My friend BJ Gallagher told me a great story recently, about her own experience with resentment (愤恨). She once worked as the training manager for a large newspaper, where she found the corporate culture extremely frustrating. The company was a hundred years old and their past success had blinded them to the need for change. Finally, after butting heads with several senior executives (主管) many times, she left the company. But she found that she hadn’t left her resentment, frustration, and anger behind when she resigned.

“I finally decided to write about my experiences and my feelings at the newspaper. I wanted to be rid of that company and those people, once and for all. So I wrote and I wrote. It wasn’t just a story that poured out; it was a whole book! We called it A peacock in the Land of Penguins. I was the peacock and those newspaper executives were the penguins.”

“It took me several more years to finally get over my negative emotions. Through a lot of soul-searching and reflection, I finally was able to let go of my resentment. I came to see that there was nothing personal in the way they treated me, and they were good people doing what they thought best for the company. I was the one who had made it personal. I thought they were making my life miserable on purpose.”

“Finally, the time came when I decided to make amends (弥补) for the sharp, angry things I had said about the company. I invited my former boss to dinner and made my apology. It was a great healing process for me. I finally felt free of the resentment that had been eating me up.”

“What was the final outcome?” I asked her.

“Gratitude,” she replied. “Not only wasn’t I resentful any more, I was grateful to the company. If I hadn’t had those painful experiences, I would never have written a book. And the book became hugely successful – now published in 21 languages; it transformed my business.”

1.What made BJ Gallagher frustrated in the company?

A. Unfair treatment by the senior executives.

B. The culture and tradition of the company.

C. The strict rules in the company.

D. Her low position in the company.

2.Why did BJ Gallagher write about her experiences and feelings at the company?

A. To make peace with the executives.

B. To make suggestions to the company.

C. To do soul-searching and reflection.

D. To express her anger.

3.What does the underlined part “butting heads with” in Paragraph 1 probably mean?

A. making friends with B. working with

C. arguing with D. spending time with

4.BJ Gallagher finally felt grateful to the company because _______.

A. she was forgiven by her former executives

B. she was accepted by the company again

C. her painful experiences there was valuable for her

D. she learned how to forgive others

Sara tried to befriend her old friend Steve's new wife, but Betty never seemed to have anything to say. While Sara felt Betty didn't hold up her end of the conversation, Betty complained to Steve that Sara never gave her a chance to talk. The problem had to do with expectations about pacing and pausing.

Conversation is a turn-taking game. When our habits are similar, there's no problem. But if our habits are different, you may start to talk before I'm finished or fail to take your turn when I'm finished. That's what was happening with Betty and Sara.

It may not be coincidental that Betty, who expected relatively longer pauses between turns, is British, and Sara, who expected relatively shorter pauses, is American. Betty often felt interrupted by Sara. But Betty herself became an interrupter and found herself doing most of the talking when she met a visitor from Finland. And Sara had a hard time cutting in on some speakers from Latin America or Israel.

The general phenomenon, then, is that the small conversation techniques, like pacing and pausing, lead people to draw conclusions not about conversational style but about personality and abilities. These habitual differences are often the basis for dangerous stereotyping (思维定式). And these social phenomena can have very personal consequences. For example, a woman from the southwestern part of the US went to live in an eastern city to take up a job in personnel. When the Personnel Department got together for meetings, she kept searching for the right time to break in – and never found it. Although back home she was considered outgoing and confident, in Washington she was viewed as shy and retiring. When she was evaluated at the end of the year, she was told to take a training course because of her inability to speak up.

That's why slight differences in conversational style – tiny little things like microseconds of pause – can have a great effect on one's life. The result in this case was a judgment of psychological problems – even in the mind of the woman herself, who really wondered what was wrong with her and registered for assertiveness training.

1.What did Sara think of Betty when talking with her?

A. Betty was talkative.

B. Betty was an interrupter.

C. Betty did not take her turn.

D. Betty paid no attention to Sara.

2.According to the passage, who are likely to expect the shortest pauses between turns?

A. Americans. B. Israelis.

C. The British. D. The Finns.

3.We can learn from the passage that _________.

A. communication breakdown results from short pauses and fast pacing

B. women are unfavorably stereotyped in eastern cities of the US

C. one's inability to speak up is culturally determined sometimes

D. one should receive training to build up one's confidence

4.The underlined word "assertiveness" in the last paragraph probably means ________.

A. being willing to speak one's mind

B. being able to increase one's power

C. being ready to make one's own judgment

D. being quick to express one's ideas confidently

阅读理解。

Babies don't learn to talk just from hearing sounds. They are lip?readers too. It happens during the stage when a baby's babbling (咿呀声) gradually changes from unclear voices into that first “mama” or “dada”. The baby in order to do like you has to figure out how to shape their lips to make that particular sound they are hearing, according to developmental psychologist David Lewkowicz of Florida Atlantic University, who led the study.

Apparently it doesn't take them too long to absorb the movements that match basic sounds. By their first birthdays, babies start changing back to look you in the eye again. It offers more evidence that quality face?time with babies is very important for speech development more than, say, turning on the latest baby DVD.

But Lewkowicz went a step further. He and his student Amy Hansen?Tift tested nearly 180 babies, groups of them at ages 4,6,8,10 and 12 months. How? They showed videos of a woman speaking in English or Spanish to babies of English speakers. They found that when the speaker used English, the 4?month?olds gazed mostly into her eyes. The 6?month?olds spent equal amounts of time looking at the eyes and the mouth. The 8?and 10?month?olds studied mostly the mouth. At 12 months, attention started changing back toward the speaker's eyes.

But what happened when these babies accustomed to English heard Spanish? The 12?month?olds studied the mouth longer, just like younger babies. They needed the extra information to recognize the unfamiliar sounds. That fits with research into bilingualism (双语) that shows babies' brains adjust themselves to distinguishing the sounds of their native language over other languages in the first year of life.

The continued lip?reading shows the 1?year?olds clearly still are fit for learning. Babies are so hard to study that this is “a fairly heroic data set”, says Duke University cognitive neuroscientist Greg Appelbaum, who found the research so fascinating that he wants to know more.

1.According to the first paragraph, babies________.

A.might get its voice “mama” by lip?reading

B.learn to talk just from hearing the sounds

C.like to figure out how to shape their lips

D.communicate with parents through gestures

2.What is necessary in developing babies' speech according to Lewkowicz?

A.Playing baby DVD nearby.

B.Teaching babies to read English.

C.Speaking with babies face to face.

D.Speaking different languages in front of babies.

3.Which of the following shows the right change of babies' eye gaze according to the text?

4.What would be the best title of the text?

A.Babies Have Different Methods to Talk

B.Babies Try Lip?reading in Learning to Talk

C.Babies Are Suitable to Learn Two Languages

D.Babies Can Easily Accept Foreign Language

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