When you make a mistake, big or small, cherish it like it’s the most precious thing in the world. Because in some ways, it is.
Most of us feel bad when we make mistakes, beat ourselves up about it, feel like failures, get mad at ourselves.
And that’s only natural: most of us have been taught from a young age that mistakes are bad, that we should try to avoid mistakes. We’ve been scolded when we make mistakes—at home, school and work. Maybe not always, but probably enough times to make feeling bad about mistakes an unconscious reaction.
Yet without mistakes, we could not learn or grow. If you think about it that way, mistakes should be cherished and celebrated for being one of the most amazing things in the world: they make learning possible; they make growth and improvement possible.
By trial and error—trying things, making mistakes, and learning from those mistakes—we have figured out how to make electric light, to paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, to fly.
Mistakes make walking possible for the smallest toddler, make speech possible, make works of genius possible.
Think about how we learn: we don’t just consume information about something and instantly know it or know how to do it. You don’t just read about painting, or writing, or computer programming, or baking, or playing the piano, and know how to do them right away. Instead, you get information about something, from reading or from another person or from observing, then you make mistakes and repeat, making mistakes, learning from those mistakes, until you’ve pretty much learned how to do something. That’s how we learn as babies and toddlers, and how we learn as adults. Mistakes are how we learn to do something new—because if you succeed at something, it’s probably something you already knew how to do. You haven’t really grown much from that success—at most it’s the last step on your journey, not the whole journey. Most of the journey was made up of mistakes, if it’s a good journey.
So if you value learning, if you value growing and improving, then you should value mistakes. They are amazing things that make a world of brilliance possible.Why do most of us feel bad about making mistakes?
| A．Because mistakes make us suffer a lot. |
| B．Because it’s a natural part in our life. |
| C．Because we’ve been taught so from a young age. |
| D．Because mistakes have ruined many people’s careers. |
According to the passage, what is the right attitude to mistakes?
| A．We should try to avoid making mistakes. |
| B．We should owe great inventions mainly to mistakes. |
| C．We should treat mistakes as good chances to learn. |
| D．We should make feeling bad about mistakes an unconscious reaction. |
The underlined word “toddler” in Paragraph 6 probably means .
| A．a small child learning to walk |
| B．a kindergarten child learning to draw |
| C．a primary pupil learning to read |
| D．a school teenager learning to write |
We can learn from the passage that .
| A．most of us can really grow from success |
| B．growing and improving are based on mistakes |
| C．we learn to make mistakes by trial and error |
| D．we read about something and know how to do it right away |
Personal computers and the Internet give people new choices about how to spend their time.
Some may use this freedom to share less time with certain friends or family members, but new technology will also let them stay in closer touch with those they care most about. I know this from personal experience.
E-mail makes it easy to work at home, which is where I now spend most weekends and evenings. My working hours aren’t necessarily much shorter than they once were but I spend fewer of them at the office. This lets me share more time with my young daughter than I might have if she’d been born before electronic mail became such a practical tool.
The Internet also makes it easy to share thoughts with a group of friends. Say you do something fun see a great movie perhaps-and there are four or five friends who might want to hear about it. If you call each one, you may tire of telling the story.
With E-mail, you just write one note about your experience, at your convenience, and address it to all the friends you think might be interested. They can read your message when they have time, and read only as much as they want to. They can reply at their convenience, and you can read what they have to say at your convenience.
E-mail is also an inexpensive way stay in close touch with people who live far away. More than a few parents use E-mail to keep in touch, even daily touch, with their children off at college.
We just have to keep in mind that computers and the Internet offer another way of staying in touch. They don’t take the place of any of the old ways.The purpose of this passage is to ________.
| A．explain how to use the Internet |
| B．describe the writer’s joy of keeping up with the latest technology |
| C．tell the merits(价值) and usefulness of the Internet |
| D．introduce the reader to basic knowledge about personal computers and the Internet |
The use of E-mail has made it possible for the writer to ________.
| A．spend less time working | B．have more free time with his child |
| C．work at home on weekends | D．work at a speed comfortable to him |
According to the writer, E-mail has an obvious advantage over the telephone because the former helps one ________.
| A．reach a group of people at one time conveniently |
| B．keep one’s communication as personal as possible |
| C．pass on much more information than the later |
| D．get in touch with one’s friends faster than the later |
The best title for this passage is ________.
| A．Computer: New Technological Advances |
| B．Internet: New Tool to Maintain Good Friendship |
| C．Computers Have Made Life Easier |
| D．Internet: a Convenient Tool for Communication |
Any mistake made in the printing of a stamp raises its value to stamp collectors. A mistake on one inexpensive postage stamp has made the stamp worth a million and a half times its original value.
