one knew—a friend of his, named Joseph … It was a secret, I think, just between those two."
注意:每个空格只填一个单词。
Inbox Zero vs. Inbox 5,000: A Unified Theory
How is it that some people remain calm as they have many unread messages in their inboxes, while others can't sit still knowing that there are unread emails and messages? One 2012 study found that 70 percent of work emails were handled within six seconds of their arrival.
So what puts people in one camp or the other? Gloria Mark, a professor of informatics at University of California has explored just this sort of question. When someone drops everything just to get an unread count back to zero, productivity might be taking a hit. "It takes people on average about 25 minutes to get back to a task when they get interrupted," she says. It often takes so long to get back on task because the project you start doing after handling an email often isn't the same as the one you were already doing.
A few years ago, she ran a study in which office workers were cut off from using email for one workweek and were equipped with heart-rate monitors; on average, keeping away from emails significantly reduced their stress levels.
After interviewing several people about their relationship with email, Mark has noticed that, for some people, email is an extension of having control. One subject, she said, told her, "The sound of the bell control my life." Compulsively checking email or compulsively clearing out queues of unread emails can be a form of get some of that control back. Mark said, "So I might say that those who would like to check email may be easier to feeling out of control and in missing out information."
I also think there's another urge that fuels the feeling that comes with unread messages: Immediately reading is just like checking a box on a to-do list and clearing out unread stories. "In other words, the popularity of these behaviors lies in the false belief of progress that they bring. Few tasks can be as neat and immediate as deleting an email. For that reason, neurotically(神经质地)tidy people like me can't help but attend to emails the moment they arrive and then they feel they have completed something."
Jamie Madigan, a psychologist who writes about video games, thinks the arrival of a notification might be similar to the accumulation of virtual reward. Email, in other words, might not be just a task, but a game. "Designers of apps for the Web, phones, and other devices figured this out early on," he says. "In the case of our phones, we see, hear, or feel a notification sound show up, we open the app, and we are rewarded with something we like: a message from a friend, a like, or whatever."
lan Bogost, a professor of interactive computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology, offers a theory. "What if actually there are people who care about technology as a part of their identity, and people who don't?" I think his point might be the reason for a part of the difference.
Inbox Zero vs. Inbox 5,000: A Unified Theory |
|
Introduction |
Some people may unread messages, while others may to emails immediately. |
of handling emails |
Checking emails, which seems a minor to their task, takes longer to concentrate again than expected yet. |
Being cut off from using emails may people of stress to some extent. |
|
Reasons for checking emails |
Unread information rules certain people's life. Checking emails, in a sense, their desire to regain that control. |
Immediately reading give people a sense of and the wrong conception that of progress they create. |
|
After reading emails, the sense of conclusion may have great for those neurotically tidy people. |
|
The feeling of being rewarded by others is also a factor how they deal with emails. |
|
Conclusion |
That people may think of technology as a part of their identity may for the difference. |
【写作内容】
1)表达感动和感谢;
2)告诉他你的现状;
3)表达信心和愿望。
【写作要求】
1)词数150左右;
2)可以适当增加细节,以使行文连贯;
3)作文中不能出现真实姓名和学校名称。
【评分标准】
内容完整,语言规范,语篇连贯,词数适当。