题目内容
Americans are obsessed (着迷的) with telling their life stories. This phenomenon isn’t simply the product of the technological world. 1. People are eager to tell stories and are fascinated by those of others. Even at preschool, “sharing time” is a common Monday-morning activity where the teenagers will sit in a circle and take turns telling a story about something they did over the weekend.
2. In many Asian countries, talking about and drawing attention to oneself can be seen as socially inappropriate. People are often unwilling to share their life stories and do not encourage others to do so. But there are also times Asians do share their stories. 3. Asians believe that a person is largely decided by his or her social status and relationships, leaving little reason to broadcast detailed and revealing personal stories to establish a unique self.
Ironically, the more unique Americans strive to be, the greater their need to feel connected with others. In their culture of individuality, relationships are highly mobile and can be easily formed or dissolved(破裂).
Sharing personal stories brings them closer through the exchange of thoughts, feelings and desires. 4. But this motivation is not nearly as strong among Asians, for whom social relations are generally unconditional, obligatory(义不容辞的) and stable, and therefore require little maintenance(维护).
5. American parents encourage children to share their stories and create opportunities to re-experience the past with children. Asian parents, by contrast, engage their children in telling personal stories less frequently. When they do talk about a child’s experiences, they are not particularly concerned with parent-child bonding but tend to focus on disciplining the child.
A. They tend to focus more on outer facts than personal details.
B. It helps them shape their “selves” and makes them who they are.
C. Interestingly, this obsession is not necessarily shared in other cultures.
D. Talking about personal stories is to cheer people on with positive feelings.
E. It connects them like many different points, holding their society together.
F. Sharing personal stories is also an essential part in everyday conversations.
G. Parents in America and Asia differ in how they share memories with children.
Secret codes(密码)keep messages private. Banks, companies, and government agencies use secret codes in doing business, especially when information is sent by computer.People have used secret codes for thousands of years.1.Code breaking never lags(落后)far behind code making. The science of creating and reading coded messages is called cryptography.There are three main types of cryptography.2.For example, the first letters of “My elephant eats too many eels” spell out the hidden message “Meet me.” 3.You might represent each letter with a number, for example. Let’s number the letters of the alphabet, in order, from 1 to 26. If we substitute a number for each letter, the message “Meet me” would read “135520135.”A code uses symbols to replace words, phrases, or sentences. To read the message of a real code, you must have a code book.4.For example, “bridge” might stand for “meet” and “out” might stand for “me.” The message “Bridge out” would actually mean “Meet me.”5.However, it is also hard to keep a code book secret for long. So codes must be changed frequently.
A. It is very hard to break a code without the code book. |
B. In any language, some letters are used more than others. |
C. Only people who know the keyword can read the message. |
D. As long as there have been codes, people have tried to break them. |
E. You can hide a message by having the first letters of each word spell it out. |
F. With a code book, you might write down words that would stand for other words. |
G. Another way to hide a message is to use symbols to stand for specific letters of the alphabet. |