The mistake was made more than a hundred years ago in the British colony of Mauritius, a small island in the Indian Ocean. In 1847 an order for stamps was sent to a London printer-Mauritius was to become the fourth country in the world to issue stamps.
Before the order was filled and delivered, a ball was planned at Mauritius’ Government House, and stamps were needed to send out the invitations. A local printer was instructed to copy the design for the stamps. He accidentally inscribed the words “Post Office” instead of “Post Paid” on the several hundred stamps that he printed.
Today there are only twenty-six of these misprinted stamps left fourteen One Penny Orange-Reds and twelve Two Penny Blues. Because of the Two Penny Blue’s rareness and age, collectors have paid as much as ＄16 800 for it.Over a century ago, Mauritius ________.
| A．was an independent country | B．belonged to India |
| C．was one of the British colonies | D．was a small island in the Pacific Ocean |
The mistake on the stamps was made ________.
| A．in Mauritius | B．at Mauritius Government House |
| C．in a post office | D．in London |
Stamp collectors have paid 16 800 for ________.
| A．fourteen One Penny Orange-Reds | B．twelve Two Penny Blues |
| C．one One Penny Orange-Red | D．one Two Penny Blue |
Today many people say that women have the same chance as men in society. But this was not always so. In the past, women all over the world had to fight to get the same chance as men in education and jobs. Many people said that women should not receive much education because they would not do as well as men when they went to work.
One woman who showed that women should have the same chance was Marie, a scientist. In the 1800s scientists knew that a metal, uranium, gave off radiation. They also knew how much radiation came from his element. But they didn’t know what this radiation was like; they wondered why and how uranium gave off radiation. Marie Curie set out to answer these questions. In one of her experiments she was studying a certain material which, she knew, contained uranium, But it gave off 4 times as much radiation as usually does. What could explain this fact? Marie Curie thought that there must be another source of radiation in this material.
In 1898 Marie Curie set out to find out this new source of radiation, which she named “radium”. Her husband, who was also a scientist, helped her. They set up a laboratory in an old building behind a school. For four years Curies searched, doing many experiments, And one morning in 1902 Marie found the source of the radiation.
Marie Curie proved to the world that there was element that gave off radiation. And she also proved to the world that, if women are given truly equal chance, they can really help society.The scientists of Marie Curie’s day knew .
| A．that uranium gave off radiation |
| B．that radium gave off radiation |
| C．that there was some radium in uranium |
| D．that uranium and radium both gave off radiation |
The Curies found the element radium .
| A．with other scientists’ help | B．by asking some famous scientists |
| C．by doing many experiments | D．with their teachers’ help |
In the past many people thought .
| A．that women must get the same chance as men in education and jobs |
| B．that women should receive much education |
| C．that women should get good jobs |
| D．that women could not do the work well |
Marie Curie proved to people .
| A．that there was a new element uranium |
| B．that there was a new element radium |
| C．that women could do their work as well as men if they were really given the same conditions |
| D．both B and C |
Anyone who doubts that children are born with a healthy amount of ambition need spend only a few minutes with a baby eagerly learning to walk. No matter how many times the little ones stumble in their first efforts, most keep on trying, determined to master their amazing new skill. It is only several years later, many psychologists and teachers agree, that a good number of kids seem to lose their natural drive to succeed. For the parents of such kids, whose own ambition is often tied to their children’s success, it can be a painful experience.
Figuring out why the fire went out is the first step. Assuming that a kid doesn’t suffer from a learning disability, or isn’t involved in some family crisis at home, many educators attribute a sudden lack of motivation to a fear of failure or classmate pressure. “Everything is within the kids’ control; their intelligence is changeable,” says Lisa Blackwell, a research scientist at Columbia University. “More than any teacher or workshop,” Blackwell says, “parents can play a key role in conveying this message to their children by praising their effort, and progress rather than emphasizing their ‘smartness’ or praising high performance alone. Most importantly, parents should let their kids know that mistakes are a part of learning.”
Some experts say our education system, with its strong emphasis on testing and separation of students into different levels of ability, also bears blame for the disappearance of drive in some kids. “These programs shut down the motivation of all kids who aren’t considered gifted and talented. They destroy their confidence,” says Jeff Howard, a social psychologist. Howard and other educators say it’s important to expose kids to a world beyond homework and tests, through volunteer work, sports, hobbies and other extracurriculum activities.
“The problem of the issue is that many students experience education as irrelevant to their life goals and ambitions,” says Michael Nakkual, a Harvard education professor. The key to getting kids to aim higher at school is to free them of the idea that class work is irrelevant, to show them how doing well at school can actually help them fulfill their dreams beyond it. They need to understand that you have to learn to walk before you can run. According to the passage, the parents of kids with no ambition.
| A．don’t do a very good job teaching them to walk |
| B．are to blame if the kids do poorly in school |
| C．feel pain because ambitions are connected to their success |
| D．should take part in extra-curriculum activities with kids |
The underlined part “the fire went out” probably means.
| A．the motivation was suddenly lost |
| B．the fear of failure was suddenly gone |
| C．the learning disability was suddenly lost |
| D．the fire was suddenly gone |
All the following can contribute to a sudden lack of ambition EXCEPT.
| A．learning disability | B．classmate pressure |
| C．emphasis on testing | D．extracurricular activities |
What is the most important thing for parents in motivating their kids?
| A．By punishing kids who don’t display ambition. |
| B．By emphasizing smartness and high performance. |
| C．By telling kids that mistakes are a part of learning. |
| D．By praising the effort and progress they have made. |
We can infer from the passage that.
| A．children who have lost their ambition will never succeed in life |
| B．school performance has much to do with students’ later success |
| C．both the parents and the school are to blame for the lost ambition |
| D．younger kids learning to walk are more ambitious than older ones |
Many people seem to think that science fiction is typified by the Bug-eyed Monster, embodying every feature that most people find unpleasant. This is unfortunate because it degrades a worthwhile literary endeavor. Instead, the basic interest of science fiction lies in the relation between man and his technology and between man and the universe. Science fiction is a literature of change and a literature of the future, and the aspects of human life that it considers make it well worth reading and studying for no other literary form does quite the same things. What is science fiction? To begin, the following definition should be helpful: science fiction is a literary subgenre which postulates(以…为前提) a change (for human beings) from conditions as we know them and follows the implications of these changes to a conclusion.
The first point that science fiction is a literary subgenre is a very important one, but one which is often overlooked. Specifically, science fiction is either a short story or a novel. There are only a few dramas which could be called science fiction; the body of poetry that might be labeled science fiction is only slightly larger. To say that science fiction is a subgenre of prose fiction(小说) is to say that it has all the basic characteristics and serves the same basic functions in much the same way as prose fiction in general, that is, it shares a great deal with all other novels and short stories.
Everything that can be said about prose fiction, in general, applies to science fiction. Every piece of science fiction, whether short story or novel, must have a narrator, a story, a plot, characters, setting, and language. The themes of science fiction are concerned with interpreting man’s nature and experience around him. Themes in science fiction are constructed and presented in exactly the same ways that themes are dealt with in any other kind of fiction. They are the result to a particular combination of a narrator, story, plot, character, setting, and language. In short, the reasons for reading and enjoying science fiction, and the ways of studying and analyzing it, are basically the same as they would be for any other story or novel. From the first paragraph, we can infer that science fiction has been most popular in modern society because ____.
| A．with the growth of literacy, the size of the reading public has increased |
| B．competition from television has created a demand for more exciting fiction |
| C．science fiction is easier to understand than other kinds of fiction |
| D．the increased importance of technology has given science fiction an increased relevance |
According to the definition in the passage, a fictional work that places human beings in a prehistoric world inhabited by dinosaurs____.
| A．cannot be called science fiction because it does not deal with the future |
| B．cannot be called science fiction because it doesn’t deal with technology |
| C．can be called science fiction because it deals with man’s relation with the world |
| D．can be called science fiction because it places people in an environment different from the one we know |
Science fiction is called a literary subgenre because____.
| A．it is not important enough to be a literary genre |
| B．it cannot be made into a dramatic presentation |
| C．it shares characteristics with other types of prose fiction |
| D．it has a great number of readers keen on reading |
One implication of the final sentence in the passage is that____.
| A．the reader should turn next to commentaries on general fiction |
| B．there is no reason for any reader not to like science fiction |
| C．the reader should compare other novels and stories to science fiction |
| D．those who can appreciate prose fiction can appreciate science fiction |
An appropriate title for this passage would be____.
| A．Man and the Universe | B．Toward a Definition of Science Fiction |
| C．A Type of Prose Fiction | D．The Bug-Eyed Monster |